Ruri Gokou (Kuroneko) finally cleared the "second NieR" in front of her.
At last, she had familiarized herself with the content again.
And this "second NieR," a PS3 game, was not something she had at home. She had borrowed it from an online friend whose screen name ID was Saori Bajiina.
This was one of the few friends she had.
They had even met offline before. She was a very big female otaku.
The reason Kuroneko described her as "big" was because after meeting this female online friend, she had the strange illusion that a halfling had run into a giant.
Her height was at least 1.8 meters.
This extremely kind female online friend had lent her the "second NieR" game without the slightest hesitation.
"So tired~"
Kuroneko lifted a hand and pounded her shoulder a few times.
Come to think of it, if Saori knew that Kuroneko had this kind of special chat group installed in her head, she would be insanely jealous, and she would absolutely want to know whether it connected to any worlds she liked.
Especially mecha worlds. Saori loved those. Part of her screen name, "Bajiina," was taken from the Gundam character Quattro Bajeena in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
If she also knew that A2's world was the future of NieR: Replicant (NIER Replicant), Saori would probably get so excited she would faint.
If she could, Kuroneko wanted to share it with Saori, but unfortunately this chat group was something only she could see.
If she actually said it out loud, it would probably just make people think her chūnibyō had gotten so severe it was beyond saving.
In that case, she might as well log in and take a look, see if anyone was online right now.
Log in!
Huh?
Someone was online, and more importantly, this was—
"Livestream?"
A2 was streaming again. What was she streaming this time, fighting the Machine Lifeforms again?
Kuroneko really wanted to watch, so she tapped in and entered the livestream. The video that popped up was—
"Th-This…"
Kuroneko could not find the words. What a magnificent scene.
Wow…
Transformable fighters were in combat with countless flying Machine Lifeforms, trading fire with them in a full-scale engagement.
A wild outpouring of ammunition. Almost nothing was wasted. Nearly every shot hit a flying Machine Lifeform, turning each one into a blooming firework.
To be honest, it felt a bit like playing a 3D mecha shooter game. One sweep, and an entire dense pack of monsters exploded.
Suddenly, a transformable fighter that was not the same model as Ms. A2's blew apart nearby. Kuroneko even saw the android inside ripped into pieces. Because so much of the internal structure seemed to imitate human organs, it scared her badly.
On top of that, the shrill alarms and the stern communications reporting battlefield conditions instantly made her mood sink, even though a moment ago she had been watching it like a high-adrenaline sci-fi blockbuster.
Only now did she realize this was not fictional film-making.
This was a real battlefield.
Right in front of her eyes, a war beyond anything she could have imagined was unfolding.
So Kuroneko started worrying about A2.
No, not just A2. There was also 2B, whom she had seen in earlier streams, and Mr. Golden Toilet—he was actually participating too.
Those three were on the same team.
They were weaving through the enemy's dense lasers and energy rounds in a hair-raising dance. If they got grazed even once, it could be total destruction, machine and pilot alike.
Only after the dense swarms of flying Machine Lifeforms had been wiped out by more than half, and a massive breach had been torn open, did Kuroneko finally let herself breathe a little.
"Operation 'Fireworks'?"
What was that?
The camera gave her the answer.
They were enormous missiles. Using the surrounding objects for scale, Kuroneko estimated each one was over thirty meters long and at least three meters wide.
Ten of these super-sized missiles rose into the sky, heading straight for the enemy airspace that had just been ripped open.
As the missiles drew closer, the enemy went berserk, throwing themselves forward to intercept. But the android air forces also intercepted with equal madness. Some even used their own bodies as living shields, blocking attacks so the missiles would not be shot down.
Not only that, there were large numbers of android air units that had already reached the coastline in advance, smashing the enemy's coastal defenses at any cost.
And Ms. A2, 2B, and Mr. Golden Toilet were also destroying the enemy's anti-air emplacements.
She had to admit, the visuals were even more terrifying now. Under that dense curtain of defensive fire, the three aircraft took hits here and there, but thankfully they were glancing blows, not strikes to critical areas.
In the end, they pulled back, rapidly retreating from the coastal fortress that had been built to look practically unbreakable.
And the super-sized missiles of Operation "Fireworks" reached the airspace overhead less than five seconds after the withdrawal.
In the next instant, Kuroneko felt her eyes—no, her brain—go blank from the flash.
But the white light faded quickly. The scene that returned to her vision made her gape, her mouth falling open in shock.
"Ah~~~"
She let out a half-choked cry.
Now Kuroneko understood why it was called Operation "Fireworks."
Those missiles really did bloom like gigantic fireworks, bursting into countless points of light that radiated outward in every direction. Each point dragged a luminous trail behind it, like a laser. It could be described as a laser firework erupting from a central core and spraying outward.
Beautiful, and deadly.
It was basically a fusion of a white phosphorus bomb and a cluster munition. That fortress that had looked unbreakable turned into a honeycomb in an instant.
Wait, this destruction… it looked like the effect from Mr. Golden Toilet's grenade earlier.
But before Kuroneko could think further, the perspective centered on A2 tilted upward, shifting to the sky. A2 was watching the sky.
The sky?
In the upper atmosphere, massive numbers of light-points were falling.
The leading lights looked like warheads!
Some of the lights behind them were fighters!
And some looked like sci-fi landing pods, dropping in as well.
Huh?
Over the ground where the drop was about to land, a vast, black, oppressive cloud surged upward.
As the display inside A2's fighter zoomed in, Kuroneko saw what it was.
A dense swarm of flying Machine Lifeforms.
The number made her scalp prickle. Her trypophobia was about to kick in.
This was at least twenty times—no, thirty times—the number of coastal interceptors. The sheer excess made goosebumps rise on her skin.
So many rising at once, "blotting out the sky" did not even feel like an exaggeration. It made Kuroneko wonder whether the android drop could really reach the ground safely.
The answer was yes.
Because the leading warheads accelerated further and plunged straight into the dense, black cloud.
And so, the incomparably shocking "Fireworks" gala began.
(End of Chapter)
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