Chapter 2

Kaguya Hanako's room was an electric gloom capsule where time seemed to be measured in processing cycles rather than seconds.

The air, dense and laden with ozone from the constant hum of the servers, now retained a new nuance: a subtle and charming biological trace, which Hanako tried to stifle with high-end air filters.

Emma stood by the entrance lock, watching her friend's silhouette shrink in front of the wall of monitors.

The violet glow of the screens was reflected in his eyes, whose pupils dilated and contracted at a speed that no normal human could replicate.

“My parents just arrived, and Shizuka just texted me; she says dinner’s ready,” Hanako announced. Her voice, once that of a fourteen-year-old in the throes of change, now possessed a crystalline clarity, its cadence ending in an almost imperceptible vibration. “She also says it’s our ‘last supper’ as a family before my parents have to leave for work and the Empire sends us to Atlantis. But we both know what it is, Emma. It’s a diagnostic test. They want to see if the new ‘me’ can hold a conversation about it without collapsing.”

Emma sighed, crossing her arms over her chest.

I knew the Kaguya lords; for them, the world was a series of interconnected systems.

Hanako's awakening was not a tragedy for them, but a statistical anomaly that they couldn't quite tabulate in their spreadsheets.

“I’ll go with you,” Emma said calmly. “If your father starts with his lectures about how to create a more efficient flowchart for converting Od into mana, I can distract him by asking about the new engines on Imperial ships. You know he can’t resist giving a lecture on high-level magical engineering, no matter how boring it is.”

Hanako let out a snort, a sound that originated deep in her throat and ended in a defensive hiss.

He rose from the chair with unnatural agility, as if gravity didn't apply to his new body in the same way. His movements had lost the bony awkwardness of his male self; now he flowed like mercury, with a predatory grace that seemed to deeply disturb him.

She adjusted her gray sweatshirt, pulling up the hood to hide the white ears that were twitching irritably under the fabric.

"If you say anything stupid in front of them, I swear I'll break into your personal network and delete all your files of those old stories you keep so carefully," she threatened, though her fingers trembled slightly as she opened the door.

Emma flinched at that stern warning. "Shit, fine..."

They both descended the stairs in tense silence.

The Kaguya residence was a bunker with a Zen-industrial aesthetic, where cedar wood blended seamlessly with touch-sensitive glass panels. In the dining room, the table had already been set with a perfection only a robot could achieve.

Kaguya Shinji, the father, sat with his back straight, consulting data on his neural interface glasses. Beside him, Akiko, the mother, finished arranging the bowls with a mechanical smile that betrayed deep fatigue.

"Emma-kun, thank you for convincing her to come down," Akiko said with a slight bow. "Please, sit down. Hanako, sit to your father's right."

Dinner began with the metallic clatter of chopsticks against the ceramic. The atmosphere was so heavy that Emma felt the air creak under the pressure.

He noticed that Hanako barely touched her food; her senses, now amplified by her Therian nature, seemed to be overwhelmed by the smell of the food and the hum of the fluorescent lighting.

His ears, under his hood, twitched frantically towards every little noise in the house.

"I've updated your Academy registration, Hanako," Shinji began without looking up. "Academy City has accepted the profile change. You're now listed as 'Feline Therian, Female.' This was necessary to prevent access errors in the dormitories and tuning labs."

Hanako placed the chopsticks on the table with a thud.

"Was it necessary to turn my identity into a technical report right now, Father?" she asked, her violet eyes flashing with a dangerous electric light.

"It's a matter of reality, not feelings," Shinji replied coldly. "Your cellular structure has changed drastically since your spiritual particles resonated and mutated your body into your current form. Your internal Od levels have increased by 20 percent, and your spiritual power now resonates with energy in nature like the Miko do...not only that, your magical energy trait literally 'mutated' into something more...powerful."

Shinji paused there for a moment, then continued, "...As a son, you had a bright future as a Data Analyst, but as a daughter of this family and now the Oracle of the Island, your value to the Empire is immense. We cannot allow an identity crisis to interfere with the results of your development in Atlantis."

"As a daughter," Hanako repeated, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "Less than a month ago you were giving me advice on how to be a man of honor, and now you talk about me as if I were an upgrade to the island's systems. I'm not a code you can rewrite as you please."

-Honey, Hanako is still adjusting...

Akiko tried to put a hand on her husband's arm, but he gently moved it away.

"The outside world isn't this sanctuary, Akiko. In Atlantis, Hanako will face Westphalia's disapproval and the Latin Confederacy's ambition. If she doesn't accept what she is now, they'll destroy her. And worse, she'll enter her first heat cycle unprepared. Her instincts will cloud her judgment, and she'll become a burden to Emma and Keiko."

Emma felt her own aura begin to vibrate in response to the tension. The ground beneath her feet seemed to cool.

“Mr. Kaguya,” Emma interjected, her voice, though low, cutting through the noise of the house servers like a mountain breeze. “Hanako doesn’t need reminding of the danger. She’s been hacking defense systems since she was a child. She knows what’s out there better than any of us. What she needs from you isn’t a performance analysis, but to know that she still has a father.”

Shinji looked at Emma, ​​assessing the hidden strength in Goro's grandson. He knew the young man was capable of feats that science couldn't yet explain, but his engineer's mind wouldn't accept emotional variables.

"Loyalty is admirable, Emma-kun, but biology is absolute," Shinji declared. "Hanako, if your animal impulses take control, you'll endanger the lives of your comrades."

Hanako stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair. Her hood fell back, revealing her white ears, which were now pressed against her skull in a gesture of pure, savage fury.

Her pupils were barely two black slits in a sea of ​​bright violet.

"I won't be a burden to anyone," Hanako hissed, and this time the sound was a low growl that rattled the glasses on the table. "I've built my own mental walls. Atlantis won't break me... and you won't tell me who I'm supposed to be again."

Without waiting for a response, Hanako turned around and ran towards the stairs with a speed that turned her into a silver blur.

The slam of the armored door shook the foundations of the house. Akiko covered her face with her hands, letting out a stifled sob. Shinji simply returned to his food, though Emma noticed his hands trembling almost imperceptibly under the table.

"I'm sorry, Emma-kun," Akiko whispered. "She was our little boy... and now, when I look at her, I feel like I'm looking at a stranger who has my son's eyes."

Emma stood up, feeling a weight in her chest that not even the most rigorous training could relieve.

"She's still herself, Lady Kaguya. It's just that now the world demands she be something she never asked for. With your permission, I'll go and see her. Don't let Lord Kaguya worry about the odds; I'll make sure she doesn't get lost out there."

Emma stood up from the table, leaving behind the electric tension emanating from Mr. Kaguya. Akiko, Hanako's mother, remained silent, staring at her daughter's empty plate as if searching the porcelain for an answer that logic could not provide.

Emma walked up the stairs with firm steps.

Upon reaching the armored door of Hanako's room, he saw that the "DO NOT ENTER" hologram was vibrating with an aggressive intensity.

"I know you're there, Hanako," Emma said, leaning her back against the cold metal of the door. "And I know you're probably trying to hack the hallway's motion sensor so a burst of tranquilizer gas will fall on me."

Inside the room, the frantic typing stopped. The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the hiss of the server fans.

"Go away, Emma," Hanako's voice came through the intercom, but this wasn't the voice of the friend Emma remembered. It was higher-pitched, with a velvety quality she hated. "My father's right. I'm a Therian now, not a man who can grow up to find a girlfriend, but a beast girl with over-senses and... and... who really wants to bite and tear things."

"You're still the same idiot you've always been, Hanako," Emma replied, closing her eyes. "Only now the game has changed your skin to a hairier one. I don't care if you're a boy, a girl, or a combat mecha. We still have a Street Fighter match to finish, and I'm not going to let you retire because of a hardware change."

There was an electronic click. The door slid open just a few inches. The violet gloom of the room filtered into the hallway.

"The same one?" Hanako peered through the crack. Her pupils dilated at the sight of Emma, ​​a feline reflex she couldn't control. "Emma, ​​my brain is processing sound frequencies that make me want to climb the walls. My body... my body feels light and strange. And you... you look at me like I'm one of those plastic figurines you have on your shelf."

Emma let out a soft laugh, which eased the tension in the crack of the door a little.

-Well, it's true that you're now a textbook "waifu," but your shitty personality is still the same. That's what gives me confidence.

Hanako opened the door a little wider and Emma entered. The room was a jumble of screens and cables. Hanako was sitting in her ergonomic chair, hugging her knees.

Her white tail curled shyly around her waist and her ears twitched as Emma sat down on the floor in front of her.

"When we go to Atlantis..." Hanako murmured, looking at her hands, whose nails were now retractable, razor-sharp claws. "I've been researching the forums in Academy City. They say Therians have a history of being overly guided by emotion and instinct, especially those from the Latin Confederation... If we go there, Emma... what will happen... what will happen when my instincts take over?"

"That's why the three of us are here," Emma said seriously, extending her hand. "Keiko is our guide, you're the brains, and I'm the one who hammers things until they're no longer a problem. No matter how modern Academy City is, the fundamentals don't change: a team that trusts each other can hack any system."

Hanako looked at Emma's hand. After a second of hesitation, she shook it. Her fingers were delicate, but Emma felt the latent strength that her friend now possessed.

"All right," she whispered, and a small smile, the first of her new life, appeared on her face. "But if I ever let out a 'meow' in front of someone important, you have permission to erase my memory with one of your Chi punches."

Emma laughed at those words. That said, she would never do something like that, and Hanako knew it. Anyway... she doubted that with that brain of hers she'd forget such a thing....

"Anyway, we've had enough of being cooped up in this cave," Emma said, giving him a gentle nudge on the shoulder from the entrance. "The Heisei Spring Festival...it's in full swing. It's our last chance to see the Sakura cherry blossoms before they lock us up in that metal city."

Emma's tone when she spoke of "Heisei" was sometimes strangely nostalgic, something that the others noticed with curiosity, just like now.

Hanako adjusted her hood, hiding her ears, although her tail was still twitching nervously under her sweatshirt.

"The density of the crowd will be unbearable," she protested, though her feet were already heading out the door, past Emma. "My ear will pick up every conversation, every heartbeat... it will be a chaos of sensory information."

"That's what I'm here for," Emma replied with a smile. "I'll walk ahead of you. Just watch my steps."

-Okay....Nya~

Hanako finally nodded, her cheeks red with embarrassment at that slip-up which, honestly, Emma found terribly adorable.

♦♦♦♦

A few minutes ago, with Hanako's parents:

The echo of Hanako slamming the door still vibrated in the thin walls of the Kaguya residence.

The silence that followed was not peaceful, but rather an electric heaviness. Shinji remained motionless, his gaze fixed on the terminal of his glasses, while Akiko sank into her chair, hiding her face behind a silk scarf.

"Are you satisfied, Shinji?" Akiko's voice wasn't a whisper, but a whip of bitterness. "Female sex," "feline subtype," "priceless"... You spoke of our own flesh and blood as if it were a second-hand processor! She left here thinking her father was a soulless calculating machine!

Shinji didn't respond immediately. Slowly, he removed his neural interface glasses and placed them on the table. Without the holographic glow reflected in the lenses, his eyes looked tired, but there was something else: a tension that wasn't anger.

"It had to be this way, Akiko," he said, and his voice, for the first time in years, faltered. "If I let my guard down for even a second... if I allowed my tone of voice to change..."

"If you allowed what?" Akiko looked at him, her eyes reddened. "What's so dangerous, Shinji? Showing that you love your child... our daughter?"

Shinji closed his eyes tightly and suddenly hit the table, not violently, but with contained frustration.

"He's just too adorable, damn it!!" Shinji exclaimed, losing all his chief architect composure.

Akiko froze, the scarf halfway across her face.

-That?

"You heard me!" Shinji covered his face with both hands, his ears turning bright red. "Her ears! Did you see how they twitched when she got angry? It was like a nervous breakdown! And that hissing! I've spent years designing firewalls, and nothing has ever left me feeling more helpless than seeing Hanako in that giant hoodie with that white tail!"

Akiko blinked, her expression of pain slowly transforming into one of utter astonishment.

-Shinji... you too...?

"Of course!" he continued, getting up and pacing like a man possessed. "When she came downstairs... my brain literally screamed 'Kawaii~'. I wanted to get up, hug her, and buy her every silk ribbon on Sakura Island. I wanted to take pictures and upload them to the family's private network! But if I did... if I became a shameless, drooling dad, she would have hated me even more! Or worse, she would have lost all respect for me as a professional!"

Akiko let out a long sigh, which ended in a small, nervous laugh. She wiped away her tears and looked at her husband with a knowing smile.

"I... I almost collapsed when she tried to eat fish and her pupils dilated like that," Akiko confessed, bringing her hands to her cheeks. "She's so small now... and so delicate. Emma-kun is right, she looks so beautiful it hurts. But I felt so guilty for finding "cute" a situation that causes her so much suffering, even being grateful that it wasn't a male Therian... that I preferred to go along with you coldly."

Male Therians in general seemed less human and more animal, so Akiko really couldn't imagine dealing with a son who looked like a literal humanoid cat...

"Exactly." Shinji paused, catching his breath. "If we're the 'cold and logical parents,' she'll have something to fight against, something to keep her on her toes. If we become her number one fans... we'll embarrass her to death. But Atlantis..."

His expression turned grim again. "I won't be there to protect her. That's why I have to be tough now. If she survives her father, she'll survive any Westphalian diplomat."

Shinji sat back down, putting his glasses back on. His face became a stone mask again, but Akiko noticed he was opening a hidden file in his neural interface.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

“I plan to install ‘maximum security grade’ tracking software on the Academy’s transport,” he murmured, a flicker of obsession in his eyes. “And I’ve sent an anonymous order for Hanako’s cabin to be fitted with the best air filters and highest thread count sheets available on the black market. If anyone tries to put a bell on her—” his eyes gleamed behind the glass—“…they’ll wish the demonic beings would drag them down to the depths of their singularities.”

Akiko smiled, feeling the weight on her chest lighten a little.

-We're terrible parents, aren't we?

"We're the parents of a genius cat girl in the thirtieth century, Akiko," Shinji replied, reverting to his monotone voice. "There's no user manual for this. We can only hope that idiot Emma has better reflexes than he lets on."

They both smiled knowingly.

Akiko then leaned back in her chair, watching Shinji as he, with an almost comical seriousness, manipulated his holographic terminal with the intensity of someone preparing an invasion, even though he was only secretly buying luxury supplies.

The silence in the dining room was thick, broken only by the buzzing of the servers.

"Hey, Shinji..." Akiko suddenly lowered her voice, a spark of mischief and genuine concern dancing in her eyes. "You're so obsessed with protecting her from the outside world that you're ignoring the variable right next to her."

Shinji didn't look up from his screens.

"If you're referring to the pollen levels in Atlantis for your allergies, I've already got you covered," he replied in his monotone engineer's voice.

"I'm not talking about the pollen. I'm talking about Emma," Akiko blurted out. "Hanako has always been attached to him. Before, they were 'the boys' who played video games, but now... Well, now Hanako's a girl. And not just any girl, she's a Therian with instincts she's only just discovering. What happens if those instincts take hold of him?"

Shinji froze. His fingers, which had been flying across the touchpad, stopped dead in their tracks. Slowly, he turned his head toward his wife, his expression one of utter mental paralysis.

"Hanako... in love with Emma?" Shinji blinked, processing the information like corrupted code. "That's a logical fallacy, Akiko! Just a month ago, you were friends arguing about recreating games from a thousand years ago! You can't just... change the 'best friend' file to 'romantic interest' just because the Archetype rewrote her biology. Emma's the grandson of that crazy old Futsu guy! He's the kind of guy who'd rather clean old DVDs than use a neural interface."

“Hormones don’t care about original thought processes, Shinji,” Akiko insisted, leaning forward. “Look at it from nature’s point of view. Hanako is scared, her senses are on edge. Emma is her best friend, he’s strong, he’s protective, and let’s be honest, he’s a very attractive young man. If she goes into her first heat on the ship or at the Academy… do you really think his masculine mindset will be able to stop the urge to seduce him? Or worse… that Emma will be able to reject her if she throws herself at him in a moment of instinctive weakness? I’ve seen my daughter… you know how, and I should have said it’s incredible what she’s hiding… not many men would reject that.”

—....

Shinji stood up abruptly, his face turning from its usual pallor to an alarming red. The thought that his "little genius" might be looking at Emma like that triggered a paternal meltdown in him.

"That's unacceptable!" Shinji exclaimed, losing all his composure. "Emma's a... a... a mud-training idiot! I won't allow my daughter to become prey to the instincts of some testosterone-fueled teenager! I don't even know if Emma knows how to treat a woman!"

"That's the point, darling," Akiko laughed maliciously. "Perhaps she'll be the one to end up 'hunting' him down."

"I have to install pheromone suppression protocols on her luggage!" Shinji began typing with renewed fury, nearly knocking the terminal off the table. "I'm going to hack the transport surveillance system right now! If I detect that Emma's heart rate rises even a single beat above normal when she's near Hanako, I'll have the fire suppression system drench them with ice water. I don't care if I have to start a diplomatic incident; no one is going to 'mark' my daughter without going through me first!"

Akiko sighed, watching her husband go into "full defensive panic" mode.

"I just hope Emma is as slow to understand hints as she is to use modern technology," she muttered to herself. "Otherwise, that trip is going to be a lot more troublesome than we expect."

♦♦♦♦

In a vast expanse of trees and plants mixed with some iron structures protruding from the ground, a girl was running at an inhuman speed, fleeing from something.

Behind them, a gigantic mass of flesh and metal was destroying everything in its path, pursuing her with an almost animalistic fury.

The girl moved nimbly through the trees, bushes, and clearly artificial metal fragments with a naturalness that made it clear she was completely familiar with the environment, trying to use it in turn to mislead the blood-red monster.

However, it was completely useless.

No matter what she did...it was as if that being could smell her scent, or even perceive the location of her soul. Even with every trick she devised or hiding place she found, it always followed her, and the reinforcement she used on herself wasn't going to last as long as her hunter's seemingly endless energy.

—Well, that being was once a guardian of his world, now corrupted by the dark arts of traitors to the great order of Machina.

She clenched her teeth in frustration, letting out a groan filled with irritation as she increased her pace.

Under the immaculate light of the Great Orb that illuminated the whole earth, the world knew no rest.

In this sacred forest, where the roots of the trees intertwine with the iron ribs that emerge from the ground, the air does not move at the whim of the heavens, but by the rhythmic breath of the Great Conduits.

Gigantic spirals of ancient metal, buried in the heart of the earth, spin with an eternal hum that keeps life alive in this sanctuary of greenery and steel.

The blue-haired girl ran with a determination to survive, and with each stride, the cyan-colored tattoos on her skin throbbed with a rhythmic intensity, responding to the heartbeat of the earth.

Her pupils, a deep electric blue, devoured the road, charged with an ancestral force that belied her youthful appearance.

Far behind her, the aberration of flesh and metal—a blood-red mass that seemed a mockery of creation—advanced with animal fury as it kept pace with her.

Each step of the monster crushed the sacred vegetation and made the iron foundations creak beneath its feet.

He was determined to capture her.

He reached a clearing where a huge vent of the Conduits exhaled a warm wind toward the zenith. The path ended in an abyss of clouds that obscured the rocky skies.

He turned, panting, as the red mass surged from among the metal trees, smashing everything in its path with a roar reminiscent of metal clashing against bone.

The girl had no weapons... She didn't need them.

She concentrated; her tattoos began to glow with such a blinding light that the electric blue of her eyes seemed to melt into the air...and then, gently joining her hands and singing, she released pulses of cyan light that expanded with her as she focused, illuminating the leaves of the trees.

With a melodic voice that stirs the soul and cyan light particles that filled the space around her with each luminous pulse, she sang without fear and anxiety affecting her rhythm and tone.

The sound of his voice resonated through the forest of trees and steel like a sacred melody that calms hearts, seeming to increase the vitality of the trees with magical energy rising in the surroundings.

She looked utterly sacred, almost capable of making anyone kneel before her in worship. Her mere singing made the area a blessed land, at least visually.

While doing this, the monster finally caught up with her and leaped, a tide of corrupted flesh and jagged limbs ready to close in on her.

At that moment, with her eyes closed, the young woman delicately extended her hands back on both sides—beautiful sparks following them—and after finishing her song, the magical energy of her tribal markings burst forth with a final divine pulse.

It was not an attack; it was an activation of a Gift bestowed by a higher being.

Space and time around her distorted, the cyan blue turned white, and with a sound similar to lightning tearing through a drum, her body seemed to dissolve into sparks before the beast's claws could touch her.

He launched himself randomly, surrendering his being to the flow of ether currents that connected everything in this world, the particles slowly fading into the air.

The red monster landed heavily on the hot metal amidst those ephemeral white and blue particles, its claws falling uselessly on the duct grate.

His prey had vanished into thin air, leaving only a trail of flowers and the echo of a power he could not comprehend.

He let out a roar of utter frustration towards the Great Orb, an unnatural sound that made the leaves of nearby trees tremble.

The prey he was ordered to capture had slipped through his fingers, leaving the colossal beast alone under the sacred light, scraping the steel floor in a dance of impotent hatred.

—Far away from there, far from the land where the wildness of nature and the coldness of iron existed in harmony, a cyan light flickered violently before the young woman collapsed onto the grass, far from immediate danger, but lost in the vastness of a world that would soon demand much more of her than a simple escape.