NIKKE, when the stars bloom

"No, no, you can't help me beat Lecheche." Anis raised her head and stared at Christine with disdain with her new red eyes.

"But but but... guess why... Commander... when he has nothing to do... he looks at everyone else... but no no no... he doesn't look at you."

"you!"

Christine, who always lost more than she won in bickering, bared her teeth in anger.

There was no way. In the whole team, she and Lavi were the most thin-skinned. Once they talked about this topic, they were destined to not win against Anis at all.

"Meet the enemy!"

Just as Christine was gritting her teeth and wanting to tear Anis's head off and stuff it into the back of Sugar's motorcycle, Rabbi's reminder interrupted this verbal battle about body shape like a timely rain.

Although they were bickering, when Christine heard that they had encountered an enemy, she didn't think twice and immediately grabbed Merry's clothes and took the two of them to a safe place.

"Attention! The number of Letchers is wrong!!"

"What do you mean?"

While running, Christine frowned and asked, "Are there more than the ones we encountered at the intersection before?!"

"There are too few! The group of Letchers that fell behind us chose to attack the commander first!"

Snap! !

The soles of the high boots collided violently with the floor tiles.

Merry, who was following behind Christine, also stopped and stared at Christine's slightly pale face in confusion.

"Take Anis and go find Rabi! The battle ahead will be over soon, there will be no danger."

"how about you?"

"...I'll go support the commander."

Chapter 14: A Night of Stars

The night wind blew across the exposed steel bars of the high-rise buildings, telling the world in a mournful voice the pain that this ruin had once experienced.

Gada...

Gada, gada…

Under the sound of the wind, dozens of Letchers roamed in this steel jungle like a pack of wolves. Pairs of mechanical spider legs hit and collided with the ground unscrupulously, making weird noises that were enough to make one's scalp tingle.

However, such a terrifying sound failed to exert any of its intended deterrent effect after entering Phoenix's ears.

The commercial district where he was hiding was huge, nearly three hundred meters long and seventy to eighty meters wide, with tall buildings everywhere and access to all directions.

If the Letchers wanted to kill him, they had to first leave a certain number of troops on the periphery to ensure that he would not escape by taking a detour. Then the remaining Letchers would use carpet search or carpet bombing to force him out.

The former would waste a lot of time, while the latter would require the dispatch of the support of the master-level Letcher.

No matter which plan is adopted, it is not an efficient method for Letcher.

Drop drop!

Just as Phoenix was carefully assessing the battle situation, the radar in his sea of ​​consciousness suddenly sent him a terrible alarm indicating trouble.

Why is there still Letcher? !

The man frowned irritably, and some civilized words burst out in his mind.

How many Letchers are there in this damn place called K Area?! What on earth are the Central Command and the Intelligence Department doing?

After sighing, Phoenix wanted to add a few more aggressive words in his hometown dialect to vent his emotions, but the image displayed on the radar was like a fishbone stuck in his throat, blocking his thoughts.

drop--! ! !

I saw a huge red dot that was more than four times larger than an ordinary red dot rushing towards the commercial street from the west at an astonishing speed.

what?

How come it is bigger than the red dot detected when we first encountered Rabi during the day? ?

Phoenix blinked in surprise, and immediately called up the three-dimensional map according to the instructions given by the flat radar.

Since the coverage of the three-dimensional map is only half of that of the two-dimensional radar, that is, a radius of 300 meters, Phoenix has to be patient and wait for a few more seconds until the huge red dot enters his "perspective" range.

However, what he never expected was that when the huge red dot stepped into the monitoring area, the picture that appeared in his mind was completely beyond his expectations.

A bone-like metal tail, bionic muscles, a head that looks neither human nor crocodile, and mechanical openers and closers on the cheeks that are suspected to replace the masseter muscles.

This, this is... "noisy"? !

Hasn't this intelligent Letcher entity been entangled with "Snow White" in the Pilgrim Organization in the Far North?

Why would you come to a regular area to join in the fun?

Wait, if it's here, doesn't that mean that Snow White has a solution to the erosion problem...

boom----! ! !

Before Phoenix's excited heart could rise, the missile explosion outside the window, like a volcanic eruption, pulled him back to the cruel reality.

“Humanity!!!!”

The loud, rough and deep roar savagely overwhelmed the aftermath of the explosion and echoed throughout the galaxy.

"Come out on your own and live. I'll come after you and die!"

The surrender phase?

Hearing the seemingly fierce but actually urgent threat, someone's heart, which had been beating wildly due to the explosion, suddenly calmed down a lot.

This guy's target is me, but he doesn't want to waste time looking for me. It seems that there is probably a Nikki code-named "Snow White" looking for him behind him.

Thinking of this, a plan immediately emerged in Phoenix's mind.

Delay! Delay until Bai Xue comes over, then he, them, and Anise will have a chance to survive!!!

【commander!】

On the side, Pepper finally came back to her senses from the shocking news that "Letcher can also be intelligent". Then, her first reaction was to poke her commander's thigh with her finger, and then began to invite eye contact.

[What should I do! What should I do! What should I do! What should I do!!!]

"..."

Seeing Pepper staring at him with hope on her face, Phoenix, who was about to shake his head, silently gave her a reassuring look, indicating that everything was still under his control.

He was afraid that if he shook his head, the girl's mentality and emotions would change drastically, and she would behave in some strange and unpredictable ways afterwards.

“I don’t want to say it a third time!!!”

"Come out!!! Or die-!!!"

On the central flowerbed of the commercial street, a creature with a body shape similar to that of an orangutan slammed its fist into the ground. The force was so great that even Phoenix and the other person, who were dozens of meters away, could feel the floor they were standing on faintly shaking slightly.

Damn!

What force?!

After being intimidated by this punch, Phoenix's expression inevitably changed a little. According to Nikki's average weight of one or two hundred kilograms, in front of the roaring fist, they might be fighting at the same zero-tolerance level as human flesh.

"five--!!!"

Outside the window, the countdown for the impending missile bombing has begun.

Faced with such a desperate situation, Phoenix subconsciously moved his gaze to look at Pepper.

However, it was his unintentional glance that helped him to discover in advance Pepper's eyes, which had become strange and determined at some point.

The man, who was keenly aware of the abnormality, reached out his hand without hesitation and grabbed the pink-haired doctor's wrist. At the same time, he frowned and asked the other party a silent question with a serious expression.

【Wait, what are you going to do? 】

"Four--!!!"

【Commander, go that way.】

Pepper held the anti-material sniper gun in her left hand, and pointed her captured right hand toward the passage on the right, then pointed at her own nose, and then pointed to the left. Finally, she held the sniper gun with both hands again and nodded vigorously to her commander.

[I'll go this way, using the big gun. Commander, you must find a chance to escape.]

"three--!!!"

In the noisy countdown, Phoenix was furious when he saw Pepper come up with a plan that was like a movie scene. He immediately raised his eyebrows and said silently:

[You are the commander and I am the commander?! We haven't been exposed yet, did you know that?]

He kept talking to himself, but how could Pepper, who had never learned lip reading, understand him?

Of course, even if the girl didn't understand what the commander was saying, she could guess from his expression that he didn't seem to like her plan.

So she shook her head and continued to apply to her commander with a determined look to implement the plan she had envisioned.

Unfortunately, the commander not only did not respond, he simply grabbed her wrist and turned away, ignoring her.

"one--!!!"

Boom boom boom——!!!

Outside the window, the missile explosion struck again, but it was different from the previous one.

The intensity and duration of the explosion this time far exceeded Phoenix and Pepper's imagination. It was as if there were a dozen or twenty mortars taking turns bombing the scene, dimly illuminating half of the commercial district in the dark.

It's not the noisy fighting style, nor is it the Bai Xue's firepower type.

Who else is joining in the fun?

His consciousness raced through the three-dimensional map at high speed, and a few seconds later, Phoenix found the answer he wanted in the sky above the commercial street - a black transport plane painted with bright red stripes.

On the transport plane, a little silver-haired girl was carrying a rocket launcher on her shoulder and bombing the ground excitedly.

Not only that, two ships full of missile containers loaded with firepower slowly floated under the transport plane, and one mini missile after another accurately hit every Letcher in sight, easily clearing out half of the entire commercial street.

The orange-red explosion flashed through the window, revealing someone's stunned expression in the dark night.

Bestie?

Rabi’s old teammates came to save the day?

Chapter 15: Third-rate

Buzz buzz buzz——

"Are we really not going to establish a communication signal with the commander? Yinhua?"

Buzz buzz buzz buzz——

"Heh, what good will it do for us to establish communication with a commander who is a third-rate person with seven non-mass-produced Nikkis and is being chased by eighty-seven Selfless-class and Servant-class Letchers?"

Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz——

"But... I feel like a normal commander would have been killed if they encountered this kind of situation."

boom--! ! !

The storm of bullets spewed out by the six-barrel Vulcan cannon successfully detonated the missile fired by Xiaocao in mid-air. The strong hot air wave slammed towards the door of the transport plane, blowing the hair of Emma, ​​Yinhua and Besty.

"Besides, we don't know the commander's location yet. If he's accidentally injured, Ingrid will definitely ask Yinhua to write reports for several days."

"..."

Hearing that he might have to write reports for several days in a row, Yinhua, who was about to pull the trigger at Xiaocao, stopped responding for a moment.

When she thought about wasting nearly a hundred hours on such a boring thing, she finally followed Emma's advice and took the initiative to try to establish voice communication with the useless third-rate commander.

drip.

【Communication established successfully】

"I'm Yinhua, captain of the special forces. Report your approximate current location. I don't want you to die in our hands, third-rate." The cold-faced girl with a high forehead urged in annoyance.