Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 12===

The battlefield had changed.

The frozen Threat swarm surrounded Karuta and Alice. A lot of them were as large as a bus or a small building, so there was plenty of cover. It was like a deep rocky area made of black metal.

Alice Majority could not talk her way out of this now that she had used her safety device. She would have a hard time arguing that someone else had stopped them at that very moment to frame her.

Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld.

Alice used Skuld, who was one of the goddesses of fate and also a Valkyrie who gathered the souls of the dead in preparation for the final battle.

Those three goddesses were said to water the world tree of Yggdrasill on a daily basis so it would not rot, but that meant it was in their power to let the world tree rot and trigger Ragnarok, which would bring destruction to all. So was this mechanical army controlled by a goddess supposed to be the dead soldiers known as the Einherjar?

“So what was that phone, anyway?”

Karuta was the first to speak.

His words set things in motion by placing the initiative in his hands.

“Was it really worth killing to get your hands on?”

“The false Threats don’t use encrypted communications.” Blonde Alice shook the phone in her hand. “I imagine it was to make them more like the real thing, but they’re like honeybees. They signal each other with visible movements of their legs or roots. But that can be interfered with. A powerful crosswind can mess with the movement of their raised leg and a whiteout prevents their red eyes from scanning the scene properly.”

“Meaning you can stop the Threat and guide them where you want?”

It would take Crystal Magic to pull that off as an individual. He knew Natalena and Sophia could manipulate the wind with their power. This power must cover a horrifyingly wide area and they had pulled it off even when enclosed in the C World dome.

But if that was the explanation, they would have no need for the (device disguised as a) phone.

“This is a satellite access communicator. When we built the circuit board based on the plans, it wouldn’t connect properly and we only got it to function after working together to attach and detach different components. So we could never make a second one even if we tried.”

Karuta was reminded of what Aine used for a bed – a prototype civilian spaceship resembling a bamboo leaf.

“Even students can build a small satellite. It isn’t that unusual. And to control the Threat with wind and light, we needed to track the weather, the distribution of the swarm, and the signals they were making with their bodies and legs.”

“So the communication interference wasn’t due to the blizzard, was it?”

“I doubt a commercial service without a specialized observation device could have accomplished much, but better safe than sorry. We had to cut off access to the various weather forecast services available through your phones.”

The many Threats surrounding them remained motionless. And not because something was interfering with the signals they made like a honeybee or fiddler crab. They viewed things with their red eyes and signaled to their own kind with their legs or roots. But when thick fog or a whiteout cut off all visual information, were they programmed to stop and think instead of moving blindly to send out signals?

But Karuta still had a more fundamental question here.

“You could do all that and all you did with it was kill?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“What made you go to all that effort to kill Riho and Sanae?”

“You killed her!!!!!!”

He thought she meant Moriyama Sanae.

Because he had broken her crystal statue beyond recognition to get the small Threats out.

But Alice went on to speak an entirely different name.

“''You killed Anastasia Blast''!! I don’t care why you did it. Whatever she might have been doing behind the scene, she was our hero. She fought to keep the world safe!!”

''That name again?'' thought Karuta.

Was killing the world’s strongest not enough to be entirely rid of them?

He did not know the exact situation Alice – no, those three – had found themselves in. Maybe they simply had heard of Anastasia’s exploits on TV or over the internet. Maybe they had been rescued from ''the real Threat'' in one of those cities on the verge of annihilation.

(Come to think of it.)

His thoughts turned toward that special drink Moriyama Sanae had always been drinking. A pinch of salt in water would not have any real flavor, so maybe it had some connection to her past. Did it help her relax? Or to put it another way, could she not relax without it? She may have found an action that reminded her of some past event. The other two may have had been hiding some unseen scar below their clothing or in their heart in a similar fashion.

Anastasia probably had not remembered them if she had ever known them at all, but her noble lifestyle had inspired some people to change and start working again.

Relatives were not the only ones who would grieve someone’s death.

Anastasia Blast’s death had carried great weight. Enough so to lead these girls to search the underside of the world for a weakness in Karuta’s group and ultimately happen across the decoy Threats there.

“So I don’t care what the strongests were doing in secret!! I only care that I can use this power to exact revenge on Grimnoah! Yes, that’s right. I killed them… We were all in it together!! To give you a taste of the defeat you so deserved after usurping the throne of the world’s strongest!!”

“But why?”

The taste of defeat?

Did this girl really think they had never tasted that before?

“I get why you’re out to get us four, but why did Riho and Sanae have to die?”

“They tried to back out.”

That short response told the whole story in abbreviated form.

“The plan was to ‘accidentally’ shoot you during the chaos of the attack, but Riho-chan didn’t trigger that attack when the time came. ''I snuck around back and asked her what was up,'' and she confessed she was scared. She said it was wrong to get so many other people caught in the attack, so she had gone into the bathroom to hide with the satellite access communicator! We needed that detailed data to control the Threat with our magic!”

Riho and Alice could not have allowed anyone else to get a look at that device’s screen. Was that why Alice had felt the need to cover her tracks by flying in through the window for a simple discussion?

“So what choice did I have? Riho-chan could chicken out if she wanted, but if she turned herself in and got us caught too, there goes the whole plan!!”

He could guess from this that those three girls could only access their small satellite with that one device.

It may have seemed like enough for them at the time, but that had caused problems down the road.

“Then what about Casualty B – Sanae?”

“She screwed up.”

Alice kept it short.

Maybe she had gotten used to it by the second time.

Or maybe after taking out Riho, she herself had gone off the rails without noticing it.

“''She said she fell for a trick,'' so she was trembling in fear. I have no clue what she was talking about, but it was all over for both of us if she was caught. So again, I had no other choice.”

“…”

Marika had actually been monitoring Sanae and Alice both, but Alice must not have even noticed the trap she fell for.

“Still, I could have seen her in a few decades.”

Finally, she ground her teeth together.

He could see pure regret in her.

“But you shattered that hope along with her statue. What is it now? Centuries? Millennia? I can’t even apologize to her now!!”

Despite all this, they would not have come together for revenge like that unless they had already been bound by friendship.

But once they got started, it ended up like this. None of their hated foes were gone and those good friends had ended up killing each other. Alice had clearly attacked the wrong targets here.

“How could this have happened?”

He could not help but ask.

He felt blessed himself. After all, what if Marika had said she was scared and backed out when they had decided to kill the Problem Solvers? Or what if Kyouka’s identity had been discovered and the investigation would have reached them before long? What if he had ended up in a deadly battle against Aine who was practically one with him???

Weapons, money, and intelligence were not the most important things when seeking vengeance.

You needed trust.

Friendship.

Unwavering feelings.

It seemed ironic since those words seemed far removed from the bloody action of revenge, but it was the truth. Karuta had been fairly unsure if he could actually continue with his revenge back then. If Marika and Kyouka had not pulled him back in, he would probably have ended up like this as well.

So…

And yet…

“You were willing to rely on each other to accomplish something even if the rest of the world was against you, right? Weren’t you good enough friends to reveal those immoral feelings to each other!? Then!! Couldn’t you have figured something out!? Something other than what happened!!!???”

His desperate cry only put a dry smile on Alice Majority’s face.

It was already over.

The rift between the successful and the failure was too great. Kind words from the successful were only salt in the wound to the failure.

He knew that.

He had not wanted to be caught up in those girls’ revenge. If he had learned Marika or Kyouka’s lives were at risk, he would have stopped them no matter what it took. Even if the rest of the world thought him a coward and even if he could not forgive himself for what he had done. That much he knew for certain.

He knew that, but this still seemed like too much.

How could he tell that trio that they had failed in their revenge and lost everything because their friendship wasn’t strong enough? What hope was there? Was there nothing at all they had left!?

“This is revenge too, don’t you think?”

Alice looked like an empty shell of a person, but she still raised that phone. No, that original device made to look like one. That card of ruin received the weather and location data needed to control the Threat with magic. She could use her magic to interrupt the honeybee or fiddler crab style of signal and that would either stop or guide the Threat. For example, she could make them stumble by sending in a powerful crosswind when they lifted a leg.

There were a number of theories where the name Skuld came from. For example, “tax”, “future”, “debt”, or “obligation”.

This girl had hoped for success in the future no matter what it took, that had placed too great an obligation on the friends who had walked that path with her, she had violently taken a bloody debt from them, and here she stood now.

For the future.

But Alice Majority should have looked back to the past.

She should have looked deeper, instead of focusing on shallow vengeance. She should have reminded herself why she was friends with Riho and Sanae. She should have recalled what bonds had brought them so close together in the first place!!

“I failed to kill you. In fact, killing you would accomplish nothing. But you will lose everything again if I unleash the Threat here.”

“That’s meaningless.”

“I was never looking for meaning in my revenge. Because if you decide it isn’t worth it, that’s when the fear creeps in.”

“You can utterly destroy the Crystal Beach, but I won’t bat an eye and I tell you it all had nothing to do with Grimnoah and I’ve lost nothing!! So don’t waste your time, Alice!! That doesn’t even qualify as revenge!!”

“Yeah, you would have to feign indifference, wouldn’t you? You can’t let me see the target means something to you.”

In that final moment, Alice Majority was definitely smiling.

Her face was a mess and it had to have been easier on her to have cried.

Her enemy had even robbed her of any hope that she could apologize some decades from now.

“But that won’t change what I do. Goodbye, Senpai.”

“You idiot!!!!!”

The instant she placed her finger on the touchscreen and her translucent armor spread out like wings, the magic was dispelled and time began to move once more. The girl had triggered Ragnarok. She had reactivated the Threat while surrounded by them herself. Marika’s laser sniper shot blew her brains out, but it was an instant too slow. A massive maw snapped shut on her crystallizing body, shattering it.

She was killed instantly.

The crystal statue was smashed to tiny pieces that glittered as they scattered around.

Something grazed Karuta’s cheek, leaving a sharp wound there. It must have been a piece of the broken device’s circuit board or LCD screen. He heard a cracking sound as crystal covered the surface of the wound.

All blood and tears vanished within that solid sound.

He clenched his teeth until he thought they would break and Aine moved out front with sword at the ready.

With a flash of that blade, a giant ant’s leg was severed with a diagonal cut before it could crush him and the ant itself toppled over. He had survived that, but the Threat was clearly locked onto him. These were now enemies rather than simple obstacles.

The ground and sky were filled once more by the fake but still loathsome Threat.

“Sacri-sama, please adapt. The situation has already changed.”

He could not afford to die here, so he shouted into his Crystal Blossom.

“I failed to persuade her! Omotesandou-san, let’s go with Plan B. The device was destroyed and we wouldn’t know how to use it anyway!”

“You mean we’re going with the ‘poisoning’ plan that started out as an act? Understood.”

The Threat could continue marching at them forever.

Even though they were fakes, a direct hit from them would still be deadly.

Utagai Karuta had been dragged into that endless battle, but he felt no fear.

He was not afraid of these attacks from emotionless machines.

He refused to let this be as painful as a clash between two people.