Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 12===

Not everyone was aware what exactly was happening there.

At a point four or five kilometers northeast of the Palace of Westminster, an eyepatch woman stood on a rooftop in the City district, a business region filled with modern buildings. She was a beautiful Western European woman, but she wore a brightly colored kimono.

(I lost the connection. Does that mean she really did get herself killed?)

“I beseech thee, Susanoo, Wakoku God of Violence.”

With that thought, she pulled three dice from her kimono’s sleeve and casually tossed them. The multiple upward-facing surfaces acted as a general guide as an enormous sword suddenly appeared out of thin air. It truly was more than 100km long. When standing upright, that absurd length was enough to reach the bottom of the thermosphere and to be mistaken for a space elevator. That massive weapon was far too much for a human to wield.

“Well, not that it matters.”

Four or five kilometers was just about to the horizon. Sending out some paper balloons equipped with cameras would be enough to expand her field of vision, but she could not rely on tricks like that with the giant sword taking up both her hands.

However, she knew the target had to be somewhere around the Palace of Westminster. And it did not really matter ''if that was not entirely accurate.'' If she made a vertical slash with this sword, it would blow away everything in the vicinity. Of course, that would also destroy all the buildings and take all the lives along the line to that point, including the G21 heads of state in the target building, but she did not care.

She had already agreed to do this.

Yukino Arakawa pissed her off, but that woman’s suggestions had always been clever.

So…

“Sayonara, Yukino-chan. I’ll crush them along with your corpse!!” she shouted.

A blazing red trail similar to a shooting star and a contrail of disturbed air accompanied the absurdly long sword as she swung it down in both hands.

But something happened before she could complete its hemispherical course downwards.

A gunshot rang loud in her ears.

There was a gaping, volleyball-sized hole in the center of her chest.

“…Oh…”

The sword was supported by her magic power, so it vanished into thin air.

The eyepatch woman lost sight of when to die and slowly turned around while coughing up blood.

“Ah???”

She heard a metallic squeaking.

A sexy girl with long black hair had arrived on the roof with her at some point. The girl sat in a wheelchair and held…was that a handgun??? But something was clearly out of the ordinary. Instead of the magazine being inserted into the bottom of the grip, it was inserted in front of the grip like with a submachinegun or assault rifle. Also, it was far too big. The magazine was the size of a thick metal detachable disk drive.

“Excuse me, lady, but I assume you are Jessie Marcus who controls South America? Oh, perhaps it was rude of me to skip all the formalities like that. How careless of me. But I do not need to explain why I am killing you, do I?”

Her voice was calm but also contained a hint of charm that seeped into you.

And it was mixed with a toxic intent to kill.

“This uses 12.7mm rounds. Those are generally used for heavy machineguns or anti-materiel rifles. Shrinking this down to a handgun size was not easy, but that lets me carry it wherever I like by hiding it on my lap.”

“…”

“Oh, you look surprised. Did you think a girl in a wheelchair couldn’t fire such a large bullet? It is true it might break my wrist to fire this one-handed. Or maybe it would flip the entire wheelchair over. But surely you must know the answer. Or did you do all that without knowing? I, Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka, have already lost 58% of my body. I am like a dented-in doll that cannot maintain a human silhouette without supplementing my internal structure with my own Crystal Blossom.”

“––––––”

“After all, I had to do my duty as Student Council President after your rampage. I used my Crystal Magic to ''accelerate the time limit of the sleeping teachers and students by a rate of 10 thousand.'' All at the cost of a single body: my own. There is actually a good chance they will recover in less than a year.”

Then why had she not told Karuta and Marika that?

The answer was simple.

Whether it would take ten thousand years or a single month, a moment’s carelessness would reveal that cave’s location to the Problem Solvers and take away those teachers and students’ lives all the same.

Those five had to be killed to prevent that. So to preserve the other two’s burning desire for revenge, she had decided it was best not to tell them about the possibility of a more positive and hopeful future.

That was her plan.

Knowing might make them relax and trigger doom for them all, so she could wait until later to reveal that happy surprise.

“Firing such a large caliber gun in a wheelchair was something of a gamble, but I am willing to learn when it means a new way to kill you five. And I was bored stuck in this chair anyway.”

How had this happened?

The woman moved her mouth, but no words came out.

So the Student Council President continued giving the answers.

“The trick when setting up security cameras is to use as few as possible to eliminate all blind spots. The most common method is to place two cameras in opposite corners of the coverage area. When they are staring at each other, they each eliminate the blind spot below the other.”

So the Problem Solvers had done the same.

They placed the light spear in one corner of London and the giant sword in the opposite corner. Together, they could cover the entire district.

“Besides, the two of you are very similar. You both have surefire attacks with an extremely long range. Once you have our location, we are as good as dead. On the other hand, the motion is so large and the lag between attacks is so great that you do not want anyone approaching you. In that sense, it was not hard to realize the two of you would be covering for each other.”

They had held the Problem Solvers in place with that note that essentially claimed responsibility for the previous attack and announced another was coming. They had also decided to take out as many Problem Solvers as they could manage on the site of the G21 summit.

So Kyouka had known this would happen.

Just as they relaxed after defeating their primary target, another nightmarish attack would arrive.

So she had needed to take things a step further to save her partners.

But to put it another way, if the those two were positioned at opposite corners to cover for the other if anything went wrong, this was their biggest chance. They could easily work out where another of the Problem Solvers was hiding in London. And once something happened to Yukino Arakawa, the owner of the giant sword would be entirely focused on Yukino.

“To be honest, I don’t care what your name is, I don’t care what kind of person you are, and I don’t care what that giant sword of yours really is. I imagine it is uses weight-based magic that makes it feel light for you but heavy for your opponent, but, again, I really do not care. Only one thing matters to me: was that magic used to destroy our school?”

And that meant she would neglect to focus on everything except for Yukino.

It would create enough of an opening for a girl in a wheelchair to arrive this close.

“Are you familiar with the disgraceful idea that British cooking is bad?”

The Student Council President once more aimed her customized handgun at the eyepatch woman who still stubbornly refused to collapse.

She did not announce checkmate.

“People say their desserts are nothing but sugar and butter and their dinners are only flavored with salt and oil, but they are enjoying those things wrong. The food here is not made to be eaten on its own. The desserts are meant to be eaten with tea and the dinners are meant to be eaten with whisky or brandy.”

This was not over yet. She could keep going. The further she went, the more she could savor the flavor of revenge. Her entire body trembled at that fact.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v01_10.png|thumb]]

“I thought there was no need to insist on revenge if it meant reducing my body to this. I thought I would stop at some point before straying as far as personally taking someone’s life. But really, this is the same as British cooking.”

Yes.

She could preserve her pure desire for revenge even with the more hopeful estimation of when the teachers and students would recover.

That true exacter of revenge made a bold announcement with that extra-large gun in hand.

“It’s strange, really. My heart balks at the thought of killing, but when I eat it with some revenge on the side, it goes down oh so smoothly. Yes, I fear I could get hooked on this☆”

Another resolution was reached.

With no one to interrupt, she indulged in more and more and more revenge until she was practically drowning in it.