Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume8 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 4===

A violent explosive blast disconcertingly shook the giant steel submarine.

“It detonated in the tube! The 3rd launch tube has ruptured!!”

“Have we set up a seal? Prepare the pumps and filler material! This is a race against time, so just don’t let the water in!! And keep the sub balanced!!”

Seawater was of course the most frightening thing to a submarine crew. Damage from a torpedo or mine, scraping the hull on the rocks, getting a net or wire caught in the propeller, and so many other things could lead to drowning in seawater. While it did happen sometimes, it was rare for flames, smoke, or an explosive blast to directly kill them. They were working in an environment inhospitable to human life, so destroying the artificial environment they created for themselves would remind them they were on the ocean floor and their lives would be readily snuffed out. Returning their environment to normal would kill them. This was different from “unnaturally taking a life” by firing a bullet or shell at them on the surface.

However. The crew frowned when they brought filler material like metal beams and thick rubber sheets to fill the large hole in the torpedo launch tube.

There was indeed seawater flowing in, but not very much.

“What? Did the wreckage of the torpedo clog it up?”

The water was only trickling out like from a sewer pipe on a muddy river wall, so a young crewmember tried to peer inside the launch tube.

Immediately, Shiroyama Kyousuke shot out like it was a water slide and the heel of his shoe caught the defenseless crewmember on the bridge of the nose.

He then spun around his long and narrow Blood-Sign.

“And we’re in.”

“W-wah. Waaaaah!?”

Before the crew could actually do anything, Kyousuke used the Blood-Sign to strike the young crewmembers on the back of the neck, on the side of the head, or in the middle of the gut to quickly knock them out.

Olivia crawled out of the torpedo tube a little later.

“I’m soaking wet… Huh? Did it not attach properly?”

“Well, this wasn’t a proper hatch, so there was only so much it could do.”

Kyousuke and Olivia had attached the bottom of the small submersible to the hole in the torpedo tube using a large, remora-like suction cup and then they had moved the seat to open the bottom. By connecting the submersible to the submarine, they had been able to enter the latter through the damaged torpedo tube.

The torpedoes would have been fired by the defense unit sent by Illegal, but who had originally supplied the equipment? Had Toy Dream acquired the parts and gotten them back in working order, or had Illegal revived that functionality for this mission?

(Either way, the submarine’s very existence is a secret, so they don’t have to worry about anyone seeing what happens in here. We should assume we’ll run into some even nastier people onboard.)

[[Image:BloodSign_v08_175.jpg|thumb]]

“The fabric is clinging to me all over. Uuh, and I don’t like how it feels in the crotch.”

Olivia looked troubled and moved her fingers to the butt below her pareo to fix the swimsuit. When she did, a clear liquid left the base of her legs and flowed down her inner thighs.

The blonde double braid girl seemed to notice Kyousuke’s eyes on her because she blushed and began stammering.

“…Just so you know, Onii-chan, this is only seawater. It isn’t anything weird.”

“I know.”

“Huh? This is odd. I had heard Japanese swimsuits had this weird hole here so the water that gets in through the chest could get back out more easily. Is it really working?”

“You don’t have to stick your hand into that tunnel. More importantly, Olivia, help me tie all of them up.”

It was unclear how she decided what qualified as embarrassing, but Kyousuke tossed her some zip ties.

“Once their arms and legs are bound, we’ll remove them from this room.”

“Oh? Onii-chan, you know how to use these in addition to the Japanese-style rope?”

She was clearly mistaken about something there, but now was not the time to argue.

The hole had not been filled with filler material, so even at a trickle, the flooding was continuing. Kyousuke and Olivia bound the unconscious crewmembers’ hands behind their backs and tossed them into the corridor. After making sure there was no one left, they shut the steel door from outside and turned the round handle.

“Huh, so even submarines have air conditioning. I thought it would be sweltering and full of exhaust.”

“The San Francisco-class is nuclear-powered, so the turbine is always turning. Unlike the battery-powered subs, they can’t completely cut the power to go silent, so there’s no real reason to not use air conditioning.”

The room temperature was only lightly cooled, so it was actually more comfortable than the cruise ship above which had been like a supermarket’s vegetable section.

All of the submarine’s doors were watertight, so if they were all shut, any flooding could be contained to a single room. And that limited volume would not be enough to throw off the submarine’s balance and make it roll over.

There was only one thing to worry about: Once the torpedo loading room filled with water, they would lose their route back to the submersible waiting outside. They would either have to find another way to the surface or acquire some legitimate diving suits to travel through the flooded area.

“Still…”

After sealing the watertight door, Kyousuke glanced around the corridor again.

The San Francisco-class had been mass produced. Since multiple identical submarines had been built at the same shipyard, there were more opportunities to acquire an accurate layout diagram. But Toy Dream and then Illegal could have made any number of additions and modifications. They could not fully trust that diagram.

For one thing, the standard model would not have had this kind of interior.

The dark gray and unrefined corridor took many twists and turns. The walls and ceiling were absolutely covered in large pieces of paper. They depicted long silver hair worn in twintails and an outfit that looked like a white wedding dress cut down to size with silver armor added in places.

Needless to say, these were portraits of the White Queen.

All mechanical cameras and sensors ceased to work when an Incense Grenade detonated, so they were all hand-drawn. They stirred up odd emotions, like when seeing the police use professionally-made sketches of a wanted criminal even in the modern day.

The people who wanted to start the Silver Resource War were apparently after the deposit of special silicon in the giant mountains around Kingdom F because that silicon’s crystal structure miraculously contained just the right impurities in just the right amounts. And they had set up an unbelievable system where the countries and regions hit by the flames of war would be thrown into the large box labeled “East Europe Axis”.

They wanted to combine cutting-edge Repliglass tech with the ancient Joruri Method to create an artificial vessel capable of perpetually summoning the White Queen.

They wanted to create a powerful anchor to re-solidify the White Queen now that word of her being killed was shaking her absolute position.

So it was true they might need portraits of the White Queen from multiple angles as reference material for the doll.

But when Kyousuke felt a strange shiver down his spine, it was not because of all the images of the White Queen’s beautiful form filling this space.

“…What…is this?”

Olivia was also dumbfounded as her wet body shook.

The eyes had been torn out. Countless blade slashes ran across the mouth. A red pen had drawn Xs all over it…

Each and every one of the portraits had been destroyed.

Kyousuke held his Blood-Sign tight and Olivia clung to his waist from the side as they slowly walked further in. Then his shoes reached something like gravel. A volleyball-sized piece of marble lay at the corner between the corridor floor and wall. It took a moment to realize it was a statue’s decapitated head after the surface had been thoroughly carved down with a chisel.

This was more than just persistent. It was obsessive.

It was more than just hate. It was a backlash. The messy spiral of emotions ruling this space was like someone had gone around destroying the very things they had gathered out of love. The oxygen level would not have changed, but an eerie oppressiveness hit Kyousuke like an invisible wall.

This was the chaos brought on by the Queen’s death.

People were resorting to strange and destructive acts now that the foundation of their belief had been shattered.

There was an old ''urban legend'' that someone’s mentality could be deduced from the lineup in their bookcase or the layout of their room. That was more an issue of folklore than science, but Kyousuke could not help but rely on it here.

(Did those belong to Toy Dream…? No, then they would have arranged the light sources, temperature, and humidity when doing the sub’s interior. These must have been brought in by Illegal. ''They were not destroying something adorning the walls. They brought their collection here for the express purpose of destroying them and creating this scene.'')

“Hmm, they sure were thorough. It looks like they don’t completely hate her.”

“Uwehh? It looks like they want to kill her to me…”

“They’re lashing out in hatred because the White Queen got herself killed, but they still have some hope deep in their hearts. Hope that it’s all a lie. That’s why they only have portraits of the White Queen. I don’t see any materials based on the Colorless Little Girl that killed her.”

They had brought along their precious items in order to destroy them here. If they simply hated her, they would not go to the effort of carrying the collection this far. They would not have taken it anywhere at all.

“Hmm? So which is it? Do they love the White Queen or hate her?”

“I think they’re trying to have it both ways. Just like someone trying to guess the murderer in a mystery novel, they can’t decide on a single person. By setting up a defensive line for every possibility, they can say they saw it coming no matter who it ends up being.”

Did they love or hate the White Queen?

Would they side with the White Queen or the Colorless Little Girl?

…The person who had made this scene could picture every possibility in their mind, but they could not decide on just one. So they were simply putting off making a decision while making it look like they were thinking about it. They told themselves there was no helping it because the answer had already been determined. They would tell themselves they were fine because they had seen it coming from the beginning. They might try to act all-knowing, but to someone a step removed, they had the dark eyes of someone who had lost all hope and they were simply floating aimlessly like a balloon in the wind.

And that made them hard to predict.

In the end, this was the kind of person who would smugly say things were going “according to their calculations” even if they tripped, hit their head on a pebble, and died. Shiroyama Kyousuke had to predict the actions of someone who did not know what they themselves would do. This could be far more trouble than dealing with the most meticulously planned crime.

“…”

“O-Onii-chan. The original data of that weird video is here, right? Let’s destroy System Atlantis and get out of here. I don’t want to stay here long and I don’t want to see the person who made this. This is an atmosphere we can’t – just can’t – bring to Kingdom F.”

“No.”

Kyousuke shook his head.

While not to the extent of a cruise ship or aircraft carrier, a submarine required a fair number of people to operate. And yet they had seen no sign of a crew since those in the original torpedo loading room.

Why was no one confronting them?

Who was keeping them away?

Those questions led Shiroyama Kyousuke to the following conclusion:

“Looks like it’s too late already.”

They heard solid footsteps.

Illegal Award 999, War Criminal.

He was the leader of one of three major powers that dealt in the Summoning Ceremony. He was the world’s greatest criminal who had taken an individual’s crimes so far that he had taken a step into the realm of war.

He matched the photo from before.

He looked the same as when Kyousuke had made those five soul-rending surprise attacks in the past.

He had lazily-combed, close-cropped hair and a completely average height.

He was a very generic boy in a rough baseball practice uniform that did not even have a team name on it.

In this case, it was wrong to find it anticlimactic.

War Criminal had already achieved many records, reigned at the top of Illegal, and was known both inside and outside Illegal for possessing the skill to take on Government Award 1000, the tyrannical Elvast Toydream.

So.

''This meant the person who stood at the top of every last criminal organization was the Boy A who stood by anyone’s side. A shudder of terror was the correct response to that fact.

Boy A had the close-cropped hair of a baseball boy and wore black sunglasses as if they symbolized something.

There was no bridge at the nose, so they had a ruler-like shape and resembled a wicked blindfold.

“Hi, Kyousuke-chan. How’ve you been?”

“…”

“Ha ha ha! It’s your old friend, Irigaru Tarou. Now then, Kyousuke-chan. Are you wondering if I have a bunch of body doubles or if I’m a stunt expert?”

As the top of Illegal roared such an obviously fake name<ref>Irigaru Tarou basically means Illegal Boy.</ref> that it could have been on a sample form at a bank or post office, Kyousuke kicked something with the heel of his shoe.

He kicked up a dropped handgun like he was juggling a soccer ball.

Shiroyama Kyousuke of all people did not hesitate to pull the trigger.

Multiple gunshots rang out and Olivia reacted more than War Criminal. She covered her ears and curled up. Some of the bullets flew straight and others ricocheted off the thick steel walls. The lead projectiles used multiple angles and time delays to essentially surround Boy A as they flew toward him.

Several dry sounds followed.

“Uuh…”

An obedient girl groaned in embarrassment.

The leader going by the name Irigaru Tarou had a girl of about the same age standing next to him. Her wavy, reddish-chestnut hair was simply tied back in two bunches that were not quite twintails and she wore no makeup. She had a decent body, but she was a book girl with a vanishing presence. But despite that impression, she wore a pure white bunny suit with a tailcoat-like vest.

No, there was one motif even stronger than the bunny ears and suggestive tights.

As she tearfully blushed and shrank down, a large flapping noise came from her back. The objects there looked as solid as hard plastic yet moved smoothly. If this model was based on an existing animal, then they may have been swan wings. However, they were dyed a dark red, so they were more reminiscent of a fallen angel. It was a depressing and profane coloring, like seeing a wedding dress colored blood red. And those wings had spread out like a large umbrella to block and knock back all of the bullets Kyousuke had fired. Her wavy, reddish-chestnut hair may have been tied back in two bunches in order to give those dark red swan wings space to move on her back. They must have been a collection of microlattices because they could spread out to a far greater size than their initial appearance suggested.

She held a fairly cheap-looking tote bag to her stomach with both hands. It may have been the prize for gathering the stickers from convenience store bread. Thanks to that, her arms pushed together her surprisingly large breasts.

“No! Stay…away!!”

Her shoulders shrank down and she squeezed her eyes shut, but that graceful behavior was belied by how the blood red swan wings swung out with such ferocious force.

“…”

Kyousuke wordlessly fired some more and watched as the oxidized-blood-colored wings spun around like a tornado.

Once the handgun was out of ammo, Kyousuke did not hesitate to throw it aside.

“You implanted Repliglass directly into your vessel’s skeleton? But once the Summoning Ceremony battle begins, no cameras or sensors can see us. And that includes your vessel as she operates that. Did you put her through the risk of rejection, infection, and mechanical malfunction just to protect yourself against surprise attack?”

“Don’t criticize me like that. I’ll cry? Repliglass is the symbol of Government, so it’s a sign of wealth for us and our inferior tech. Reputation is crucial for a criminal organization. I’m not interested in nuclear weapons or stealth fighters. I want something with such great value that it shows off ''that there’s nothing I can’t get my hands on''. It seems weird to me too, but trust is of the utmost importance in the underworld. Ha ha!!” The generic Boy A laughed with his eyes hidden by the horizontal line of his ruler-like sunglasses. “And that’s not what matters here. You were testing to see if my aide would stop the bullets when you attacked with deadly force, weren’t you? No matter how excellent the lackey, they wouldn’t risk their life for a replaceable body double. Whiiiich meeeeans that’s convinced you, hasn’t it?”

It was not Kyousuke whose shoulders jumped up in shock. It was the fallen angel, who was trembling in embarrassment from the mismatched outfit she had been made to wear.

Kyousuke narrowed his eyes when he saw it.

“I see. I may have been looking at this wrong.”

“Ohh. Now you’re focused on her? Yeah, making these alterations to my childhood friend might’ve been a mistake. She was originally the kind of person who would come running to my room cause she couldn’t watch a rented horror movie on her own. That’s all changed after I messed with her a bit, though.”

“That girl is ultimately motivated by fear, not love, War Criminal. You yourself are a war that causes tremendous damage all around you, but the one surefire way to avoid that damage is to be the vessel by your side. You could think of it like the eye of the storm. …She might look obedient on the surface, but that’s sort of like Stockholm syndrome where a hostage is so desperate to read the criminal’s slightest emotions in order to protect themselves that they end up empathizing with them and developing a temporary affection for them. That reaction couldn’t be duplicated with a body double because your skill is needed for it to develop. So I’ll have to go with the stunt theory instead of the body doubles.”

The cowering girl’s trembling increased explosively.

“Uuuuh… Uuuuuuh!!”

She groaned like a shabby dog chained to a post. Her spiteful eyes told him not to reveal too much and not to take away the eye of the storm, but Boy A himself did not seem bothered by the accusation of false trust.

No.

He may have never really understood what trust was.

The close-cropped hair boy was not even looking in the vessel’s direction.

“Aren’t you gonna ask?”

“Ask what?”

“There are standard questions for times like this: Why did you do this? How much work did you put into making a Toy Dream non-executive director your pawn? Why do you want to use the Blue Film to start the Silver Resource War? Y’know, checking your answers.”

Kyousuke gave a short snort.

And he laughed.

“…''Like you would have a good reason.''”

“''I’m offended you would say that.''”

The generic boy laughed in a tone that would rub anyone the wrong way and smiled behind the horizontal line of his sunglasses.

Then he spoke words that sounded like some kind of curse.

“An artificial vessel made of Repliglass. Well, I guess it would be more like overclocking than creating an anchor. Materials are temporarily summoned from another world and used here. So if they’re summoned wrong, they lose power, but the opposite is also possible. That’s what an artificial vessel made of special silicon will do. The White Queen was apparently killed while in her base state, so now we’ll use human tech to strengthen her. I guess it’s similar to the experiment run with Pandemonium.”

That Deltaston Family that led that project had been a special group that encompassed Government, Illegal, and Freedom. That would explain how information on the technique had reached Illegal.

The White Queen was not enough.

So they would use their clever human brains to elevate her to even greater heights.

…Had humanity made no progress since the Queen’s Miniature Garden? Or had the sense of danger faded and been reset, like with the memories of war?

Did this Boy A realize it or not?

Regardless, he continued speaking with a voice as heavy as coal tar.

“You’d normally figure this out, right? You’d normally be able to do this much, right? And if you can do it, you’d normally go ahead and actually do it, right? So I did it. That’s the only reason I had. There’s nothing majorly twisted about this. ''Just think about it normally and anyone could figure it out, right?''”

“…”

“Did you think this was the ramblings of a lunatic? Hey, Kyousuke-chan, you think too highly of the word ‘normal’. Who was it that sold out their neighbors with dark smiles on their faces during the witch hunts? Who was it that spread mistaken training methods without feeling a shred of responsibility? Who is it that’s still passionately supporting the income of the drug cartels? …The darkness of history doesn’t come from the serial killers and dictators with special minds. Drug lords can only do so much on their own. The people you really need to fear are ''the faceless Person As'' who can be found all over the world. Kyousuke-chan, you’re always being watched by the As you would never suspect. Those are the pieces of shit who will kill millions and then casually claim they’re the real victims.”

The White Queen was powerful, but she did not intentionally drive people insane.

It was the world and human race around her that grew twisted on their own.

However.

“The White Queen doesn’t matter.”

Boy A smiled coldly as the one who had destroyed all of the pictures of the Queen plastered across the walls and ceiling.

“Humanity is garbage whether she’s with us or not. We’ll just find another symbol, worship that, go nuts, and cause more damage. I worship the White Queen in the same way. It’s like finding a new waifu each season. Ha ha. If a Red Queen or Blue Queen took the title of the strongest, I bet I’d worship her without even questioning it.”

“…So that’s why you’re trying to have it both ways? So you can laugh and say it all went according to your calculations whether your overclocking works and you strengthen the White Queen or it doesn’t work and Colorless Little Girl worship covers the planet?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Even though we’re talking about how you live your life?”

“I simply wanted something that wouldn’t break. I wanted a support that wouldn’t be shaken even if it was hit with a war. I needed some solid rock to drive in the piton for my lifeline. That’s why I worshiped her. ''Not cause she was the White Queen.'' There was something stronger than me in the world, so I used that great being to support myself. She could’ve been red or blue for all I cared. It just so happened that the she was white, so I placed my faith in that. That’s all.”

It was strange, but even members of criminal organizations had religious faith.

For example, a gang hitman would wear a cross around their neck or have a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on their back. They lived lives of a formless anxiety telling them they would be punished in an unexpected way if they strayed from the path they had set for themselves.

“The basic plan is to incite Toy Dream into spreading the Blue Film that will bring about the Silver Resource War. And in the confusion, I can nab all the crystal resource needed to create the Queen lookalike for the perpetual summoning. Then my artificial vessel can overclock the failing Queen. …''But the success of that overclocking doesn’t really matter.'' We just want to know what color stands at the top of the world. If strengthening the White Queen allows her to keep her spot at the top, that’s great. If that isn’t enough, then we’ll switch over to the Colorless Little Girl. We’re not fixated on a single thing here. We just want to know which is the winning side this season. We’ll worship them, use them up, and throw them out. That’s how normal humans work. ‘I’ve always been a fan.’ ‘I knew you would win.’ ‘I was rooting for you on my blog, telling everyone you were my team.’ It’s not so bad when it comes to mechanical businesses. The real horror comes from the normal, everyday humans who have no idea what they’re doing. ''They feel no responsibility at all when they choose or abandon someone. They’re grotesque creatures who will distort their own memories as long as it makes them feel good.''”

Olivia’s small hand grabbed Kyousuke’s wet hoodie. And she was not the only one feeling an indescribable tingle of fear. The vessel girl, who was forced to wear suggestive clothing and even had her body modified, was trembling in a different way now.

Sometimes it had been out of love and sometimes it had been out of hate.

Kyousuke had seen several people who were fixated on the White Queen.

Azalea Magentarain, Benikomichi Fuuki, Biondetta Shiroyama, Himekawa Mika, Akura Taisaku, Elvast Toydream…and more recently, Olivia Highland and Doctor S.

It had been obsessive, insane, and hopeless, but they had risked their lives and futures for the path they had started down.

But this was different.

Kyousuke spat out some words without rejecting the strange feeling.

“If you’re insane, you creep me out. If you’re not, you’re scum.”

“Ha ha!! Just how highly do you view the ultimate grotesque creatures we call humans, Kyousuke-chan!?”

War Criminal reached a hand out to the side.

His book girl of a vessel reached into the tote bag she held in front of her with both hands and she pulled out a hand grenade with a handle. The explosive looked like a maraca or a club with a fat end. She pulled the string on the bottom of the handle and threw it toward Kyousuke and Olivia.

There was not much space inside the submarine.

Swinging his Blood-Sign for a homerun would be difficult. Besides, if he eliminated the supernatural element and challenged them to a normal battle, he would be up against a vessel whose body had been modified. Those solid and dark-red swan wings had instantly knocked down every last bullet he had fired their way. It was hard to keep one’s distance in the complex layout of the submarine, so if that monster rushed toward him, he would be unable to avoid the rush of blows. Thus, it would be best to wait for the Incense Grenade to detonate and battle using the Summoning Ceremony.

''Or so the enemy wanted him to think.

“Olivia!!”

“Nweh!?”

The small girl had started to wait, so Kyousuke grabbed and tugged on her hand while reaching for a nearby watertight door. The submarine’s doors were even thicker steel than the cruise ship’s. As soon as he opened it wide as a shield, the grenade exploded.

Yes.

It sent out a perfectly normal explosive blast along with anti-personnel fragments.

If they had waited for the Artificial Summoning Ceremony instead of using a shield, the wall of destruction would have hit their entire bodies within the narrow space. Olivia only wore some synthetic fabric fully soaked with seawater, so a single graze from a fragment would have taken out a large chunk of her flesh.

Meanwhile, the enemy must have done it in the off chance that he got a lucky shot. A careless voice reached them through the smoke.

“Tch. So you used your dirty mind to figure it out. I guess it takes one to know one. Nothing scarier than a normal human, huh?”

“Illegal…!!”

“Ha ha. That’s right. There’s nothing special about us. This is the honest malice that any human carries inside!!”

The name of his group told you exactly what he believed. After all, he was the evil leader who brought together all of the world’s criminal organizations. It had been wrong to expect him to play fair and square in the first place. Kyousuke dropped a hairspray-can-sized Incense Grenade at his feet behind the metal door shield to make the challenge himself.

“Oh, oh.”

The suggestive fallen angel staggered as soon as the Artificial Sacred Ground opened up. Now that the cameras and sensors no longer worked, the connection between her body and the machine had been severed. War Criminal had thoroughly modified his vessel partner’s body and he liked to play dirty…but that did not mean his skill was lacking.

The 20m cube had appeared.

But they barely had any room to move inside the submarine. The Summoning Ceremony was beginning at unprecedented close range.

“Goodbye, War. This time…this time I will bring an end to your slaughtering…!!”

“Ha ha!! A death match at close quarters? And stop putting on airs, cheater. You act like you alone are observing humanity from the outside!!”