The next morning, Sunday, Kana woke up to find herself alone in the house. Jina wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t in the living room either. The kitchen counter had a small pink note with a heart drawn on it. Inside the heart, was a simple message –

  “Going to the Sakai Entertainment headquarters for some practice. Breakfast is in the microwave. Heat it according to when you wake up!”

  Then, she had written down different numbers based on the amount of time that had passed. Kana noted that the temperature of the entire house was also lower than she had expected. It was August, which means that she should have expected some heat with those glass windows, but that wasn’t the case. After setting the timer to let the food heat up, she started walking around to check things she had missed last night.

  As expected, there was a digital thermostat. She played around with a little bit as she laughed. They had never been able to afford an apartment that had one, so this was certainly new. She had jumped straight to the latest technology, too. Other than that, there really wasn’t a lot she had missed, other than all the small decorative pieces everywhere. One that she particularly fell in love with was a small statue of a woman holding a vase.

  The microwave beeped, and she hurried back to get her food out. Once she took it out, she found simple tomato soup and an omelette. There was a coffee machine, so she took fifteen minutes to figure out how that thing worked and kept some to brew for herself. Then, she quietly headed to the dinner table and looked down from the window as she took her first bite.

  Kana could see the building Emi was in right now. If only she had been able to see her right now, too. That would be nice. Emi was probably pissed off at her, but Kana didn’t care. She wanted to give her a big hug either way. She looked down and noticed that the omelette was over before she could even form an opinion. Her brain said that it had been delicious.

  So, she tempered her expectations and took one sip of the tomato soup.

  A sour expression spread across her face, and she groaned. She was trying too hard to be angry, and yet, she couldn’t be. The soup was perfect.

  _____________

  The Sakai Entertainment building was even more inconspicuous than the one they had been in two nights ago.

  It was big, but had absolutely no branding on it. The major colour on the walls was white, and the windows were sparse. That made sense for a place which was meant to hide so many things behind its concrete barriers. Kana had found a car waiting for her below her apartment, so she had taken that all the way here. Once she got to the building, she got out of the car, and entered via the main door.

  Immediately, she saw a man in his early thirties approaching her. With a light stubble, thinning brown hair, and dark circles so heavy they looked like they were going to fall off, his purple striped suit was doing nothing for him. He nodded and then gave her a short bow, “Kana Minami-san?”

  “Yes. Where is the training range?”

  “Please follow me. Ohara-san has already been working on levelling up for two hours now.”

  Two hours? Kana started following the man as she thought about the timeline. She had woken up at eight and gotten here at nine-thirty. Jina, on the other hand, had been practicing here since seven-thirty if he was to be believed. That meant she had woken up before six, prepared breakfast, and then gotten ready before heading to work. It was a scary schedule, but one that Kana could never get behind. Her sleep was of utmost importance.

  “My name is Jun Yamazaki.” The man said as they went up a flight of stairs and took a right turn on the first floor. The building was impressive on the inside too, with clean white tiles and walls everywhere, with occasional yellow painted accent lines. The man, Jun, continued, “I will be your primary manager and representative in Sakai Entertainment, and directly report to President Sakai.”

  “And he has told you everything that is going on?” She asked him.

  He stopped at a fairly regular-looking door and gestured for her to move in. “Everything? He has told me about the month-long test that he will be holding. The one to check your performance against A Team?”

  “So, what do you think about our chances?”

  “Chances?” He nervously laughed, “It’s not really a competition, is it? President Sakai just wants to check the difference between the two teams and their numbers. I don’t think we can be better than the A Team either way, so all we can do is put in all our effort into it.”

  He didn’t know everything, then. Ryu Sakai had only told him the information that was most necessary to him, and was betting on the fact that Kana would keep her mishaps a secret. Unfortunately, it seemed he hadn’t yet understood how little of a fuck she gave.

  “Yamazaki-san?” Kana looked at him as she pulled out a set of white gloves from her casual yellow dress and put them on, “Have you never dreamed of a building called Yamazaki Entertainment instead of this place?”

  “Huh? What might you be saying? That’s a bit…out there of an idea.”

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  She sighed, “You’re that kind of person, then? Fine. Just do your best, Yamazaki-san. I’ll handle the rest.”

  Kana pushed the door, and the sounds of a blade slicing through the air filled her ears. Before she could fully open it and get eyes on that goth bitch, her new manager put his hand on the door and stopped her from moving forward.

  “What happened?”

  He looked at her, gulped, and asked in a trembling voice, “What…did you mean by that statement, Minami-san?”

  A devious smile spread across Kana’s face, “So, you’re this kind of person. That’s better, isn’t it? By the evening, can you tell me more about the A Team and their manager? Thank you for your help. Come to our apartment, please. We can discuss the specifics from there.”

  “S-sure.”

  “We’ll go far together, won’t we, Yamazaki-san?”

  “How far, Minami-san?”

  She laughed in her idol tone, stuck a tongue out, and blinked with those blinding moe eyes before bending under his hand and getting inside the room. The door closed behind her, and she heard footsteps withdrawing from the outside.

  Inside the room, there were six lanes that looked very similar to her training center. Or to be more general, like a shooting range. Jina currently occupied the only one with her sword as she made her way through a bunch of dummies that poured out of the other end of the range.

  Every time she cut through one of them, they burst into the same purple cubes that made their weapons. These cubes then flew up and into their chest, inside where the implant that allowed them to harness these powers was. Kana made sure her gloves were tight and entered the range too, immediately taking out her grenade launcher as she did.

  The sound of it cocking attracted Jina’s attention, who waved her hand. The first time, to say hello. The second time, to stop the dummies from being spawned.

  “How was the omelette? Not too salty, I hope?”

  “I could make a better omelette in my sleep.”

  Kana sighed and decided to get away from her. Any more such questions, and she was going to lost her mind. She got into the lane furthest away from Jina and waved her hand to get the dummies to start spawning for her. Then, she aimed the grenade launcher and started firing. Every time one of the dummies was destroyed, the same thing happened as with Jina. The cubes flew into her chest, and a new bar appeared on the screen of her launcher.

  This one counted EXP. The more purple tiles she consumed, the more the implant inside her could change its form and use it to power up her weapon. This was the only way that weapons were upgraded. All that killing yesterday hadn’t really meant anything for her launcher. But just about ten minutes in the lane, and the grenade launcher moved up to Level 6 with a short celebration.

  This was another way the Agencies Coalition made sure that they controlled the narrative and the power.

  The Monster Dimension was not the only dimension they had come in contact with. This second dimension was the one that allowed them to make the weapons. It was filled with planets' worth of this particular resource that they all harvested using these specialized ‘training rooms’ that reshaped them as humanoid dummies for practice. In a way, Kana and Jina were mining for the Coalition right now.

  If they were ever kicked out and lost their position in the agency, the implant would be removed from their bodies, and the Coalition would gain control over all this alien resource that they had harvested till now. But none of that really pissed Kana off. She knew she was never going to get kicked out, so she had never even considered it to be an annoyance of any kind.

  The thing that did piss her off was that they had gained this amazing resource, but hadn’t given it a name yet. That was because the scientists who had worked on making all of this work had then been executed. Whatever name they had internally had never been considered to be important. Just another justification for when she would eventually blast their asses to kingdom come and take over the industry herself.

  The grenade launcher was now at Level 8, so she decided to go for 10. It was the highest she could get with it right now. The highest level for the Railgun was Level 2. That was because she was only at an overall Rank 2. So was Jina. All recruits were locked at Rank 2. If you placed in the top 5 of the Battle Royale, the agency unlocked Rank 3 for you and then allowed you to keep levelling up.

  There was a total of five ranks, and no public information beyond that. To unlock Rank 5, you had to be Rank 4 and win a match with a 100,000-point lead on the group in second position. A feat achieved by only a single group. The ones who had been winning the competition for the last thirty-three weeks.

  “Ruby Passion.” Kana gritted her teeth and kept mindlessly blasting the lifeless dummies as she imagined the faces of those three girls on them. By virtue of their extremely high-level weapons, nobody had been able to defeat them until now. And so, the rich got richer.

  Taking them down had always been her primary goal. Not her final goal, but her current primary goal. Right now, becoming Sakai Entertainment’s A Team was a secondary goal under that.

  Before she knew it, the weapon was at Level 10. A pop-up confirmed that she could not level up any further on this rank and congratulated her. She sighed and switched to the railgun. As soon as she did, though, she felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped in fear.

  “Calm down, Minami-san.”

  “Ah, Ohara. What do you want?

  “It’s ten.” She showed her the clock, “We should be going for our brainstorming session. You want to write some lyrics, don’t you?”

  “Not really.” She put on her cute voice, “Why don’t you do all that, Jina-chan? Or…let’s see…I’ll tear you into a million pieces when we go back home.”

  “You…can’t?” Jina shrugged, “If I die, then you will have nobody to support you in defeating the A Team. What will you do then? Dance on stage all alone?”

  Kana put the railgun back and stepped out of the range. Then, taking the lead, she started walking to the door as she gave her answer, “I don’t need you at all, Ohara. I told you yesterday, right? I have a plan to succeed, and it doesn’t really change with or without your involvement.”

  “Oh?” Jina ran and kept up with her as they got out of the room and headed for the third floor, where their green room was. “Why am I still walking beside you, then?”

  Kana laughed and smiled, “Cause I’m just so kind and cute that I’m doing you a favor!”