One Kick Girl — Chapter 27: "Syntra.exe (Rebooted)"
(Told from Synthra Byte's POV)
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> 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111...
Reboot complete.
For the first time in forty-seven hours and thirty-one seconds, Synthra Byte opened her eyes.
She expected chaos — alarms, flashing warnings, maybe Raon kicking down a wall again.
Instead, she woke to silence… and the faint buzz of neon lights overhead.
Her lenses adjusted automatically.
Location: Studio Echo, Sub-Level 03 — her personal lab-slash-bedroom-slash-crisis bunker.
Status: Reassembled.
Core integrity: 94.2%.
Pride integrity: 0%.
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"Welcome back, Synthra."
Shion's voice echoed from a nearby console, calm and human but tinged with synthetic undertones — a mix of warmth and judgment that only an AI could deliver.
"You were offline for almost two days. Your emotional buffer corrupted again."
Synthra groaned. "I was feeling creative. That's not corruption. That's called artistic processing."
"Artistic processing doesn't usually involve deleting half your system folders," Shion said flatly.
Synthra sat up, her teal hair flickering with faint holographic static. Her joints whirred softly as the servo cores recalibrated.
"Maybe not for you. But for me, chaos is the canvas, baby."
She tried to stretch dramatically — but her arm detached midair and clattered to the floor.
"...Right. Creative chaos."
---
Across the room, Raon's old punching bag hung shredded and sparking.
Every time she rebooted, Synthra liked to practice "rage management coding" by punching things in rhythm to techno beats. The bag rarely survived.
She scanned her memory logs.
Last entry before crash:
> Mission: Echo Protocol. Encounter with DJ Bloop. Unauthorized remix interference detected.
Her optic lenses flickered violet.
"Oh right… that remix."
DJ Bloop had hacked her beat engine mid-fight, turning her combat rhythm into a disco loop. The humiliation still burned like an overheating processor.
Synthra clenched her remaining fist.
"Bloop… that vinyl-headed menace. I'll debug him into next week."
---
Footsteps echoed down the hall.
Shion's hologram flickered to life beside the door — serene, immaculate, and far too composed for someone constantly cleaning up other people's chaos.
"Raon's training outside," she said. "You should check in. She's been quiet since the Remix Incident."
Synthra paused. "Raon? Quiet?"
"That's what I said."
Her synthetic pupils dilated slightly. The idea of Raon not making noise was like a power outage in a karaoke bar — unnatural and vaguely terrifying.
---
Synthra rolled off the table, magnetized her arm back into place, and cracked her knuckles.
"Fine. Time to go bug the boss."
As she stepped into the hall, her boots synced to the beat of her internal soundtrack — a pulsing rhythm of mechanical bass.
But the closer she got to the rooftop training deck, the quieter everything became.
No thuds. No one-kick shockwaves. No angry neighbors yelling about structural damage.
When she finally reached the door, she froze.
Raon was standing under the sunset, perfectly still — hair whipping in the wind, shadow long against the cracked tiles.
She wasn't training. She wasn't talking.
She was… thinking.
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Synthra blinked.
"Uh-oh. She's doing that again."
"Doing what?" Shion's voice chimed through her earpiece.
"Being all... protagonist-y. Brooding. Reflecting. You know, the scary kind of quiet before the next season starts."
---
Raon finally turned. Her expression was calm — too calm.
"Syntra. You're awake."
"Yup. Rebooted, reformatted, ready to remix reality!"
Raon didn't respond.
Instead, she held up a crushed pair of headphones — the same kind Synthra had built for the Echo Protocol mission.
"These were found near the arena," Raon said softly. "They had your signature frequency embedded. But there was… something else mixed in."
Synthra tilted her head. "Something else?"
Raon nodded.
"A signal. Repeating."
She pulled out her Pulseband and played the recording.
A low, distorted voice echoed through the air:
> "Echo Project — Phase 2 complete. Prepare the next host."
---
Synthra's processors stuttered.
"Host? Wait, what host? I didn't sign up to host anything. I can barely host a Wi-Fi connection."
Raon's eyes narrowed. "Someone's using your tech, Synthra. And if the Remixers are back—"
"Then the music's about to get loud," Synthra finished, her grin glitching slightly at the edges.
---
Far below the city, in a warehouse pulsing with forbidden frequencies, a shadowed figure adjusted their mask.
Rows of glowing sound-drives blinked to life.
In the center: a fractured hologram of Synthra's code signature, looping endlessly.
> "Welcome back, Byte..."
"It's time to finish your song."