Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume5 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

Natalena Blast couldn’t breathe.

A blank area in her mind expanded to eat away every thought there.

The world looked blurry around her, but was that due to the tears in her eyes?

She shook her head with her back still against the wall. She could tell she would faint if she wasn’t careful. And if that happened, there was no way she could save Karuta’s group.

What was that about?

What did they mean a journey into death!?

“Dang.”

Natalena slapped her small hands against her cheeks to force her mind to face the reality before her eyes. She focused on what she needed to do.

Did she need to directly confront Karuta’s group? Of course not.

They were the Four Living Gods, the world’s strongest. Meanwhile, she was just another Crystal Magician. Remember when they fought at the Crystal Beach. It had been hopeless when it was 1-on-1, so what chance did she stand against all four of them? And who would save them if they forcibly stopped her before heading to their own dooms!?

(Let’s see, the time is…7 at night!)

Natalena checked her phone and clenched her teeth.

Karuta’s group had called this their final day. They had said they were contacting the human string pullers soon. She needed to assume they were dead if no alternative was found before midnight.

That only left 5 hours.

But it also meant there was still a chance to change their destiny!!

Natalena doubted it would be that easy. Karuta’s group wasn’t stupid and they weren’t saints. The world’s strongests had thought through every possibility they could come up with and still chosen self-sacrifice. The answer wouldn’t be simple enough for a Subcategory Regulation 1 to come up with it on her own.

Which meant…

(I can’t keep this to myself. I need to gather as many people as I can so we can all put our heads together!)

They each might not be a match for those four, but there would be so many more of them.

Second Grimnoah was a school. Why wouldn’t they rely on the power of numbers when they needed more?

But who could she get to help her here?

“First the teachers! With the grownups’ approval, the students will be a lot more willing to help out!!”

There was no time to waste, so she took off running.

The view past the side deck and across the dark ocean felt so very wrong.

A line there stuck straight up toward heaven.

That was the space elevator’s silhouette.

“Kh.”

(No.)

It felt like an ominous symbol of death now. The human string pullers were waiting there for the Four Living Gods. In order to sacrifice those four by ejecting them into space to draw the Threat’s attention.

(I won’t let that happen!! I don’t care if it’s selfish and, um, I’m willing to set aside the future of the Earth!! I couldn’t protect my sister…I could only watch helplessly as the worst came to pass. I refuse to let that happen again!!)

“Sophia-sensei!!”

“?”

Young Natalena slammed on the brakes when she spotted that nervous Subcategory teacher. The ship was resupplied on the Port Days, but the teachers must have returned to the ship. Natalena initially thought that was lucky, but she stopped herself. That word didn’t apply as long as the Four Living Gods were marching toward their doom.

She didn’t know how influential Sophia Firenze, who was carrying a lot of brand-name boxes, was in the faculty room. Actually, she could guess it wasn’t much. But the woman was still a teacher. She had to be far more useful than one powerless student. And Natalena had planned to talk to anyone she came across anyway.

As many as possible.

She needed everyone’s help.

“Please help me! Um, Karuta-senpai and the others, well, they said they’re going to contact the human string pullers!!”

Why was she so hesitant to come right out and mention the self-sacrifice and ejection into space?

Perhaps she still hadn’t gotten over the shock of learning of it herself.

(No, don’t do that. You need to face the ugly truth!! We can’t come up with a solution if you don’t mention the most important factor! Um, that’s how Karuta-senpai always does things!!)

And Sophia was far from calm herself.

She had gone pale before being filled in on the details.

“Oh…oh, no.”

“Sensei?”

“Um, ''Jane-san''. I am, uh, in no position to fight the human string pullers.”

“Do you know something? Like, um, how to save Karuta-senpai and the others!?”

The teacher used Natalena’s usual pseudonym and Natalena nearly grabbed at her shoulders and shouted back at her, but then it hit her.

The woman was shaking. It was an unnatural tremor, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

Sophia ''Firenze.

Wasn’t a weapons researcher named Chrisbart Firenze one of the human string pullers? This was a big deal for her in a different way than it was for Natalena.

“Argh!! That’s not a good reason! If a family member is doing something wrong, shouldn’t you do everything you can to stop them? Um, I will explain everything, but there really is no time. We can’t afford to be delayed because you’re too afraid to act!!”

“B-but…”

The teacher squeezed her eyes shut and spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice, but she threw out all the niceties of being a teacher.

She exposed her feelings to Natalena, no matter how ugly, pathetic, dark, and filthy they were.

“You all might think of the human string pullers as detestable villains, but no matter what the other 5.5 billion people out there might say, all I see is that kind uncle who gave me so many wonderful memories growing up.”

“!!”

Finding out a family member or a friend was a bad person was not fun. Having your suspicions confirmed was unbearable.

All that shopping during today’s Port Day may have been a way of distracting herself from her worries and nerves.

Anyone would feel that way, adult or child. That was why young Natalena did not scorn or insult the much older woman. Anyone who had seen the past battles would know that every person out there was doing everything they could to keep on living. That desire couldn’t be pretty or ugly.

“I don’t want to fight my uncle. In fact, I can only see this going badly whether I do or not. I’ll do anything else, even offer up my own life, so please let me sit this one out. I don’t want anything to do with this!!”

But that wasn’t an option.

That choice wouldn’t save anyone.

Natalena Blast understood better than anyone what failure here felt like. She wasn’t working based on assumptions here. She knew this from firsthand experience.

“I…”

The young girl clenched her teeth hard.

She gathered up what had been stewing inside her for so long – an empty dream that could never come true – and threw it right in the hesitant adult teacher’s face.

In other words…

“I wish I could punch my sister right in the face and stop her from making that mistake!! But Anastasia Blast, world’s strongest, isn’t here anymore, so that isn’t an option anymore and it never will be! But it’s not too late for you! Um, you can still stop Chrisbart Firenze. You can still stop your family member from making a terrible mistake!!!”

The teacher still didn’t know what it felt like to cross that line, but the young girl had crossed it and there was no going back.

Natalena knew how foolish and meaningless it was to try to find peace by turning away from the unbearably cruel reality standing in your way.

“You can still walk that painful path,” said Natalena, sounding thoughtful. Her small hands squeezed hard at the woman’s upper arm. “Nothing I can do can save my sister now, but, um, you’ve been given a free chance to achieve a goal that’s even more unreachable than immortality for me! Look into my eyes! Do you see the darkness there!? This will be you too if you screw this up!! Don’t you want to protect your irreplaceable family member!?”

She didn’t receive a response.

The teacher with the same name as one of the string pullers fell to her knees, clung to the girl, and burst into tears.

“I, sob, I!!”

“Yes.”

“I can really say I want to save him? Even though he’s, sob, one of the human string pullers manipulating the 5.5 billion other people!?”

“You can. I would do the same if my sister was still alive. Even if what she was doing is wrong. And you still have that chance. It’s not too late for you.”

Natalena didn’t think this adult was weak for letting her feelings out like that.

In fact, she felt people only walked to their own doom because they lacked the courage to let out their feelings.

Like Anastasia Blast of the Problem Solvers or Utagai Karuta of the Four Living Gods.

What if they had been able to say they were scared, in pain, and fed up with it all?

What if they had said they didn’t want to die?

What if they had asked for help?

Would things have gone differently for them?

Why couldn’t they do that when they were just as human as everyone else?

“Sensei,” said Natalena Blast, holding Sophia in her arms. She was young, but she was one of the people challenging a great unfairness. “I want to save Karuta-senpai from being thrown into space to draw the Threat’s attention. And, um, this has nothing to do with him being a Living God or the fate of the world. So will you help me?”