Home coming (WIP)

Starlight lurches out of the street fight and into the edge of the industrial district. Emergency lights paint the warehouses red, and dust skates across the asphalt in dirty sheets.

Chiaki Kaname pushes through the dead zone beside a shuttered freight gate, the cockpit still screaming warnings. Homura Akemi keeps pace near the broken curb, weapon up, eyes searching the smoke.

A warning beacon flashes over a loading bay as a second path opens between stacked containers and rusted pipes. The damaged salvage unit’s silhouette flickers at the far end of the lane, still moving, still hunting for a gap.

Chiaki angles Starlight toward the container corridor, forcing the wounded machine back into the light. The next clash is no longer at the house, but here, where the district narrows and everything has to choose a side.

Starlight slides in hard, nosing across the lane mouth. The damaged unit loses its clean exit and checks up, forced into the corridor under the loading-bay beacon.

Chiaki keeps boosting forward, dragging the fight deeper between the containers. Dust explodes off the asphalt as the mech’s route collapses behind him.

Homura shifts up along the curb, lining her shot down the narrowed lane while the salvage unit skids in the light, boxed in by steel walls and Starlight’s bulk.

Its tone stays flat, but its chassis turns sharp toward Chiaki, trapped in the corridor and still calculating a way out.