Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume5 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 12===

The zero-g proved to be a bigger problem than expected.

Marika tried to change from her skirt into track pants, but she gave up on that plan when it earned her glares from Kyouka, the fashionable upperclassman, and even from inhuman Aine. She ended up continuing with the “hold down the floaty skirt when necessary” plan, but that was far from perfect. Each time there was a careless mistake, Karuta would get punished for it, which meant a lot of getting hit by the girls.

Omotesandou Kyouka smiled and made a suggestion.

“Hitting doesn’t have the same oomph in zero-g, so I say we switch to electrical punishments. You know, like zapping him with the hair dryer.”

He really wished they would do better at holding their skirts down instead of improving the punishments. In fact, this would only do more damage, which didn’t solve anything for anyone.

And zero-g had other effects as well.

“Ugh.”

“What’s wrong, Aine-chan?”

“Miss Kyouka, your boobs have unfairly increased in size.”

“Have they? No, I don’t think this is their size. It’s probably that gravity is no longer holding them back. That means less strain on my shoulders, so I’m all for it☆”

Being trapped in the same room as a bunch of girls was a problem. Karuta had to do his best to look anywhere but there. That devilish president was sharp (which she seemed to use to tease him as much as possible!!) and she giggled when she noticed how he was acting, but how else was he supposed to react to this!?

In his attempt to look away from Kyouka, he saw Marika sleepily approaching.

“Play with me, Karuta.”

“Oh, no! Another minefield!!”

All his shouting was making him thirsty.

In zero-g, straws were valuable. Except they got sick of using them and were now having fun squeezing out the contents of the drink packs and eating pieces off of each other’s floating globules of colorful liquid. Even a lab water flea could think of that game when out in space, but it was actually quite dangerous since you weren’t guaranteed to get all the small droplets and those could cause mechanical trouble while out in space.

Karuta was stuck catching a few juice globules in his mouth on Aine’s expressionless request and his thoughts shifted a bit toward the belt-covered sports equipment in the next room.

“Come to think of it, you wouldn’t have to worry about your skirts if you had just changed into those bulky spacesuits, would you?”

“For three days in a properly-heated compartment? Don’t underestimate the female body, Karuta-kun. That would lead to a hell of delicate parts getting much too sweaty,” remarked Kyouka.

She normally had to remain seated in her wheelchair at all times, but the tires were useless without any gravity to press them against the floor. She had abandoned the wheelchair and now floated in the air. She had made up some aphorism about space bringing people freedom and stretched.

“The waterless shower is pretty interesting, but space is really inconvenient for sleeping.”

“Yeah, I don’t like having to strap myself down so I don’t float out of bed.”

For once, they were in agreement with Aine who preferred cramped places. She looked uncomfortable floating out in the open. The idea of sleep freeing you from the worries of the day did not exist in space.

Their shared life here would not last forever.

This was the third and final day.

The sunrise and sunset did not exist out here, so the food disappearing from the fridge was the biggest reminder of time’s passage.

“What…is that?” muttered Marika, looking out the window.

Karuta focused that way too and saw something new there. A bunch of artificial objects formed something like a net overhead.

“That would be the Sunny Side Up Project, a network of space stations made from a solid foam material. You know, the one run by Yukino Arakawa of the old strongests.”

Kyouka’s explanation brought it all back to him.

That network covered the entire Earth, didn’t it? The centrifugal force would differ at different points, but that would have all been forcibly dealt with using God-Worshiping Magic. The last he had heard, control had been lost and it was breaking apart with its master gone, but that didn’t mean the entire network would be cleared away immediately.

It looked like there was a gaping hole in the network around the space elevator.

That proved the elevator had been considered a greater priority than Yukino’s secret weapon.

However…

“No, not that.”

“?”

When Marika’s further comment made Karuta take a second look, he saw an object glistening darkly in the powerful sunlight.

That was the Threat.

Specifically, a bunch of giant spider crab ones all tangled together.

That meant the Threat had animal forms even out in space. Did that mean similar lifeforms existed on another planet? Or would they change form further after descending to the surface and cannibalizing their own?

Given the distance, that clearly wasn’t just one of them. A whole lot of them had to be forming a big ball in space like bugs gathering together to survive the winter. That one ball had to contain hundreds, thousands, or even more.

The group that had occupied Second Grimnoah off the Port of Kobe had been in the tens of thousands.

That group alone would be too much for the four of them to defeat.

And there were more than 300 million in all. How big was the enemy force?

“…”

Karuta fell silent, but then another change came over the elevator car. The floating sensation grew. Most likely, it was tugging them in the other direction as it slowly decelerated. Inertia still existed in zero-g.

They were approaching their destination.

“Karuta-kun.” Kyouka brushed her long hair to the sides in zero-g. “We need to get ready soon. Although I doubt we even need to put on those spacesuits.”

“What happens when we reach the space station?”

“We board a separate launch shuttle. The station is 36 thousand kilometers from the surface and the station itself is 10 thousand kilometers to strike a balance with Earth’s gravity. That exceptionally long space elevator is constantly rotating in accordance with Earth’s rotation and revolution. A shuttle’s rocket engine can fly us to the tip in less than an hour.” Kyouka calmly explained. “After that, we don’t even need explosives or fuel. We can use the massive centrifugal force or the force of the wire’s own swaying to launch ourselves with enough speed to leave the solar system once we cut ourselves free of the station.”

However, this was a journey into death with no actual destination. They would divert the 300 million Threats’ attention away from Earth and give the people there even a few years of peace. This was an empty coffin used to preserve that state of peace by using up each new world’s strongest.

Marika looked confused.

“Wait, I thought everything was weightless in space. Won’t the slightest push send you forever in the same direction?”

“There are a lot of things that will decelerate you, like the gravitational pull of other astronomical bodies and solar winds which are clumps of ions. A true vacuum is only a theoretical concept. Even space is a treasure trove of dust and garbage.”

Was that how it worked? It was probably best to trust the beautiful astronomy lover on this one. Given the actual risk to their lives, they probably shouldn’t have been discussing this, but they were likely only distracting themselves like someone starting to clean their room on the day before an exam. Besides, no amount of thinking would reveal a solution to their problem.

They had already made up their minds.

Their deaths were assured whether they remained on Earth or went into space. If they let their resolve falter, it would only mean more people dead.

They were scared, of course.

But more than that, they had had seen how the world’s strongest could abuse their power.

What kind of strongest did they want to be?

At the very least, they did not want be the kind that would put 5.5 billion people at risk just because they feared death. They had defeated the Problem Solvers for that, so they would not take that path themselves.

Their view of the starry scenery vanished.

The elevator car had arrived in the space station’s interior hall.

After one final shake and a metallic thunk, it came to a stop.

Out of habit, Karuta checked the modified military flashlight at his hip. That showed just how nervous he was, but he felt silly as soon as he did it. What was he going to fight at this point? But as ridiculous as it was, he couldn’t even crack a smile. No amount of struggling or fighting would be enough to escape death.

The series of compressed air sounds was likely the two airlocks joining together.

The red lights on the wall all turned green.

That likely meant they could open the airlock.

“…”

This really was the end.

He was briefly tempted to punch Marika and Kyouka in the gut to knock them out. He wanted to leave them here. But that was meaningless. The Living Gods would be the first ones killed by the 300 million Threats even if they did remain on Earth. He was growing uncharacteristically charitable as a way to avoid focusing on his fear of being ejected into the endless expanse of space, but he couldn’t forget the entire reason they were doing this.

Things from here on wouldn’t be like the space elevator. The shuttle ride would be a one-way trip without even a temporary goal.

This really was the end.

He would die.

Without even being to protect these three girls.

He silently cursed the human string pullers for not filling the elevator car with an invisible gas that knocked them all unconscious for some automatic process to load them into the deadly shuttle. Couldn’t those villains be kind enough to rid them of the need to see their doom slowly approaching?

He felt like they were performing sokushinbutsu.

They had chosen to bury themselves alive where they waited for death to finally arrive. And they were wishing for world peace the entire time.

“Let’s get going,” he said, but no one expressed agreement.

All four of them may have had someone they had wanted to protect. Even if it meant leaving that someone here. But none of them did so. Karuta, Aine, Marika, and Kyouka approached the airlock, looking less than pleased about it. The president looked back toward her wheelchair in an uncharacteristically worried way, but she must have decided it was meaningless. She left the device behind and floated toward the exit.

They were scared.

Of course they were, so they wished they could numb their hearts as they continued on.

Because as things were, they would break before they reached death.

Even though this was the right thing to do.

They lowered the large levers on the outside of the door and opened it.

Through the airlock, they found a space larger than a train station concourse. If there had been gravity, the size would have been enough to forget they were in space.

And there was something there.

It came without warning.

“We have been waiting for you, superior terrestrial carbon structures. AKA, the world’s strongest humans.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Utagai Karuta froze.

He didn’t understand.

Why was he hearing someone speaking?

Someone was waiting on the supposedly unmanned space station?

The human string pullers hadn’t mentioned this. Hadn’t Chrisbart Firenze said the space elevator was managed entirely from the surface and there was no one on the station!? Then who was this that had so easily obliterated the seemingly all-knowing human string pullers’ plans and calculations!?

“You’re…kidding.”

But.

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising this had slipped past the human string pullers.

Because the person in front of them was not human.

The black carapace and slimy green light were not any different from the giant spider crab variety.

But this one was clearly different from any that Karuta and the others had ever seen. They had come in many forms, such as a tadpole or a lion. There had even been the Armored Warrior who changed their appearance based on their hatred toward humanity after feeling betrayed.

But this was something else entirely.

“Sacri-sama.”

Something audibly sliced through the artificial air.

Even as she floated in the zero-g space, Crystal Girl Aine moved in front of Karuta and drew her transparent katana out of empty air.

“''That'' is not human, thus it is likely outside the human string pullers’ control. Things are not going according to plan.”

“…”

So Aine saw it that way too?

She agreed this being wasn’t human?

If the human string pullers could control something like this, they never would have gotten their own hands dirty.

Karuta had completely tensed up. He couldn’t even pull the modified military flashlight from his hip.

This was an utter monster.

This was something on another level entirely.

She had transparently white skin, shining eyes, and glossy black hair. A sticky green light crawled along her pitch black metallic clothing that could have been armor or a dress. Without the black “armor” that fused with her soft skin, she might not have seemed so monstrous. If she had walked by in Second Grimnoah wearing a school uniform, he would have just assumed she was another student. That was how human she looked.

She looked to be 20 or maybe older.

Her allure was even stronger than Regulation 3 Kyouka’s.

But this was only based on human assumptions.

No one could actually say how old she was. In fact, a lifeform that didn’t live on a rotating and revolving planet might not even have a compatible concept of “age”. They might even measure their “service life” by distance traveled or number of accesses. She was just that far removed from humanity – and biological life altogether.

“Karuta-kun,” cautioned Omotesandou Kyouka.

She was looking at the wall.

No, she was looking at what should have been a window. The entire wall should have been transparent, like at an airport, but something covered the outside. Enough darkly glistening somethings packed in so tight that there wasn’t a gap left open.

They were shaped like giant spider crabs, water bears, and blue-ringed octopuses.

Needless to say, these were the Threat.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v05_bw3.jpg|thumb]]

As crazy as it sounded, this space station had functioned as the final trump card protecting 5.5 billion people, but it had been taken over so easily!? How could this happen? Karuta’s group were willing to sacrifice their lives to redirect the Threat’s attention, but they had ended up diving right into a giant creepy cocoon made of thousands or tens of thousands of Threats gathered together.

They couldn’t act as decoys or redirect attention like this.

The human string pullers couldn’t hope to control things anymore. The plan was meaningless if the world’s strongests were captured before leading the 300 million Threats away from Earth! They were really and truly going to die for nothing!!!

“Congratulations.”

And.

They heard one of the last words they had expected.

It was not that this being was failing to communicate. It was more like the mind or feelings behind the word were twisted beyond recognition.

The countless Threats surrounding the station produced creaking noises while the woman with a pitch black sheen spoke.

She smiled as gently as a divine mother and spread her arms wide.

“Congratulations, world’s strongests! You are safe now. You need not fear death now that I, Transline, have collected you!!”

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