The City Flickers & So Does Hope

Haruki and Kaito, suited up in their combat gear, burst through the lab doors, ready to save the day. They’d shot down OR5, who’d been standing guard at the gates. Guns still drawn, adrenaline still spiking, they braced for chaos.

What they found was... not chaos.

Yuzuki and Natsuki were sitting at a table, sipping tea like this was a casual afternoon hangout. Dr. Chiba, figurehead of Unity First, was strapped to a table nearby, thrashing and cursing.

“Girls are scary...” Haruki muttered, and Kaito nodded solemnly in agreement.

.

Meanwhile, Miyuu was sprinting across Harmonia City, her limbs aching but her determination keeping her moving. Her lungs burned, her head throbbed, and her neural link buzzed with K.A.T.O.'s occasional updates on the evacuation efforts.

She knew Haruki’s decision to prioritize the students over the bombs was the logical one. She wasn’t mad about it. Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time, and risking lives on what was essentially a suicide mission wasn’t exactly a rational move.

But logic wasn’t going to stop her. Harmonia was her home. She couldn’t just let it go up in flames.

As she leapt over a crumbling wall and swung onto a low-hanging balcony, fragments of her time here played through her mind. Her first day. She’d been furious, bitter, snapping at anyone who came near her. She hated the place before she’d even set foot in it, convinced it would hate her back. She’d been so sure.

Her first reflection mission. The one where Chibi Miyuu had nearly driven her up a wall, pushing every button she didn’t even know she had.

Natsuki. When she was the Shadow Phantom of the Toxic Pond, rallying an army of frog bots like some bizarre fairy-tale villain.

Yuzuki. The pure satisfaction of hacking the sprinklers to drench her in front of everyone—a rare, golden moment of victory that still made Miyuu smile when she thought about it too hard.

All of it. Every ridiculous, frustrating, beautiful piece of this place. Harmonia wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t always kind, but it was her home. Losing it—to see it obliterated into nothingness—was a reality she couldn’t make peace with.

Dr. Chiba’s words bounced in her mind: You’re a monster.

Maybe he was right. Everyone was in danger because of her. Harmonia City’s fragile peace was crumbling, and she was the one who had tipped the scales. Even her desperate attempt to save Natsuki had ended with her strapped to a table, useless and humiliated.

Her feet slammed onto the rooftop of another building, the impact rattling through her bones. Her chest heaved as she pushed herself to keep going, one hand gripping the edge of a vent to propel her forward.

When Miyuu finally got a good look at the bomb, her stomach sank. It wasn’t just that it looked complicated—though it did, with wires crisscrossing like an angry spider had a bad day—it was the timer. The unforgiving, merciless numbers ticking down toward zero. She barely had five minutes left, and she knew, that defusing one would take longer than that.

And there were four.

Why hadn’t she anticipated this?

Her map blinked open in her vision, highlighting the bombs’ locations. All distant. Each one might as well have been on a different planet.

Her breath hitched. It was hopeless.

Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground hard. Not that she noticed the pain, not really. It was drowned out by the slow, crushing weight settling in her chest. This is it.

Of course it would end like this. She had finally, finally found a place where she almost belonged. And now it was all going to blow up in her face.

Her thoughts spiralled. Even if—if—she somehow managed to save the city this time, how many more times would Unity First come after her? How many more bombs? How many more people she cared about would be dragged into this, hurt because of her, because she existed?

Would she have to live like this forever? Running, fighting, failing?

She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t take it. The weight was unbearable. The guilt, the fear, the exhaustion—it all pressed down until something inside her cracked wide open.

It wasn’t a physical sensation, not exactly. There was no sharp snap or burn. But it felt like a dam collapsing. And instead of water, it was light, data, and noise, all pouring into her mind at once. Too fast, too much. It overwhelmed her senses, ripping through her like a tidal wave demanding to be understood at once.

Her skin started glowing.

Her vision dissolved into white-hot light, before snapping back into something unbearably sharp. The world wasn’t just visible—it was alive, every detail pulsating with raw energy. The frayed edge of her sleeve, the faint hum of the bomb’s circuitry, the distant rumble of the city—all of it seared into her awareness with unnerving clarity.

She realized, with a distant sort of detachment, that she was floating. The ground was no longer beneath her feet.

And then she felt it. All of it. Every circuit, every wire, every pulse of electricity in Harmonia became an extension of her mind, lighting up like a neural map. It wasn’t just information; it was a system. A system she could touch, manipulate, and bend to her will.

She floated higher, her awareness expanding outward, wrapping around the city like a net.

The heat in her veins grew unbearable, searing through her bloodstream in sync with the alien rhythm of the nano-vessels coursing through her. She felt them, tiny and intricate, woven into her very being. They weren’t dormant passengers anymore. They were active, alive, and waiting for her command.

And she gave it.

Her realization hit like a jolt: her mind wasn’t just receiving signals—it was sending them. She focused, and the circuits of the bomb in front of her flared erratically, sparks spitting from its surface. A pulse of thought, and another bomb’s inner mechanisms began to glitch and stutter. She could feel the current flowing through the city’s systems, and with another directed surge, she rode the wave straight into the heart of Harmonia’s tech grid.

She wasn’t a body anymore. She was a signal, a field of energy. Movement wasn’t necessary; she existed beyond it. Her consciousness reached out, wrapping itself around the bombs like a tidal wave consuming the shore.

She ripped through their systems, dismantling them from the inside out. The energy cores sputtered under her control, drained and defused.

But she didn’t stop there. She couldn’t. Her energy surged outward, uncontrolled, spilling into the city’s power grid. The lights across Harmonia City flickered violently.

Streetlamps blinked out, one after the other. Windows darkened. Holo-screens sputtered and died. Everywhere, the city dimmed.

And then—silence.

The rush of power drained as quickly as it had come. Miyuu’s awareness snapped back, slamming into her body with force. She felt everything all at once: the unbearable weight of her limbs, the ache in her chest, the hollowed-out void where the heat had burned through her veins.

Her glow faded, the eerie light that had surrounded her extinguishing like the last ember of a dying fire. Her feet found the ground.

The last thing she saw was the city, blanketed in darkness, before her legs buckled and the world tipped sideways. She collapsed, her body limp, her mind spinning into the void where no light could follow.