The Roar of the Beast and the Black Rain.

The balance of the battle was broken with a single gesture.

The Regent slowly raised his right hand, palm open toward the black sky, as if he wanted to crush the clouds. And then, he roared.

It was not a military order. It was not a word. It was a primordial sound, the roar of an ancient beast that had been chained for centuries. GWAAAAAAAAAAH!

It wasn't one, or two. It was three consecutive roars. Each one was a shockwave of physical pressure. The first roar stopped the wind. The second made the concrete foundations of the base vibrate. The third roar dispersed the dense fog covering the battlefield as if it were cigarette smoke, leaving the air clean and cold.

The creatures of the Calamity, upon hearing their master, entered a state of absolute frenzy, shrieking in euphoria and attacking with renewed violence, ignoring pain and death.

Amid that nightmare chorus, the girl in the kimono made a superhuman leap. She soared several meters into the air with a grace that defied gravity. At the highest point of her jump, she drew her weapons from her sleeves. They were not swords. They were two war fans (Tessen) made of dark metal. Opening them with a dry CLACK!, she revealed edges as sharp as razor blades. On the iron ribs glimmered engravings of letters that were not Japanese kanji, nor any human alphabet; they were angular runes that seemed to hurt the eyes.

The girl spun in the air and struck out with both fans. A gust of cutting wind, visible from the distortion in the air, shot upward. The attack struck the swarm of drones Natasha controlled head-on. There was no explosion. The drones were simply shredded, cut into pieces of scrap metal that fell like metallic rain.

Below, in her trench, Natasha clutched her head and let out a choked scream. With her mind connected to the machines through the Neural Link, she felt the destruction of each drone like a physical blow to her own brain. She spat out a mouthful of blood and the world spun. Her knees buckled, but before she could hit the ground, she drove her katana into the earth and used it as a crutch to hold herself up.

"Damn it..." snarled Natasha, wiping the blood from her chin angrily. Far from feeling fear, she felt fury. It was the first time anyone had broken her link like that. "You'll pay for this!" she thought, forcing her body to obey.

Slowly, she straightened up. Her mismatched eyes searched for the figure of the girl, who was landing softly on a beam of a nearby ruined building. Natasha couldn't see her face clearly from the distance, but she felt that creature, despite having its eyes blindfolded, was staring straight at her. She felt a strange connection. An invisible thread, unsettling and familiar, that made her skin crawl.

Natasha turned to Ken, Yamato, and Shinji, who were watching her with concern. "Split up!" she ordered in a hoarse voice. "Go support the west wing! Don't do anything stupid!"

"But Natasha, you're..." Ken began to say.

"It's an order!" she barked.

The three boys, seeing the seriousness on her face, nodded and ran toward the chaos of the battle.

Just as they left, Natasha felt something cold on her cheek. A drop. Then another. And another. The sky, tortured by the Regent's roars, finally broke. It began to rain. But it wasn't clean water. The rain carried the tons of human ash floating in the air. The water fell black, thick, and sticky, covering the base, the weapons, and the faces with a layer of grayish mud.

From the Command Tower, Kaori watched the panorama through the windows streaked with black rain. "Rain..." she murmured. "This will reduce visibility, but it will also put out the fire from the explosions. Does this help us or doom us?"

Her eyes instinctively shifted to the monitor watching the enemy leader. She needed to know what he would do after those roars. Kaori's blood ran cold. The monitor showed the Mobile Throne on the other side of the moat. The four Oni bearers were there, motionless in the rain. But the throne was empty.

"Where is he...?" whispered Kaori, a chill running through her entire body. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. "Sector search! Track Class S thermal signature! Now!"

The cameras spun frantically. They swept the battlefield, the moat, the walls... Nothing. The Regent, a three-meter-tall creature in heavy armor, had disappeared without a trace in a matter of seconds. He had moved. And no one had seen him.

Kaori grabbed the communicator with a trembling hand. "Natasha, Kyosuke!" she shouted, losing her usual composure. "Be on your guard! The Regent has disappeared from his throne! I repeat, the primary target is not there! We don't know where he is, take precautions!"

Outside, under the black rain and the clamor of steel, Natasha tightened her grip on her sword's hilt. The feeling of being watched intensified. The hunt had begun.