Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

But it didn't work.

Judging from their reactions, they did not seem to be highly intelligent social creatures. Aiba Yu understood only a few words through their mental dialogue.

If Dr. Mizuno's conjecture is true, why did they suddenly drop from the higher ionosphere to an altitude of 23000 meters?

The good news is that he didn't sense any uncomfortable darkness.

"Maybe it was just a lucky accident?" Aiba Yu couldn't help but recall the scene he had witnessed.

Those long-tailed creatures resembled plankton in the sea, leisurely stretching themselves in the highly unstable cloud, as if in a comfortable womb.

They all looked similar, except for one curled-up individual that was three or four times larger than its companions. Their external skin tissue was also somewhat different; Aiba Yu observed a bony-like shell and flipper-like forelimbs.

It glanced at the plane as it passed by, showing neither aggression nor fear.

Aiba Yu "saw" it; through the layers of mist and clouds, amidst the lightning and thunder, he vaguely heard the other say "friend."

friend?

Is it a gentle creature? When it uttered that word, Aiba Yu didn't sense any malice.

“We can’t let our guard down,” he stepped forward and reminded them, “It’s affecting normal flights. If a civilian airliner were to encounter it, the consequences would be dire.”

“No need for you to tell me,” the police chief, who was always extremely wary of unknown life, said, “If the investigation at the scene hasn’t yielded any results, then it’s handed over to the Life Science Research Center. Whether the hypothesis of ionospheric life is true, or there’s a UFO hiding inside, anything that threatens human safety must be dealt with!”

Chapter Six: People Cannot Be Generalized

"Things that threaten security must be dealt with..." This sentence seems to be without fault, but Aiba Yu always felt that there was something he hadn't noticed, like a missing, crucial piece of the puzzle.

After Commander Yoshioka finished explaining the work for next week, Aiba Yu went to see Staff Officer Nanbara. He was about to talk about the ionospheric life, but Nanbara only pulled him aside to improve the Extraterrestrial Life Act.

"Unknown life on Earth? I've heard of this hypothesis before, but it's actually very unlikely... If it really exists, why wasn't it detected by satellites and previous aircraft?" Staff Officer Nan Yuan handed him the bill, which had been revised countless times.

The General Staff's office was filled with files, yet strangely neat and clean. All materials were categorized and stuffed into file boxes with labels, a sight that would please an obsessive-compulsive. Cabinets stretched from floor to ceiling, requiring a ladder to access them.

The last time Aiba Yu had seen so many materials was at the TLT's Memory Police Office.

"The European branch, referencing existing regulations on the prevention and control of invasive species, social security management regulations, and even existing laws and regulations such as the Law on the Entry and Exit of Foreigners, has put forward suggestions on the possibility of extraterrestrial life settling on Earth. They have thought far ahead, so our bill needs to be revised again—the forty-second version." Staff Officer Nan Yuan smoothed his increasingly thinning hair.

So Aiba Yu went over with his questions, and came out with a stack of newly printed documents. He smelled the fresh ink... and realized that he hadn't even voiced his question.

He returned to his office and put down a thick stack of draft bills. He subconsciously clenched the thing hanging on his chest through his clothes, recalling the creatures he had seen in the thunderstorm clouds, trying to figure out what was wrong.

It was quiet outside; most people had already gone to rest, and the lights running through the corridor made the floor look snow-white.

"Excuse me, is anyone home?" A polite greeting followed by a gentle knock on the door.

"Please come in."

When Daigo walked in, he happened to see Aiba Yu hanging something back around his neck. In just a blink of an eye, he could barely make out the black strap of the thing.

He wasn't very familiar with the air force's territory, and it took him some time to find it. He only relaxed after confirming that he hadn't knocked on the wrong door.

"I've come to return the book." He handed over the blue-covered book.

"The data from the Flying Swallow No. 1 test aircraft, and my notes," Aiba Yu was stunned for a moment: "You finished reading it in just one day?"

“I made a copy. Since it’s important, it’s best to return it as soon as possible.” Daigo pulled out a visitor’s chair and sat down, his gaze naturally drawn to the decorations on the table.

A potted green plant, a stack of simply bound booklets with labels bearing people's names.

There was no colored cardstock cover; it was simply printed on A4 paper and bound together—simple, efficient, and without any fancy embellishments.

His attention paused for a moment before he continued, "The Flying Swallow No. 1 doesn't feel so unfamiliar anymore. I've never flown a plane before. When Xincheng first explained the instrument functions to me, it was like listening to gibberish. Lina explained it in more detail, but it's true that understanding the design intent helps you remember it more clearly. It's just that I learn a bit slowly..."

"Much faster than Sosuke."

Daigo looked up and saw the air force captain opposite him with a subtle expression: "He took the notes and copied them for more than ten days. He never thought that he could make copies."

He even knocked over a water glass halfway through, almost turning his notes into a mess. If Aiba Yu hadn't been there and heard him let out a heart-wrenching "howl"...

That's probably the difference; there's a reason why some people are stopped by the selection test for the Victory Team.

……

If this was only one aspect of the gap, then on the second day, Aiba Yu felt an even greater chasm.

Daigo has good observation skills, but he knows how to control his behavior. He didn't look to the side when he entered the room, even though Aiba Yu noticed that he was very curious about the cabinet of documents behind him - especially when he saw the materials about the Carlo airship, his eyes lit up.

Sōsuke Fujisawa, on the other hand, was completely straightforward.

"Captain, are you switching jobs?!" The shout, rising eight octaves in octaves, was earth-shattering. All the members of the air force were startled by the shout and stopped what they were doing, clinging to their equipment to look at Aiba Yu.

Fujisawa Sousuke saw the book in Aiba Yu's hand, a library catalog label, with the words "Evolutionary Biology" prominently displayed on the cover.

"I only knew that you were exchanging glances with the people from the Victory Team, but I never expected that the Life Science Research Center would strike before the General Staff!"

His mouth worked faster than his brain; seeing the other person's face darken, the next half of the sentence still slipped out: "I saw you pointing at that new guy in the library while he was taking a book."

"...You never taught me like this!"

The thought of being eliminated by the GUTS team, and the captain even going so far as to teach the person who eliminated him, brought tears to Fujisawa Sosuke's eyes: "Ah, I'm just a rejected guy, going back to the air force as a security guard, with no end in sight for solo flight, not to mention being smeared by the ground guard's idiots as 'dedicated co-pilot of an Airbus'..."

His voice grew softer and softer until the person opposite him started to smile at him.

A cold face is fine, but starting to smile is a very bad sign!

Fujisawa Sousuke's crisis radar arrived late, and he hesitated whether to pretend nothing had happened and go back to training on the equipment.

"He's a few days further away from going solo," someone whispered to their partner.

“Why don’t you learn from me? When in doubt, just shout ‘yes, sir’,” the brown-haired white man muttered. “Didn’t he just say ‘security guard’ and ‘bus driver’?”

Fujisawa Sousuke swallowed hard, chuckled foolishly, and tried to get away with being cute.

Suddenly, a white thing flew towards him. He raised his hand and caught it, glancing at it as a matter of habit.

The "Air Force Manual - Summary of Existing Aircraft Type Classification for Responding to Sudden Thunderstorms" had name tags in the lower right corner. Following the captain's habit, he probably compiled the material into different versions based on each person's skill level.

“Memorize it,” Aiba Yu said.

The booklet is neither too thin nor too thick, about four millimeters in size. If you remove the illustrations that take up a significant portion of the page, the text content is even less.

But the captain likes to have people hold model airplanes and simulate the situation in the example picture on the spot!

Sousuke Fujisawa felt his brain trembling.

"What are you daydreaming about?" In his daze, he saw the captain calling others to get the manual, saying to himself, "If you can memorize it by next Monday, I'll treat you to curry rice."

“I’ve fallen for someone else,” Fujisawa Sousuke’s mouth once again won over his brain: “That shop’s salt and pepper egg rice is better than their curry rice.”

"Pfft," he heard his teammate chuckle.

But the captain was unusually agreeable today: "Then it'll be omelet rice. He'll start training with the Victory team's rookie next week. He has no foundation, so if he's allowed to go solo before you..."

"You might as well twist my head off and use it as a ball!"

"I don't play football."

"Then I'll go to the transportation department, and he'll come to aviation... ugh, he'll stay with the Victory Team!"

Chapter Seven: The Origin of the Mutation

Perhaps it was Fujisawa Sousuke's words that had an effect.

From that day until the day of joint training, he didn't see the captain and the guys from the Victory Team interact—he even went to the library to "study" about it, but came up empty-handed for several days.

I didn't see the captain, but the new recruits from the Victory Team were there every day without fail. On the contrary, because I felt that "coming and leaving would make me seem like I don't like to study, especially since I'm being outdone by the guys from the Victory Team," I actually absorbed quite a lot of things.

It was only later that he learned that the General Staff had sent the captain a huge stack of draft bills that made his scalp crawl. Fujisawa Sosuke didn't know whether he should thank them or not.

Weekends are always too short, and Monday comes quickly.

Fujisawa Sousuke was on high alert. No matter how outstanding his opponent was, he believed that he could not lose in terms of momentum and attitude.

"Hello, I am Daigo Masakado. Because Rena is going to adapt to the Flying Swallow II, she needs to train with everyone for five days."

The red and white uniforms were indeed smart and good-looking. In comparison, their clothes looked like old relics from the previous generation. Fujisawa Sosuke secretly sized them up.

The other person's words were very polite, he thought, and then he resentfully discovered... up close, this guy seemed to be more handsome than him!

We lost the uniform, fine, but we also lost face!

“Aiba Yu, we’ve met before,” the captain began to introduce the squadron members one by one: “Herbert Longman, a British man, one of the rotating captains of TPC1.”

The tall foreigner nodded, and a brown-haired man with a similar foreign appearance next to him put his arm around his shoulder and winked at Daigo with his left eye: "Ralph, your family name is too long to remember, just call me Ralph. I'm here to accompany my ex-girlfriend to school. I applied to be transferred from the North American branch."

Ex-girlfriend… Daigo vaguely sensed the painful past of this curly-haired man from this word.

Next is Sousuke Fujisawa. There are two other groups of people in the air force currently flying, and with the usual holiday after long-haul flights, they probably won't see each other during joint training.

“It’s my turn.” Fujisawa Sousuke had intended to give a powerful self-introduction, but when he saw the guy who had eliminated him standing in front of him, and when he remembered the pledge he had made to the captain to “go to the Transportation Department,” all the words he had prepared for a long time vanished into thin air.

"I won't lose to you, you Victory Team guy!" His voice boomed. "I'll definitely get my solo flight clearance before you do!"

"..."

Daigo looked at him blankly, then shifted his gaze to Aiba Yu, who had a stern face.

“A little,” Aiba Yu said without changing his expression, “a minor misunderstanding.”

Ralf gently kicked Fujisawa Sousuke from behind and whispered, "My little genius, you didn't listen to him and came to the joint training for five days. What kind of god with no foundation can go solo in five days? So the captain must have been bluffing you before, so that you would work hard to memorize that manual."

Daigo only caught a few fragmented words, and his expression became subtle.

But Aiba Yu's hearing is good.

"Have you finished memorizing the thunderstorm response manual?" he asked Fujisawa Sousuke, turning to him.