They were almost at the exit when Airi appeared ahead of them.
She didn’t teleport.
Didn’t materialize.
She moved.
Fast, smooth, perfect.
Slipping into place and blocking the corridor with a presence so calm, so soft, almost domestic
that even Zeros stopped.
From behind her, Shiori’s voice followed:
“Sorry, Zerosu-san.
But don’t leave like that.
I want to thank you properly.
Both of you.
Come with me to Hangar B-2.”
Zeros let go of Blindy.
Blindy immediately dropped to the floor like wet laundry.
Airi giggled, reached out her hand
and even hummed a short little UwU tune under her breath.
Blindy flinched away from her touch and got up on his own.
At Shiori’s quiet command, they moved through the spaceport
until they stopped in front of Hangar B-2.
The door opened slowly.
Like a theater curtain.
Inside stood a ship.
So advanced
it looked sculpted, not built.
Streamlined. Predatory.
Done in warm rusted bronze tones.
Like a custom garage masterpiece made by a mad genius
industrial, but elegant.
Shiori gestured toward it.
“Please. Accept this as my thanks.
Your ship was destroyed…
and I can’t be your driver forever.
I have my own duties.
So… it’s yours.”
Blindy felt, as usual, his jaw quietly begin migrating downward toward the floor.
Zeros reached out
and casually pushed it shut with two fingers.
Airi giggled, covering her mouth:
“I thought Buraindi-kun would feel… comfortable
on a ship that looks like this. [￣ω￣]”
The ship rested in the hangar
like a beast pretending to be an object.
Its hull wasn’t just metal.
It was polished to the shine of ancient bronze
like someone built a machine of the future
out of materials from a long-lost civilization.
The engineers who created Airi had clearly touched this too.
It carried the same signature.
A smooth, almost biomechanical silhouette.
Not a single unnecessary line.
Not a single useless edge.
But where Airi was pure silver and cold moonlight
this machine was
sunset
molten copper
the heat of a forge.
The hull looked like a predatory deep-sea fish,
rebuilt at a cosmic scale.
A narrow, elongated nose
like a blade cutting through any atmosphere.
Smooth curves along the fuselage
like the result of successful experiments with FTL velocities.
At the rear, two massive stabilizers.
Not decorative. Functional.
Built to dampen inertial spikes during violent maneuvers.
Across the bronze surface ran thin veins of black composite.
Like burns. Like scars from past battles.
Or maybe not scars at all
but marks of deliberate tempering.
The cockpit was double-seated,
stretched, flowing
sharing the same design language as Airi.
But the glass wasn’t transparent.
It was deep violet.
Almost black.
Reflecting the hangar lights like a drop of oil.
With that glass, the ship looked at the world like a predator.
Revealing nothing.
Seeing everything.
The main engines were hidden inside the bronze body—
like Airi’s ship, they used a brutal Orion-style nuclear pulse drive,
kicking the vessel forward on controlled detonations
like it was punching its way through the void.
Yeah, for those who already forgot—yes.
It moves by detonating nukes straight out of the ship’s ass.
Elegant. Civilized.
Peak engineering.
Basically space farting at Mach 1000.
Only short vents visible,
leaking a soft blue glow
like a star was boiling inside the hull.
Underneath, retractable landing legs with flexible shock absorbers.
This was a ship that could:
- take off vertically,
- turn in place,
- kill inertia,
- enter atmosphere with almost no resistance, and… survive Blindy
Experimental S+ class.
The kind corporations test in simulations,
not hand over to living beings.
It embodied the philosophy of the same engineers who created Airi:
technology should be beautiful, alive, elegant
even when it exists to tear space and time apart.
But there was a difference.
• Airi is perfection.
• This ship is character.
The ship felt like it was saying:
“I am not perfect. I have survived fire.
I have been patched. I have been polished.
But I take off again.
I am not a model. I am a survivor.”
Shiori knew Blindy would lose the ability to speak.
And Airi knew Zeros wouldn’t be able to criticize it.
This machine had character.
History. Memory. Even if it had never left the hangar.
And most importantly—
it was designed for an idiot.
Not just any idiot. The idiot.