Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 7===

A fearsome tremor spread out in all directions, making it feel more like a tactical weapon that used shockwaves instead of an explosive blast. As that propagated outwards, it triggered avalanches on all the nearby mountains and the conifer trees pointing sharply up toward heaven were knocked to the ground.

The log cabin was truly eliminated in an instant.

The countless splinters blasted away by the explosion functioned as projectiles as they scattered all around while breaking the sound barrier. Even if the cannon’s aim had been somewhat off and even if the target had fled the cabin and dove into the snow, that sandstorm of wooden fangs would have turned them to mincemeat.

There had been no escape anywhere on the face of the earth there.

Which was why they had gone elsewhere.

“Kh!! Wh-what was that? That thing that burst from the lake, I mean!! Is that a military application of one of those mass drivers that use staged detonation acceleration!?”

They had gone up.

Twintailed Marika had blasted the roof with her Crystal Blossom’s laser beam and then escaped into the sky, so now she was shouting questions while soaked with a tense sweat and breathing heavily.

But oddly enough, Karuta’s heart had gone cold.

He worked his mind while clinging to her hips and dangling down.

This opponent had not hesitated to destroy their own secret base to achieve their objective. No matter what memories that cabin held for them, they had blown it away along with the attacking assassins.

There really was no common ground there.

Karuta recalled the secret base he had built below the giant ship’s heliport. The Student Council had found it while he was away, dismantled it, and confiscated the things he had left there. That had not taken his dorm room or classmates from him, but it had still saddened him. So much so that he had felt no desire to build a new one.

Then he opened his mouth.

This opponent’s blatant deadliness rid him of any guilt.

“This must be her genre of world’s strongest.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“This is the world’s strongest mechanized human. She’s a cyborg.”

He thrust the reality of the situation into Marika’s dryly smiling face.

This felt like it would be Anastasia who controlled the world’s militaries, but could he really just assume something like that?

Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka had said Susannia was the monster who controlled the global agricultural infrastructure, but it was hard to tell what role she actually played. The civilian satellites only showed giant mechanized farms.

Mechanized.

That meant this could be Susannia too.

“Did she lure us in so she could blow us up and ensure her own safety!?”

Crystal Girl Aine was not with them.

The boy clenched his teeth and looked down where not even the foundation of the cabin remained.

But he did not have time for sentimentality.

He heard a dull rumbling as the giant cannon changed its angle.

“Here it comes!!”

“Wait, really!? Okay, hold on tight!!”

The entire concept of sound vanished.

Their ears only felt some kind of compression.

While dragging around some dead weight, Marika flew in a complex figure eight to desperately avoid the back-to-back cannon blasts. This was not just an issue of weight or air resistance. The rapid changes of altitude brought changes in atmospheric pressure, the rapid movement brought inertia and air friction, they needed oxygen, and their body temperature could not fall too far. She was used to providing those protections for herself, but she had to provide them for Karuta as well this time since his weak barrier was not enough. That placed a greater burden on her.

“She doesn’t have cluster bombs, does she? That would be the worst! We’d have countless smaller explosives filling the air like fireworks!”

“We’ll be lucky if that’s all she has. We’re talking about a Problem Solver – one of the world’s strongest. She might not be entirely reliant on that one giant cannon!”

Just as Karuta gave that warning, they heard a sound like explosives splitting through a steel panel on the surface. A chill ran down their spines when they realized something had been purged, and then ''something'' stretched out its silver wings from above the frozen lake. The device installed on that person’s back ignited. They took flight with fearsome speed, almost like they had transformed themselves into a surface-to-air missile.

It was a tall woman with her red hair worn in a long braid.

She wore a skintight special combat outfit that resembled a black diving wetsuit, but various “components” must have torn through from within because her soft skin was showing all over her back and limbs like she was covered in torn stockings.

Karuta recognized her.

He had seen her photograph earlier.

“Susannia Evans!?”

This was different from a Crystal Blossom that was controlled using a printed circuit board smaller than a stamp and cables thinner than hairs. They had to begin a dogfight against a Problem Solver using four steel wings and several jet engines the size of a water bottles.

Crystal Blossoms used magic to ignore inertia and air resistance while flying, so they allowed for a dimension of flight not possible with fighter crafts. Simply put, they could make right angle turns at supersonic speeds with no risk whatsoever.

But this Problem Solver could apparently do the same with her older form of magic. Just how much had that beautiful silhouette been modified? A normal pilot would have blacked out from the blood not reaching their brain. In fact, they might have had all their blood vessels burst from the pressure, but she was flying through the biting chill without an oxygen mask or even goggles to cover her eyes. Any air force official or even UFO researcher who saw this would probably throw in the towel.

And no matter how cutting-edge the technology, the fundamentals were the same.

Unless they hoped to start some close-quarters combat using a sword or spear, head-on charges were rare during dogfights. The standard in aerial battles was to take up a position on your enemy’s tail while keeping them off your tail. Since Marika was the one being chased now, she constantly had to dodge redheaded Susannia Evans’s attacks. She could spin her rapier around and target behind her, but being on your opponent’s tail still gave you a tremendous advantage.

Both Susannia’s arms opened up from within.

The next thing they knew, both her arms were gone, something like the framework of a fan was spreading out, and that framework was revealed to be several cannons of various sizes. The volumes did not seem to match.

“!!!???”

Beams of red light pierced the white sky either as tracer rounds or as a form of intimidation. And not just a few; it was like a shower. Marika somehow managed to dodge them by twisting around and spinning her body like a spring or coil, but that kept her from flying freely through the sky. Just like in a chess problem, every move she took was being gradually guided toward the position where she could be taken out.

“Marika!”

“Shut up, you dead weight! Let me focus!!”

“Then could you manage if you dropped me?”

“~ ~ ~!! What did I say about not leaving me behind here!?”

That kindness may have been one reason she could not make any headway in this battle. Not only was she facing one of the Problem Solvers, someone she could not afford any kind of opening against, but she was attempting it while handicapped with this dead weight clinging to her slender waist. She had no chance like this. The two of them would be shot at some point and it would all be over.

Also, Susannia Evans’s transformation was not over yet. She must have grown impatient because she expanded even more weapons that were stored in her body. Her four wings grew to eight, the number of jet engines increased, and the area around her ribs stirred before several small supporting arms burst out like shrimp legs. Also, each of those arms was holding the grip of a Gatling gun made of several cannons or a laser beam cannon with exposed excitation rods.

Each new component further tore her wetsuit-like special combat outfit, but it no longer looked like a woman exposing her soft skin. This could only be described as a grotesque collection of machines.

“What the hell!?” Marika’s eyes bugged out as she flew around the sky, scattering shockwaves as she went. “Does that really obey the law of conservation of mass!? How do you fold all that up to fit inside that body!?”

Susannia had matched their speed while gradually taking an advantageous position, so they did not have a moment to lose.

After some thought, Karuta spoke up.

“Marika, we know we can’t escape, so do you think you could instead slow down to get us closer to her?”

“We’re 300 to 400 meters away already. That’s ‘right in front of her’ as far as dogfights are concerned. Even if I ‘returned’ the air resistance parameter to normal as a special maneuver for rapidly braking, getting within 50 to 100 meters of her is the best I could manage. And with how she’s been moving, I doubt even catching her by surprise will get her to overshoot us. But!! The closer we get, the harder it will be to dodge her attacks!”

“She’s using laser beams that move at the speed of light, so distance doesn’t really matter.”

“Surely you aren’t planning something suicidal like intentionally taking a hit to damage her with the Crystal Blossom fragments you scatter behind us.”

“This is nothing that heroic, but you’re in the ballpark.”

His casual response left her speechless.

He hesitated like a normal person more than the others did, but his ideas tended to be more out there than the others. And he made a suggestion while holding onto his childhood friend’s hips.

“We only have one shot at this. We can shatter her assumption that she’s safe if she’s on our tail.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no safety here. Because we’re true avengers who are here to fight to the death.”