– Arakawa Kouki's POV –

(Kouki) To the middle of the gate, huh…

A huge gate is in front of me. It's tightly blocked. It's great that the centipede squad along with Noah have broken in, but now we're left here.

(Yurya) According to the engineers, it's from a material similar to the high-strength metal used in Noah. We can't blow it up, so we'll have to slowly dissolve it.

Captain seems to be in a bad mood. The rest of the Chernobog members have started to take their breaks and eat. But something about it feels off considering the rest of the squads have to be in constant watch and have no time to rest.

Alice guessed what I was thinking and showed me a map.

(Alice) Kouki-kun, look at this.

(Kouki) Hm? Is this… our current surroundings?

(Alice) I can collect the information gathered by all the Chernobog suits, and-

(Kouki) Are you monitoring all our surroundings!?

(Alice) And if I do this… We can now see the room in front of us.

(Kouki) It's… completely fenced?

(Alice) Even if we shot it, the bullet would probably be deflected.

This is way too convenient. There doesn't seem to be anything dangerous… But I have a bad feeling.

(Kouki) Hmm.

I couldn't hold my curiosity back so I tried getting close to it. A giant shield with a skull appeared in front of me and one of the suits moved to my side to draw fire.

(Yurya) Commander, I see you're having fun, but please stay put. It would be annoying if we were to lose you after coming this far.

(Kouki) Yes, Captain. I'm sorry.

I better stop. I don't want to make Captain Yurya mad. Still, the gate is nowhere near being melted. The centipedes are melting the gate but from what we've been told it's 7 meters thick.

(Kouki) It'll take some time, huh.

(Yurya) Yes. According to the centipedes, it might take about 15 hours to melt the gate completely. I'm worried about the battery in the powersuits. Not just yours, but ours too. And the longer we take the more our enemies can reinforce their defen-

(Kouki) What's wrong?

(Yurya) Wait here.

Suddenly all the Chernobog members start moving towards a single direction, and away from the Noah units.

(Yurya) Commander, is Alice free?

(Kouki) Yes, she's just checking the datalink. Do you want me to call her?

(Yurya) Please do.

Alice was just doing her thing of acting as if she's controlling a keyboard. She immediately responded to Captain.

(Alice) Alice Alford here. We're talking in a private line.

(Yurya) Thank you. I'll get straight to the point. I need you to hack into the Japanese Self Defense Force?

(Alice) I can, but why?

(Yurya) I need data on "Satou Taro". Formerly part of the Japanese Self Defense Force, belonged to the 1st Airborne Brigade. I want information on the Dishonorable Discharge.

(Alice) Give me a second.

(Yurya) Understood.

Why is the Captain asking for something like this? And why is Alice accepting like it's nothing!? If they find out we hacked into national security Noah will be done for! We could just ask Claire and Ellie about this.

(Alice) Hm, don't worry about it. Miki-san said she also pulled out some information from here the other day. And I did too. I don't think they have a problem with this. It's kind of a mutual agreement.

Alice seems to be confident in what she's saying, but I'm sure if Ellis heard about this her stomach would revolt.

(Alice) Found it! Let's see… Satou Taro. Lieutenant. Participated in the Alaskan Conflict six years ago as a paratrooper. Was court-martialed for 30 years for violence against prisoners of war. There's something strange here… Some information has been deleted.

Actually, there's no information about the past of this individual. Even the squad he was a part of is strange, I don't think there's a "12th supply squad" in the Airborne Brigade.