Adventure of Pablo 1

Pablo hauls himself onto the noodle shop platform, metal limbs whining against wet steel. Below, rain hisses on the street. Above, neon washes the cramped counter in sick blues and reds.

Tsubomi Inaguchi, Harriet, Isabel Libely, Scarlett, and Sera are already there, mid-breath, mid-laugh, until the front blast door caves inward with a hard metallic crack.

Corporate enforcers surge through the breach in black riot shells, rifles up. The senioritas scatter, chairs scraping, cups spilling, bodies ducking for cover.

Pablo ends up planted between them and the muzzle line, his robotic arms twitching, servos hunting for a target before his brain finishes the thought.

One enforcer squares his rifle toward the platform. Tsubomi freezes behind the counter, Scarlett disappears low behind a stack of bowls, and the whole room holds its breath.

Pablo’s arm blades flash out and catch the lead enforcer across the chest armor, driving him back into the broken threshold. He folds hard, rifle slipping from numb fingers as the impact drops him out of the fight. Before the others can breathe, a return burst clips Pablo’s side plating, jolting him sideways in a spray of sparks and wet neon reflection.

The lead enforcer slumps unconscious against the doorway, but the shot punches a fresh hole in the room’s cover. Harriet flinches low, Sera snaps her gaze to the breach, and the others stay pinned as rain hammers the shattered entrance.

Pablo twists his back-mounted rocket launcher into line and fires. The shot tears out through the shattered front, swallowing the doorway in a brutal white flare.

The blast slams the remaining enforcers off balance and buckles the breached frame. Glass, rain, and smoke bloom inward as their fire breaks apart.

Harriet surges from cover, one arm thrown wide to pull the others toward the back of the shop as the front line collapses.

Sera ducks low beside the counter, already herding the shaken group away from the breach while smoke rolls over the spilled noodles.

Tsubomi half-rises from behind the counter, pointing toward the rear exit as rain and alarms churn together at the ruined front.