E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 126: Second Sun.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 126: Second Sun"Are you ready?" Reaper asked.

The secured video call connected them across opposite ends of the coming war. His end was in a prefabricated round room built for exactly this kind of situation, calm, precise, mechs moving outside with hydraulic efficiency, no unnecessary noise.

Shelly's end was something else. She was sitting on the grass at the border between Kasparia and the Remidican Republic, arms folded, the camp behind her in full preparation chaos, captains barking final orders, military vehicles cutting across each other without courtesy, the steady grind of electric tools driving a metal perimeter into the ground.

"A little late to be asking that, brother." She glanced at the hills surrounding the area. Small, dead things, stripped of grass by years of conflict between the two countries on either side of them. Both sides knew this ground well. "I'm already at the border preparing for any incoming attacks."

"And why is that?" Reaper asked.

"I know, I know." Shelly looked away. "But we need to protect our neighbors so we can protect ourselves. And honestly, I want to fix your image. Not for you, I know you don't care about that. But I don't want people across the world to feel disgusted the moment your name comes up. Protecting a weaker nation proves something."

"So that's the real reason." His voice was dry. "You know I don't care about optics. Chasing human approval leads to our end, Shelly. They don't care about us, and you need to reach the same conclusion about them. The moment they consolidate enough power, Elysium is gone. Think about what happens to every robot in it after that."

"I know." She lowered her head. "Never mind. You're right."

"You don't actually believe what you just said."

She didn't answer.

"When this settles," Reaper continued, his tone shifting slightly, "I have something to show you. Evidence about E-UNIT 00, what Nick did to her. It won't sit easily with you, but you should know it." A pause, quieter now. "Don't push yourself past your limit out there. If it becomes too much, send the army ahead."

Shelly laughed softly. "What if I'm already overwhelmed? Would you stay on the call while they go in my place?"

"Behemoth is more excited to watch me run the new protocol than he is about winning the actual battle. He would tear down a communication tower if he thought it helped. I can't afford that distraction." He straightened. "I'm sending you to that front because I trust you with it, more than anyone. Not as punishment. Because I know you'll win."

"Very confident."

"Of course."

Shelly's expression went flat. "Now I understand what Infinity meant about your ego."

"Win something for Elysium and I'll tone it down."

"Don't." She smiled before she could stop herself. "It suits you better."

"I can feel the insult under that smile from here." He shook his head. "Go. I need to prepare the new protocol."

Shelly sat forward immediately. "What new protocol—"

"You'll see. Take care of yourself, sister."

"You too." She closed the screen.

24 was lying on the grass directly behind where the screen had been, chin resting on her hands, watching.

Shelly stared at her. "How long have you been there?"

"Since the call started." 24 shifted upright. "Lord Reaper really talks differently with you. I've never heard him that relaxed, except with Infinity." She tilted her head. "Is he as good a brother as he is a leader?"

Shelly stood and adjusted the brace on her chest. "More than that." She looked toward the hills. "I was afraid that after he shut off his emotional driver, I'd lose him entirely. That I'd look at him and not recognize what was left." She glanced at 24. "I was wrong." She let the thought settle. "One question, how did Infinity manage your unit? Did she put a memory wall in place?"

"No." 24 replied. "She showed us what happened to 11, to 05, to 02. We came on our own." She called back over her shoulder. "25, did Infinity put anything in your system?"

25 was carrying three oversized crates and clearly resenting every one of them. "No. She removed something. A safety limiter, I think she called it."

Shelly went still. "She removed the—" She stopped.

"What?" 24 asked.

"Nothing." Shelly turned toward the frontline. "I can hear the sirens. Let's move."

The minutes stretched like hours.

The hills sat dead and windswept under a sky that had sealed itself with thick cloud cover, pressing the darkness down close to the earth. No grass on these slopes, no life, just the hollowed-out terrain of a region that had been fought over too many times to recover. Both armies knew every rise and hollow of it.

Shelly walked ahead of the formation, cloak pulled across her frame, the wind finding the hood and throwing it back. Behind her, fourteen thousand E-UNITs held perfect formation, their eyes the only light in the zone, hands resting at blades.

The rear lines carried the Liberta 01 sniper rifles, mass-produced after Infinity had stripped the Hope Bubble's files. The flanking units kept exo-knives tucked beneath cloaks, their movement patterns carrying the unmistakable signature of E-PHONEUS training.

Behind all of that, the Kasparian forces waited, soldiers and machinery holding position, ordered directly by Reaper to leave their anti-missile systems behind. They had nothing between them and the incoming strike except the blue-haired girl standing at the front of an army they didn't fully understand. Stress had been working through their ranks for hours. They were placing every hope they had in Shelly.

Then the small stars appeared in the sky. Distant, bright, growing.

A hundred and fifty of them.

The comm opened from the Kasparian side. "Middle-range missiles incoming. Contact in two minutes."

Shelly nodded once. The E-UNITs stepped back as one body.

She began to glow. Green energy pushed outward from her in a slow expanding ring, then surged all at once, wrapping her frame in heatless fire from the ground up in a single breath. She opened her eyes. Green burned at the outer edges of her irises, bright and unwavering.

She bent her knees.

Then she was gone, upward, the air snapping shut behind her.

A green blaze cut through the dark sky, a black silhouette at the center of it with nothing visible but two burning eyes. A second sun running the night shift.

“Devils Deception Protocol, initiated."

Black horns curved forward from behind her head. Bat wings spread in one smooth motion. A tail extended behind her, ending in a sharp point. Her smile widened past what looked comfortable, lit green from the inside, the glow bleeding into the dark around her.

"Gates of Hades, initiated."

The ground beneath cracked. The fracture moved outward from the center in both directions at speed, spreading across more than five kilometers, covering the full width of the incoming strike zone.

The missiles grew louder and larger as they closed the distance. They weren't aimed at the military formations below. They were aimed at the cities behind the border. The capital itself wasn't far, which said everything about how far the Remidican Republic was willing to go.

Shelly extended one arm, black silhouette, green fire running along it.

She snapped her fingers.

The crack split open.

The earth tore into two pieces. Massive ravines opened below her, dropping into a darkness that had no visible floor. The sound wasn't an explosion, it was something older and worse, the ground screaming as it came apart, a noise that rolled across the hills and kept going.

The Kasparian forces froze. Even at distance, the sound reached them.

Shelly snapped again.

Green fire rose from the ravines in a single unbroken wall, wide, tall, dense, climbing toward the sky. It turned what should have been another cold dark night into something that looked like noon in a different color. The light hit the E-UNIT lines, overwhelming their optics at the edges. Behind the front, Kasparian soldiers stood with phones raised, recording what looked like the world ending in green.

The missiles arrived.

They entered the wall and didn't come out the other side. No detonation. No fire. No shockwave. Each one touched the green and dissolved on contact, silently, immediately, without producing so much as a sound.

One hundred and fifty of the Remidican Republic's middle-range arsenal, erased. The wall took them one after another, the same fate meeting the last as it had met the first.

Then the sky was empty.

No more false stars. No more trajectories pointed at civilian cities. The Kasparian just stared at the green sun hovering above them, realizing they hired more than an ally.

Shelly descended. The wall pulled itself back down into the ravines as she dropped lower, fading out as she neared the ground. The fire left her body. Her eyes stayed the same.

She looked back over her shoulder.

The sound of fourteen thousand blades leaving their sheaths at once moved through the air like a single long exhale.

She nodded.

The E-UNITs jumped the ravines and ran.

On the Remidican side, the command room had been waiting for impact reports.

The door came off its hinges.

"Sir." The sergeant's voice carried something wrong in it before he'd finished the word, and heads turned before he continued. "They stopped the missiles. All of them." He steadied himself against the door frame. "Ground assault incoming, close combat, thousands of them."

The room stood as one.

The general opened the comms. "Defend the base. Get every vehicle moving now."

24 had taken the lead position. She moved through the advancing enemy line like something that had already decided where it was going and didn't intend to slow down, left, right, ducking under one soldier, vaulting another, closing the distance at a pace the defensive line couldn't match. One finally managed to get his rifle up and opened fire at her.

She raised her left shield. Blade in her right hand.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

The rounds bounced off and went nowhere useful. She kept moving toward him without adjusting her pace, eyes burning red. She reached him before his magazine ran out, one kick, direct, driven upward into his gut.

He left the ground.

She went up with him, matching his height. One motion, the blade came down through the center, smooth and unhurried, running through him like he wasn't there.

She landed cleanly. A half-second later, the two halves of the soldier hit the dirt on either side of her, painting the dry ground in a brief, heavy red rain. She didn't look back as she kept moving.

Shelly tracked the tanks deploying on the far hill from altitude, descending fast down a road that led directly to the battlefield, ordered to move at maximum speed because their front line wasn't holding. She launched herself upward and came down in their path, landing in the middle of the intersection like a green comet, the impact cracking the road surface beneath her.

The formation halted.

The crater of green energy settled around her. She stood at the center of the heatless inferno, untouched. Only her burning eyes and wide smile were clearly visible through the glow.

The tanks held position, engines running, and then began moving again, intending to run her over.

She pressed one hand flat against the road.

The surface changed. Green crept outward from her palm, the ground shifting from solid to something that glowed faintly and moved like liquid. The tanks sank into it, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as the material lost cohesion beneath the weight.

The vehicles held in place, their tracks spinning against a surface that no longer pushed back, the green light began pulling at their iron frames from below, quietly deleting their mass.

Voices broke inside the tanks, soldiers pushing against each other, climbing over one another to reach the hatches before the floor came up to meet them, screaming in whatever language fear defaulted to. The ones who got out first jumped onto the glowing road surface trying to move, trying to run.

They went faster than the tanks had. Less mass, less resistance. No heat, no burning, no pain, just the quiet, steady dissolution of their molecular structure, the ground taking them in without ceremony.

The support column disappeared. Where a road full of armor and personnel had been, a solid surface remained, faintly metallic, slightly luminescent, completely still.

Shelly lifted her hand from the ground.

The comm opened. "Captain Shelly." The Kasparian operations manager's voice was not entirely composed. "First camp, neutralized. You're clear to advance on secondary targets."

"How many remain?"

"Roughly twelve, ma'am."

"Roger." She switched channels. "Good work. Split into fourteen teams as planned, your maps have been updated. Two teams come with me. We're going straight to their Ministry of Defense. I want this finished quickly." She paused. "Do not touch civilians. My brother's image needs to stay clean. He's earned that."

"Roger!" Fourteen voices layered over each other in the response.

Shelly stood at the crest of the hill and looked down at the terrain below, fourteen streams of white and blue moving through the dark across the full width of the operational zone, each one with a heading and a purpose.

Her expression softened into something she hadn't planned.

"I really wish you could see this, brother." She shook her head. "What a waste.”

Shelly