The moment the fighting ended, I blurted the first stupid thing in my head.

  “This was like a hero movie!”

  “A shame,” Armad said, voice flat as ever. “I’m not a hero. I’m just a handyman out on the frontier.”

  “Handyman is not the word for what you are.”

  The Witches’ Family goons were already on the ground, zip-tied and sulking like kids caught shoplifting.

  That’s when it happened—

  A black shadow shot out from behind us.

  “Behind you!”

  I shouted, but I was too late.

  The shadow—one of those weird little critters I’d seen in the forest—launched straight at Armad’s throat.

  Armad didn’t even flinch. He shifted one step to the side and let it sail past him.

  No wasted motion. The kind of movement that looked less like reflex and more like he’d read the wind a second early.

  “Miss,” he said, calmly, “I’m not so old that I’d get hit by something like that.”

  “This is not a cool-line moment!”

  At the same time, Shiratori’s drones snapped out of their bays, grabbed the creature midair, and hauled it away somewhere with the efficiency of a trash pickup.

  I stared after it. “What… was that thing…?”

  Armad walked over and stopped directly in front of me. Every time black snow landed on his shoulders, it left ugly ink-blots on his white coat.

  “Now then,” he said. “I came to pick you up.”

  “Yeah, you said that already! Also, I wasn’t exactly standing at a bus stop waiting for you—more like, you teleported in out of nowhere!”

  “Apologies. But I hurried as best I could. I’m not cold enough to leave a young lady sleeping under subzero skies.”

  “Stop trying to sound hardboiled.”

  The instant I said it, my vision swayed.

  “H—huh…?”

  Maybe my adrenaline finally ran out. Maybe my body decided it was done pretending. Either way, the world tilted away and my consciousness dropped like a stone.

  Armad caught me before I hit the ground.

  “You’re fine,” he said, closer now. “I’ll treat you. I’m taking you to my ship.”

  “Wait… don’t… just… carry me off…” I tried to protest.

  “If I don’t, you’ll die.”

  “…Yeah… that would be… inconvenient…”

  That was the last thing I managed before everything went dark.

  When I woke up again, my vision was hazy white, and my nose filled with the blended scent of machine oil and disinfectant.

  “Where… am I…?”

  I was already pretty sure, even as I said it.

  A medical capsule. My body was warm, floating in gel that felt weirdly comforting.

  But then I noticed a shadow right next to my face.

  My focus sharpened—

  —and I found myself staring at a bird-shaped manipulator, tilting its head at me like an ominous mechanical pigeon.

  “W-wait! Who the heck are you!?”

  The bird didn’t answer. Of course it didn’t. It just cocked its head harder.

  Then, without a word, it pressed a drug nozzle against the capsule’s feed port in front of my mouth.

  “Hey—hold on! I’m gonna drink it! I’ll do it myself, so stop shoving it—!”

  The bird shoved it anyway.

  Apparently it was built on a simple philosophy: Medication first. Patient consent optional.

  “…Gulp. Gulp…”

  “Okay, fine! I drank it! I drank it, so back off!”

  Satisfied, the bird made a sharp beep! and retreated to the rear of the capsule like a nurse who’d successfully wrestled a toddler into taking vitamins. Then it just… stared. Unblinking lenses, wings tucked, like it was waiting for me to start bleeding again so it could win round two. My tongue was numb with that clean, artificial aftertaste—like someone had tried to disinfect my mouth from the inside.

  The capsule opened. I sat up—

  —and there was Armad, arms folded, looking like he’d been standing there the entire time.

  “You’re finally awake.”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “…You,” I said, and my voice came out half gratitude, half complaint.

  “Your life was saved. You may want to thank me before you start yelling.”

  “I will thank you! But my mouth moves before my manners, okay!?”

  He smiled. A tired smile, but a real one—relaxed, like he’d done this a hundred times and still found it mildly amusing.

  “Relax. I’m sorry I’m not your prince on a white horse—” he said, “but I did come to help. For real.”

  “Stop saying that line. It’s… it’s unfairly cool.”

  He shrugged, like he’d been born shrugging.

  “You’re lively. Good. Next is rescuing your father and cleaning up what’s left of the Family.”

  “Hold on, can I rest first!? I just crawled out of a medical pod! A bird-shaped machine just force-fed me drugs like I was a malfunctioning printer cartridge!”

  “Don’t worry,” Armad said. “That medicine has zero bitterness.”

  “That is not the issue.”

  Somewhere in the ship, the hull trembled and an engine spun up—low and steady. A soft voice chimed from nowhere in particular.

  “Vitals stable. Hypothermia resolved. Residual toxin load: moderate.”

  The bird manipulator answered with another curt beep, like it was filing my existence under solved problem. I rubbed at my face and left a smear of gel across my cheek.

  “Tell your murder-pigeon nurse to stop staring at me,” I muttered.

  Armad didn’t even look away from the console. “It stares at everyone. It judges.”

  “Great. I’m being judged by a robot pigeon while my life is falling apart.”

  “Your life isn’t falling apart,” he said. “It’s… rearranging.”

  That was somehow worse.

  The inside of Armad’s shuttle—Shiratori—was… unexpectedly plain.

  I’d been picturing a secret base belonging to a galaxy-wandering adventurer. The kind of place with suspicious armor plates and piles of explosives stacked like furniture.

  Instead it was clean. White walls. Neat storage. Minimal instruments. A glossy floor that looked like it got polished for fun.

  “It’s not… messier?” I asked. “With the kind of work you do?”

  Armad’s expression barely moved, but the corner of his mouth lifted.

  “Anyone who keeps a combat craft messy isn’t a professional. Same as a craftsman with a filthy workbench. You can’t trust them.”

  “…I feel like I just got scammed by a cool-sounding excuse.”

  “I’m not making excuses. It’s experience,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought: “Also, this ship is new.”

  “Oh. So it’s clean because you haven’t had time to ruin it yet.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  Shiratori rose smoothly, punched through the cloud layer, and reached orbit.

  Below us, the planet was swallowed by gray snowclouds. You couldn’t see the surface at all—just a choking haze, like the whole world was embarrassed of itself.

  Staring down, I let out a long breath.

  “From up here… it really does look like ancient Titan,” I muttered. “You can’t see anything. Like the future’s fogged over.”

  “It is,” Armad said. “Hard to see ahead. The Witches’ Family holding power has devastated public order.”

  “Which is… basically my stepmother’s fault.”

  “Partly.”

  “Partly?” I repeated, offended on principle.

  Armad sat at the console and flicked through screens.

  “Your stepmother is relatively small fry, even among the Family,” he said. “What’s truly rotten is the force behind her—people who let small fry run wild. Cleaning them up is also my job.”

  “Small fry?” I echoed, incredulous. “I almost died. Twice. If she’s small fry, what’s ‘big fry’? A planet-eating shark?”

  “I took care of a few of the bigger ones before you ran into her.”

  “…What? When? Where? Why didn’t you tell me!?”

  “No time during the fight,” he replied. “If I’d stopped to explain, you would’ve almost died again.”

  “Ugh—when you say it like that it’s annoyingly correct!”

  He brought up a list of Family members on the screen.

  The moment I spotted my stepmother’s face, my glare sharpened into a weapon.

  “Wow. She really has the face of a villain,” I said. “Even her nose looks evil.”

  “Stop judging criminals by their noses.”

  “Look at her! That’s a con artist face!”

  “She did commit fraud,” Armad said, casually.

  “There it is.”

  Then another face appeared at the top of the list.

  Huge sunglasses. Bleached spiky blond hair. A purple suit. Chains across his chest like someone tried to strangle him with jewelry and failed.

  It was villainy at 100%. Honestly, the character designer should’ve been arrested.

  “Who’s that? He’s doing the ‘evil template’ with his whole body.”

  “A high-ranking executive at the Family’s central base on Planet Teroid,” Armad said. “Grimm Barlock. The one pulling strings this time.”

  “Even his name is evil! What kind of childhood gives you that name!?”

  “No idea.” Armad’s tone turned slightly colder. “But he’s dangerous. The attack on your father was likely his order.”

  My mouth went dry. I bit my lip.

  “…Dad’s still alive, right?”

  “He’s alive,” Armad said. “Comatose, but alive. We also found traces of a mind-control device your stepmother tried to plant. Sloppy work. Barlock would have left less evidence.”

  “So the real mastermind is him…!”

  Armad nodded.

  “Your father’s protection facility was surrounded,” he continued. “But when Shiratori fired a few warning shots, they ran. While you were unconscious, I transferred your father to this ship’s medical block.”

  “…Wait. You did that while I was out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—yeah, obviously, but—can I see him?”

  “You can.” Armad rotated his chair and looked straight at me. No teasing in his eyes this time.

  “But first… I have one question.”

  “M-me? What?” I asked, suddenly on guard.

  “Why do you fight?” he asked. “If you’d just run and stayed away from your stepmother, you would’ve been safer.”

  The question landed heavy.

  He wasn’t joking. Not poking. It felt like he was pressing a thumb against the center of my chest and asking what I was made of.

  I crossed my arms and thought for a beat.

  “…Because this planet is our home,” I said finally. “Dad’s and mine.”

  He didn’t blink.

  “I’m not the kind of daughter who lets someone steal our house and shrug it off,” I continued, heat rising in my voice. “Running away and losing to the Witches’ Family? Absolutely not. I refuse.”

  Armad paused. Then he smiled—small, but warm.

  “…Good answer.”

  “I—I wasn’t saying it for praise!” I snapped automatically. “Seriously!”

  “Your stubbornness,” he said, “isn’t something I dislike.”

  “Is that a pickup line? Because I don’t know how to respond to that!”

  “It’s a fact,” he replied, shameless.

  Ugh. This man.

  Hardboiled one moment, casual the next. It was unfair.

  And right as my brain was trying to reboot from that—

  I heard it.

  A faint groan from the corridor leading to the medical block.

  “…Ugh… uuh…”

  My heart lurched.

  “Dad.”

  For half a second, the ship felt too quiet—like the universe was holding its breath. Then the alarm screamed.

  TACTICAL — SHIRATORI

  Multiple contacts: 6 (fast movers)

  Vector: intercept

  Range: 39,000 km → closing

  IFF: Witches’ Family (probable)

  Warning: Witches’ Family remnants approaching. Intercept posture required.

  Armad stood.

  “They’re here,” he said. “The leftovers. Perfect. I’ll clean them up in one sweep.”

  “Isn’t that… bad!? I literally just got out of a medical pod!”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You sit in the back. This is Shiratori and me—cleaning time.”

  “Stop calling it ‘cleaning’!”

  But his voice didn’t waver. Like this was just another Tuesday job.

  I still took a step toward the medical block—gel residue clinging to my skin, legs half asleep from whatever the bird had pumped into me. Armad’s hand landed on my shoulder, solid and immovable.

  “Calm down,” he said. “The medical AI is monitoring him. He’s safe.”

  “But—!”

  “First we crush the remnants,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll target him again.”

  I hated it, because he was right.

  I clenched my fists and nodded.

  “…Fine. Do it. But when you’re done, I’m going to him.”

  “Of course.” Armad grinned—sharp and certain. “He’s your family. You protect what matters.”

  My chest did something stupid at that line.

  Don’t. Don’t you dare flutter, heart.

  Shiratori rolled into a turn. Weapon systems whined awake.

  Armad glanced back at me once more.

  “I’m sorry I’m not your prince on a white horse,” he said, “but right now, it’s my turn to stand in front.”

  And with that, he walked toward the combat seat.