In the Control Tower, Captain Shimaoka and the Control Department Chief stared blankly for a moment at the bolt of lightning that split the sky.
Captain Shimaoka quickly came to his senses. "It's fine. Like I said, an aircraft is basically a Faraday Cage. Lightning only travels along the exterior and can't damage the inside. At most, it might damage the Communication Equipment or something. These planes all have backup systems. Even if the helpful passengers don't know how to activate them, the instructions have already been given. We just need to wait for the plane to come to a stop."
Control Department Chief: "..." Really? But he had a feeling this lightning strike looked different from the previous ones—when other planes were struck, the lightning merely passed lightly over the fuselage. This time, however, the plane looked as though it had been struck head-on by a club, and even its flight had been slightly affected.
Inside the cockpit.
Jiang Xia opened his eyes and found that the surroundings had grown much darker—after the lightning flashed, all the colorful Dashboards in the cockpit had gone black, as if the power had gone out.
Hashimoto Maya noticed as well. He was more familiar with aircraft safety measures, and seeing this level of damage, he froze in disbelief. "It was only struck by lightning once. How could it..." How could it end up like this?!
Earlier, he had thought that Uzo couldn't possibly control lightning.
Yet the tricky angle of that lightning strike seemed to carry the inevitability of being manipulated by an unseen hand.
"This is a very new model. Its lightning protection shouldn't be this weak. Someone must have... tampered with it." Hashimoto Maya did not dare say that Codename aloud—every time he was certain Uzo would not do