he underground bunker shook more violently than ever before, enough to phase Yuta's sandals and his hakama trouser's hems through the floor. Jules and Rayph leaned into their mother's bed from where they sat on their knees on the floor beside it. They looked up at the ceiling in fright. Yuta had already explained to my children that the Vyx were mounting an attack on the base, and that I and the other wyrms were fighting on defense. Though that had initially elicited some colorful language from my daughter, she and Rayph broke out in cheers once they learned—and heard—the spirit-manned tanks and aerostats engage the enemy.

"What was that?" Jules asked.

"Something's wrong," Rayph said.

At first, interacting with my kids had been somewhat awkward; Yuta and Ichigo could see them, but not the other way around. Thankfully, Ichigo had come up with a simple solution, one so obvious, it irked Yuta that he hadn't seen it himself.

"Just hold the consoles," Ichigo had said.

Jules and Rayph turned to what—in their eyes—were a pair of haunted PortaCons floating in the middle of the room.

Unfortunately, Rayph's words were truer than he could have known. Just moments before, Yuta's connection to me had suddenly evaporated, and with it, any sense of my presence. Ichigo had yelled in panic at the unexpected, disconcerting sensation, though Yuta managed to keep his young ward calm.

"Focus, Ichigo," he'd said, pressing his arm onto the young man's shoulder. "Dr. Howle is not gone. He's just… distant."

"Samurai guys!" Rayph said. "What's going on?"

Ichigo angrily typed into the console. I don't know. It's your father. He

But then Yuta grabbed the console from Ichigo's hands and set it on the bed. Jules and Rayph's nervous eyes widened in shock.

"Stay calm, Ichigo," Yuta said. "It's in tense moments like this that a level head makes all the difference."

Jules yelled. "What the fuck?!"

Yuta typed into his own console: Wait a moment, please.

Closing his eyes, Yuta focused on the presence of my other spirit passengers.

"Where is Dr. Howle?" he asked, and when he spoke, the others heard him. "What's happened?"

"He's entered the Network," Lt. Kaplan said. Though Yuta didn't know the man, my wyrmsong communicated the soldier's name to him.

"He entered the Network?" Yuta said, thinking aloud.

Ichigo turned to him, eyes wide. The oni crossed all four of his arms. "No shit…" He smirked. "I guess he took your lessons to heart."

Yuta remembered: Be open to opportunities, and act wisely when they present themselves.

Nodding, he typed the explanation up for my kids.

Your father found a way to re-enter the Network.

"That's a good thing, right?" Rayph asked.

Yes.

Somewhere unseen, a spirit screamed: "Shit! They've broken through the perimeter! The Vyxit are entering the base! The defensive line has fallen!"

The destruction outside thundered even louder, enough to shake the room.

Yuta typed frantically with his ghostly fingers.

The enemy has broken through Fort Marteneiss' defenses.

"Shit!" Jules screamed, coughing as she placed her hands atop her head. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Ichigo turned to the wall. "They need us out there."

"We swore to Genneth we would protect his wife and children," Yuta replied.

"We can do that outside more easily than we can in here." Ichigo groaned. "Down here, we wouldn't be able to see the enemy coming."

"That… is a very good point," Yuta said, with a nod of a finger.

Given how he'd met his end, Yuta was loath to abandon ailing children in their time of need. He'd already experienced the pain of losing his family, not once, but twice. He wouldn't wish that fate on his worst enemy, and that was before he'd struck up a begrudged—though enjoyable—friendship with Count Athelmarch of Seasweep.

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But to do that to a man—a wyrm—he counted among his dearest friends?

It was unthinkable.

"You're not moving," Rayph said, addressing the spirits. "Why aren't you moving?"

I promised your father we would keep the three of you safe while he was gone, Yuta typed.

"Yeah," Jules said, "and every step the Vyxit take is actively making us less safe. Dad told us the Vyx rescue uninfected survivors." She glanced at her unconscious mother. "I'm pretty sure we're not that." She coughed. "I can only imagine what they'll do to us if they find us here."

Rayph looked up at his sister. "Wait… what?" Fear was wide in his eyes.

"Don't kid yourself, Rayph, we're infected, and the aliens are here to destroy the infection. Put two and two together, and…"

The sight of the little boy breaking out in panic was too much for Yuta to bear.

He wished his sons were still with him—Uzé, and Genta—but they weren't. They'd had their chance, and it had passed them by.

Lifting the PortaCon with him, Yuta rose to his feet and turned to where Ichigo stood by the bunker's sealed door.

The oni had already set his console down on a nearby table.

The two samurai locked eyes, and Yuta nodded.

"Alright," he said, "let's go."

Ichigo unsheathed his blade with a white-fanged grin.

Yuta turned to face my children.

Stay here, he typed.

"Are you going to fight them?" Rayph asked.

Yes.

Then Lord Uramaru placed the two rectangles of tomorrow onto Pelbrum Howle's bedside and followed his retainer in phasing out through the wall, flying up through the garage's concrete ceiling, and joining the wildest battle he'd ever known.

— — —

"Shit!" Lt. Kaplan yelled. "Someone, give me some covering fire!"

The aliens were hounding him from above and below. The one remaining starfighter was on his tail. Then, all of a sudden, two figures flew up out of the brown earth, wielding—

—Swords?!

But then Adam's bemusement turned to exultation. One of the flying warriors was red-skinned—redder than blood—with white hair and four arms. The other wore a sweeping Munine robe, and held the single oddest-looking sword Adam had ever seen.

He'd never met them, but the connection offered by my wyrmsong helped to fill in some of the gaps. Adam knew their names: Ichigo and Yuta. And he had to admit, they looked pretty badass.

He just hoped they'd deliver.

And then they did.

Flying through the air, the ghosts swept down onto the Vyxit troops in a wave of phantom steel. Their attacks came so suddenly, and from such an unexpected angle, that by the time the walker mechs and stilt-legged infantry realized what was happening, they were already cut to pieces. This created a vacuum in the middle of the up-raining laser fire, giving Adam a clear path to sweep follow after them.

"Yes!" Adam hissed.

He checked the display.

"Perfect!"

The bogie on his tail had taken the bait.

Silver-clad hummingbird knights rushed up to intercept Adam's ship, but Lt. Dueright and a couple other wyrms attacked them from the side with a one-two punch of claw swipes and spore blasts. The wyrm lieutenant had a morning star made from psychically bound spores, the business end of which was engulfed in flames.

The precious seconds the hummingbirds wasted deftly dodging the attacks gave Lt. Kaplan the perfect opening.

"Fire!" he cried.

One of the hummingbird warriors managed to dart out of the blazing red death ray's way just in time, but the other two took the full brunt of the laser blast, evaporating into dust and nothing.

Better still, the death ray ignited the spore clouds, causing a massive explosion that spewed smoke in every direction.

Adam ran his fingers along the steering globe, rolling it backward, sending the ship rocketing up through the smoke.

With Yuta and Ichigo keeping the walker mechs occupied with their weird ink-waves and four-armed strikes, the wyrms had a clear path to the flower-ship on Adam's tail. They launched themselves at the spacecraft like kamikaze drones, latching onto it as it passed through the smoke cloud. Adam watched in glee as the serpents used their psychokinesis to destabilize the ship's flight path, sending it into a whirl. Slick and Dueright led the follow-up attack, barraging a single spot on the ship's shields with the Trenton military tech on their bodies.

The spot started to flicker.

Then Ichigo leapt up from out of the blue, up onto the flickering section of the shield, phased through it, landed on the ship's hull, carving a sparking gash with his psychokinetically powered blade as he ran across.

The shields collapsed a moment later. The wyrms inundated the spacecraft with torrents of acid spore breath.

The spaceship careened down at a long, low angle, like a drowning stone, streaming fire and smoke. Extrapolating the wreck's path, the wyrms rushed ahead to alter its course, but were too late to stop it from plowing into the Fort Marteneiss' main building.

The ensuing explosion was as glorious and tall as any Lt. Kaplan had ever seen.

The blast wave sent debris flying out, knocking nearby Vyxit troops to the ground, and—ironically—giving the Fort's defenders an opportunity to recoup their losses.

Spirits ran out from the burning building and the heaps of ruined tanks and aerostats with whatever weapons they could carry. Yuta and Ichigo dropped from the sky and landed on the fallen aliens, blades pointed at the earth. Blood, ichor, and mech-fluid seeped and splashed from the wounds they stabbed into their victims, and then again with the waves of bullets and laser-fire the spirit troops unloaded onto the enemy forces.

And then, wouldn't you know it, Lt. Kaplan heard and felt the one thing every pilot dreaded most: sudden engine failure.

The lone remaining hummingbird warrior had pulled its own kamikaze maneuver, launching itself at the rear of the ship in a rocket of hot light that pierced through the shields like they were paper, spearing a deep, surgically aimed strike into the engines' exhaust ports that caused the mother of all alarms to wake up and scream from the sides of Adam's viewscreen.

And then every sense of comfort and control Lt. Kaplan felt got ripped away from him as the ship started to plummet. The flight controls became increasingly unresponsive beneath Adam's fingers.

"Clear the landing strip!" he yelled. "My ship is coming down!"

Without an engine to power it, an aircraft was little more than a brick with wings. All Adam could do was steer the ship toward the Fort's landing strip as the ground rushed up to meet him.

Wyrms flew in ahead of him, knocking vehicles out of the way with their powers. One wyrm simply grabbed an abandoned car right up off the ground.

Everything roared as he hit the landing strip.

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