Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 2===

The roof had broken and artificial rain poured down on the trashed gym. The waxed flooring was probably permanently ruined. Bent steel beams from the ceiling and the flipped-over and unmoving tadpole bodies littered the floor. Those gruesome corpses all belonged to students who had been lazily taking a class and finding their own ways to pass the time.

This was a hellish scene for the humans and the Threat.

The boy bit his lip.

He had failed to claim the side of justice, but the deadly battle was not over yet. If he did not fight and win, he would lose something he valued more than his own life.

He was not going to give up again. He knew he was wrong and he knew no outcome here would lead to a bright future, but Utagai Karuta faced and pointed at the 3m armored warrior that shined a reddish purple.

His battered face looked pale in the chilly rain.

He almost felt like he was following the same path as the Problem Solvers who had come to the Crystal Magicians and gotten killed for it.

“Aine.”

But if it would protect Crystal Girl Aine by his side, he was willing to become a devil here.

“We will win this. Even if it’s wrong.”

The wind roared as the Warrior Doll charged toward him.

There was an absolute gap between them. The Threat instantly closed the distance between them with artillery-like speed and attacked with its sword’s fearsome edge. Karuta could not stop that with his flashlight and having Aine stop it with her sword would only let the “wall of explosive wind” from the plasma jet hit her.

They could not afford to touch it.

But this opponent made that easier said than done.

The Warrior Doll’s sword had a white plasma jet running along its blade, so it could probably slice through a pillar of depleted uranium alloy as thick around as Karuta’s torso like it was made of gelatin or margarine.

A human would die instantly whether they defended or not.

When that armored warrior could use bursts of green light to pull off ultra-high-speed combat, falling back to keep your distance and predicting the path of the blade to avoid it were both unrealistic. Aine’s endurance was an unknown factor, so she could easily shatter from the very next explosion for all he knew.

The reddish-purple armored warrior roared and immediately swung down its long katana at full strength. That weapon incorporated a police baton and handcuffs as symbols of justice and it roasted the surrounding air to produce a terrifyingly sharp edge.

It was over.

And yet…

“Come to me, Aine!!”

For some reason, the blast of wind as powerful as a speeding subway train passed by a mere meter to Karuta’s side. If he had not pulled the crystal girl close with his empty hand, she would have been sliced through.

“Karuta!?” shouted Marika from somewhere.

He and Aine had dodged to the side, but that did not seem like it should have been enough to survive.

The deadly armor could not break the sound barrier if they did not give it enough distance for a “running start”, but it could still silently tear through the wind at subsonic speeds, putting it at the same level as an assassin’s bullet.

Even the greatest expert should have been helplessly pulverized.

Yet the boy had survived.

He held a modified military flashlight. It was hard and heavy enough to use as a police baton, but that was all it could do. And yet it had made the difference between life and death.

“You’re a Threat with red glowing eyes.”

He was not expecting an answer. In fact, he doubted his words even got through to this adversary.

Still, he smiled and waved the flashlight to show it off.

This was not a street fight between delinquents, so why bother glaring at each other from close range? Karuta had faced the Warrior Doll’s red eyes from head on so he could check on this.

He knew that his ability to spit out things like this meant he had fully abandoned justice. He swallowed the bitterness and spoke with the look of a minor villain driven into a corner.

“That means ''you rely on sight'' just like the tadpoles and wharf roaches. So this infrared interference will work on you!!”

There was a crackling as if from a bug zapper.

The Threat did not pull back the sword it had swung down.

The excessive amount of energy could work against it at times. The floating rubble provided advance warning of a major attack.

“Aine!!”

This time, the crystal girl pulled the boy toward her. They spun around together to dive behind the remains of a devoured tadpole.

The small rubble around them continued to float and a pure white explosion erupted from the sword longer than the Warrior Doll was tall. Even behind cover, Karuta felt a slight pain running through him like he had a sunburn. A direct hit from that firepower would have burned all of his skin and fused his melted uniform to it with just the emitted heat.

He put on the fierce but pathetic smile of the routed soldier focused only on survival.

That was two attacks survived. He should have died the instant the blade began to move. With first the blade and then the shockwave, he was in fact surviving the 3m giant’s supposedly surefire attacks.

It felt a lot like bullfighting.

He had less speed, power, and weight, but he could still survive by accurately obstructing his opponent and causing it to miss. He would be killed instantly if he screwed up and let that opponent charge him, but his side still had a chance to stick it with their sword in the instant they crossed paths.

The puny human had a chance to challenge a much more powerful monster. The Threat could customize themselves through cannibalism, but if the original lion and the absorbed tadpole had both relied on sight, ''it gained nothing new.'' That would not give it new senses that used microwaves or ultrasound.

“You were messing with the Threat’s eyes using your laser unit, right?”

“You only just now noticed? But I cannot switch modes quickly enough for the Warrior Doll. It will approach and cut me down while I am aiming the laser.”

That meant they could not attempt a feint where they occasionally swapped roles. Similarly, he did not have time to bring Aine back into his body to heal her wounds.

They would have to do this as is.

“Aine, leave the assistance to me. Just go at it with everything you’ve got!”

“I am not sure what to say when you are praising your own specs.”

She spun around and rushed out from behind cover to slice at the reddish-purple armored warrior with the intensity of a tornado. The Warrior Doll swung its long sword diagonally. The two swords clashed and Karuta felt a squeezing at his heart while clutching his flashlight behind cover.

The plasma jet did not explode and the armored warrior immediately raised its sword in a defensive pose. Only after a second strike from the crystal sword hit it from the right did the light began to expand again.

(Did it intentionally alter its previous timing!?)

“Hide, Aine!!” shouted Karuta while sending out IR with his flashlight.

Aine rolled back. There was an explosion, but she had managed to find cover behind a severed tadpole leg lying on the floor. Karuta nearly had his lungs scorched because he had been leaning out from behind cover.

(One at a time, huh?)

“Marika, help us out!”

He was answered by a sharp light attacking the Warrior Doll from the side. Marika cut through the air with her rapier device in hand, dropped down just barely inside the massive sword’s range, planted her feet on the wet floor, and sharply shoved her body in even closer.

The extreme maneuver bringing her from long to close range was a lot like a horizontal lightning strike.

But the dull sound that followed came from Marika. The tonfa-like protrusion of the armored warrior’s sword guard crashed into her crystal armor and slammed her down to the wet floor.

“Gah!!”

Tayori and Imi apparently considered joining the fight after seeing their classmate rolling along the floor, but they came to a stop after seeing the rubble around the armored warrior unnaturally float up. That ionocraft effect showed a fearsome amount of energy was gathering within the Threat. Tayori had her hands full simply restraining terrified Imi.

“S-sorry, Karuta.”

“That’s fine.”

That was not just a polite response. As he moved toward the armored warrior from the side, he said one thing more without moving his lips or looking toward collapsed Marika.

“''That was all according to plan''.”

“…?”

It had all been for the dry crinkling sound he heard now. Any communications using their Crystal Blossoms or phones could be intercepted by the slate pencil urchin and holding a secret conversation right in front of the armored warrior would be the height of folly.

The girl behind him had unfolded a small piece of paper and would now have read the short message it contained:

“Burn their surfaces to weld them together, or continually scorch the air to create suction from the pressure difference.”

Yes, there were plenty more Threats inside and outside Second Grimnoah. After making this much of a commotion, they would have to deal with them as well.

Marika’s Crystal Magic would be able to pull off one or the other methods written on that memo.

Also, none of the Threats except the Warrior Doll had broken through the ship’s walls or doors. Not even the Gestalt. If she fired her powerful sniping laser on the Threats packed into the hallway, she would scorch the air in the small gaps between them and cause a suction effect. That would not stop them forever, but it would help.

The armored warrior’s red eyes followed Marika as she nodded and moved behind a tadpole, but Karuta moved in between. He put on a filthy smile and forced out his voice.

“Do you really have time for distractions, Warrior Doll? Is your anger so weak you can set it aside for other things?”

He held his modified military flashlight and Aine wielded her crystal sword by his side.

He was essentially an amateur mimicking the pros and he was facing an opponent ten thousand times more frightening than a pro bullfighter ever had, but he had still claimed the right to challenge the Warrior Doll.

He took a deep breath.

He gathered his resolve and stepped out from behind the tadpole.

His opponent did not understand his words and no signal was needed.

This time, they were on equal footing.

They glared at each other and then charged straight toward each other.

The strongest human and the strongest Threat bet everything on this.