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Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 19

2015-08-09T17:49:16Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 19: Simulated Tomorrow */

==Chapter 19: Simulated Tomorrow==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0693.png|thumb]]
''Everyone

''How about we think of tomorrow?

''Of a tomorrow bright with destruction

Evening filled the sky.

Below, the forest sank into darkness.

However, that forest did not maintain its proper form.

The tree-covered earth was split, cracked, and broken.

Ropes and warning lights were set up to block off what little remained of the road.

Night was fast approaching, so most of the trucks and heavy machinery had been pulled back to the base of the mountain.

But even as everyone else was headed down, one figure remained at the top of the slope.

An old man in a lab coat and a yellow hard hat stood on the broken asphalt.

His nametag said Ooshiro and his eyes were pointed downward.

He was looking at the valley filled with dirt.

The dirt piled up at the bottom of the valley was two hundred meters wide and several kilometers long. It also contained fragments of manmade objects.

They were asphalt and metal pieces melted by the heat as well as pieces of white building materials.

Those were the remains of Japanese UCAT.

Ooshiro stared at them in the shadows of the setting sun.

“#8-kun, you’re there, aren’t you?”

He suddenly spoke to someone behind him without turning around.

The air moved slightly and #8 stepped out from between the fallen trees behind him. She too was wearing a yellow hard hat.

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> was wearing jeans and a down jacket instead of her usual maid outfit.

“What are you doing here, Ooshiro-sama? According to our estimations, the positive concepts will react to the activated negative concepts inside the Leviathan and change the world by midnight tomorrow night. To prevent that, the others have gathered at Yokota and Yokosuka and are holding a strategy meeting in Yokosuka’s underground meeting room.”

“And with all that going on, what does it look like I’m doing?”

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> saw Ooshiro looking back toward her with the setting sun behind him and she slowly observed their surroundings.

All she saw were the setting sun and Ooshiro.

…''Is this…?

After confirming the still scenery, she nodded and gave her conclusion.

“I believe you are mentally planning your next 18+ game.”

“A-are you really ignoring the sunset behind me, #8-kun!? Do I really look the same as always!?”

Hearing that, she wondered if she had made a mistake and looked into the sunset again.

“The sun is merely setting for the night. What about it?”

“Wah! This is the problem with you! And when I was really setting the mood, too!?”

“Really?” asked #8 as Ooshiro wiggled in protest. “Testament. Then I will ignore that part. As an emotionless automaton, I cannot hope to guess what is going on.”

She then changed the subject.

“Anyway, everyone is worried about you, so please return to your post as soon as possible.”

“Eh? R-really? I’m the mega hero everyone’s pinning their hopes on?”

“Testament. Everyone in Yokota and Yokosuka was complaining about having no one to shove the unpleasant jobs onto, the construction workers were complaining about an old man getting in the way of everything, and I am complaining because I was called out here when I was supposed to be tuning my spare body. To statistically sum it all up, you need to get back there right away.”

“Th-that’s nothing like what you said before!”

Despite Ooshiro’s complaint, #8 pulled something from her pocket.

“This is the straw doll containing one of Itaru-sama’s hairs. Would this doll be an acceptable substitute for spending your time staring into the sunset?”

Ooshiro looked at the proffered doll.

“This was Sf-kun’s…”

“Testament. Sf-sama followed after Itaru-sama. …Because this doll is not Itaru-sama.”

<nowiki>#8’s</nowiki> tone of voice was firm.

“But you are not the same as Sf-sama. …You are technically human.”

“What do you mean ‘technically’?”

“I went out of the way to leave that unsaid, so why do you insist on nitpicking my wording?”

“I-I’m the one being scolded over this!?”

She ignored him because she had something to say. She had to say this before gaining even more bizarre conversational experience.

“Humans have an imagination. They have the power to imagine someone where nothing remains. So wouldn’t a doll containing something he left behind allow you to imagine him all the more?”

“#8-kun…”

“Yes.” She nodded. “All your pathetic brain can do is imagine things about dolls or an image on a monitor, but that will finally be a useful skill. Now, have a good time imagining.”

“I-I just imagined something really sad about myself!”

Still, he took the straw doll from her hand.

“But #8-kun? It sure would be nice to have something else to cheer me up.”

“Such as?”

“Like having you hug me and console me.”

“How exactly?”

“Calling me Kazuo-chan and hugging me as sweetly and softly as possible! Like the tenderest of simmered meats! Something that would need the sound effect ‘honyo’ or ‘huryo’! L-like this! This! Just like this!”

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> stared at the old man backlit by the sunset as he made his sound effects and bent backwards again and again.

She wondered what to do for about three seconds, but finally said “testament” and nodded at the man. She then pulled her cellphone from her pocket.

“Hello, police? Yes, the pervert that I mentioned earlier is once again blathering on about bizarre nonsensical things while acting extremely suspiciously.”

“Wah, #8-kun! Stop, stop! And what do you mean ‘that I mentioned earlier’!?”

She hung up the phone and glared at Ooshiro.

“Have you made up your mind?”

“About what?”

“Will you be coming or not?”

She further clarified.

“Will you be giving up on or continuing the fight? Which will it be?”

He did not answer her.

He fell silent with the straw doll in hand.

So #8 determined what it was he wanted to say.

She opened her mouth to tell him.

“Testament. Then let’s go, Ooshiro-sama.”

“I-I’m going!? Don’t I get a say?”

“Since you did not answer immediately, I determined you were willing to go either way. And…”

She looked up into the clear sky as she spoke.

“We are in the mountains of Okutama at the end of December. The temperature will fall below zero at night. If you remain here, I have determined the frozen corpse of a pervert will be discovered here by tomorrow.”

“Well, I suppose that’s true.”

“You admit you’re a pervert!?”

“Damn, you’re strict!”

He wrapped his hands around his head and struck a pose, so she turned her back on him.

“You have to leave the mountain no matter what you choose, so your only option is to go. So I have determined there is only one thing to say: let’s go, Ooshiro-sama.”

“Ah, wait, wait!”

Ooshiro took a hesitant step after she began to walk.

“You’re pretty forceful.”

His shoulders drooped, but he followed her.

She looked back toward him.

“Are you coming with me?”

“Everyone wants me to, right?”

He pulled the helmet deep over his eyes.

“They’re hopeless without me, aren’t they?”

“Testament,” replied #8. “I have determined we are about to grow very busy. Prepare yourself.”

“I’ve been ready for ten years now.” His voice fell to the ground. “I thought I had prepared myself for this day back then.”

“You grow tired of things quickly, so I have determined you grew tired of being prepared.”

She suddenly sped up and he had to run to catch up.

“#-#8-kun! Why are you running away from me!?”

“I am not running away. Please stay at least five meters away from me.”

“I doubt I want to know, but why?”

“Testament.” She nodded. “A filthy old man carrying a straw doll approaching you from behind deep in the mountains? Are you trying to become a new urban legend?”

People filled a large space.

The bowl-shaped circular space was the meeting room below Yokosuka.

The room was completely filled with a great mixture of colors.

In addition to the representatives of the international UCATs, the national representatives accompanying them, and the Gear representatives, even volunteers from the normal members of those groups were present.

They all looked to the central space where a 3D image floated above a round table.

The transparent green light drew a 3D map of Tokyo with Shinjuku in the center.

“Tomorrow will be a day for the hidden annals of history.”

A boy in a suit, Sayama, spoke as he walked through the center of the large transparent map.

“This is the Final Concept War that will never be mentioned in the official history books. It will come down to a great urban battle in which a coalition force of UCAT, our various nations, and the Gears split into eight armies to attack the Leviathan.”

The Leviathan sat in midair like a giant island and red lights indicated the positions of the UCAT forces.

“According to our predictions, the positive concepts inside the Leviathan will be complete tomorrow, the 25th, at 10:30 PM. These positive concepts will react to the already activated negative concepts, but they will both fully activate and create the immortality concept at precisely midnight.”

In other words…

“At precisely midnight tomorrow, the world will be changed and the living will all be erased.”

Everyone gulped at Sayama’s words.

He then walked toward the image of the floating Leviathan and the eight red armies deployed in Tokyo moved toward the center.

The ribbon lines of movement had an arrow at the end. They split apart and covered Tokyo while approaching the Leviathan.

Sayama also reached a hand toward the Leviathan.

“If the Leviathan creates and activates the positive concepts, even the existing Concept Core weapons will be useless. After all, we have no idea how to defeat that colossal rampaging dragon,” he explained. “But the Leviathan has left us a decisive opening.”

Everyone looked up and Roger raised his hand in the American UCAT representative seat.

“What is this opening?”

“Until the positive concepts have been created, it must avoid moving as much as possible.”

As he walked, Sayama pointed back toward the curled up Leviathan.

“If it could move, it could have easily destroyed the outside world already. It has not and it has overlooked us as we gather together, so I can only assume it is confident in its own strength and currently cannot move.”

He took a breath.

“I know why. The Leviathan…no, Noah failed in its concept creation before, so it wants to be as careful as possible.”

“In that case, is destroying the Leviathan not our primary goal?”

“Correct. Our goal is to prevent the Leviathan’s positive concepts from reaching completion at 10:30. …I will now show you how.”

Sayama turned toward everyone else. On the 360 degree transparent map, UCAT’s red ribbons split apart and formed eight foundations.

“A representative bearing a Concept Core weapon will be placed in each of these eight directions. While holding those eight directions, a barrier wall will be created in each spot.”

Eight walls appeared to surround the center of Tokyo.

“Oh?” said the Chinese UCAT representative.

The man in black crossed his arms with an impressed look.

“A Bagua-style omnidirectional barrier? It looks just like the Eight Great Dragon King barrier used when sealing 10th-Gear’s Concept Core, though.”

“Not quite. The sealing walls will be used to keep the Leviathan from escaping and the circle itself acts as a declaration of the Concept Cores’ presence. In other words, we reject the creation of the Leviathan’s positive concepts by ''showing off the real ones''.”

Sayama kept his legs moving.

“But that rejection must not have a way out,” warned the man. “A simple eight-direction seal is not enough.”

“Then…” Sayama came to a stop right below the Leviathan made of transparent light. “We do this.”

He waved a hand and red light appeared.

It appeared directly below and above the Leviathan.

Two red walls were displayed above and below the enemy dragon.

“We add two extra Great Dragon Kings to the Eight to install a seal above and below. The Leviathan will have nowhere left to run and we can lecture it from all directions using the presence of the real positive concepts.”

To put it another way…

“Yes, for simplicity, you could call it the ‘Leviathan, your positive concepts are fakes and are thus banned! Ha ha ha. How do you like that?’ barrier.”

“That’s a little too simple!!” shouted everyone else.

“Simple is best, don’t you think?” replied Sayama. “But if you insist, we can call it the Ten Great World Dragons barrier.”

A short pause followed.

After a few seconds, Roger raised his hand in the American representative seat again.

“Who will be in charge of the two great dragons in the heavens and on the earth?”

“Anyone will do. As long as they are worthy of bearing a Concept Core weapon, that is.”

“Anyone?”

“Yes.” Sayama looked across the approaching red ribbons of their armies. “It may be a rough way of looking at it, but the Concept Cores are worlds themselves. They contain elements of the heavens and earth within them. So if two of the Concept Core weapon bearers travelling in these eight armies – or two others on the same level – bring in the Concept Cores, they only need to set up the seals of heaven and earth once the eight-direction barrier is established. To put it another way…”

He took a breath.

“Those two will be trying to score a touchdown on the Leviathan.”

He raised a hand, said “but”, and looked across his audience.

His expressionless face silently observed them.

“But you are thinking this sounds simple, aren’t you? We can transport the Concept Core weapon bearers in with an aerial force, after all.”

Once he said that, a few numbers appeared in the air. They were formatted like a time and they displayed an estimated length of time.

“Based on the time needed for the barrier in Top-Gear’s Osaka and the barriers used to seal 10th-Gear’s and 2nd-Gear’s Concept Cores, we can estimate it will take this long to establish a barrier large enough to seal the Leviathan.”

The proper numbers appeared and everyone gasped.

“The eight-direction barrier will take sixty-four minutes. Counting from there, the heaven and earth one will take sixteen minutes. That makes a total of eighty minutes that we must face the Leviathan. By counting back from there, we know when we our attack must begin.”

Diana gave the answer from the German UCAT representative seat.

She gave the numbers with a serious look in her eyes.

“At the very least, it has to be eighty minutes before 10:30 tomorrow night. To give ourselves some breathing room, we need to attack by nine at night.”

“Exactly. And this is going to be quite troublesome.”

Sayama’s words brought the color blue to the map.

Blue ribbons appeared from the Leviathan.

It almost looked like the color blue had exploded from the dragon.

“The Leviathan contains a massive fighting force. Based on what I saw, its concept space hangars hold approximately two thousand five hundred gods of war of various types, one thousand mechanical dragons of various types, and as for automatons…”

He smiled bitterly.

“Approximately three hundred thousand of various types.”

A few people voiced their disbelief.

That simply seemed impossible.

That was when a sudden voice of rejection reached them. It was a sharp girl’s voice.

“You would not regret it if you showed a little more tolerance.”

The voice came from directly next to Sayama.

No one had seen them arrive, but two figures had joined the transparent map of Tokyo.

One wore a black armored uniform and the other was a twelve-winged maid automaton.

They were Mikoku and Noah.

Everyone in the meeting room began to raise their voices at their appearance.

Some reached into their pockets to pull out weapons, but they never completed that action.

“Please quiet down. Over.”

Noah’s voice seemed to be emitted from her entire body and a weight fell down from above.

It was a great burden.

“…!?”

Those who had started to stand up fell to their knees. Those who had reached into their pockets collapsed forward.

The weight bore down on their entire body.

But the cups and pens on the desks before them did not even budge and their clothes were not pulled down.

Only the people were pressed against the desks or the floor while Mikoku and Noah stood tall.

Noah had lightly raised her right hand.

“I have tripled your body weight. Please calm down, everyone. Over.”

But someone opposed those words and began to move.

Sayama stood in front of them and…

“Go!”

On his shout, two figures moved inside the meeting room.

The girl and boy moving quickly forward in their white armored uniforms were Kazami and Hiba.

Their movement time was shortened and they moved too quickly to see properly.

Kazami spread her wings and forced her way through the extra burden.

“!”

She circled behind Noah and thrust G-Sp2’s tip up from below without warning.

At the same time, Hiba rushed directly in front of Mikoku.

Kazami’s attack hit and the sound of the impact exploded out.

However, it hit Hiba.

“Eh!?”

The sound of everyone else gasping was louder than Kazami’s cry of surprise.

At some point, Noah had appeared behind Kazami with Mikoku in her arms.

“…!”

Kazami turned toward the presence behind her and Noah spoke expressionlessly.

“Please quiet down. Over.”

Hiba flew over their heads after being knocked into the air by G-Sp2.

He normally would have hit the tall ceiling from a blow like that, but the distance and height of his flight were shortened by his tripled body weight.

At this rate, he was going to crash into the third level of the stepped meeting room.

His arms flailed wildly, but there was nothing he could do.

His legs also flailed wildly, but there was still nothing he could do.

Kazami knew what to do at a time like this, so she gave him some advice.

“Hiba! It’s no use!”

“Y-you’re the one that did this to me!! You really are the worst!!”

However, he spotted someone to help him up ahead: Izumo.

Izumo was sitting in the stepped aisle between desks eating a hamburger, so Hiba shouted to him while flailing his limbs.

“I-Izumo-san!”

“Yeah…” Izumo nodded and averted his gaze. “It’s just that you’ve been making a lot of gay jokes lately.”

“Don’t give up like that! Try to have a proper conversation with me!”

Hiba braced for impact.

“Izumo-san! C-catch me! Please catch me! It might mean cracking a few bones, but l-let me plow into you!”

“It might mean cracking a few bones?”

Izumo gave a reluctant nod and went with Hiba’s suggestion.

He pointed at Hiba, held his sides like they were splitting, and spoke to the Kenyan UCAT representative sitting next to him.

“Hey, hey. Did you see that!? That idiot’s flying! Wa ha ha ha ha!”

Hiba crashed into the seat next to Izumo.

The sound of destruction was three times greater than normal.

Izumo spoke to Hiba’s legs and hands which were growing from the remains of the wooden desk and chair.

“Was that good enough? But if you want to ‘crack’ people up with your jokes, you can’t force them.”

Hiba shot to his feet, scattering pieces of the seat, and clenched his fist with blood flowing from his face.

“I-Izumo-san! There are some things you just don’t do!”

“And was this one of them?”

“U-um…”

Hiba hesitated, so Sayama shouted over at him.

“Was it!? Or was it not!? Give us a clear answer!”

Rushed by Sayama, Hiba held his head in his hands.

“I-it was…was not…was…”

He looked up in surprise, turned around, spread his arms, and gave his answer.

“It was not was!”

Noah was standing in front of him and she gave her response to his suggestion.

“Please quiet down. Over.”

“W-wah! Even the enemy’s treating me like this!?”

They all ignored him and Noah placed Mikoku back on the floor.

Mikoku took a breath, fixed her collar, and looked across the group in the room.

“Everyone, I am here to suggest you surrender.”

She expressionlessly looked through the transparent map of Tokyo surrounding her.

She looked at the red ribbons of UCAT and the blue ribbons moving toward them.

“To speed up your decision, I will provide you with some details concerning my weapons.”

Sayama fought the weight as he listened to Mikoku provide her numbers.

These were simply the numbers of her army, but…

“Mechanical dragons: 121 Seraph-type, 406 Cherubim-type, and 640 Galgalim-type. Gods of war: 301 Lords-type, 814 Virtues-type, and 1201 Power-type. Automatons: 98000 Prince-type, 10001 Arc type, and 189000 Angelus-type. Altogether, it is an army of more than three hundred thousand.”

Those simple numbers moved on the map of Tokyo as the color blue.

As everyone pinned to the desks or floor looked to the map, blue ribbons rose from the ground and began intercepting the red ribbons.

Sayama saw Mikoku instruct Noah to end the extra weight.

“Testament.”

With that word, the weight left them all and they breathed a sigh of relief.

No one around Sayama considered attacking Mikoku.

She must have understood that because Mikoku looked first to him and then the others.

“I have no intention of fighting yet. The Leviathan is always under my control. I can send out it and its troops as easily as you can clench your hand into a fist. Blindly attacking with no preparation will only lead to regret.”

“In other words, it is time for a chat straight out of the long-running TV show ‘Disastrous You’?”

Noah tilted her head, but Mikoku nodded and lowered her gaze a little.

“I doubt it will be a very nice chat.”

Someone chose to question that.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

It was Ooshiro who had entered the meeting room with #8.

People raised their voices to welcome him.

When he fixed his collar and raised his arms in an entrance pose, everyone smiled and applauded.

“Tch. Why’s he alive?”

“#8-san wasted four hours of her life bringing him back.”

“He bought up three or four of the limited-edition figurine I wanted.”

“I-is it just me or are all of you giving into personal grudges a lot lately!?”

“If you have something to say, get on with it, old man.”

“Very well.” He sat on the steps, pointed at Mikoku, and then pointed at the giant dragon on the map. “How should I put it? You may be able to use the Leviathan, but can you really utilize all of those weapons? It must take a lot to fire even a single cannon. Do you have any proof what you’re saying is-…”

Before he could finish, Mikoku snapped her fingers.

Noah nodded in response.

A moment later, everyone saw a building on the southeast side of the transparent map disappear.

Tokyo Tower had completely vanished.

As soon as the green, transparent tower disappeared, the automaton operating the round table controlling the map spoke quietly.

“The tower within the Leviathan’s concept space has been vaporized.”

“Testament.” Noah nodded. “The Leviathan is linked to me. I exist here as an automaton, but I am aware I am nothing but a weapon for Mikoku-sama. Over.”

“I see.” Sayama nodded and looked to Ooshiro. “Why are you even here, old man? It is your fault Tokyo Tower was destroyed inside the concept space.”

“Eh? I-it’s my fault!?”

“Ha ha ha. Who else could we possibly blame?”

Everyone in the meeting room glared at Ooshiro.

He shrieked, rolled along the floor, collided with the next step up, and rolled back to #8.

“#-#8-kun, are you going to give me the same look all of them do?”

She ignored him entirely, pulled a mop from below her apron, and began cleaning the floor with her back to him.

“#-#8-kun! Won’t you help me after going out of your way to bring me here!?”

“I apologize, but I am incredibly busy with nothing to do and am therefore cleaning.”

“How long will you be cleaning?”

Ooshiro asked while sitting on the floor and #8 answered with her back to him.

“Until the filth is gone.”

“Is that…a metaphor for something?”

“Testament. …Of course not.”

“Which is it!? Which of those answers am I supposed to believe!?”

“Ooshiro-sama.” She continued mopping with her back to him. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

He lay on the floor and pretended to cry, so everyone ignored him. Mikoku glanced over at Ooshiro.

“You are a strange bunch.”

“You’re one to talk!!”

Mikoku flinched back at everyone’s retort, so Noah supported her back and spoke expressionlessly.

“Mikoku-sama, do not let them bother you. What could they possibly be looking at to think we are strange? We are far too low-key for that. Over.”

“R-right. I am living such a low-key life that I had plain soba for lunch.”

“Since you would have been floating in the sky while eating it, that is a most impressive way of being low-key.”

Mikoku cleared her throat after hearing Sayama’s opinion.

She looked over at him and held out a hand to indicate the transparent map.

“Anyway, my army of automatons and gods of war has already been deployed within the concept space. Every last one of them wears pure-white armor. Meanwhile, what kind of fighting force do you have?

Sayama responded.

“You already know, don’t you?” he began. “We have millions upon millions of fighters.”

“Let me be blunt. Are you stupid?”

“Heh heh heh. I can see you are shocked by the overwhelming vagueness of our army.”

Mikoku gave Noah a look of protest, so Noah held out her right hand and bent her fingers twice.

“Based on my predictions, they currently have seventy thousand in all. By nine tomorrow night, they will have two hundred and ten thousand. Over.”

“You need to learn to dream.”

“I have never had a dream. Over.”

“That is unfortunate.” Sayama crossed his arms. “Dreams are wonderful. Shinjou-kun will perform all sorts of acrobatic positions while only putting up a token resistance. Come to think of it, I can do that in reality now.”

“Waaaah!!”

The meeting room’s door burst open and a shouting form rushed in.

“Ah! W-wait! Why are you dragging me out! I have an objection! An objection!! I demand an appeal!!”

The figure was taken back outside.

Sayama glanced over at it.

“Would you look at that. The dream has appeared for real.”

“You need to check yourself into a hospital,” said Mikoku.

She crossed her arms and addressed the comparative numbers of the blue and red ribbons.

“Going by the numbers alone, my force is 1.5 times larger than yours.”

Add in the superior fighting power of the gods of war and mechanical dragons and the Leviathan had an overwhelming advantage. Gathering every god of war and mechanical dragon from every Gear would have trouble reaching even a tenth of the Leviathan’s numbers.

Mikoku must have realized that because she continued.

“Therefore, I suggest you surrender. You can do so simply by doing nothing.”

“Why?”

She answered expressionlessly.

“If you do nothing, you can enjoy Christmas night with your families. You would be happier if you made some nice memories before being erased in the instant of the new world’s creation. And just like me, you will be reborn in the new world in some form. If you do not like the sound of that, then this will be your fate.”

She pointed to the map where UCAT’s red ribbons were being devoured by the blue ones.

They were devoured rapidly and in great numbers.

The erasure of the red left everyone in the room speechless.

Could they stand up to that?

But Sayama was unfazed.

“I see.” He looked Mikoku in the eye. “You certainly are brave to suggest we surrender. A very bold move if you ask me.”

“How is this bold? Are you implying you have some chance of winning?”

“Allow me to ask this: Do you seriously think ''you can defeat me?''”

Everyone gasped and Ooshiro shouted from the floor.

“M-Mikoto-kun! Don’t provoke her! That’s a big no-no!”

“There is nothing to worry about. We are merely chatting. For today, she will suggest we surrender and we will declare war. So let me make one thing very clear: We will stop the creation of the Leviathan’s positive concepts by 10:30 tomorrow night.”

“Can you? Even after seeing the result of the simulation surrounding you?”

The silence from everyone else grew heavier.

The reason for that silence was simple.

All red had vanished from the map of Tokyo in which Sayama stood and it was absolutely filled with blue ribbons instead.

If that simulation was accurate, every last member of UCAT would be devoured by the Leviathan’s army.

And Mikoku stood in the center of that blue battlefield.

“If all you have is pointless bragging, there is nothing left for you.”

But Sayama did not respond.

He said nothing. That was all.

They had already declared war against each other, so Mikoku looked down, closed her eyes, and hung her head.

“So all that remains is the battle. Understood.”

She sighed and raised her head without opening her eyes.

“Let us fight during tomorrow’s holy night. Let us fight with the entire world on the line.”

As soon as she said that, both she and Noah disappeared.

But they had not completely vanished.

“––––?”

They had lost their human forms.

With a sound much like sand, only a pile of something white remained where they had been.

When Kazami saw it, she frowned and spoke from the floor.

“Salt?”

“Yes,” agreed Sayama. “They were likely creating copies of themselves using gravitational control or something else. Such careful preparation and such overacting. I cannot believe they would force salt to cosplay as them. But…”

He moved his legs to enter the transparent map of Tokyo.

He moved below the Leviathan where Mikoku and Noah had been and stepped on the piles of salt.

“Was that supposed to be their declaration of war?”

No one answered him.

They all simply let tension fill their bodies.

So Sayama opened his mouth.

He let his words soak into them and remove their tension.

“That was an amusing little diversion. Now, let us get back on topic. I will give you my idea of how to escape this situation where Tokyo is filled by the blue ribbons.”

Everyone watched as he raised his hand.

In response, a flower bloomed in the blue Tokyo.

A few red forces suddenly welled up there.

There were not that many of them, but they were definitely there.

“I will now show you the battle as I see it. In other words, I will show you a battle of gods, where everyone is the same as me. And, everyone, I have only one thing to say here. There is only one objective to this plan I am calling Operation Leviathan.”

He spoke the words that were essentially a promise to the others.

“We must not allow the Leviathan to reach reality.”

The area around Shinjuku Station was filled with the lights of night.

According to the clock in front of the station, it was 4:22 AM.

There were people there, but not many. Some people in suits were arriving for the first train of the morning and some younger people and women who had spent the night in the area were moving between empty stores to keep out of the cold.

But there were a few people unlike them.

These men all wore work uniforms with matching blue jackets.

Large trucks were pulling up alongside them not just at the center of the taxi-filled roundabout in front of Shinjuku Station, but also in the alleyways by the south, west, and east entrances.

The trucks were loaded with metal pipes and panels.

“Who would have thought we’d be blocking off Shinjuku and building stages on the roads?”

That comment came from Kazami’s mother who stood in a small clearing in front of Nishiguchi Station.

She wore a coat and the man next to her, her husband, passed her a thermos of tea.

“It’s going to be blocked off from nine to midnight tonight. I’m impressed you got permission for this, papa.”

“Well, I’ve been planning this for a long time and I have some connections here since we used the area a lot for a police drama I worked on. You know the one: ‘Detective Fluke: The Activation’ where he always found the criminal on intuition.”

His wife smiled bitterly at that.

“I remember that. Chisato would always watch your shows back then. Like that popular anime.”

“Oh, you mean the sexual harassment food hero ‘Panpanman’? Chisato came up with a lot of the ideas for the pathogen monsters working for Gaikinman, the enemy boss who refused to work in the office. Choleraman and Aidsman were certainly straight to the point.”

“That one got cancelled pretty quick, didn’t it?”

A short silence followed his wife’s comment.

Their daughter would normally keep the conversation going with a complaint, but she was not here and the father had to clear his throat.

“Well, ever since then, I’ve wanted to pretend to conquer Tokyo like this.”

“Oh, my. So are you conquering it with music instead of police authority?”

“Ha ha.” He laughed and smiled bitterly at his wife’s words. “I wonder what Chisato would think if she knew her papa was going to be a dictator tonight?”

“She’d probably come to overthrow you and tell you to stop dreaming.”

“Y-you sure are cement-like!!”

“Am I?” she replied.

Suddenly, a large figure approached them.

Kazami’s father stood up when she saw the man wearing a jacket over a white suit.

“Oh, Izumo-san. Why are you here? D-don’t tell me searched us out with psychic powers!?”

“That’s exactly right! Esper Beam Beeeeeacon!!”

“Old Man Shield!! And Man Beam Birooooon!”

“What!? Shepaaaah!! …Oh, this is a paralyzing beam, okay?’

“Roger that. But… Ha ha ha. That won’t work on me! Meyo meyo meyo meyo meyo!”

The mother removed a shoe and struck the father’s head as he moved his arms in a wavelike motion and made a bizarre sound effect.

“Ow!”

He bent forward and she smiled his way.

“Why are you two posing at each other? I’ll grab your collar and hit you next time?”

“Hmm, are you saying you’re willing to hit just anyone, mama?”

“Anyway, enough of this nonsense only men can understand. Try talking like human beings.”

“Sure, sure, sure.” He straightened up and turned toward Izumo. “What brings you here so early in the morning?”

“I just have business in the area is all. But on the way, I heard something interesting was going on here. I’m really not sure what to say about this.”

Izumo Retsu looked around the nighttime station area and spotted the loaded trucks hidden in the alleyways.

“It looks like you’re up to no good!!”

“Ha ha ha. I see you understand. You sure are young at heart, Izumo-san!”

“I understand all too well. It’s like you’re conquering Tokyo!”

Wondering how he could tell, Kazami’s mother tilted her head and glared at them, but the two men paid her no heed and began discussing the location of the stage and the timing of the lights and sounds.

Suddenly, Izumo’s father crossed his arms and smiled.

“I wish I could have helped out with all this.”

“No, that would feel like we were abusing Chisato’s connections.”

“True enough.”

The two men smiled bitterly.

“So what do you have planned, Kazami-san?”

“Nothing much. Just calling in artists from around the world and having them perform on different stages simultaneously for a ridiculously exciting Christmas. Walking around the streets of Shinjuku will feel like walking all around the world.”

“Will your wife be singing?”

Kazami’s mother gave her husband a quick look, so the man gave a single nod.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Ah, what a shame! I have her LP, you know? The one where she adds that sound effect to the end. ‘I’m. Still. Seventeen. Piyo-piyo’.”

Kazami’s mother shrieked, held her head in her hands, and crouched down.

Seeing the father frantically try to help her, Retsu scratched his head awkwardly.

“You were traumatized by that? My bad. Then what about after you started writing your own songs? Y’know, like ‘No one will even look my way. I’m a sweet pea of a bygone era’?”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”

Kazami’s mother shook as violently as someone on the receiving end of an exorcism, but…

“I-Izumo-san, please stop hitting her past with these uppercuts!”

“Sorry about that.”

Retsu gave an honest smile.

“No matter how it might look now, we all had fun at the time, so I don’t see any reason to reject what happened back then.”

“That’s right. That’s right, mama! Did you hear what Izumo-san just said!? ‘No one has had as painful a life as me’ was a really, really good song!”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow! Papa! You wrote that song!!”

The father looked up in surprise.

“That’s right. That’s the musical curse I wrote when I was so mad at my idiot of a boss! I planned to send it to him, but I accidentally put it in your birthday card instead.”

“Yes, and the card saying ‘I want to be with you from morning to night (heart)’ ended up going to your boss. Didn’t he quit almost immediately after that?”

“Ha ha ha! And it was all thanks to you, mama!”

The mother hit his head with the thermos.

The empty thermos made a nice side, but by then, Retsu was already walking toward the station.

“Are you leaving already?”

“Yes.” Retsu waved without turning around. “I’m looking forward to it. We’re having a pretty serious festival too, so I hope we can enjoy the night together.”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 17

2015-08-04T03:14:24Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 17: A Dedication to Relief */

==Chapter 17: A Dedication to Relief==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0601.png|thumb]]
''Are you sure you want me?

''I am

''You wouldn’t want me

''That is not true

A long line cut across the land below the dark sky.

The illuminated westward-running line was a runway.

It was the western spare runway at Yokota Air Base.

Four people stood in front of the hangar located at one end.

They were two boys and two girls.

The boy with dark skin crossed his arms.

“Noah is sitting above Tokyo after turning into the Leviathan and we can’t contact anyone who was in Japanese UCAT. On top of that, our weapons can only stop the Leviathan temporarily and who knows if that will work again. …What are you planning, Hiba?”

He turned his sunglasses to face Hiba.

“The injury in your side has only been treated with first aid. I’m sure you had a reason to come here without even heading home, but shouldn’t you get treatment from the macho men in the medical room instead of calling just us here?”

Hiba scratched his head.

He let out a white breath with his eyebrows lowered a bit in a smile.

“Well, there’s something I wanted to show you first. I wanted to show just you and Heo-san.”

Heo tilted her head and lowered her eyebrows.

“Something you want to show us before you meet the macho men? It isn’t something perverted, is it?”

“Wh-what makes you think I’m a pervert!?”

Harakawa whispered into Heo’s ear.

“As hard as it is to believe, he isn’t aware of it, so try not to mention it. If you corner him, he probably really will do it. Keep in mind that this is the guy who took a hit to the crotch to make people laugh.”

“Oh, right. Testament. Understood. …I’ll try not to encourage him. It would make my teacher sad if one of us turned into a criminal.”

Heo forced a smile and looked back to Hiba.

“Wh-what is it you want to show us? I’m really looking forward to it.”

“I really feel like you have an ulterior motive when you say that…”

Hiba glared at her but then sighed. He turned to look at the girl with long black hair standing next to him.

“Well, I had us come here because of what happened to Japanese UCAT. There’s nowhere left to treat my wound, but also…”

He nodded.

“Mikage-san said she was worried everyone might be feeling a little hopeless.”

Hearing that name, Heo looked over and saw a slight smile on the other girl’s face.

“Mikage, do you not feel hopeless or like we’re completely outmatched?”

Mikage returned Heo’s gaze and tilted her head.

“The Leviathan is sad.”

“Eh?”

Heo looked surprised and Mikage turned to the east.

Tokyo was there.

The lights of Yokota Air Base kept the dark of night away, but the sky above the city center was even brighter.

The end of the year was approaching and Mikage looked to the sky illuminated by the bright city below.

“The Leviathan is so big, but it’s alone with Mikoku.”

Mikage looked down where something was moving within Yokota Air Base.

They were inside the concept space surrounding the base, but the main eastern runway was filled with the aircraft carrying various UCAT representatives that had arrived through the concept space corridor and mechanical dragons from the United States.

The spare runway they stood on would eventually be used as an apron.

“We have everyone here,” said Mikage as she watched their movement.

“B-but,” cut in Heo. “The Leviathan’s power is absolute!”

“If you’re powerless does that mean you can’t fight back?”

Mikage asked her question while looking at them all and it stopped Heo.

Harakawa suddenly patted her shoulder and looked to both Mikage and Hiba.

“Let’s not act so self-important. Heo especially has learned to get lost in her worries. If she stumbles even a little, she’ll make a huge fuss and show off how hopeless things are while naked. …You could call it a sudden-onset self-obsession disease.”

“H-Harakawa, you don’t have to be so mean about it!”

Heo frantically looked around and found Hiba giving her a puzzled look.

“Wow… Is that like the person who complains about the school in their graduation essay and says how unfair they had it, but they don’t actually mean it and just want to show off?”

“N-no, that’s not what this is…”

“Well, when Heo starts pointing out problems like that, she’s bound to get other people involved,” said Harakawa. “And the first up to bat will definitely be me. I should probably evacuate to a nuclear shelter.”

“N-no, like I was saying…”

“A shelter?” asked Mikage. “Heo, are you as powerful as a nuclear weapon?”

“No, wait, um, uh…”

Thick sweat poured from Heo’s entire body.

“U-um, are we really still doing this? Are we still continuing with the usual hate that completely ignores the individual in question? Really?”

“Calm down, Heo Thunderson. We are not ignoring you.”

“H-Harakawa. R-really? You aren’t ignoring me?”

“No, we aren’t,” he said. “But don’t infect me with your brain disease, Heo Thunderson. I have a busy life.”

“You’re mean!”

Hiba held out a hand to calm her.

Once she and Harakawa turned back his way, Hiba stood in front of Mikage.

“Anyway, whatever we might say, we’re the people who always end up fighting.”

“In other words, we’re dangerous people.”

“Harakawa-san, the way you know just when to take the shot is an art.”

Heo nodded in agreement and Mikage placed her hands on Hiba’s shoulders.

She then looked to Heo.

“Heo, you have a will, don’t you?”

“Eh?”

Heo hesitated and turned to Harakawa.

He averted his gaze and looked up into the sky.

“How about you answer on instinct like you always do?”

Hearing that, Heo sighed and looked to Mikage.

“Yes, I have a will.”

She directed her answer toward Mikage’s eyes and Mikage looked right back into her eyes.

“Then…let’s go hear the Leviathan and Mikoku’s cries.”

“Eh?”

“Before, you said people should cry when they want to, so let’s go hear it head-on. We’re the only ones that can do that. We’re the only ones that can grab their hand as they try to sweep everything away.”

“But,” said Heo. “Can our power reach the Leviathan?”

“It can,” confirmed Hiba. “At the very least, the two of us can.”

Heo glanced over at Harakawa.

“Harakawa, in weekly manga, isn’t it always the first one to declare victory that loses?”

“Shh. It’s true the short ones and huge ones get taken out first, but don’t say it loud enough for him to hear. We’ve finally got him back in the usual pattern, after all.”

“Wh-what are you two saying!?” Hiba sounded completely confused. “T-Team Leviathan doesn’t have someone to be the ‘opening act’ for that kind of pattern!”

Harakawa and Heo looked away from Hiba for a full five seconds.

Afterwards, Harakawa patted Heo’s shoulder and she gathered her strength with her head lowered.

For the second time that day, she worked to force a smile.

“U-um, what is this power that you and Mikage have?”

“Is it just me or have you decided you don’t need to take me seriously?”

“Th-that isn’t true. We haven’t at all decided we can just ignore you or look away from you!”

“Y-you do that all the time! You all need to treat me in a way that I can accept! If you do that, then I’m fine being looked down on like a mere animal! Can’t you find a way to make me feel more motivated!? Y’know, like how you would treat a puppy!”

Heo and Harakawa clearly wanted to ask him if he would really be fine with that, but then Mikage pressed up against him from behind.

“If I do this, can you tell how big they are?”

“You’re the best, Mikage-san! I’m absolutely brimming with meaningless motivation!! …Hey, you two! Stop looking at me like I’m a pathetic animal!”

“I don’t really care, so can we move this along, Hiba Ryuuji?”

“Yes.” Hiba maintained his good mood. “At the very least, I’m looking at our power in a different way now.”

“Looking at it in a different way?”

“That’s what I’m about to show you. …At the very least, it should be different than it was when we fought the Leviathan earlier. And…”

As he took a breath, Mikage opened her mouth and looked to Heo.

“Even if all of our power can’t reach it, the power Ryuuji-kun and I have might be able to. …Is this what you call hope? Or is it hopeless?”

“They do say nothing is as hopeless as hope with an uncertain future.”

Harakawa’s comment made Mikage smile.

“Then nothing is as hopeful as hopelessness with a definite future. That means we’ll be fine,” she said. “I think you two and the others have all overlooked something and still have something you can do. We’re about to show you an example.”

Hearing that, Heo took a hurried step forward.

“You’re about to? Um, then shouldn’t you call the others, too?”

“They might get caught in the middle of it if we did. And…”

Mikage closed her eyes.

“You’ll understand once you see it.”

A moment later, Mikage and Hiba spread their arms and cried out in unison.

“Susamikado!!”

Kazami apologized.

She was sitting on the floor and wearing a track suit.

She was in the living room and it was already five in the morning.

…''Why do we have to have a family meeting now of all times?

The idiot next to her had caused this, but she was also at fault for going along with it.

Thus, she could only bow down to her father who sat in front of her.

She apologized whenever he said anything to her and she used up all of the apologies in her vocabulary.

Sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m so very sorry.

I am ever so sorry.

My bad.

Please forgive me.

Forgive me, okay?

C’mon, I’m telling you to forgive me.

Forgive me.

Forgive me already.

Just forgive me.

I’m. Telling. You. To. Forgive. Me.

“I-I’m starting to feel like I’m the one being scolded here!”

“Oh, sorry. I got a little carried away.”

Kazami bowed again and finally reached over to slam Izumo’s forehead into the floor.

“We’re sorry!”

Meanwhile, her mother approached.

Kazami slowly looked up and saw her mother handing her father a plate with steam rising from it.

She also saw what was sitting on that white plate.

“Ah! That’s the fried rice I was planning to make!”

“This used up all the rice.”

“You monster!!”

“Have you learned your lesson?”

Kazami felt the hunger in her stomach.

“Well…”

At some point, her mother had grabbed a fan that she used to fan at the fried rice.

…''Nwaah! That pepper and cooked fish paste smells so good!

“This is delicious!” said her father. “Your fried rice is so good, mama!!”

“Stoooop! There’s a difference between punishment and bullying!”

She could not help but complain and her mother looked over at her.

The woman lowered her shoulders.

“You know what?”

“What?”

Next to her, Izumo spoke up while wearing a track suit he had borrowed from her father.

“W-wait a second!”

He bowed his own head this time.

“This was my fault for getting carried away! It wasn’t Chisato’s fault at all!”

Kazami was a little surprised.

“K-Kaku. I’m actually kind of moved.”

“Don’t act like it’s never happened before. …But it doesn’t really matter. It really was my fault.”

Kazami’s father nodded while eating the fried rice.

“But Chisato went along with it, so she is somewhat at fault, Izumo-kun.”

Izumo’s head shot up when he heard that.

His expression was serious, but it immediately crumbled.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

''You moron,'' thought Kazami as she raised a fist, but she stopped when her mother cleared her throat.

Izumo had shrunk away from her fist, but he looked back to the two adults.

“Still, I don’t think it could be helped.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” he began. “If I wasn’t with her, Chisato would’ve started crying.”

“Why would she do that?”

“There’s been some…hard stuff at work.” Izumo chose his words carefully. “Some coworkers might be dead.”

He looked back down toward Kazami’s parents.

He gave them a troubled smile as if seeing how they would respond.

“She’d cry if she was on her own, right? That’s why I had to be with her.”

When she heard that, Kazami swung down her raised fist.

She lightly tapped his shoulder with it.

“I-idiot.”

She did so a few more times.

“D-don’t assume you know what I’ll do. I hate that.”

But he did not seem to mind. He kept his eyes on her parents.

When she stopped moving her arm and lifted her head to look at her parents, she found them looking back at her.

…''Wow.

She was not sure what to do about their narrowed eyes and she felt her cheeks growing redder and redder.

“Wh-what’s with all of you?”

“Well,” began her father while scooping more fried rice into his mouth. “I just realized that you’ll always need to rely on someone.”

She bent back as if someone had shot her.

…''I can’t stand this.

''Is no one going to stick up for my honor? Please come quickly, hero.

But after no one showed up even after asking thrice, she straightened back up.

“I-I’m not relying on anyone. Kaku, y-you need to stop making up excuses for yourself!”

Izumo looked at her with a perfectly serious expression.

“You’re super cute right now, Chisato.”

Without speaking a word, she knocked him to the ground.

''Oh, I think this actually made for a decent change of pace,'' she thought as she did so.

Sayama and Shinjou sat side by side on the bed.

They had their backs to the wall and they spoke about the current situation and Shinjou’s novel.

In the darkness, their words brought each other relief and brought smiles to their faces. Heat still remained in their bodies.

Shinjou had put on a shirt.

After they finished talking about the novel’s protagonist, Sayama said something more.

“It was good. I want you to write much, much more, Shinjou-kun. Are you going to be an author?”

“I don’t think it would be that easy to become one.”

“But if you do not go easy on yourself about becoming one, I think you can become one.”

“Is that how it works?” she asked before gulping and laughing.

Sayama tilted his head at the laugh and she bent her eyes in a smile.

“I was thinking I could continue making novels about you and the things that happen around us. That would end being a lifework, wouldn’t it?”

Her small smile continued to grow.

“So I’m glad I’m alive and I want to defeat the Leviathan. Otherwise, I can’t write about what you do afterwards.”

She heard Sayama say “I see” and saw him lean back against the wall.

“If you will write about me, that could help me out, too.”

“Help you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded.

“—————”

After a while, he brushed a hand through his hair and said more.

“Just between the two of us, I do not actually have anything like your novel.”

Dumbfounded, Shinjou could only hear his quiet words ringing in her ears.

“Izumo has IAI, Kazami has her singing, the Hiba boy has the Hiba School, Mikage-kun has the many joys she will find in the human world, Harakawa has his precious everyday life, and Heo-kun apparently wants to be a teacher.”

This early morning space shared only by the two of them may have been making him more talkative.

He spoke of what his teammates had.

It may have sounded cheap to call them “dreams”, but they were what allowed those people to get serious.

Shinjou watched Sayama speak of their teammates’ futures, but then he closed his eyes.

“Do you understand? I can get serious when I need to, but the Leviathan Road was given to me by my grandfather and all I am doing is settling the past my grandfather and father left behind. Once that is over, I will still be able to get serious, but I will have nothing left but the work directly before me. I can only think of one other thing I could have.”

“What’s that?”

“Yes, perhaps I can get serious about loving you.”

“Calm down.”

Even as she said that, she wondered what would happen if he did get serious about that. She could not imagine what a Leviathan Road level of loving would be.

But when he opened his eyes, he was expressionless. It was the usual expressionless look, but…

…''He’s worried?

Noticing that, she took his hand and opened her mouth.

“Don’t worry. We can work together to find what comes after the Leviathan Road.”

That may have sounded a little too vague because he did not turn toward her.

Regardless, she created even more words.

“If the world is able to continue…then let’s continue seriously negotiating and fighting while we search.”

He still did not look her way.

“Do you really think anything on the level of the Leviathan Road will happen? I cannot imagine it would.”

“You’re wrong.”

Her immediate answer finally got him to turn toward her.

The surprise in his eyes asked if she was serious, but she did not falter.

She was confident that he was not someone that would be stopped here.

No matter how he viewed himself, she had absolute confidence in that fact.

…''I even have proof.

She felt she should tell him. He had revealed his own thoughts, so she wanted to answer in kind.

So she brought a hand to her chest and commanded her heart to speak honestly.

“Sayama-kun, are you less than your grandfather or father?”

“Something…something so nonsensical could never be true.”

He made that very clear, so she used his words and tone against him.

“Your grandfather had the ten-against-one Concept War and your father stood up against the world that contained the other ten worlds. And since you’re higher than either of them, there has to be something for you, doesn’t there? This world must contain a war of your own that you cannot win without getting serious.”

“Isn’t that the Leviathan Road?”

She smiled at that.

“Who was it that said that was only settling the past? That’s only something your grandfather and father left behind. Didn’t you say a while back that it was forced onto you? This isn’t what you were originally meant to do.”

Which meant…

“You’ll find something if you’re serious about it. In other words, as long as you hope for a stage on which to negotiate, fight, and do perverted things, you’re sure to find something on the same level as the Leviathan Road.”

“Did you slip an insult into the middle of that wonderful statement?”

…''Did I? But I don’t remember saying anything inaccurate.

After he thought for a bit, he looked away from her and spoke.

“Will you…help me find that stage?”

She had long since known the answer to that question.

She nodded, grabbed his hand, and turned him toward her.

“Yes. I’m a little worried about the perverted part, though. …B-but it isn’t just me. If you’re serious about it, I think everyone will gather around you and help you.”

After all…

“All of those things you said they have? If you hadn’t been serious, they would have lost them or never gotten them in the first place. I never could have made my novel without you and I was only able to seriously pursue my past because you were with me. So helping you get serious is the same thing as improving the things we have.”

“You make me sound like a leader.”

“You’re the ruler of the universe, aren’t you? And a god too.”

“Oh? Are you finally willing to admit it?”

Sayama’s usual tone of voice was back.

…''Ah.

Shinjou looked over and found him looking at her. His expression was much calmer and more peaceful than before.

She returned his gaze and realized the same expression appeared on her own face.

“Are you feeling better? You don’t need to worry, Sayama-kun. You may not have noticed it yourself, but when you get serious, people gather around you and accomplish something. Something very, very big. If not…I never would have written about you.”

She nodded as she spoke.

She plainly explained the source of the confidence allowing her to push him forward like this.

“I was the first one touched by your serious side and I gained the most from it, so I should know.”

“Then,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Anything. It’ll be fine whatever you do. But for the moment…let’s make sure the world can continue on.”

She took a breath.

“After that, you can look at the world and decide how you want it to be. And if you’re serious about it, then we’ll help you. Once you get serious, you never give up and you do everything you can to accomplish whatever it is, so it’ll be worth helping.”

“Then I will undoubtedly end up the ruler of the entire world.”

He sounded somewhat amused but also somehow serious.

Finally, a bit of a smile escaped to his lips and he nodded.

“Thank you, Shinjou-kun. …You are right. I thought what I had inherited was everything, so I may have forgotten to search for what comes after that. I thought I had nothing, so I did not even notice I had forgotten ''that I only have to try to find something for myself''.”

He suddenly added one more thing as if to sum it all up.

“So let us end it all.”

“Eh?”

“I will end what I have inherited and find my own battle within the fights and negotiations beyond that. …I will find something I can only find if I am serious. I will find my own Leviathan Road that requires the help of many people. And I will find it as many times as it takes. Yes…if my father and grandfather destroyed eleven worlds, then I will find even more battles than that. And…”

Shinjou heard him sigh. It was a sigh of relief.

“At the very end, I suppose the two of us shall become gods.”

“Wait.”

“Wh-why are you stopping me? Isn’t that the most natural plan for our future?”

The idiot next to her blatantly feigned confusion and looked up at her in surprise.

“Or are you saying you have already walked down that path as you are already a butt god!?”

“No, that isn’t it. Um…”

She thought for a moment but then changed her mind.

…''Since he’s back to his usual self, is it over now?

She doubted he was going to speak his heart anymore for the moment. Someday, at the end of some major incident, he might tell her more about what they had discussed.

But she was also happy he had said “the two of us”.

“I really am glad I’m alive…and that I’m with you.”

“So am I. It is so early in the morning and I have already gotten so many wonderful birthday presents. First I was reunited with you, then we confirmed each other’s presence, and…”

He continued.

“You helped me realize what I should do from now on.”

The emotion she felt in his tone filled her yet again with surprise.

She was surprised that he had been so worried about what would come after the Leviathan Road.

…''He seems so almighty, but he’s actually pretty withdrawn in some ways.

He had the ability to wish for so very much, but he would hesitate because he did not know whether he should wish for it. That was especially true when it would involve other people.

''No one else knows about this side of him,'' she thought. ''I hope I can learn even more about this side of him.

He looked at her and tilted his head a little.

“By the way, how did you get here? The door was locked when I got here, so what exactly happened? Add in what happened to the others, and there are so many questions left.”

He could not find an answer to any of those questions, but Shinjou smiled with the ends of her eyebrows lowered.

“I can’t say anything about the others.”

After seeming to think about what she meant, he asked another question.

“Then do you know how you got here?”

She had a single answer.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “I do.”

Sayama saw Shinjou nod while sitting on his suit.

“I figured it out earlier. Can you look by the pillow?”

He did as he was told.

The suit and books were scattered around by the pillow, but he moved them out of the way.

He turned his back on her and prepared to remove the suit.

“Oh, you left a bite mark on my suit.”

“W-wah! I-I’ll pay for it, so forgive me!”

“It cost about seven hundred thousand, you know?”

She fell silent for a while before answering.

“Can I take out a thirty year loan for it?”

“Are you planning to buy a house?”

He smiled bitterly and dug down toward the bed. It was too dark to see what was there, but he could feel something small. They only felt like scraps.

“Straw?”

Only after asking did he realize what it meant. There was someone in Japanese UCAT who carried around a straw item.

“Sf-kun? It is true she could unlock and relock the door without the key.”

“Yes.” Shinjou gave a weak nod and presented more evidence. “You said before that something fired from below UCAT, right? Itaru-san knew what was down there, so I think it must have been him. But if so…that means Sf-san left him to take me here. And…”

And…

“What about the others? She might have only taken me away.”

They could not even contact Ooshiro at the moment.

The worry in Shinjou’s voice came from her understanding of the current situation.

So Sayama looked back to tell her it would be okay.

“Shinjou-kun?”

He found her standing on her knees in the center of the bed.

Without bothering to hide the unease on her face, she exposed her shirt-wearing form to the dark blue light coming from the window.

“Can you keep me from being afraid?”

She had tied back her hair at some point.

She had used his red necktie instead of her usual ribbon.

But even with her hair tied back, she lightly grabbed the bottom of her shirt.

“Um…? I changed earlier.”

Lifting the shirt a little did not reveal Sadame’s body.

She lowered her head and blushed, but her eyes looked directly to Sayama.

“Will you…check on me to the very end? And will you keep me from being afraid?”

He knew exactly how to answer her. First, he nodded.

“Do not worry.”

He moved toward her, took her hand, pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her, and held her tight.

“Let us both do so to keep away the fear, Shinjou-kun.”

Sayama loosely crossed his legs and placed Shinjou on his lap.

He stroked her shirt which fell from her shoulders and gathered around her waist.

When she looked back at him, he placed his lips on hers and touched her body.

He moved from her chest to her armpits and he lowered his fingers down her sides like her ribs were a musical instrument.

“Ah…”

He continued down from her sides.

He stuck his right hand below her shirt and wrapped his left arm around her body.

He spread his own legs a little to spread Shinjou’s legs on top of them.

“Wait, S-Sayama-kun. My stomach and below are defenseless.”

“If they were defended, I could do nothing. What would you have me do then?”

“You’re a poet in the most meaningless way.”

Sayama thought about that.

“Should I create a better mood?”

“What kind of mood?”

“The kind you like.”

She thought about that for a moment.

“Like what?”

“Video games.”

She thought even more on that and turned a smile his way.

“If you say you’re going to use the joystick and two buttons to enter rapid-fire mode, I really will hit you.”

“Ha ha ha. What are you talking about? We have to start by inserting a coin and pressing the start button.”

“What is that supposed to represent!?”

She protested, so he was not sure what to do.

Creating the proper mood was quite difficult.

But it was also fun, so he thought as hard as he could and finally found a good idea.

“Now, to begin with…”

“No.”

“You certainly are hasty.”

“Yeah, I know things are most dangerous when you pretend to actually think about it. It’s best to hit the cancel button immediately.”

“What on earth are you talking about? I was only going to advise that we release your extra ships to lower the difficulty.”

“What if you miscount the number of extra ships and get game over! I’ll turn off the game!”

But Sayama shook his head because he already had a solution.

“If that happens, I will insert another coin for a continue.”

“I prefer to win on a single coin, even at home.”

“In other words, you prefer to play this game outside in the arcade?”

Shinjou slowly turned toward him with a smile.

“If you say it’s a reverse-import from the home version that uses a 360 degree rotating machine, I’ll hit you.”

“Ha ha ha. I am perfectly fine playing the crane game.”

He touched her and she trembled a bit.

“Ah… S-stop. If you touch me like that, I’ll…”

“Hmm. It seems my machine has a weak arm. I need to grab on better!”

“What exactly are you treating as the prize!?”

But as she trembled, he lay back on the bed.

That caused her to lean back on top of him.

He kept his arms around her on either side and he further spread the legs bent under her.

“S-stop. The bottom of my shirt is pulling up. You can see everything below my navel…”

“Not to worry, Shinjou-kun. Just a little further.”

“Just a little further and what?”

“We will earn a full power up for your normal shot. Would you like a beam?”

“Stop that!!”

…''Strange. I thought she liked video games.

''I wonder why,'' he thought before realizing the answer.

''Is it because this is a shooting game?

“In other words, your weak punch is about to become an unbeatable super dragon fist.”

“Y-you don’t have to talk anymore.”

And so he fell silent.

He touched her in silence.

He rubbed her in silence and he moved in silence.

“Ah, w-wait. Sayama-kun. No, not without saying anything!”

“You tell me to stay quiet, but then you are mean to me when I stay quiet?”

“S-sorry, so, um…”

“Or should I do what you did before? Accept it all with my mouth?”

“N-no. You’re not allowed to do that. Th-that’s for me to do.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Yes. That’s right. That’s how it works.”

“Understood.” Sayama nodded in understanding and spoke in his most charming voice. “At any rate, I think it is about time for you to launch your bomber.”

“Have you noticed that the bomber gauge just rapidly fell?”

“You really do have harsh ups and downs, don’t you?”

But despite what she said, her body seemed to be heating up. As he continued, a tremor ran through her body.

“Ah, u-um, Sayama-kun!? I-I…I’m not Sadame right now?”

“But you are still Shinjou-kun.”

He raised his right knee a little to further lift her hips.

“As long as it is you, nothing else matters.”

After he touched and rubbed her more strongly, she kissed him and her body shook.

“…”

The surging sensation left Shinjou.

…''Ah.

She breathed out and her body sank into a deep sense of relief, but then Sayama touched her again.

“Ah, S-Sayama-kun. …I-I don’t get any invincibility after a death, so you’re going to use up all my extra lives!”

“Shinjou-kun, calm down.”

“R-really? We’re not doing that joke anymore?”

“No.” He nodded. “In my mind, we were playing best to three.”

“That’s the problem!?”

Meanwhile, she was lifted up. No, Sayama collapsed to the left below her and bent even further forward.

His momentum bent her forward with him.

He slipped his face and shoulder below her left cheek.

She was lying on his left arm and his left hand started touching her.

A moan escaped her lips and she bent further forward.

That was when his right hand touched her from behind.

She gave a start.

“U-um? Are you sure? Are you really sure? You aren’t going to regret this? Are you okay? Is your brain working properly?”

“Calm down, Shinjou-kun. I want to check on you, so of course I will be doing this.”

She hung her head at that and felt the heat in her face growing.

“It hasn’t even been a year since I met you, so…um…”

She tried to avoid the issue.

“We’re still in the warranty period, so you can keep going even if you find a manufacturing defect.”

“Not to worry, Shinjou-kun.”

“Really?” She asked

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Machines these days are guaranteed not to break for the first two years.”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m going to break in two years!”

“Ha ha ha. Then I will not hold back.”

She cried out but immediately suppressed her voice.

He checked her with both hands. He rubbed her and massaged her. She tried to bear with it and endure it, but he refused to stop.

She did not know what it meant when he stuck out his right middle finger, but she greedily brought her lips in close, wrapped her tongue around the finger, and licked it. She brought it into her mouth as if to swallow it just like she had done to him before.

After he rubbed his finger through her mouth and even along the back of her teeth, he pulled it out and slid it toward her back.

“Eh? I-in my butt?”

Before she could finish asking, his finger slipped inside.

It was so sudden that she gasped and tried to bear with it, but to his licked finger, it was only light resistance and there was no stopping it.

His finger made it past the gentle resistance and slipped on in as he varied the speed.

“Ah!”

By the time the sensation washed over her for the second time, she had lifted her butt up high on the guidance of his finger.

Her face-down body was covered in sweat, she was gasping for breath, and her chest was pressed against the suit below her.

She removed the shirt wrapped around the back of her waist and threw it away.

“Ahn…”

After brushing her hair out of the way, she pulled a pillow close and embraced it below her chin.

She was on her knees with her waist lifted high, so she tried to look back.

“Ah, w-wait, Sayama-kun! Don’t kiss my butt!”

“I am only doing the same thing I did to Sadame-kun.”

He treated it the same way.

Brief cries kept escaping her and she brought her knees together to fight it, but it was no use.

Her skin was damp with sweat and a finger or tongue could warmly slip past it even if she pressed that skin together.

“N-no, Sayama-kun. It’s going inside!”

Aiming for the instant she relaxed her strength, he spread her legs again.

She could feel the wet finger and tongue deep inside her, but she decided to give herself over to it.

That was when she noticed his face between her legs.

“Ah.”

He turned to the side and gently bit her.

What he had done and the slight pain it gave her caused her to lose control.

As a tremor ran through her, everything she had been holding back spilled out and was caught in a third handkerchief.

A “hyah” escaped her and her body went limp.

“D-don’t do that…”

“Hm. That seemed a little too powerful. I need to remember that as a surefire strategy.”

She kicked him.

She seemed to have hit him in the solar plexus so she turned toward his slight painful groan.

“You need to watch out for the boss character’s motionless attacks, okay? Honestly.”

“I-I am glad to see you are the same as always.”

After he caught his breath, he continued.

[[Image:OnC_v14_0637.jpg|thumb]]

“Will you…show me?”

After a pause, she responded.

“Yes.”

She lifted her butt back up, exposed everything to him, and let a warm breath escape her lungs.

“What do you think?”

He got back up, looked at her, and answered.

“You are eroundic, Shinjou-kun.”

“You’re saying that again?”

She smiled a little and spread her knees some more to see him between them.

“W-will everything work out? Will we be able to make a baby?”

“If so, I will have only one thing to say: congratulations.”

Hearing that, bitterness filled her smile and she held the pillow close while still looking at Sayama.

“Then…you can do it.”

“I can check on you?”

“Yes. …Will you?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I never even dreamed that someone would check on me to the very end.”

“This is not a dream. It is all real. After all, it was in your novel, too.”

That made her sweat even more and the heat reached her ears.

“Th-th-th-th-th-th-that was, u-um, uh, just me writing what I thought would make the best story.”

“No, Shinjou-kun. That is not what you should say here.”

She then remembered what the novel’s heroine had said at the end of this sort of scene.

“Right.”

She altered the line she had written for her purposes.

“Here, this is my…this is Setsu’s birthday present for you.”

She bent her waist and lifted her defenselessness for him to see.

“And in exchange, will you let me check on you to the very, very end as your present to me?”

“Yes, I will give you myself as a present while I take you as one. All of you.”

As if to show his agreement, he made her words a reality.

His fingers dug into her skin as he held her into place. After that sensation confirmed his presence, the two of them checked on each other.

They did so slowly but thoroughly.

Shinjou was dreaming.

Her sleeping body felt the warmth and strength of his hands, so she knew this was a dozing dream.

The dream was made of the color white.

White light filled the place and a glowing pillar rose into the sky.

She looked up toward the heavens and saw a giant object on its side like a white cloud.

The pillar of light before her was in the center, but there were four more pillars in the four corners of the heavens.

…''Huh?

When she looked down, she realized two things.

Her vision was situated lower than it normally was and someone was sitting in front of her.

It was her mother wearing white.

She had some gray in her hair and she had grown a little thin.

She sat on a clump of sand that looked like stone and she was out of breath, but she was smiling toward Shinjou.

Shinjou realized her mother could no longer walk.

And she realized something else too.

…''This is the past.

It was when Top-Gear had been destroyed and when she had left her mother.

She sensed someone on either side of her. They were likely Sayama’s parents.

''But,'' she thought.

…''Baku isn’t here today.

She was only sleeping next to Sayama, yet she was having a dream of the past.

…''Oh, this is one of my forgotten memories, isn’t it?

So she watched these events of the past, of her and her mother.

“Mom.”

Her past self, not even half her current age, spoke.

“Let’s go together!”

Her younger self pleaded, but her mother shook her head while still smiling.

''She wants to go,'' understood Shinjou. ''But she can’t.

But her younger self did not understand. She ran the short distance to her mother and pulled on her hand.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!!”

Still, her mother did not move and could not move.

“…”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother hang her head and shed some tears.

Her younger vision was soon filled by her mother’s chest.

Her mother had hugged her.

Her younger self hugged back.

''Yes,'' she thought. ''I must have known what I wanted couldn’t happen.

Even so, the younger Shinjou raised her crying voice. She breathed in and spoke weakly.

“Let’s go! I won’t be picky anymore! I’ll go to sleep at my bedtime! I won’t say it’s your fault when dad doesn’t come home at night and I won’t cry about my body. I’ll be good! I’ll always be good from now on, so…”

She raised her voice.

“Let’s go!”

Her mother said nothing and only squeezed her tight.

As if to accept her child’s tears, she breathed heavily which shook her body and finally…

“Satsu-chan?”

“…?”

Her mother breathed in but could not catch her breath properly. Still, the younger Shinjou heard her speak.

“Do you care for your mother?”

“Yes! I do,” she said. “Y’know what? You know the clothes you made for me before? I said they weren’t like the ones the boys wore at kindergarten and I tore them apart and I said I didn’t like them, but I was actually so…so happy I got them… When you made me new clothes, I couldn’t say I liked the old ones better and I really wanted to cry…and I said I didn’t like them, but…”

“Yes.” Her mother nodded. “I understand. You really liked that white dress, didn’t you? …You were just embarrassed and thought you had to do that in front of the others, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The younger Shinjou nodded. “Also, when we got in a fight when I knocked over that cup…I refused to eat the food you made.”

She breathed in.

“Make it again… I’ll eat it! I’ll really eat it this time! I’ll be good!”

Her mother did not respond. She only patted on her back to comfort her.

''Yes,'' thought Shinjou ''Hold onto her.

…''That will tell her how much you care and how much you love her.

“Satsu-chan.”

She heard her mother’s voice.

“Don’t worry. No matter how much you said you didn’t like us and got into fights with us, your dad and I both knew that you actually cared about us and loved us. We know you’re a good kid.”

“Really?”

“Really,” answered her mother. The woman breathed in and continued in a shaky voice. “Really. After all, you always called us mom and dad. …And those people you called mom and dad? We understand. Even if you say you don’t like what we give you, get into fights with us, or don’t eat what we fix for you, we know that deep down you remember and care about us and what we do for you.”

She took a breath.

“And we’re the same, you know? No matter what comes between us, we care about you and love you the most. You might get into fights with us, refuse to eat our food, and rip up or give back what we give you, but we really do understand that you care for us.”

Her mother nodded and Shinjou could feel the movement.

“It’s okay if you rip up your clothes. You were happy when you got them, weren’t you? And you usually eat all of the food we make, don’t you? I know that, so it’s okay. And before, you painted your nails to copy me and they made fun of you at kindergarten, didn’t they?”

“When I got home…I got mad at you…”

“That’s fine.”

“It is? Why? I said I hated you!”

“You know what? I’m happy just knowing you tried to copy me and that you’re with me. Just because they made fun of your painted nails doesn’t mean you don’t want to be like me anymore, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to be with me anymore, and it doesn’t mean you really do hate me, right?” She heard a bitter laugh.

“If your friends hadn’t made fun of you, you would have kept wearing that dress and painting your nails, right? And if you hadn’t spilled that water, you would have eaten that food, right? Your initial happiness would have stayed, right?”

“…Yes.”

“See? Then if nothing had happened, you would have still cared for us the same, right? It was only because of what happened that you got angry and said you hated me, but I know perfectly well that you wouldn’t grow to hate us over something like that. After all, you were so happy. Nothing anyone says can change what a good kid you are.”

“————”

“There might be misunderstandings, but that isn’t enough to fool me. I’ve been watching you from the very beginning, so don’t worry. …I only stopped making that kind of clothing or painting your nails because I wanted you to be happy without being made fun of. That’s better, right?”

And…

“I know that you really were happy. But because you were made fun of and had those misunderstandings, I did some studying and chose a method that wouldn’t let that happen. So I made those new clothes for you just like I made that dress. …I didn’t think the old one was better.”

“But…I liked the first one better…”

“I see.” Her mother laughed and lightly patted her back. “Then from now on you can choose to wear that kind. It was a white dress with a red necktie, wasn’t it? If you can wear that and hold your head high even if someone makes fun of you, then I’ll be glad I made that dress. …I’ll know you really care about the clothing I made for you.”

“…Really?”

“Yes. I know. We like a lot of the same things.”

Her mother embraced her long hair and brushed her hands through it.

“Yes, you are a lot like your mother. Like your hair. And…”

And…

“That song.”

“Yes.”

Her mother lightly patted her back.

She hugged her as if to tell her this was the last time.

Her younger self breathed in and her embracing arms practically clung to her mother.

Their breathing aligned and they nodded.

“Satsu-chan?”

“What?”

They both moved a bit apart and looked each other in the eye from close range.

“You don’t have to copy me even when I cry.”

“You copied me!”

“I guess you win this round.”

Her mother smiled bitterly. She briefly glanced at the two behind Shinjou but immediately turned back.

“No matter what happens from now on, you can trust in one thing. And if you remember anything bad you did to us or you want to tell us something when we’re not there, you can trust in this one thing. You can trust that we will always care for you no matter what.”

She took a breath before continuing.

“And you can also trust that no matter what you do, we’ll always be on your side. We will never betray you.”

“…Really?”

“Yes.”

When her mother narrowed her eyes in a smile, some tears spilled out.

“If you trust in that, you will always be able to reach us even if we’re not with you.”

So…

“Go, Satsu-chan.”

“But!”

“Don’t worry,” said her mother. “Eventually, you’ll find someone other than us you care for. You’ll find someone who you can trust will always care for you and love you no matter what you say and even if you act like you hate them.”

“N-no, I won’t! I have this body…and everyone always makes fun of me!”

“You will.” Her mother gave her another light hug. “I did and your dad did, and that’s why you were born.”

“…Really?”

“Really. So trust that our feelings for each other will never change no matter what, that we’re always listening to your voice, that we’re always rooting for you even if you can’t see us, and…”

She breathed in, moved away, and smiled.

“That you will be like us one day.”

“Will I…? Really!?”

“You will. I’m sure there’s someone waiting for you that will care for you just like we do.”

“Will that person-…?”

“They will not make fun of you. Even if you try to pull away, they will tell you that you are wrong, they will support you, they will always be by your side, and they will accept you in your entirety. And you will want to support them, too.”

She nodded.

“You can go now, can’t you? No matter where you go, we’re watching over you. Even if you can’t meet us, we know what you’re thinking. But if you do want an answer…”

She placed a hand on her chest.

“Remember that song. That special song we sing to celebrate.”

“Silent Night?”

“Yes. You remember that song I taught you, don’t you? …When you remember that, you will be singing with me in your heart. And when you do that, you will be with me.”

And…

“That song will lead you to your own precious person.”

Her mother said she was going to sing.

“Don’t forget. This song is the proof of our connection. The song I taught you is inside you, so even if I’m not with you, you still have proof that we’re connected.”

“Really?”

“It’s the song I taught you, isn’t it? Even if I’m not there, it won’t disappear, will it?”

“You’ll be inside me…telling me you’re there?”

“Yes.” Her mother moved completely away and placed her hands on Shinjou’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. When you sing it, we’ll be with you. Even if we’re not there, we won’t disappear and we’ll sing with you.”

“Right….”

“So if anything happens, make sure to sing. When you’re happy, sad, angry, disheartened, or want to celebrate, just sing that song and we’ll be with you. We’ll rejoice with you, cry with you…or just be by your side.”

So…

“Tell us all sorts of things, okay? Tell us what you’re doing and what you’re thinking. And…if you find someone you care for, sing to tell us. Tell us the holy child has found someone they love and care for. Make sure to tell us you’ve found someone who will be with you like we are. …When you do that, we’ll be happiest of all.”

“You’ll be happy?”

“Yes. You’ll have gone out and found someone on your own. You had us with you from the start, but this will be someone you chose yourself and let hear your song.”

“If I find someone like that, will you and dad celebrate?”

“Yes. We’ll sing with you. …And I’m sure that precious person will celebrate with us.”

When younger Shinjou nodded, her mother straightened her back and opened her mouth.

“Okay, Satsu-chan, it’s time to sing.”

“…Wait.”

Her younger self spoke to her mother.

“I’ll definitely, definitely see you again, won’t I?”

“Yes. If you trust in us and search for us, you should realize that we’ll always be together.”

Her younger self did not understand what that meant, but she still nodded and trusted it.

“Then sing, mom. I’ll listen…I’ll listen while I go. So…so don’t stop, okay? Make sure…make sure you keep singing!”

“Of course.”

Her mother nodded again and opened her mouth. Her younger self opened her mouth, too.

“————”

They sang.

As the destructive light grew stronger, her younger self followed her mother’s lead and began to sing.

They sang the first verse. By the time they sang the second verse, she could hear other voices behind her.

The two behind her were both awkwardly joining in the best they could.

Her mother briefly stopped singing and spoke to the younger Shinjou.

“Those people will take you with them. They will take you to the world of my song.”

“Really?”

She looked back and the two brightly backlit people nodded.

“Mom,” she said. “Thank you. I love you.”

“Thank you too, Satsu-chan. And I love you too.”

They both smiled, shed tears, and wiped the tears away.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep singing forever. Even if you can’t hear me, I’ll definitely be singing in your heart. If you’re ever feeling hopeless, just remember that and sing with me.”

After hearing that, her younger self moved back and began walking.

Her mother looked to her and resumed singing. She nodded and heard the song even as she moved away.

''Oh,'' thought Shinjou. ''My mom is inside this song.

As long as she could hear the song, her mother was there and watching over her.

If she sang the song, her mother would be with her.

As she ran, she could only hear the voice.

She looked back and saw her mother was indeed looking at her.

…''Thank you.

She could hear the song. She was running. When she looked back, her mother was looking at her. Her mother was waving at her while singing. Her mother was probably waving at her even when she did not look back.

She was glad she had looked back, but it would have been fine even if she had not.

“Do not worry,” said the man running alongside her. “You will definitely meet your mother and father again.”

''That’s right,'' she agreed. ''The fact that this world exists means my parents and I are always together. I can be with them by singing.

As she ran and looked back, her mother grew more distant and eventually could not be seen beyond the light.

She almost stopped running once her mother was out of sight, but something pushed her onward.

It was a song.

She could hear the song. She could always hear it as if it remained in her ears.

The song pushed her toward the world where she could meet her parents again and where someone even more important awaited her.

Would that person be with her? If she wore the kind of clothes she liked and painted her nails, would they say it looked good on her? Even if she got into fights with them, said she hated them, or rejected what they gave her, would they trust that she actually cared for and loved them?

If she copied her mother and cooked for them, would they eat it like her father did for her mother?

If she ever stumbled or cried, would they tell her she was wrong, tell her it would be okay, and support her?

And would she want to support them and be with them?

…''I want to see them.

Her parents would always be with her and there was no need to check on anything there, so she was perfectly fine. But even so, she wanted to meet that precious person.

She wanted to sing with the person who would listen to her song.

That song.

Even if she could not hear her mother’s voice, the song her mother had taught her would remain inside her.

''This is what told me this,'' she thought.

…''It told me everything will be fine whether I look back or not.

They both understood everything they wanted to say, so everything would be fine even if they were apart.

At the moment, she heard her mother’s actual voice.

''Yes,'' she thought again. ''My mom’s voice is definitely in this song.

In her memories, whenever she had remembered the one song that had stayed with her, she had heard a voice not her own.

She had always thought it was her own voice.

…''But it wasn’t.

The voice providing the lyrics ahead of time when she sang had been her mother’s.

''She traveled to Top-Gear, met my dad, and sent me away, but she’s always stayed with me in this song and she makes sure I hear her whenever something happens.

Shinjou remembered how she had constantly sung this song.

Whenever she had felt alone, lonely, or sad, she had sung it.

…''But that was what I promised my mom. I promised to tell her whenever something happened.

White light filled her dream.

She could not tell if the world was ending or if the dream was ending, but she still heard the singing voice she had inherited from her mother.

That song proved they were together.

No matter what happened, her parents would be on her side and they understood she cared for them no matter what she might say or do. Even if they were no longer there or she wanted to apologize for something, it would all be okay and she could rest easy because they understood without being told.

This song of absolute relief contained her parents’ wills. She had inherited it and it stayed with her.

What would happen if she sang that song and tried to reach someone with it?

…''Would it get through to them?

Would they know that she wanted to be with them?

And she had indeed sung that song when she met that precious person.

…''Did he understand?

She had sung for the boy who had saved her and borrowed her lap in that Okutama forest.

A month and a half before, he had come to meet her after being delayed by nine years and two minutes.

When he had saved her again, she had lent him her lap again and sang for him again.

Had that reached her parents as her mother had promised?

Had they heard that she had met someone she cared for just as they had hoped? And in a white dress no less?

…''Yes.

It was because she knew they cared that she could leave her parents without issue, but then she had continued on so she could be with the person she had come to care for on her own.

''I’m so spoiled,'' she thought. ''I already have parents who say they care for me and watch over me, but I still chose someone else I care for and he responded to my feelings.

''How spoiled can I be?

They had held hands and sent their thoughts to her parents in front of the shrine at the Tamiya house, but she now knew her thoughts had been reaching them long before that.

…''Thank goodness.

She then spoke to the mother who had seen her off with a song, the parents still watching over her, and the precious person who was by her side now.

“Thank you.”

She held a hand in her own.

Just before waking, she held the hand of the precious person she had chosen herself.

She held it tight and refused to let go.

The morning sun began to rise.

It rose in the east and sent shadows stretching across the streets.

But those shadows were thinner in one place.

There were long runways there.

Those runways were in Yokota Air Base of Fussa in western Tokyo.

Inside the concept space, the eastern three thousand meter runway was being used while the secondary runways to the west and north were not in use.

In the hangar beside the runways, the maintenance and modification of mechanical dragons and fighters continued at a quick pace.

Even in the cold air, the light of welding and the sounds of drills continued without rest.

A bus arrived.

The base was large, so the bus carried personnel around.

Most of those disembarking in front of the hangar were a new shift of workers who were working throughout the night.

Those men in blue work uniforms exchanged greetings while some continued with the leftover work, others exchanged information to pass the work off to the new shift, and others ran off to grab some materials.

A worker from the morning shift approached the storage building next to the hangar.

He had to get a forklift to carry the special-ordered parts of a mechanical dragon.

He started toward the parking hangar alongside the secondary runway, thinking his favorite forklift was there.

On the way, he met a member of the group who had been working through the night.

“Hey,” he said in greeting. “I hear things are getting tough. Can we still not reach the colonel and the others?”

“No,” replied the colleague as he adjusted his work hat. “Same with the major. The other higher ups are managing the coordination with the States for now, but with only a substitute commander, this place might as well be a parking lot.”

“Do you think they’re alive?”

“I’ll bet you five bucks.”

“On which side?”

The man thought before nodding.

“Do you know why no one’s searching for the colonel, the major, or that German inspector?”

“Why not?”

“They put in for paid leave before heading to Japanese UCAT.”

“Then this isn’t a very good bet.”

“No.”

They both smiled bitterly.

“I’m sure they’re alive.”

“So am I. if they’re not…what then? That Leviathan is apparently sitting there above Shinjuku. …They put me to sleep with a forced injection kiss when I wanted to join the attack last night, but that thing’s Babel, right? There’s nothing we can do without the colonel and the others.”

He frowned as he spoke and the other man nodded.

“It’ll be tough even for them. Apparently not even Concept Core weapons work on it.”

“Then it’s all over, isn’t it? By tomorrow, they’ll have created the positive concepts inside the Leviathan and the world will change, right?”

“That’s why everyone’s working so quickly.”

“Can we fight it?”

He sounded doubtful and the other man tilted his head a bit while holding the brim of his work hat.

“I don’t know. Or rather, I do know, but I don’t want to know.”

“…”

“But,” he said. “We’re still going to do it.”

“Can you?”

“That’s the wrong question. We’re ''going to'' do it.”

He patted his shoulder.

“You have good luck. You’ll get to see it before even getting to work. …You’ll understand just how frighteningly made this world is. Even if you try to run away, a faint bit of hope will follow you around and lure you into hell.”

“Hm? What are you talking about?”

“It’s simple,” said the other man. “It’s like the worst kind of woman. Even when you know it’s hopeless, you still end up thinking it might work out.”

With that said, the man walked off.

The worker watched him leave but then sighed.

He recalled the gravity of the situation as explained over the base’s radio and he circled to the side of the hangar.

His heart was heavy.

If the Concept Core weapons did not work, the mechanical dragons they were working on would not work either.

“…”

Before getting to work, he thought about distracting himself by making a spinning turn with the forklift on the apron of the secondary runway.

He often played around like that when unpleasant things happened.

The world would change on the 25th. In that case, this might be his last chance to do this trick.

But he suddenly realized something.

…''I’m pretty sure this isn’t that guy’s post.

''Then why did he come from here?'' he wondered as he arrived on the side of the hangar.

He saw something there.

“What the heck?”

The secondary runway should have been there.

The runway was two thousand meters long, but that long strip of asphalt was gone.

A deep, two hundred meter mark was left in its place.

“Something tore up the entire runway?”

It was a canyon four hundred meters wide and over two kilometers long.

Some kind of powerful strike had burned the grass, melted the crust, and left its mark there.

“Oh, come on.”

He trembled from something other than the chilly morning air and let out a white breath.

“Now I can’t have any fun with the forklift.”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 8

2015-06-21T03:05:37Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 8: Confirmation of Determination */

==Chapter 8: Confirmation of Determination==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0305.png|thumb]]
''The place for determination

''Is known as a decisive battlefield

Sayama had entered a white cave.

“Now, should I call this the interior of Noah or the interior of Babel?”

The vast cave continued for as far as he could see.

It was dimly lit, so his view ahead was limited, but the ceiling and walls seemed to all be over one hundred meters away.

He then looked back over his shoulder.

“The entrance, hm?”

The entrance he had come through was a hole located on the floor.

This space was oriented vertically when viewed from the ground.

However, Noah was an ark, so it was naturally tilted at ninety degrees when standing vertically from the ground.

Gravitational control was allowing him to stand on what would be the wall from the ground’s perspective.

…''But this was originally the floor.

Its size could be explained if it had been a transport passageway along the exterior wall.

He could see a few hatches and holes along what were walls when viewed from the white floor.

“Now, then.”

Sayama faced forward, toward Noah’s bow.

A single white light was visible there.

It was a white automaton with twelve wings and she had said her name was Noah.

She resembled Shinjou…no, Shinjou Yukio and she turned back toward him.

“Sayama-sama, this way. Only sixteen more minutes. Over.”

Hearing that, Sayama recalled the dream of the past in which he had seen Noah.

This was likely the automaton his parents had seen with Shinjou’s parents at the top and center of this ship.

The three of them had to have been in the control room for the concept creation facility.

In that case, his destination was up ahead.

He breathed in and then asked Noah something.

“Were you here when Top-Gear was destroyed?”

“Testament,” replied Noah, using the response that Shinjou Yukio had likely brought to that world. “Beyond the infinite past, on the December 25, 1995 of approximately sixteen billion years ago, the one said to be your father visited and my creator left with him. Over.”

“They left you behind?”

“I was given a job to complete. And…”

And…

“As I fell into a location I determined to be a void, I entered a permanent sleep mode. But based on the memories of my terminal consciousness, Low-Gear was created, people were born, and – while I did not understand how it was possible until thirty-seven hours ago – someone identical to your father entered me about ninety years ago. Over.”

Who was that father of his?

Sayama exhaled as if relaxing his lungs.

“Professor Kinugasa, you mean? …But you understand what that was now, don’t you? You understand why the same people from approximately sixteen billion years ago are here now and why my father and your creator came here over twenty years ago.”

“Testament. Twenty-three hours ago, a theory arrived concerning that question and I checked back over the memories of my terminal consciousness in units reaching 102 digits, but I have determined it is all the truth. Over.”

Noah faced forward.

“I will show you the way. I hope you will not be late. Over.”

“Yes.”

Sayama took the first step through the great white cave as he followed Noah.

But then…

“So you have come, Sayama.”

A voice reached him from the passageway’s sky.

It was Mikoku’s voice. The voice contained a hint of exhaustion and its intonation shook a bit, but Sayama nodded in response.

''So she is watching,'' he thought.

“Does the master of the house not even provide tea for her guests?”

“The master was long since destroyed. I am simply borrowing the place. And you have a guide, don’t you?”

He noticed a small bitter smile in her voice, so he formed a similar smile.

''Is this smile nothing but a bluff?'' he asked himself.

“I am on my way there.”

“I will not be serving tea,” she said. “But I will turn on the lights. …Noah.”

“Testament.”

After Noah’s one-word response, there was light.

Bluish-white lines of light appeared on the cave’s floor, walls, and ceiling.

The great space was illuminated.

The bluish light was calm and quiet, but there was obvious shadow remaining on the passageway.

“Follow the path of this light. And after you reach the end, take the right-…”

Mikoku briefly trailed off.

“Which way are you facing now? If you are facing up, then, um, you would need to turn toward your chopsticks-holding hand, and…”

“Just to be clear, I am left-handed. And in this situation, which way would ‘up’ be?”

“W-wait, stop confusing me. Um, let’s see. I am right handed, so…”

Noah tilted her head.

“Mikoku-sama, you can solve this problem by leaving it to me. Over.”

“No, I should really do this myself. Um…”

“This is a recent discovery, but you are actually an idiot, aren’t you?” cut in Sayama.

“Look in a mirror when you say that!”

They both fell silent after that and then they both smiled.

“If I looked in a mirror inside Babel, I would probably see you in it,” said Sayama.

“Noah is not that harsh.”

After a three second pause, Mikoku continued.

“Continue straight ahead, and turn right when the lights go out. You will find an elevator there.”

“And I take that up?”

“At the top, you will find hangar doors that lead to…”

He heard her voice.

“Georgius’s foundry.”

Sayama was dumbfounded.

Instead of speaking, he held the right Georgius to his chest.

His aching ears heard more.

“Pass through there, follow the single passageway to the end, and you will reach me.”

“Quite the direct path.”

“There used to be a lot more here.”

That was all Mikoku said concerning her inner state.

“Hurry. The positive Concept Cores have already been placed within the facility. The negative concepts are activating and – as you can see – Noah is waiting to activate. You only have about fifteen minutes.”

“Will you wait to create your philosopher’s stone until I am there?”

“No,” she replied. “Noah was overjoyed by my visit and she is already preparing everything. …After all, it seems I was the last thing my parents registered with her. She was set to recognize my voice and follow any of my orders after entering standby mode in response to the activation of the negative concepts.”

The winged maid nodded in response.

“I was unable to predict that I would be able to meet you again after a nearly infinite amount of time. Over.”

“I see,” said Sayama as he began to run down the great passageway lit by blue light.

He could hear his running footsteps echoing in the distance and he sped up as if to erase that echo.

“Wait for me.”

He pursued the white wings, exhaled white breaths, and literally “ran up” the tower.

“I will reach you very soon.”

Fluorescent lights illuminated the walls of a small lobby.

The lobby contained a red telephone, a deactivated television, and a sofa.

This lobby was on the second story of a hospital, near the nurse station.

Visiting hours were nearly over and very few people passed through the lobby, but there was one person there.

A woman in a gown sat in a chair in front of the red telephone.

The nametag on the gown’s chest said Harakawa Yui and she held the phone’s receiver.

She smiled as she spoke into it.

“Oh, dear. Roger-kun, I see you’ve earned enough promotions to be stuck in this troublesome position. It must be tough not being able to head out onto the battlefield yourself. It serves you right.”

“Your own son is on that battlefield,” noted the voice coming from the receiver.

“And he’s responsible enough to take care of everything on his own. Plus he has Heo-san with him, doesn’t he?”

“Testament,” replied Roger. After a pause, he continued. “Is that how I should respond, Mrs. Harakawa?”

“You can use ‘miss’ if you want, Roger-kun.” Yui narrowed her eyes. “I hear something big is about to happen to the world.”

“You still get right to the point, I see.”

“That man liked to keep things frank. So does his son and so does Heo-san. …Don’t you think it’s wonderful? Everyone’s so open about everything that there’s no need to observe what’s going on in their home.”

“I am having trouble figuring out how that is ‘wonderful’,” said Roger. “And I only called to keep you updated, but I’m glad to see you’re as unreasonably calm as ever.”

“How rude. Especially when you’re as modest as ever despite your promotion.”

“That’s only because all of you naturally end up looking down on people!!”

“Maybe so,” she said.

She smiled bitterly at the sigh she heard from the other end of the call.

“C’mon,” she said. “How about you settle down a little? I know some nice nurses I could introduce you to.”

“For example?”

“Would you prefer a girl who loves pink bowels or one who enjoys giving injections a little too much?”

“You really haven’t changed! And knowing you, you’re probably serious!”

“Of course I am. I’m trying to solve your problems, so I can’t just make something up.”

Roger fell silent, so Yui continued.

“Another one wants to start a blood drawing exchange diary?”

“Can we get back on topic?”

Roger sounded exhausted, so Yui quietly apologized.

He then cleared his throat.

“Well, if something happens with the battle, I will contact you again.”

“Yes, yes,” she replied. “But I might not be here next time you call.”

“Where will you be?”

“Well,” she said.

That was when the phone rang.

The red telephone she was already using produced a noise.

It must have reached the man over the phone because she heard him gasp.

“It seems you have a visitor. Who could be visiting a lady at this hour?”

“Don’t you know? It’s always a witch that visits a girl at night,” said Yui. “I’m about to leave for the castle.”

“Do you have your glass slippers?”

“My normal ones will do just fine.”

With that, she set down the receiver.

The phone was still ringing and she was afraid of disturbing anyone else in the hospital, so she picked up the receiver again and brought it to her ear.

“What is it?” she asked.

A quiet female voice with a slight tremor answered her.

“I am right behind you.”

“Then why call on the phone?”

“That’s a good point.”

After hearing that, Yui turned around.

At some point, a woman in a black suit had appeared there.

The woman had written “telephone” on a paper cup and held it next to her mouth.

“Diana, at least make enough noise as you walk so that I can hear-…”

Yui trailed off when she saw Diana’s eyebrows lying flat.

“Is Yukio’s child doing that badly?”

“…Testament.” Diana lowered her shoulders. “She was hit by an attack with the name ‘Mikoku’ under the effects of 2nd-Gear’s Concept Core.”

“You don’t have to explain. You don’t.”

Yui stood up and brushed a hand through her hair.

“I can’t believe this… Diana, answer me honestly. Do you want to save her?”

“Well…”

The witch shrank down but said nothing more.

Yui nodded as Diana simply stared at her.

“You’re so afraid of not being able to save her that you don’t want to save her?”

After a few seconds, Diana slowly closed her eyes.

“But at Osaka back then…”

“What about it?” Yui smiled bitterly. “I’m not going to say that those of us in the western unit wanted you to help us withdraw after you completed the eastern pillar of the barrier.”

“But…”

“You think you could have saved me from my illness, those who died afterwards, or those who are suffering like I am, don’t you?”

Diana nodded like a scolded child.

“I wanted to save all of you…”

“But you couldn’t move, could you?”

Diana looked up in surprise with tears in the corners of her eyes, but Yui went out of her way to show her a smile.

“If you couldn’t move, then there’s nothing you could have done.”

“B-but I…” The witch brought a hand to her forehead. “If I had been more determined back then, I might have been able to save Alberto, James, and Hiba.”

“Or you might have gotten yourself killed along with them.”

Yui spoke to Diana who was half in tears.

“That’s just how it is, Diana.” She took a breath. “Your broom was broken and you didn’t have anything to use in its place. The witch couldn’t fly, even if she had power. You think you might have been able to save them, but if you ask me, you would have been going off to your death.”

Yui stuck out her tongue.

“And I should really apologize. To be honest, I remember saying some awful things to you after that battle. And not even the negative concepts can erase that.”

She looked to Diana and Diana quickly lowered her head.

The witch had a hand over her eyes, tears spilled from below it, and her shoulders shook silently.

Yui took a step forward and gave a deep, bitter smile.

“That’s just how it is. I’m sorry it took me this long.”

As soon as she said that, Diana casually looked back up.

She turned her hand around to show a paper with “tears” written on it and smiled.

“Those were fake tears.”

“You haven’t changed at all!”

Diana laughed, straightened up, and nonchalantly looked up at the ceiling.

“You apologized just now, didn’t you?”

“…It’s possible.”

Diana smiled.

“That really hit me hard back then and I never really resolved any of it, but since you apologized first, I guess I will apologize too.”

She nodded.

“Sorry for not being powerful enough.”

“So do you think you could have saved them?”

“A German witch is as powerful as she is confident.”

Diana smiled and Yui saw something transparent in the corners of her eyes, so Yui patted her on the shoulder.

“So you did cry.”

“I-I did not. It was an act! All an act!”

“Germans sure are bad at lying.”

“And the Japanese love to misinterpret things.”

Yui laughed off Diana’s blushing complaint, but then she held out her right hand.

“How about now? You may not be powerful enough, but you still have time, don’t you? In that case…”

Yui asked something of Diana who had briefly stopped moving.

“Do you wish to save her? Even if it might be hopeless?”

She held her hand out to the regretful witch.

“You might not be able to save her, but if you won’t fear that fact, then take this hand, Diana. If you will stop fearing your former regret and wish to save someone once more…”

She took a breath.

“Then I too will work to help one of the children who will inherit the present.”

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> slowly but surely raised her speed on the battlefield.

As she moved her racing legs, she lifted her two machineguns.

The enemy rushed in ahead of her. That enemy was hundreds of dolls.

That was enough to call a horde.

But she did not care.

She swung the raised weapons like wings.

“Here I come!”

She squeezed the triggers with her fingers.

A series of gunshots immediately began to sound and the staccato noise, that resembled beating on paper, shot sparks into the night sky.

The vibration and sound sent out bullets at a pace of more than eight hundred a minute.

She controlled them and focused all of her functionality on her fingertips.

She pictured a great number of threads attached to each of her fingers.

“————!”

She controlled all of the flying bullets.

The ammunition belts ran out and the machineguns’ loading coils had nothing to load.

But she did not mind.

Her focus was on the bullets scattered throughout the air.

As if flapping her “wings”, she threw aside the machineguns and spread her fingers.

“Send these supersonic bullets to everywhere they might go.”

She gathered strength in the arms she had closed while “flapping”.

“There are no blind spots in the three hundred sixty degrees over which I serve!!”

The speeding bullets immediately struck all of her enemies.

They collided with the dolls’ necks, shoulders, arms, stomachs, waists, and ankles.

She heard the sound of penetration and snapping wires.

Those same sounds overlapped countless times and filled the air as a single ensemble.

Not one of the dolls was not pierced and thus absent from the song.

The dolls in the field had their bodies broken in places.

As they collapsed limply to the ground, new ones arrived from behind.

However, some space had opened up, so #8 ran.

She ran through the now unobstructed field to reach the large automaton.

That was her true target.

…''If I do not defeat this, I have determined they will take control of this place!

She could deal with the normal dolls somehow or another.

By taking their equipment, she could fight them up to her limit.

But the large doll was different because she could not destroy it with the dolls’ equipment.

And if she was to do so with her own equipment…

…''It has to be when it is still careless and not interfering!

That meant the initial attack.

She had to make this first attack count because the large doll was still carelessly assuming a single automaton could not do anything to it.

Her weapon was a hardened combat knife and she had a single target in mind.

…''The shoulder wire cylinder!!

Such a large doll would be quite heavy and the shift in balance from damage to one arm would require some adjustment. This would not completely take the large doll out of the fight, but incapacitating one of the arms it used to wield its weapons would mean a lot.

Normally, she would have gone for the knees or ankles, but it had defensive armor there.

The shoulders however had a clear gap for when it opened the armpits, so she would attack there.

The problem was the fifteen centimeter diameter of the wire that acted as the giant doll’s tendon.

…''How can I cut through that with this knife?

She knew a way. There was only one way for an automaton born in 3rd.

She could create high gravity near the tip of the knife blade and then give her attack extreme acceleration.

As long as she cut a notch, the wire’s own tension would do the rest.

“This will work.”

She calculated it out.

She had controlled hundreds of bullets a moment ago, so she only had to focus that power on a single point.

“I have determined this will work!!”

The large doll took a step toward her.

It was a step of interception. It had frantically taken the step after noticing her movement, but it was too late.

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> only had to use its outstretched leg as a foothold and jump up to its right shoulder.

She briefly created a band of repelling gravity behind herself.

“!!”

And she accelerated.

She was headed toward the top of the large doll’s foot. That metal stepping stone was two meters long.

She performed a flip and used her right hand to pull a knife from below her apron.

She held down her skirt and apron with her left hand, bent her knees a little, and landed on her enemy’s foot.

At the same time, she kicked off the foot.

She made the kick much like a step and kept herself curled up like a cat.

She jumped straight up to approximately eight meters in the air.

She then rotated around and prepared the knife.

Her right palm wrapped around the bottom of the hilt and turned the blade straight toward the large doll’s shoulder wire cylinder.

“————!!”

A moment later, #8 realized the she had lost the right half of her body.

“…Eh?”

It was not that she could not determine what had happened.

She simply could not react. Her senses of sight and touch determined what had damaged her and from which direction.

A giant wooden arrow had smashed her body.

It might as well have been an entire log and it had been fired by what seemed to stand up from the forest to the right.

…''A second large doll!?

This was a new enemy and she had not been able to anticipate its presence.

After abandoning its bow, the large doll slowly crossed the forest and approached #8.

A flood of new dolls appeared from the forest at its feet.

This second large doll appeared in the field like the lord of those dolls.

By the time she realized it looked so large because she was looking up at it, #8 crashed into the ground.

“…!”

She felt no pain. There was only static.

She had lost everything from her right collarbone to her right hip.

A lot of her internal structure had been taken with those parts.

There was fortunately no damage to her head, but the center of her body had entered independent control mode for self-preservation in order to prevent any interference from the missing parts.

Her parts locked down their bypasses and balanced themselves.

This brought a sensation much like having an invisible hand groping at her insides and stroking along her muscles.

“Khah…”

She twisted and stiffened her body.

“Ah…”

But then she realized the enemy was right in front of her.

There were two giant forms and countless ones her size.

With the two large dolls looking down at her, she bit her lower lip.

“…”
She grabbed the one remaining shoulder strap of her apron and pulled it down.

She was covering her broken and exposed parts.

Only after twisting her body and raising her knees to hide her body did she face her enemy again.

This prevented her from resisting any further, but…

…''I never let even Sayama-sama see that.

She stared straight at her enemy with her raised body.

What was she to do now?

Her experience told her.

She knew exactly what a member of Team Leviathan would do, so she changed her expression and spoke.

“This is an expression of confidence.”

She formed what she thought was a powerful smile.

“How well would you say I reproduced it?”

She only received a single response.

Both large dolls raised both their sashimi knives.

''No,'' reflexively thought #8 when she saw them prepare to swing the blades down at her.

…''With a knife, you are supposed to cut with a pulling motion!!

They should have moved it past her and pulled the blade back across her, and yet…

“How inept!!”

As soon as she shouted that, the inept two were sliced apart.

…''Eh?

The first thing #8 sensed came from her hearing devices.

She heard the sounds of splitting metal and snapping metal wires.

She actually heard hundreds of those noises, but…

…''It all sounds like one.

It was a lot like the sound of a fork dropped on the floor.

For just an instant, a ring of white water vapor surrounded the torsos and waists of the large dolls overhead.

“!!”

Both of them burst from within at the same moment.

“Wh-…”

Just as she was going to ask what was going on, #8 heard an odd sound.

She heard the odd new sound as she looked up at the large dolls bursting to pieces from an internal shockwave.

It was an awful singing voice performing an original children’s song not found in her memory.

“One niiiiight, when wallllking through the forrrrrrest, I stumbled on a porrrrrrrrn graveyarrrrrrrd.”

The singer was on the mountain path to the field.

He was sitting on a motorcycle while randomly playing an accordion on pure intuition.

“Ken-channnn got all turned onnnn. It’s a treasure trooooove, he said. I’m taking it with meeeee, he said. Then caaaaame the class triallll.”

He then pulled on either side of the accordion until it ripped in two.

“Yeahhhhhhh!!”

All of the dolls in the field stared at him, wondering what in the world was going on.

But he paid them no heed and stuffed the torn accordion in a trash bag he had brought with him.

“Ahh, what a pain in the ass. Kashima won’t shut up about keeping the mountains clean.”

As he spoke, #8 sensed more presences around her.

Her hearing devices sensed sounds and her tactile devices sensed the movement of the air.

“You all…”

The ones she had urged to retreat had walked up behind her.

And that included the badly damaged ones inside the coolers.

They were all approaching with smiles on their faces.

“We called in reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements?”

More figures left the forest behind the young man who had sung the aggressive children’s song.

They were all dressed as maids, but…

“#8-sama!!”

She heard their voices.

“The forty-two of us who were resting with the train have arrived!!”

The maids then split apart, creating a path for an old man in a lab coat.

“#-#8-kun!! Are you oka-…”

He looked at her and then at the enemies between them.

After seeing the bows and arrows the dolls slowly prepared, he tilted his head a bit.

“Mind if I just leave now?”

Everyone ignored him.

The young man on the motorcycle then took the Cowling Sword leaning against the motorcycle and rested it on his shoulder.

He sighed and looked to #8.

“Well, you did pretty well for a doll.”

“Yes,” replied all of those around her while placing a blanket over her to hide her broken form. “#-#8-sama was forced to expose herself!”

“No, it wasn’t that bad…”

“It was!” insisted the others as they looked across the enemy and then to Atsuta. “Smash them all to pieces, Rapist-sama!”

“I am not a rapist!!”

The enemy took a defensive stance toward his shouting and new dolls appeared from the forest.

But Atsuta remained relaxed and whistled as he looked at them all.

He also looked at the automatons behind #8.

“Grab your fellow doll and get out of here.”

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> could not help but raise her voice.

“A-Atsuta-sama! I must stay by Babel to protect Sayama-sama!”

“Shut up,” he said while stepping off the motorcycle.

After spitting out a light “keh”, he looked around his surroundings.

“You don’t have to go to the trouble. This’ll be over soon. Wait until I clean things up here. Then you can go sit in front of Babel and wait for that idiot to come out all you want.”

After hearing that, #8 began to shake.

A tremor ran through her.

However, it was not caused by her.

Something was shaking the air and the earth.

Her scans instantly located the source: the Cowling Sword.

“This thing’s still in testing. …I used it once just now, so I’ve still got four to go.”

Atsuta raised the white Cowling Sword as he spoke.

“I’ll cut them all down with the remaining four!”

At the same time, a helicopter landed at Japanese UCAT.

Harakawa Yui stepped out of it wearing pajamas and a gown.

On her way to the operating room, she requested all of the defensive philosopher’s stones the development department had.

With a single order from Tsukuyomi, that request was granted.

But according to the report, Shinjou’s heartrate had already dropped below half of what it had started at, so she was in real danger even without worrying about the concept.

That was why Diana and the others were on the move.

They were preparing their various formations in the struggle against an entire world.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 6

2015-06-10T17:36:59Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 6: Wind-Told Distance */

==Chapter 6: Wind-Told Distance==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0213.png|thumb]]
''Let’s go.

There was sound.

The sound of iron.

The sound of steel.

The sound of metal.

It was all the sound of machines.

There was more continuing sound.

The sound of wind.

The sound of earth.

The sound of trees.

It was all the sound of movement.

There was yet more continuing sound.

The sound of impacts.

The sound of strikes.

The sound of swords.

It was all the sound of combat.

The created sounds met to make even more sound.

The sound of damage.

The sound of breaking.

The sound of destruction.

It was all the sound that summoned victory.

There were also voices.

“Oh,” the voices yelled.

“Ah,” the voices cried.

“Nn,” the voices replied.

The voices came not just from the usual directions, but also from the heavens above and skimming just off the earth below.

Swords flew.

Bullets poured.

Armor deflected.

Metal rang.

Steel struck.

Machines raced.

All movement became evasion, became attack, and never stopped.

The questioning sounds seemed to respond, call, and answer.

All movement instantly broke the sound barrier and a wrist reversing a sword was enough to slice through an explosion of water vapor.

The black and white were surrounded by the roar of vacuum and the flavor of the whipping night wind.

The black used evasion and defense to deflect and pass through the rapid series of attacks and the white blocked and dodged the black’s attacks before striking.

Sparks flew and the wind was cut apart.

The earth split and the sky shattered.

There was sound.

It was the sound of battle bearing the name “god of war”.

“I can hear it!”

The black god of war cried out to break through that sound.

It rushed toward the white god of war.

“I can hear the voice calling for me!!”

Mikage quit controlling the emotions filling her body.

''It’s okay,'' she thought.

Her high-speed pressurized thoughts surrendered her body to Hiba and allowed him to use all of her strength.

They did not stop.

She kept moving her wings, moving her legs, and balancing her upper body.

She let Hiba try to do what he wanted with her body and she tried to grant it all.

It was all possible.

It was now possible for her to move as he wanted at the speeds he wanted.

She moved to block Typhon’s two swords.

She controlled the defense by using her understanding of each and every piece of armor to sense precisely how to move them all to redirect the attacks.

Like a bird controlling each individual feather to fly, Susamikado flapped onward through the damaging wind.

She raised her speed.

''Faster, faster,'' she thought.

She did not need a character string of emotions.

She did not even need a description of her thoughts.

She reacted even faster than her reflexes.

The wind was solid, so she raised her speed.

She fought even more quickly, tried to get behind their opponent, could not, and repeatedly exchanged attacks from the side.

The attacks came from the left.

The armor on the left was being heated by the friction of the sword strikes.

The shield. She could reduce the heating with better usage of the shield.

…''No!

''I can’t think like that,'' thought Mikage.

''I can’t answer if I think like that.

She could hear the sounds.

All of the sounds among the movement and collisions were conveying a certain thought.

It was…

…''Miki.

Mikage wondered why the sounds that girl made sounded so much like crying.

It was a crying voice.

All of the strikes sounded like the fists of a child clinging to someone in tears.

Why?

Why was she crying when she was so strong and had so much power?

Mikage did not understand.

But she wanted to understand.

No, she ''did'' understand.

…''Miki.

Miki had said she had killed his father.

Mikage did not know how much of that was true.

That was someone she should not have killed. As her other self’s parent, he was essentially her own parent.

So she had waited for Hiba. She had waited for the heir of the man she felt she had killed.

Why had she waited?

Why had she continued to win all this time?

Why had she wished to battle Hiba so many times?

Why was she crying?

Why?

…''Why did you continue to wait even when Ryuuji-kun lost?

Mikage understood.

…''You defeated someone you shouldn’t have defeated, so for their sake, you couldn’t let yourself lose?

So even as she grew tired of always winning, she had not been able to lose.

But there was one person she could let herself lose to: the original person’s heir.

…''You waited for him all this time, didn’t you?

For so long, she had made herself their enemy, defeated them several times, and yet waited.

She had waited for the moment when they could both use their greatest power.

Mikage had a thought as she synchronized the wings and legs for even greater speed.

…''Ryuuji-kun, you’re here to answer that call, aren’t you?

She spoke to make way for that answer.

“Ryuuji-kun! Let’s speed up!”

“Right!!”

She moved.

Her entire body moved about.

Hiba had to have noticed Miki’s true thoughts and that was why he raised his own voice.

“Mikage-san!” he said as if making a promise. “I will win this!”

“Nn.”

“Go ahead,'' she was telling him. ''Do what you wish. I’ll lend you my strength. All of it. I’ll do anything for you.

Her strength.

She recalled an older time when she had wondered if she was just a machine and when she had feared the strength she held.

But what about now?

That strength was necessary.

''Yes,'' she thought. ''I’m glad I have this strength.

Without it, a certain hand would have been unable to reach the person waiting for it.

So she desired even more speed.

She fully opened her wings and moved them along with her legs.

That way, each step had the same force as flying through the sky.

She picked up speed.

It did not matter how powerful the enemy was.

It did not matter how solid the enemy was.

It did not matter how strong the enemy was.

Speed would reach them.

Speed alone would never lie.

After all…

…''That is how you reach someone waiting for you!

Her vision had sped up to the point that all sound vanished and she saw what was in the sky and on the earth.

The moon.

The stars.

The night.

The forest and the people.

The heated metal fragments scattering like flower petals.

And the ones dancing amid it all were a white being and herself.

They faced each other in the center of all the motion and the vacuum.

It was the perfect place.

The air had been blown outwards and only clearness remained.

''It’s beautiful,'' thought Mikage as she saw Hiba reach his hand out toward the girl.

Their body slipped past the white swords and moved unhesitatingly forward.

As the white attempted to escape, they spun on their heel and pursued her just by facing her way.

“———”

The world looked so calm at this extreme speed.

There was no excess and only motion existed.

There was no hint of difficulty or fear of moving forward. This was where her final evolution had taken them.

…''How nice.

She danced.

Her metal heart danced along with her body.

There were white sword strikes, cannon blasts, evasive actions, defenses, and so much else.

But he slipped past it all, did not so much as graze them, and simply tried to reach his opponent with his own hand.

“Ryuuji-kun.”

His movements looked slow and she thought she saw a touch of fear in them, so she supported him from behind.

She placed her hands on his shoulders and leaned in.

“Nn.”

And she gave a push.

She gently urged him toward his other self.

She told him to go.

Tatsumi saw Susamikado slip below her attacks.

It happened amid the mixing vacuum and wind and amid the silence as the bottom of its defensive coat was torn.

Susamikado swung its body in the clear emptiness containing only moonlight.

It did not walk.

Nor did it run.

It did not even slide.

It only gently approached like a pendulum.

That movement told Tatsumi that Susamikado was receiving and redirecting the full burden of each and every movement.

Even the force pushing up on the soles of its feet and the pressure on its body as it moved forward.

…''Are they controlling all of that!?

When a force reached someone from one direction, it left in the opposite direction.

The standard way of controlling the forces received was to pull back, but controlling all of the forces reaching their entire body was something entirely different.

Even if they pulled back from the force arriving in one direction, they would be receiving another force from the direction in which they pulled back.

If they could not pull back, then the forces would explode inside their body.

…''So controlling all of the forces reaching your body is impossible.

But the word “possible” was displayed in front of her.

She saw it in Susamikado.

That was actually Hiba and Mikage.

Hiba had the same technique of controlling forces as Tatsumi did and Mikage would be controlling their entire body based on that.

She was using her high-speed calculations and her combination with the system known as a god of war.

She was simultaneously handling all of the forces arriving from a multitude of directions by adding in slight time lags and expanding the armor panels to allow the vectors to escape.

A single, instantaneous mistake would cause all of the forces to explode inside their body, but Mikage could pull it off thanks to her understanding of Hiba’s actions.

They were not just one in spirit; they truly were a single individual.

They were a single bearer of strength.

…''No, they are a single rider of strength.

Black wings opened before Tatsumi’s eyes.

Susamikado had gently moved right up to her.

A sword approached, so she had Typhon catch it on its left sword.

She planned to attack with the right sword in the opening that created.

But…

“!?”

The left sword was deflected.

Tatsumi’s technique of catching and stopping any power was rejected and deflected.

…''Is this…!?

She knew what it was.

It came from strength.

It also came from skill.

The idea was simple. As soon as Tatsumi activated her negation technique, Susamikado had slightly shifted the direction of its attack.

That was much easier said than done.

After all, she determined the direction to pull back in the very instant Hiba’s attack hit.

It had to happen in that instant.

Tatsumi made sure it was quick because she would be hit by the attack if she took too long.

So to knock back her technique, one had to intervene in that instant and reset the direction of their attack.

''That’s impossible,'' she thought.

But Hiba, who knew her technique, made it possible and Mikage, who had the strength, gave him the permission he needed.

And as a result, the word “negation” vanished from between Tatsumi and Hiba.

Instead, there was swordplay at extreme speed.

It was a pure exchange of swords with no excess strength.

The white silver arc raced and the black moonlit arc flew.

In that clear space, blue sparks flew and disappeared.

Blazing-hot seams blossomed and withered away in that transparent world.

They attacked.

Their attacks were their movements.

Tatsumi repeatedly struck as if brushing aside an outstretched hand.

Stay away.

…''Stay away!

No.

Her thoughts went further than that.

…''I’m telling you to stay away.

And yet…

…''Are you still coming!?

Susamikado answered.

It seemed to slowly bend in that empty space.

It swayed like a branch in the wind.

“…”

There was no shouting voice or anything else there.

Susamikado used only its movements to move in and continue forward.

It was close enough that its breaths would have reached had it breathed.

Tatsumi then launched a supremely swift strike.

Typhon swung its right sword straight down.

Susamikado’s left arm responded by rising like shimmering heat.

Its shield was there.

The sword dug into the tip of the shield.

The white blade tore away the thick steel armor.

Typhon’s sword was redirected downward and Susamikado lost its shield.

Tatsumi took action at the same time.

The left sword raced toward the back of Susamikado’s neck.

The flying silver arc was deflected by a black sword.

White struck black in that clear world.

The clash of the swords sounded only in her imagination.

But her goal lay beyond that.

She used her left sword to knock Susamikado’s black sword further outward.

Susamikado had broken through her technique, but she returned the favor in double.

With the shield gone from the left arm, Mikage would have to rebalance due to the change in weight between the left and right arms.

So if the right sword was knocked powerfully outward at that moment…

“!”

Susamikado prioritized keeping its balance and let go of the sword in its right hand.

It also leaned back and to the right.

Susamikado had no sword or shield, so Tatsumi did not hesitate.

With a snap of the right wrist, she raised the sword diverted by Susamikado’s shield.

“How about this?”

She asked that question while thrusting the sword tip toward Susamikado’s throat.

Immediately afterwards, she saw Susamikado move.

It raised its now-shieldless left arm.

“…!”

And it caught the approaching sword in that palm.

There was no sound, but there was destruction.

The blade pierced through the god of war’s left hand.

It plunged in up to the base, but…

“!?”

Susamikado’s left hand grabbed the sword’s guard and Typhon’s right hand beyond it.

Typhon’s right sword and hand were crushed.

And this time, Susamikado’s hand reached Typhon.

Tatsumi saw the machine clench its right fist.

''It can’t be,'' she thought.

It had let go of its sword and it had leaned back and to the right as if keeping its balance, but…

“Was that all to pull back your right fist!?”

There was nothing to hide behind in this space, so she clearly saw the metal fist as it was launched.

The strike seemed to flicker as it flew toward her.

Its target was Typhon’s face right next to her.

She realized she could not block this one.

Nor could she negate its force now that Hiba and Mikage could turn that against her.

She could not take this blow.

But neither could she avoid it with Typhon’s hand held.

“Then I’ll have to go with this!!”

Tatsumi raised Typhon’s left arm.

The left blade shot up from below and severed Typhon’s own right arm.

Typhon could now move back, so it started to take that first step. Except…

…''If I escape…!

Tatsumi hesitated.

If she escaped here, she would undoubtedly get by without losing.

But…

…''Can I really do that!?

Just as she asked herself that, two things stopped her from moving back.

Those things were noise and light.

A noise from the sky seemed to penetrate this space.

“Tatsumi!”

It was Alex’s voice.

However, that voice from above was not the only one she heard.

She heard more from the distant mechanical dragons lying on the forest floor.

“No running away!”

They belonged to Heo Thunderson and the powerless ones.

“Fire!!”

She saw a light.

One of the broken dragons had lifted its upper body and opened its mouth.

The light was its main cannon.

“…!!”

It was directed into the space behind her.

She did not know if it had been poorly aimed or if they had no real intention of hitting her, but it was clear what they were trying to do while frantically fleeing from the dragon as it was blown backwards by the recoil.

…''They’re keeping me here.

''Thank you,'' she thought as she stopped after only moving back one of Typhon’s legs.

She then shifted to dodging by focusing on her own movements.

She tried to avoid the fist by leaning back.

It worked.

The metal fist shot by just thirty-two centimeters in front of her.

And just as Susamikado’s right fist was going to pass before her eyes, she almost thought she heard Susamikado yell something.

No, she had heard it.

“Keravnos!”

That was 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core weapon.

Susamikado did not have that Tartaros pile driver equipped.

Keravnos was currently inside Noah.

But something did open before Tatsumi’s eyes.

It was the entrance to the Concept Space that acted as a hangar.

The opened space threatened to swallow Tatsumi.

“What!?”

Acting on reflex, she drew the sword on her back.

“…!”

She defended herself by striking the concept space with her blade and absorbing its power.

Just as the opening concept space was swallowed by the blade, she saw Susamikado’s arm flying past her.

She felt some relief at having survived, but…

…''Oh, no.

She realized she had made a grave error.

She realized that this attack had been one of the goals that Hiba, Mikage, or both had seen in this battle.

“Don’t tell me…”

Tatsumi gasped, raised her Cowling Sword, and faced forward.

She looked past Susamikado and its fist and she looked to the people on the path through the forest.

A certain girl stood among them.

Her blue eyes were staring directly Tatsumi’s way and her mouth was already open.

“Please come out,” she shouted to the sky. “Thunder Fellow!!”

The response to her cry came from Tatsumi’s hand.

Her Cowling sword had sealed the power to open a concept space and that meant one thing.

…''I’ve created an exit for what I sealed with this same power before!

It burst out.

It appeared of its own accord from the Cowling Sword’s blade.

It was a heavily armored blue and white mechanical dragon.

It was Thunder Fellow.

Heo and Harakawa were instantly taken within Thunder Fellow.

Before they had time to breathe, their vision was pointed skyward.

Something was descending toward them.

It was a mechanical dragon colored red, white, and blue.

Its entire body was heated by the air’s friction.

It was Alex.

Thunder Fellow briefly stopped twenty meters above ground to face him.

Thunder Fellow opened all of his accelerators and checked on them as if waving his tail.

He then performed a roll while still positioned vertically.

“My output is all green.”

“I see you’re well-prepared,” commented Harakawa.

Heo nodded as she entered the back seat.

“Thank goodness.”

All the others were on the surface behind them.

Those people had brought them this far.

They were all looking up and waving: the scarf-wearing mountain unit commander, the sand dune regiment with mohawks or masks, and the American UCAT members in blue armored uniforms.

They were all waving.

“U-um, you’re going to be blown away by the accelerators!”

They all scattered.

But as they looked back over their shoulders, they were smiling.

Someone told her to get going, so she smiled.

''It’s time to go,'' she thought from the bottom of her heart.

Her destination was the airspace above.

That was a place only dragons could go.

Heo sat in the back seat and waited to combine with Thunder Fellow.

But first, Harakawa tossed something to her from the front seat.

It was contained in red cloth packaging.

“Broiled chestnuts.”

“Munch on that while you’re inside. Do it outside and you’ll gain weight.”

“I-I can’t eat while combined with Thunder Fellow!”

“Actually, Heo,” said Thunder Fellow. “I could take them in with you and place them inside your digestive system.”

“Sorry, but you’re supposed to taste things with your tongue, not your stomach.”

She heard Harakawa laugh quietly at that.

“Well, whatever,” he said. “Let’s go. How about it, Heo Thunderson?”

“Are you inviting me to go?”

“No. You’re the one that decides to go and I’m the one who drives. It’s just that you always take so long that I end up having to rush you along. So I’m going to say it again today, Heo Thunderson: Let’s go.”

She thought about what he meant and she realized it meant she would not be left behind anymore.

And that led to a single answer.

“Testament.”

She looked up into the sky.

“Let’s go.”

She spoke into that sky.

“Let’s go to that absolute place where our answer lies!!”

Immediately afterwards, everyone spread out across the Mt. Ikoma region saw a line of blue light fly up towards the center of the night sky.

At the same time, the mechanical dragons in that black sky spread out.

They were opening a path for the blue light passing between them.

And something pursued that that blue light.

A red light flew in from below and tore a straight line through the sky.

Everyone watched as the blue and red lights rose into the heavens.

They watched those lights approach an airspace they could never reach.

Tatsumi watched Alex ascend once more, but she only did so for an instant.

Susamikado was still moving before her.

Without pulling back its right arm, Susamikado made a full rotation to make its next attack.

In the silence, Tatsumi used her left hand to raise the sword that had produced Thunder Fellow.

Susamikado was about to complete its rotation in front of her.

It had pulled back its right hand again and had twisted its body around to the limit to launch the attack.

''Come,'' thought Tatsumi.

“I will knock you back however many times it takes.”

She gathered strength in her body and moved her right hand to have Typhon raise its left sword.

She planned to strike her enemy’s fist with the blade.

But…

“Oh, they’re white.”

With those words, her skirt was lifted to waist height behind her.

It had happened suddenly.

Tatsumi had been so focused on what was in front of her that she was slow to react and hesitated.

“…!?”

As if brushing off her waist, she moved back to the right, pushed down her skirt, and lowered her hips.

She then looked towards Typhon’s left shoulder.

She saw someone there.

“Ryuuji.”

“That’s twice today.”

He was three meters away.

He had to be here for the same reason as before.

It had happened while she was distracted by the fist and the failed summoning of Keravnos and while she was confused by Thunder Fellow’s summoning.

…''He had Susamikado turn its back and then released his combination.

She saw Susamikado continue to rotate and…

“————”

As wind gently wrapped around it, it came to a stop.

Its movements were now feminine.

The one who piloted it for combat was standing in front of her.

Hiba gave her a trouble smile and took a step forward.

Tatsumi held her Cowling Sword in both hands with her hips still lowered.

“Wai-…”

She started to say “wait” until she realized something.

She remembered this layout.

This was the same as ten years before.

Back then, everyone had evacuated to the gate which had stopped functioning and those without defensive philosopher’s stones had started collapsing, one after another.

Tatsumi had been given a defensive stone by her parents.

…''So I alone was fine.

The sky had split open and the earth had shattered while all the others had fallen to the ground in groans of pain.

She had wanted to do something, but there had been nothing to do.

Because she alone had survived, she had decided to protect the others until the end.

After all, she had the power to fight.

And then ''he'' had arrived.

He had been an enemy.

He had said he was there to save them, but she had not known if he really was there to help or not.

She had not been able to judge anything about the situation.

She had suspected he might cause further damage to the people whose demise was only a matter of time.

So…

“N-…”

Hiba approached.

She swung her head.

She realized she had started trembling at some point and she could not stop it.

“No…”

She thrust out her sword as a way of telling him to stay back.

“No!”

But he still entered within range of the danger.

And so she changed her display of rejection to something else.

“…!!”

She stabbed.

She thrust the blade straight forward into Hiba’s right side.

Her footing was weak and the sword did not pick up much speed, but…

“————”

The blade pierced through his side and out his back.

The sword was incredibly sharp.

Its tip stabbed through its target with no sound or resistance.

…''Eh?

Tatsumi seemed to stumble as she stared dumbfounded at what she had done.

She held a hilt in her hands.

A guard was attached to the top of the hilt and that guard was pressed against Hiba’s stomach.

She had stabbed him.

“Ah…”

''No,'' she thought. ''Why?'' she added.

''Why didn’t he dodge? Did he not think I would stab him? What was he thinking?

The questions in her heart were a refrain of those from ten years before.

Her former doubts were revived.

She felt it clearly in her hands, but…but why?

…''Why didn’t you dodge!?

As soon as she asked that silent question, she heard something.

“I see…”

It was a troubled voice that was clearly putting up with some pain.

It was Hiba’s.

But Tatsumi could not bear to look at him. No matter what expression he had on his face, it would be a reaction to what she had just done.

She could only hang her head and two things entered her field of vision: Hiba’s hands.

The boy’s hands touched hers that still held the hilt.

Taken aback, she tried to let go but instead clamped down from the tension.

Nevertheless, Hiba’s hands removed hers from the hilt.

And after peeling away her hands, he spoke.

“There, everything is going to be okay now.”

That was much like what someone had said ten years before.

“———!”

He reached below her arms and lifted her up.

The shorter boy somehow managed to lift her weakened body.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

She snapped back at his words.

“H-how is this okay!?”

She squeezed her hands tight and hit him.

Her clenched fists hit the head and shoulders she could see below.

She hit him again and again, telling him to let go.

“How can you say that?”

She struck him.

“You might die!”

With those words, tears poured from the corners of her eyes and they would not stop.

“You’re going to die!”

“I-I’m not dead.”

“But…”

She hit him as her mouth and face tearfully twisted.

“When your father was stabbed in the same way…!”

“I’m not dead!!”

“But…”

“I’m not dead!!”

His shout stopped her from moving.

She breathed out and the built-up tears fell from her eyes.

She sniffled and saw Hiba hanging his head.

Without wiping away the tears, she spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“He died…”

“It’s true my dad died,” he said. “He was stabbed through the gut and some of his organs were hit. That had to have been a lethal injury…if nothing was done.”

“—————”

Tatsumi was left briefly speechless by those final words and Hiba’s voice seemed to follow her silence.

“Am I dead right now?”

She looked to him when she heard that question.

And finally…

“No.”

“Right?” he replied before sighing.

Then something red spilled from where her sword had stabbed him.

His sigh had relaxed his tension and opened the tightened blood vessels.

“Ah…”

She was nearly panicked, but he shook his head.

“My dad didn’t do anything about it afterwards.”

Because…

“He had something he had to do and he gave that priority. He had something he found more important than being stabbed by you.”

Tatsumi listened to him speak with his head lowered.

“Do you understand?”

She heard that question and then more.

These were the words of the answerer she had waited so long for.

“I am not going to die. I still have to flirt a whole lot more with Mikage-san and master several different paths, so I will not die. And if my dad hadn’t had something he had to prioritize over his own death…he wouldn’t have died either!”

So…

“You don’t get to take credit for what his own decisions led to!!”

Tatsumi tried to say something, but something else left her before her voice: tears.

…''Why?

She needed to argue back and she needed to say she had killed him, so why could she not speak?

As she wondered why, she found the answer in her heart.

…''Because these are the words of my other self?

As she thought, she looked up into the heavens to hold back the tears.

This was the sky near Osaka and it looked a lot like the night sky she had seen in the past.

She had been there, the parents she had lost had been there, and they had all looked up into that sky as they walked home from the store.

Hadn’t she constantly asked them a certain question?

…''What kind of person do you think my other self is?

Her father had reached below her arms and picked her up.

After comforting her from her fear of the height, he had given her the same answer he had given her so often before.

…''I’m sure he’s a lot like you.

She distinctly remembered him telling her that.

His sex, age, and height were different from her own, but he had come this far, he used the same technique as her, and…

“————”

She released her voice into the sky above.

It sounded a lot like the cries of a newborn.

And as the reverberation of her throat faded into the sky above, a battle raged there.

Babel’s light had yet to fully activate.

The battle was not over yet.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 2

2015-05-22T03:15:18Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 2: Slope of Meeting */

==Chapter 2: Slope of Meeting==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0079.png|thumb]]
''In other words

''Meetings are found

''At the end of a mountain slope

The stars were quite visible in the winter night sky, but a few conditions had to be met for them to be seen.

First, the atmosphere had to be stable.

Second, there could not be any bright lights nearby.

Third, someone had to be there to see them.

A long runway in the mountains met conditions one and three and number two was underway.

The long runway’s lights were switched off, starting from the far end.

It was as if the runway was going dark and silent.

It took less than a minute for the three thousand meters of light to vanish between the mountain and forest.

Once the residual light faded, only one thing remained.

“The starlight, huh?”

A woman in a white armored uniform and a scarf let out a white breath as she looked into the sky.

Her semi-long hair shook as she turned back toward a shadow.

The dark blue shade from the moon and starlight was provided by a beach parasol raised on the runway.

A man in a black suit sat on a long chair below it while a maid set up a telescope next to him.

The man finished wiping his mouth with a white handkerchief and looked to the woman in the scarf.

“Ooki-sensei, are you in charge while everyone else is away?”

“Ah, Itaru-san. You’re older than me, so don’t call me ‘sensei’. I am grateful, though.”

The maid responded to Ooki’s comment while adjusting the angle of the telescope.

“Then may I refer to you as Ooki-sensei?”

“Of course. Oh, I can’t wait to teach a class with someone like you in it, Sf-san.”

“…I have determined I will not do that.”

“Wh-why not?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Itaru. “So did everyone else decide you were useless?”

“Th-that got specific in a hurry! ….And that isn’t it. Kanda needs some support with concept related things. They needed someone to work with them from here, so I stayed behind.”

“Then why are you out here?”

“Well, after I finished linking the devices, there was nothing more for me to do.”

Sf and Itaru began whispering to each other.

“She was definitely excluded.”

“Is this what they call ostracism, Itaru-sama?”

“D-don’t say that loud enough for me to hear you,” complained Ooki. “And you know what?”

She raised a finger to gather their attention.

“They needed someone to keep them informed on Shinjou-san and Mikage-san’s conditions.”

“Then why aren’t you in the medical room or the development department?”

“I always get lost when I go underground,” she admitted with a hand on her head and a smile on her lips.

“Itaru-sama, I have never before seen someone so innately uncooperative.”

“Have you never looked in a mirror? Then look at your hand. That’s you.”

Sf looked at her palm as instructed.

“I have determined this is very philosophical.”

“Oh? Do you know how the character for ‘philosophy’ is written? By ‘bending’ your ‘mouth’. Into a frown. That’s often how I feel when I see you. Philosophical, isn’t it?”

“Tes. I have determined that is because I was made in Germany, the homeland of philosophy. Therefore, my every action requires an understanding of philosophy to grasp.”

“Oh, is that why seeing you fills me with melancholy and an urge to kill myself?”

“Tes. I have determined that is one of the trials of life. There are both mountains and valleys in life, after all. …Why you choose that treacherous route instead of the level sea is beyond me, though.”

“That’s because of you!!”

Ooki smiled as she listened to them.

“You two sure get along well.”

“Ooki-sensei, you’re too quick to assume there is good in everyone. She’s more than enough to prove that idea wrong.”

“Tes. Because that is what you wish for, Itaru-sama.”

Itaru let out a white sigh and collapsed back in the long chair.

But Ooki turned to Sf instead of him.

“Then what would you be like if Itaru-san didn’t wish for that?”

Sf tilted her head a bit, placed her hand on the set-up telescope, and replied expressionlessly.

“I was created exclusively for Itaru-sama, so there is nothing else I could ''be like''. Even if identical models were mass-produced at some point, I have determined that I would be the only one that is me.”

She placed her other hand on her chest.

“An automaton’s heart is metal, so that point will never change.”

“I see.”

Ooki scratched her head and looked to the telescope Sf’s hand rested on.

“Do you like to look at the stars?”

“Tes. Itaru-sama does.”

As they turned toward him, Itaru let out an annoyed comment.

“It’s an old habit. We used to do this a lot.”

He viewed the dark runway through his sunglasses.

“We would shut off all the lights without permission, use a lantern to set the mood and keep track of our footing, and get all excited over seeing Saturn’s rings or something.”

Ooki glanced around, but saw no one else on the dark asphalt beyond her white breaths.

Everyone had either gone to Kansai or was working down below.

However, Sf suddenly opened her mouth.

“I can estimate that Itaru-sama imagines that there are people around him when he looks at the sky in an empty place.”

“Don’t speak for me,” he said while still looking to the runway. “But when you turn out all the lights, it feels like everything has already ended here. …Ooki-sensei, we’ll be taking care of a job down below in a bit, but don’t turn the lights back on.”

“Eh? But won’t that be a problem when the others get back?”

“Do as your supervisor tells you,” he said. “I’ll give you some orders soon, but until then, why not look at the stars?”

“Oh, can I mess with it?”

“Yes,” he replied with a shrug and a white sigh. “It’s better than having you go down and get lost.”

“Oh, yeah, I suppose so.”

“Then I’m counting on you. I’m sure I’ll have a few jobs for you.”

He let out another white breath as he spoke.

“You should be able to help those idiots fighting over Babel.”

The clash in the late-night mountain region began with a firefight between an American UCAT ground unit and a group of Top-Gear dolls waiting in the forest.

American UCAT made use of armor and explosives while the dolls kept their opponents in place with a hail of arrows and their mobility.

American UCAT put no limits on the quality and quantity of their explosives.

They poured in as much personnel as they could to push on through.

But that did not go as planned.

“What’s going on!? Our explosives aren’t as effective as they should be!”

The flying arrows pierced through the armored shield on the commander’s false arm.

“!?”

The three arrows sticking from him were made of wood.

The voice that escaped his throat was filled with more confusion than pain: why?

His question was answered by his second-in-command who had taken one of the arrows to his shoulder.

“This is a concept of terrain protection! On natural terrain, the things closest to that terrain are more effective and anything unnaturally processed has its power rejected!”

“What kind of cheap fantasy story is this!?”

The commander scattered gunfire into the surrounding shadows to protect those following from behind.

“Are we overwriting the concept text to cancel it!?”

“We’re trying, but the large Kanda facility has to distribute their processing power elsewhere too.”

“But the enemy can focus on this battlefield, so we can’t overpower them, is that it!?”

Through the thinner parts of the dark forest, the commander saw new dolls arriving.

…''They sure are persistent.

The dolls hit by their bullets would fall over but quickly get back up.

The metal bullets had a complex manufacturing process, so they caused little damage in this space.

The explosives and optical weaponry were the same.

“Dammit. Does this concept even affect conceptually strengthened concept weapons because they ‘aren’t natural’!?”

Each enemy might as well have been a solid wall and American UCAT’s defenses might as well have been made of paper.

And even just counting the ones they could see, there were more than one hundred dolls in the forest.

…''How many of them are there in the mountains as a whole?

This was worrying and these dolls were not their only enemy. There had to be a main force as well.

“Dammit!”

The commander sprayed machinegun fire, but the bright sparks quickly vanished and the sound was absorbed by the forest.

Eventually, his ammunition belt ran out.

“Get me a reload! And have the following unit temporarily withdra-…”

He turned around to find his second-in-command was gone.

No, he was still there, but he had collapsed to the ground after taking an arrow to the front of both shoulders.

…''Kh.

A moment later, someone shouted from behind them.

“Withdraw!! Get out of the forest!!”

At the same time, the commander felt a slight wind.

…''!?

He turned just his head and saw a doll only twenty centimeters away.

By the time he wondered how it had gotten there, it wrapped an arm around his neck from behind.

That was when he realized that the dolls themselves were made of wood.

…''They made them ecological to match this terrain!?

Their cooling, armor, mobility, and everything else was taken care of by the protection provided by the concept space’s concept text.

Most likely, their actual design only included the bare minimum.

They had been carved down, given moving parts and controls, and then painted.

''We’re losing to them?'' thought the commander.

But his troops’ concept weapons were useless against the dolls’ conceptual defenses.

“Kh!”

The automaton’s right hand shot up in front of him.

It held a black knife made of polished obsidian.

It was coming for his throat, but he took that instant to move.

His trained reflexes linked with his survival instincts.

“———!”

He sank down and forcibly grabbed the knife-wielding arm with his own right hand.

He then bent forward to lift up the slender form behind him.

He immediately flipped his lower back forward.

“Secret technique! One-Man Shoulder Throw!!”

He threw her to the right as if dropping her to the ground.

He had a lock on the doll’s arm, so she could not escape.

As if he had swung a tree branch, she fell head-first in a completely vertical posture.

“Final blow!!”

He took something from his left hip and shoved it into the briefly upside-down doll’s mouth.

It was two hundred grams of C4 explosive with a conceptual protection applied.

The protection simply caused it to detonate when a password was spoken.

While brushing off the automaton’s chokehold and putting some distance between them, he gave a shout as soon as her head was going to strike the ground.

“Explosions are art!!”

She exploded.

A solid sound accompanied the doll being blasted into the sky instead of hitting the ground.

The force of the blast was far smaller than normal, but that was due to the concept space.

Still, it had definitely blown her away.

…''Even if it is just one!

He grabbed the collar of his still-breathing second-in-command and tried to pull him to his feet, but then the airborne doll did something odd.

She had been sent upwards while upside-down, but she then bent both her knees forward.

The legs wrapped around a thick tree branch passing through the darkness above and she swung like a pendulum.

…''Wha-?

The commander stared blankly upwards as the doll swung twice to build up speed.

“!”

And she jumped straight down.

She flipped around once in the few meters of space available, landed with her body turned to the side, and looked right at him.

He saw a scorch mark on her mouth as if blood was oozing out, but that was all.

“That didn’t affect you!?”

As if to answer him, the doll shook her head and spat something onto the ground.

It was a single tooth made of wood.

The action seemed to be showing him how much it had affected her.

She was saying to thank her for taking that much damage.

Simply put, it had not affected her at all.

He gulped and confirmed something with his sense of hearing.

He could hear something, but it was not gunfire or shouting voices.

He heard a voiceless silence and soft footsteps approaching him through the underbrush.

Figures stood in the surrounding forest…no, in all of the darkness he could see.

These figures were not his fellow soldiers. They were all dolls wielding knives and bows and arrows.

''Impossible,'' he thought. ''All of my comrades were taken out?

“We were hoping to make a successful assault, but we couldn’t even act as a proper diversion…”

He clenched his teeth. The only upside was that the following unit had been able to withdraw.

But he picked up a machinegun lying on the ground.

He exhaled and did not bother wiping the sweat from his brow.

“I’m not going to lose here.”

He was well aware the voiceless dolls were not going to reply.

“I may have no power, but I do have a will.”

So…

“If I can lose with that, then this world is done for!!”

He knew it was not going to work, but he still raised the machinegun like it was some kind of ritual.

The dolls began to move at the same time.

They rushed toward him like a wind blowing through the forest.

The countless blades and flying points were trying to tear into his body, not his will.

It only lasted an instant.

Just as he prepared to squeeze the trigger, everything was swept away before his eyes.

“…!?”

It looked like a white gale, but…

…''A shell!? No…

It was a train.

The high-speed train measured over two hundred meters long and it used its speed to become a high-speed shell and plow onto the battlefield, breaking through the conceptual protection on the way.

A shockwave raced by, trees were toppled, and the commander too was blown away in an instant.

But in that instant, he saw the train tearing into the ground, racing through the sounds of destruction as it fell on its side, and yet continuing on in the direction American UCAT had been trying to go.

“Ha ha…”

He stopped when he hit a tree and he laughed in the blowing wind.

He could see a mechanical dragon and a black god of war flying and repeatedly clashing in the sky.

The train was no longer visible, but he had noticed that the front car was partially destroyed.

He doubted it could carry its passengers all the way to Babel.

But that was enough.

Mountain climbing was best done on foot.

“Ha ha,” he laughed in the wind.

He could see twin lines of bent and twisted metal laid out along the path the train had taken.

He could not stop laughing when he saw that and he sat down at the base of a tree.

“So they laid a manmade track to decorate the path we made.”

He raised his voice while hoping it would ride the wind and reach them.

“Keep going, you bearers of strength!!”

The train stopped near a ridge in the western Mount Ikoma region.

Susahito Custom’s attack had kept Alex’s cannon blast from scoring a direct hit, but the front car had still been knocked on its side, twisting the other cars in the process.

It had of course been the automatons who saved them when all of the cars were about to slam into the mountainous terrain.

They had fixed the track below the train like a sled, so the train had become a high-speed shell sliding along the slope and into the mountains.

After placing the cars gently on the mountain slope, the forty-two automatons were too overheated to move.

The front car was almost entirely destroyed.

The rest had had their armor destroyed and not a single window had survived.

However, the passengers were almost entirely unharmed.

They worked to carry the unmoving maids into the shadow of the train.

“Let’s go,” said Kazami as they all started up the slope.

If they crossed the ridge, it was all downhill from there. They would reach Babel in no time.

They had received a report saying American UCAT would regroup and follow the path they had created.

Also, American UCAT’s mechanical dragons had arrived and were crushing the dolls like tanks.

But when they reached the top of the ridge and looked down, they all saw a shadowy tower rising toward heaven in the vast night.

Below, a forest surrounded the tower, but that forest was broken by the slope they stood atop.

The rocky way down was about five hundred meters and there were enemies there.

The slope was covered in dolls and…

“The sky too,” said Sayama.

Indeed, a few dozen figures were visible in the sky.

They were dolls wearing black armored uniforms with black wings spread.

Izumo responded by resting his large Cowling Sword on his shoulder and saying the following:

“Even more dolls, huh? How many variations are there?”

“Ooshiro-san must be happy with this many dolls around.”

“I-I don’t like dolls that much.”

Hearing that, #8 turned toward Ooshiro and he gave a quiet shriek at the look in her eyes.

“Y-you are…different. Okay?”

“In other words, you hate me even more?”

“Y-you must not twist my words! I think you’re great! Yeah! You’re so great, #8-kun.”

“Testament.” #8 nodded. “In other words, you think being despised and beaten is ‘great’.”

“Is that all I am to people these days?”

They all made sure to ignore him.

That was when a voice reached them, carried up the mountain by the wind.

It was a female but deep voice.

“So you’re finally here.”

Kazami reacted before anyone else by adjusting X-Wi’s position on her back.

“…Jord!?”

“That’s right.”

She was standing halfway up the slope and a giant hammer-style weapon rested on her shoulder.

“I’m not really taking Top-Gear’s side, but there’s something I wanted to check on.”

She was looking at Izumo and Kazami.

“You aren’t going to be betraying any expectations, are you?”

“Don’t worry,” replied Izumo with a serious expression. “I meet her expectations every night.”

Kazami’s kick sent him flying through the air and that signaled the beginning.

As Izumo flew below the moonlight, the dolls reacted and the others from UCAT began to move.

The white army and the black army rushed forward like avalanches moving both up and down the slope.

“Ha ha ha. Hurry on down!”

Jord’s words rang through the surge of people and voices.

A moment later, she raised her giant hammer in the shadow cast by the tower behind her.

“If you’re too slow, the world is gonna change!!”

A small white underground room in UCAT contained a bed in the center with lights shining down on it from the ceiling. It was an operating room.

The tones of the EKG sounded quietly as the doctor closed the wound on the back lying on the bed and applied a charm.

Next to him, Tsukuyomi wore her development department lab coat.

She looked to the doctor with a few swords in hand.

“Well?”

The doctor hesitated to answer.

“I managed to close the wound, but…”

The lines coming from the EKG printer had reached the falling line.

The doctor looked to Tsukuyomi.

“I think she will last like this. She must be fighting with her own willpower. To be honest, it’s a miracle she’s holding on like this.”

“Will she recover on her own?”

“No. The name concept is like a linchpin. It was applied under the effects of the Concept Core, so it will continue to carve into her life. If we could stop that, then we could make her life whole again, but…”

The doctor trailed off and lowered his head.

“I apologize. You already know all this.”

“Yeah.” Tsukuyomi nodded and looked around with the swords in hand. “From here on, it’s a concept battle. We have to see how much people can fight against the world of 2nd-Gear.”

She looked at the sleeping girl, at Shinjou’s closed eyes.

The EKG was beeping.

It was a quiet sound, but it was proof that the girl was fighting against that world.

“That girl always does give her very best effort.”

Tsukuyomi nodded and tension filled her face.

“I’m going to begin now, but call someone for me. …The world’s most powerful witch should be here. I could use someone that skilled with spells.”

Kazami and Izumo faced Jord.

Kazami was in the air and Izumo on the ground.

Kazami had just destroyed a few dolls and their fellow UCAT members had just vanished into the forest below.

Izumo had just stopped Jord’s hammer with his white Cowling Sword and put some distance between them.

Jord took a large step back and spoke while catching her breath.

“So dolls aren’t enough, are they?”

“No, they aren’t.” Kazami looked down at Izumo. “Even if they have the conceptual protection of the terrain, their joints still use wires and oil for smooth movement. If you cut them in just the right spot, they’ll lose their balance and fall.”

To do that, one had to keep up with their speed or be able to block their attacks.

Kazami and Izumo could do one or the other of those, so the dolls were keeping their distance.

Jord shrugged.

“I see. So dolls really aren’t enough. …I thought you might have been relying on the Concept Cores, but it looks like you can actually fight pretty well yourselves.”

“You’re not bad without a Concept Core yourself.”

Kazami heard Izumo speak casually to his grandmother, but Jord only lightly replied, “That’s right.”

In that instant, Kazami realized the sounds of wings and thus the winged dolls had moved away.

The dolls on the surface had also moved far away from Jord.

…''What are they doing?

Worried by how the dolls quickly moved several hundred meters away, Kazami asked a question.

“What are you going to do?”

“Something simple. I’m just going to show you how stubborn 10th-Gear can be.”

She raised the giant hammer with only her right arm and she smiled with one eye shut.

“Do you know what Concept Core weapon 10th-Gear made before making Gungnir?”

Kazami frowned because this was something Izumo had only just told her the night before.

“Thor’s Hammer…”

“Right.” Jord nodded. “This is it right here. I picked it up from the reservation on the way here, so I’m going to see for myself just how you two will oppose a god!”

She then swung down the hammer.

When it crashed into the rocky slope and produced a metallic noise, Kazami heard a voice.

—'''Abilities are reversed.

At the same time, she saw her wings pick up speed in a certain direction: down.

“…!?”

Her wings of flight were now powering her fall.

Before she could even gasp, she crashed into the rocky slope.

Izumo saw Kazami fall toward the rocks.

She fell back-first, where her wings were.

Cautious of Jord, she had moved lower, so the fall happened almost instantly.

“Chisato!”

He ran over, but he was not going to make it in time.

…''Dammit!

She fell about five meters and she had lost her balance due to X-Wi, but he doubted she would mess up and fall on her head.

She hit the ground as he ran over.

“Ouch!”

That shout proved she was not too badly hurt.

Once he arrived, she placed her hands on her lower back while lying on the ground.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow…”

“A-are you okay, Chisato! Is it your butt!? Does your butt hurt!? What a naughty butt! I may have to confiscate it! Like this!? Like this, right!? O-or is your butt just unspeakably naughty!?”

“The problem isn’t my butt! It’s your head!!”

Her fist flew, but…

“Huh?”

She never reached him and her fist swished harmlessly through empty air.

X-Wi lay between her back and the ground and the metal backpack had pulled her down.

She could not get up from the ground.

“…?”

She raised her arms and swung them around, but X-Wi did not follow her movements or even budge.

It almost seemed glued down.

“What is going on?”

She looked over her shoulder toward X-Wi and Izumo tilted his head.

“Did it get heavier?”

He reached for X-Wi himself and it easily moved. If he subtracted Kazami’s own weight from the weight he felt, X-Wi had to be about three kilograms.

“It’s not heavy at all?”

“B-but it’s really, really heavy.”

“No, that isn’t it.”

He let go of X-Wi and thought for a moment.

“Your special ability ‘Kong Power’ has been reversed.”

“How can you be so mean to a girl!?”

“Hey, calm down, Chisato. Think about this positively. This means your power comes from a kind of divine protection instead of from you. In other words, your Kong isn’t actually yours.”

“Oh, you’re right.”

Her face brightened and she gave a sigh of relief.

“Now I don’t have to be synonymous with school violence anymore.”

''I have one hell of a girlfriend, don’t I?'' he thought as a strange feeling filled his heart.

Kazami then gathered strength in her abs to sit up.

“Nn.”

She failed to sit up, but she kept trying.

“Nnnn.”

It looked hopeless.

She sucked in air, sprawled out on the ground, and swung her legs to build up momentum.

“Nhhhhh.”

But she still could not get up.

Izumo watched as she flailed her limbs with more grunts of “nwah” or “nn”.

…''Damn. This is pretty nice.

“H-hey, Kaku, h-help me out a bit.”

“Sure,” he said as he cheerfully started removing her skirt.

“What are you doing!? We’re in the middle of a battle right now!”

“Calm down, Chisato,” he said as Kazami stopped moving. “My special ability ‘Adolescence 2005’ must have been reversed, too. That means I’m doing this with a pure heart. I am dedicating my life to keeping a pure hart.”

“Then that dedication is about to end.”

She swung her arms and legs, but she could not get up and thus could not reach him.

“Ah. Hey. Kh. Hit him.”

Watching her flail around helplessly calmed Izumo’s heart.

…''Wow, this is just amazing.

He thought to himself while watching her struggle like a small animal.

…''I need to keep trying tomorrow, too.

Suddenly, she got her hips up and forced a kick which hit him on the right arm.

It was a much more powerless kick than usual.

…''That’s clearly not going to hurt or send me fly-

“-ing?”

A moment later, he made five and a half flips and crashed into the ground.

The impacts and pain reached him directly.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow! What was that, Chisato!? You’ve got plenty of power!”

“N-no, I don’t!” he heard her say. “Your divine protection has been reversed!”

The damage he took was being multiplied by as much as it would normally be reduced.

“Seriously?”

He clenched his teeth and looked to their enemy.

Jord was smoking a cigarette ten meters away and the hammer was resting on her shoulder.

“Well, humans? Do you get it now?” She blew smoke from the twisted corner of her mouth. “All abilities are reversed right now. Even the ones people use to fight. Now, a question. It’s a nice question because it has a nice answer. So listen. …Can you tell me what my ability was originally?”

Izumo and Kazami exchanged a glance.

After looking at Kazami’s wrinkled brow, he turned back to Jord.

They both gulped and answered in unison.

“Not acting your age?”

“You people don’t make things easy, do you!?” Jord raised the hammer. “Met expectations. Everything will go exactly how I want it to! That is the power of a god!!”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume14 Chapter 1

2015-05-22T02:48:33Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 1: The Joy of an Outing */

[[Image:OnC_v14_0030-0031.jpg|thumb]]
''Do I wish

''For it to end?

—'''We will not immerse ourselves in the past.

==Chapter 1: The Joy of an Outing==
[[Image:OnC_v14_0033.png|thumb]]
''Hidden feelings

''Can remain hidden

''They are personal and their joy can also be hidden in your heart

During the night, most of the light had vanished from the residential district, but one area remained lit by more than just the streetlights.

It was a large house surrounded by a wall.

The gate was open and a blue tarp was spread out just inside. A folded-up festival stand and its framework were piled up on the tarp and several people were working to put it away.

But one person sat out in front of the gate.

She was a woman wearing a leather jacket over a kimono. She sat on the gate’s curb and stared intently to the east.

The eyes behind her glasses were fixated on the dark residential district and the pale light in the sky beyond.

That faint brightness came from the lights shining up on the winter sky.

“Taka-Akita’s festival is still ongoing…”

Her comment received a response from the roof of the gate.

“Ms. Ryouko, waiting for Ms. Shino?”

“Yeah. Setsu-chan didn’t come back either, so I thought they might be playing together. Poyanski, you thought so too, didn’t you?”

A deep sound descended from afar. It seemed to shake the air as it travelled through the heavens.

“There have been a lot of planes today.”

“That was fighter jet.”

“I guess a former soldier would know that. Is there a war going on or something?”

Her question was answered by the young man in a suit who walked out from the gate.

“You always make things sound so dangerous, sister. From what we managed to intercept, it seems they’re holding some kind of night exercise in Kansai. But…”

“But what, Kouji?”

“There are more planes flying around than reported. And according to Toki-san, military bases in the West, Asia, the Middle East, and Russia are working together with Japan.”

Ryouko tilted her head.

“If that was true, it would be big news. There would be fighters flying around on a global scale.”

“That’s what doesn’t make sense.”

Kouji sat next to Ryouko and pulled two paper cups of coffee out from behind him.

“Bases around the world are working with Japan, but it seems no one can see any of the fighters.”

“No one can see them?”

“Like I said, the bases are really busy, but they can’t see the fighters.”

“Oh.” Ryouko nodded in understanding. “So the world’s super technology has created fighters that idiots can’t see. That would explain why you can’t see them but I can.”

“If you can see them, then tell me what’s flying overhead right now.”

She looked up in the sky and narrowed her eyes.

“Hmm. Ah! See!? It’s flying! It’s a twin-engine bomber with pink frills! Did that design come from Shibuya? Is it a Shibu-Bomber? That’s so cool!”

“Sister… You don’t have to get all worked up and lie about it.”

“I-I am not lying! I can see it! It’s flying right there! You can hear it cawing to the west!”

“Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, it sure is flying and cawing there. Yeah, no question about it.”

“What are you talking about, Kouji? Is there something wrong with your brain? Are you actually a moron? Oh, sorry. Should I not have asked that?”

“You said it first!”

“Give me some coffee and I’ll go easy on you.”

“Fine, fine.”

He held out one of the paper cups.

“Why is my sister so…”

He trailed off and looked up at the roof with the other cup.

“What about you, Poya-san?”

“Leave there and I will drink.”

“Pes has been asking for it for a while, so are you sure you want to leave it here?”

“I might not drink.”

“Sure, sure.”

Kouji set the cup on the edge of the gate’s lintel and then sat back on the curb.

“But ignoring all that activity, where has Shino-san gotten off to?”

“…”

“I haven’t seen her since she said she would buy us some drinks. Nagase-san, who was playing the Festival Stand Detective, forgot to rehydrate, so the next thing we knew, he was so dehydrated he began giving a confused roadside speech. It was something about demanding the return of the Northern Territories so he could turn them into the Bear Kingdom.”

“That would be problem. Penguin Land better name.”

“But everyone thought the speech was part of the show.”

“Best to ignore, Mr. Kouji.”

“Calm down.” Kouji sighed while quieting down the roof. “But after Nagase-san collapsed, we removed the mask and found him passed out with a refreshing smile on his face. Then again, it might have just been his face stiffening up from the dehydration. …Not that any of that is Shino-san’s responsibility.”

He then faced Ryouko who had fallen silent and he smiled bitterly.

“Do you think she isn’t coming back because the atmosphere here just wasn’t a good fit for- Why did you just collapse on your back and fall asleep, sister! At least listen to what I’m saying!”

“Eh? O-oh, sorry, Kouji. You were letting your love of little girls burst from your soul as all that pedo talk about Shi-chan, so I had to restrain myself so much I actually fell asleep. I was so serious the coffee’s caffeine didn’t stand a chance! So? Have you finished that filthy discussion, you genuine pedophile?”

“I-I didn’t say anything ‘filthy’.”

“And you won’t even admit it!? How was any of that not filthy? How are you not a pedo!? Honestly, I’m promoting you from genuine to super genuine! I hope you become a white dwarf and shrink away!”

“Not that it matters, but can’t I explode and become black hole instead?”

“Do you have any idea how much trouble that would cause the neighbors? And are you trying to become the center of a galaxy or something? What would your galaxy be called? The Genuine Galaxy? …Yay! I said it, I said it!”

Ryouko was so worked up that she stood and clapped her hands once. Responding claps came from the nearby wall, gate, and manhole.

She then turned around.

“So what were we talking about?”

“You’re the worst, sister!!”

“K-Kouji’s being a bully!!”

“Can you stop talking on reflex and actually use your left brain!? What is even in that half of your skull!?”

“P-probably…brains, I guess?”

“Please don’t sound so unsure.”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s not like you’ve ever seen inside your own head.” She took a sip of coffee. “Well, it doesn’t really matter, but Shi-chan has a big sister. You don’t have to worry about her too much, so get inside and make me a midnight snack.”

“I wasn’t actually out here to wait for her, you know?”

He stood up and let his shoulders droop a little.

“I have a feeling she isn’t coming back, so…”

“So you came here to tell me to stop waiting? Don’t be silly.” Ryouko smiled bitterly and sat back on the curb. “I’m waiting for Shi-chan to make sure I don’t have to wait for her anymore.”

“…”

“This is a ritual for me. And you know what?”

She looked up in the sky and heard an airplane fly from south to west.

“I like to think Shi-chan holds the fate of the world in her hands, so armies from around the world are chasing after her right now. Girls like to dream, you know?”

“That is quite the dangerous dream.”

“Wow, I could hear the young master saying that!!”

Kouji smiled a bit at that, but then sighed and took a step toward the gate.

“Well, you take care of things here, sister.”

“Yes, yes. Leave this to me. …Shi-chan will be okay.”

She took a breath.

“I’m sure she’s surrounded by good people.”

“Yes,” replied the roof. “But Ms. Ryouko, are you okay? Very cold outside. Da, very cold”

Ryouko answered the roof’s concern with a gunshot.

There was a great noise.

It was a high-pitched noise that reverberated through the sky.

The surging sound was created as the atmosphere was split apart and eight aircraft were visible at the front end.

They were twin-engine fighters equipped for a ground attack.

They travelled west below the moon and their sides were decorated with American UCAT’s emblem. They belonged to American UCAT’s Atsugi Base.

The massive payload of bombs attached below their wings and the accelerators attached above the wings rid them of a normal fighter’s silhouette.

The oddly-shaped eight were flying west through the Tokai region.

The northern of the two in the lead lit up his optical communication pod.

“R1, this is BA1. BA and BB have secured our course. Shifting into weight reduction flight.”

A response came from the control craft flying above Suruga Bay far behind them.

“Testament, BA1. BA and BB, maintain your course. Attack craft teams AA and AB have also detected no enemies on their approach from Okinawa.”

“Testament,” replied BA Team’s commander before sighing. “R1, how well are the different countries working together? I want to avoid a midair collision while we’re all using stealth.”

“Testament. It seems the UCAT bases near the Sea of Japan have become a showcase for the world’s fighters. And they’re all waiting for our results.”

“Testament. So we have to do our job right as the opening act, do we? I’m sure D Team’s mechanical dragons will clean everything up once they arrive.”

“Testament. But BA1…”

“I know,” replied BA1. “The enemy has two aircraft: one mechanical dragon and one god of war. …And I remember having all of our mechanical dragons shot down by that god of war a month and a half ago.”

Also…

“I hear the pilot of that white god of war defeated our blue and white mechanical dragon.”

“Testament,” replied R1 before saying what they thought BA1 needed to hear. “Don’t think about fighting. Fly straight in, scatter your bombs while accelerating, and get out of there.”

“I’m well aware. We don’t have the armor, hand-to-hand ability, or firepower of a mechanical dragon, but we still have our top speed since we’re smaller. This kind of mission is perfect for us.”

BA1 continued speaking while tearing through the wind in the lead.

“R1, has the girl of the blue and white dragon woken yet?”

“That is highly classified, so I can’t answer.”

Everyone listening smiled bitterly at the casual tone, but then someone spoke.

“Do you think that mechanical dragon will come back from the alternate space it was sent to?”

“Don’t rely on a girl,” succinctly replied BA1. “And I doubt she wants anyone to rely on her right now. ...Not when she’s lost her power.”

But as soon as he finished speaking…

“———!?”

His fighter broke apart and scattered through the sky.

Everyone inside the control craft designated R1 froze when they realized what had happened.

But a moment later, the American UCAT members escaped their surprised despondency and managed to speak or begin moving.

They had already lost the transmission from BA1 and…

“BA2, BB1…and BA3 were lost!”

After the communications officer finished her report, a shout came in from B Team.

“This is BB4! R1… What happened!?”

When they heard BB4, everyone in R1 thought, “You were just shot down.”

They all gulped because they did not know why, but the situation would not wait for them to catch up.

“B Team, scatter and ascend!”

“R1, what is going on!? It looks like we lost some fighters! But there was no explosion or anythi-…”

The next voice was accompanied by the static of being shot down.

“I’m breaking apart!”

“BB4 has been lost!”

The communications officer seemed to have difficulty giving the report.

“A Team’s attackers will arrive in thirty-two seconds!”

Hearing that, everyone turned to one point in the aircraft.

One of Japanese UCAT’s automatons had been deployed to man the radar that checked for philosopher’s stone readings.

The businesslike maid illuminated by the pale red light was named #66. The data from the battle against 3rd-Gear and from the Army’s attack on UCAT had been downloaded into her personal memory.

“I am detecting Typhon and Alex’s readings. Typhon’s is within thirty kilometers to the west, but its output is too weak for flight.”

However…

“I am detecting a philosopher’s stone reading elsewhere, but it only ever lasts an instant.”

“Elsewhere?”

“Testament,” replied #66 while noting that the screen indicated that BB3 had been shot down as well. “The reading appears on the fighters in the instant that they are shot down!”

As she spoke, the information she was receiving confirmed her suspicions, so she turned toward the other frowning people.

“This is not an attack by Typhon or Alex! This instantaneous output is only seen from a close-range attack of a handheld concept weapon!” she said. “The enemy is using a concept weapon to bring down the fighters directly without causing an explosion!!”

BA4 was ascending toward the moon when he saw BB2 break apart in the moonlight up above him.

There was no explosion.

Nor was it broken apart.

It simply scattered its pieces with no flames or smoke.

BA4 saw fragments, the frame, pieces of explosives that scattered without a detonation, and…

“!!”

Someone stood on his own fighter’s nose.

Moonlight washed over the back of a girl holding a curved blade.

The wind blew at her hair, combat coat, and skirt and she wore red pumps on her feet.

There was nothing BA4 could do.

He could not aim his machineguns at someone standing on the nose and the missiles were meant for ground strikes.

He considered accelerating so the wind would sweep her away, but he was already travelling at three times the speed of sound which was apparently not enough.

“…!”

He suddenly rolled to catch her off guard.

He added in a bit of yaw to swing the fighter around, but…

“Impossible!”

He had been trained to react to high-speed movement, so he saw it all.

The enemy kept up with the fighter’s movements simply by lowering her hips a little.

It looked a lot like she was riding a surfboard.

For just an instant, the moonlight revealed her expression.

Her mouth and eyes showed a silent smile.

She then opened that mouth and raised the sword.

“Surprised? I had Typhon throw me from below so I could pretend to be a human shell.”

BA4 recalled that Top-Gear had two female swordsmen. The younger was nearly immortal and the older had a strange concept weapon.

“That concept weapon absorbs its target’s attack and makes it its own.”

“Yes,” replied the smiling girl. “First, I stored one of Typhon’s blasts and used that to destroy one fighter after being throw here.”

She took a breath.

“Then I absorb the blast created by the explosion to recycle it against the next fighter.”

This enemy also controlled the direction of the destruction so that the recoil of the blast allowed her to hop to the next fighter.

They had scattered and ascended to see what their enemy was, but that enemy had moved to the first ascending fighter and worked her way down as she destroyed them.

And as for the sword she held…

“This is charged with the recycled explosions of eight fighters, so it will cause quite a boom if I use it all at once.”

At the same time, a transmission reached BA4’s ears.

It was the relieved voice of R1’s communications officer.

“BA4! A Team has arrived!”

He saw them both on the radar and with the naked eye. Eight attack craft were arriving from the west.

However, BA4 silently begged them to stay away.

As soon as they arrived, their enemy was going to hit him with the explosive power she had accumulated thus far.

It contained the explosions of eight ground-attack fighters, their explosives, and a blast from Typhon’s cannon.

That would undoubtedly burn through the sky and blow away everything there in an instant.

So BA4 tried to tell them to escape.

But in that moment, the skirt before his eyes fluttered upwards and he shouted something else instead.

“White!”

The enemy stabbed her sword downwards with a smile and BA4 scattered below the moonlight.

In the final moment, he saw her moonlit form.

Heo slowly awoke.

“…”

She seemed to have been placed in a bed on top of some fairly hard fabric.

But she did not know what position her body was in; she could not even guess.

She could not rouse any thoughts.

She felt like her mind was empty and like she was blankly watching herself from the outside.

She did not try to move or even consider it as a possibility.

Her consciousness was entirely closed.

She knew why: she did not want to remember.

If she did remember, she would also remember that there was nothing she could do.

And if there was nothing she could do, she had no power.

So there was no point in doing anything.

She was filled with a great sense of powerlessness.

Thinking about power only reminded her of the moment when she lost it.

If there was no point in being, then she thought she might as well die, but she could not even think about that too seriously and she simply tried to erase her thoughts as a substitute.

If she thought nothing, she would not lose anything. If she hoped for nothing, she would not feel anything.

The only thing at the base of her powerless thoughts was the decision to stay still and let others ignore her.

She wanted to go to some dark place.

She wanted to go to some quiet place.

She wanted to go to some solitary place.

And she felt like that wish was being granted. She felt like a wall separated her from her skin, but that skin felt air which was chilly enough to be called cold and her ears sensed silence.

“———”

She opened her eyes, but not of her own will.

She had simply abandoned even the strength she needed to keep her eyelids shut.

Even keeping her eyes shut had felt like doing something, so her eyes opened and she stared blankly forward.

She should have seen the white wall of the infirmary, but she instead saw the night sky.

Not only that, but she had a full view of that sky and all the stars therein.

“Eh?”

She was lying in a bed, but there were no windows, walls, or ceiling. There was not even a floor.

“…!?”

Fear over this unknown situation won out over her self-imposed stupor.

Her pulse raced and she sat up as she wondered what had happened.

She then realized that this was at the top of a mountain cliff and her bed had been placed on the edge of that cliff.

The bed was the reclining type used in hospitals and its white frame and blanket had been placed on the grassy clifftop such that she was looking up into the sky.

“So you’re finally up, Heo Thunderson.”

She turned toward the sudden voice to her side and saw a boy sitting at the head of the bed on the side closer to the mountain. His right arm held a machinegun encased in a white cowling.

“Harakawa?”

He did not turn her way.

He simply stared ahead and said nothing more.

His silence confused her. Why was he not saying anything?

That was when the sky split open.

Sudden red split through the dark blue of the starry and moonlit sky.

The silence was broken by a bursting sound of impact and crimson flames blossomed in the sky.

For just a moment, Heo knew what that crimson light was, but something else escaped her mouth.

“Why…?”

She gasped a bit as she looked into the sky.

She gulped, tensed her shoulders, and slowly opened her mouth again.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Don’t ask the obvious, Heo. Heo Thunderson.”

She snapped back at the word “obvious”.

“How is this obvious?”

She spoke quietly, but that was enough to sap her of strength.

She was closing up.

But she continued to speak because she wanted him to understand this at the very least.

“I have no power right now.”

However, Harakawa did not turn toward her.

She only heard him speak a quick question.

“So what, Heo Thunderson?”

This time, Harakawa did turn toward Heo.

There was more noise in the sky, so there was likely light as well.

However, he only looked at her pale face with tears welling up in the eyes.

“There is a battlefield for you whether you have any power or not.”

He could also hear noise from beyond the forest visible west of the cliff.

The American UCAT troops that had dropped them off here had engaged the enemy.

They were fighting with no air support and they would likely change their mission from an assault to a diversion.

Japanese UCAT had yet to arrive, but he knew they had to be nearby since they intended to charge in after American UCAT’s attack.

''But,'' he thought.

“I don’t know if those crazy people can win this time.”

There was a reason for that.

“First, Sayama doesn’t have Shinjou, so he can’t raise his bizarre excitement gauge to max. Also, the violent comedy couple have lost their Concept Core weapon pets. And of course, Hiba has been without Mikage so long he can act without thinking while also having Susamikado off limits.”

“That’s quite an accurate analysis.”

“Yes.” He nodded and looked Heo in the eye. “And we don’t have Thunder Fellow.”

Heo shrank back, but he did not care.

He spoke the truth without holding back.

“Our strength has fallen considerably and our enemy could keep up with us before. That means…”

That meant…

“Our enemy is far more powerful than us right now.”

And…

“There’s another problem.”

“Eh?”

Wind swept her question away.

It was the cold winter wind of a mountain.

The whiteness of her breath made the air seem all the more invisible.

And Harakawa spoke to add meaningful color to that transparency.

“I’m talking about Babel, Heo.”

He looked up at the sky above the mountain.

Beyond the forest, a great tower pierced the heavens in the dim light.

“Based on the documents he found he can read now, Sayama concluded that Babel has been partially active ever since ten years ago to restrain the activated negative concepts contained inside. And since Babel is Noah, the Top-Gear residents will be allowed in.”

He took a breath.

“Noah will treat the people of Top-Gear like gods and do whatever they say. It can create concepts as instructed by its ‘gods’, so Top-Gear can now influence this entire world.”

“B-but…!”

Heo threw her words his way, so he turned around.

As if to surpass the cold wind, she held a hand to her chest with the night sky in the background.

“What can I do in such an important fight!?”

“I have fingers, so I can pull a trigger.”

Harakawa immediately answered her and stood from the bed.

“I have eyes, so I can see the enemy approaching.”

He spoke.

“I have a mouth, so I can inform people of things.”

He continued speaking.

“I have ears, so I can grasp the situation on the battlefield.”

And…

“I have a body, so I can show people that something is there to support them.”

Also…

“Everyone has this much, Heo Thunderson. …Most people don’t have the kind of power we did.”

''Now that I think about it, Sayama’s the representative example of that,'' thought Harakawa.

Heo stared blankly up at him and he spoke toward her powerless eyes.

“But even if I lost my power, I can still drive a motorcycle and I have pretty good eyes. It’s no more of an advantage than anyone else, but that kind of advantage is important on the battlefield.”

What about you?

“Being the same as everyone else doesn’t make you powerless, Heo Thunderson. If you make good use of the slight advantages you have, they will bring even more power. And if you continue to train those advantages and accumulate even more…”

''You’ll probably become the kind of person people call stupid.

''But,'' he thought. ''What about you?

“In battles, everyone is shorthanded. Everyone wants someone by their side when things are feeling hopeless and they want something to protect. The battlefield is for the people who can fight, but more than that…it’s a helpless place that is always asking for help.”

He looked straight at Heo from where he stood.

“So. Are you willing to reach out to the battlefield that is asking for help?” he asked. “And I know it’s a little late for this…but put on some clothes, Heo Thunderson. They’re on the edge of the bed.”

“Eh?”

Heo looked down at herself.

The blanket had fallen from her upper body when she sat up, so it was completely bare.

“Eh? Ah, w-wait. What is this!?”

“It was your teacher that removed your clothes, so don’t ask me. She also put you on the transport helicopter.”

“W-wait a second! Removing some of them is one thing, but why am I completely naked!?”

“Isn’t that your cruel personal skill? Also, Germans are all perfectionists.”

“Y-you find a reason for everything, don’t you!?”

To protest, she gathered the blanket in front of her chest and pounded on the bed.

“Then why…why is everyone trying to get me to fight!?”

She hit the bed again as she shouted.

“Tell me that! Because I’ve lost track of why I’m even here!”

Harakawa heard a shaking sound as she hit the bed.

Heo’s eyebrows were raised in anger, but her face was gradually rising and leaning backwards.

“Huh? Harakawa?”

“What is it, Heo?”

“For some reason, I can see the sky even though I’m sitting up.”

“Yeah, and it looks to me like you and the bed are tipping backwards.”

“Oh, c’mon, Harakawa. You make it sound like the bed is shaking and falling off the cliff.”

“If that was enough for you to understand, I must be better with words than I thought. The bed’s about to reach a ninety degree tilt.”

And it did.

Heo was thrown out into the air.

She gasped as the bed toppled over.

It seemed to scrape her right shoulder as it rotated around to point straight down.

…''The sky…

She was tipped a bit on her back, wrapped in the blanket, and falling.

She felt weightless and the night sky quickly grew more distant.

There was a drop of around a dozen meters behind her.

If she fell, she would die.

She would be no more.

And at the bottom of her vision, she saw Harakawa standing on the edge of the cliff.

…''Harakawa.

But she noticed that he was not trying to help her.

He simply stared at her while still holding the gun.

He did not budge.

She felt like he was pushing her away.

Did she not matter to him?

…''Even I thought I didn’t matter…

And now the person she most wanted to understand her was pushing her away.

''Then this must be the end,'' she thought.

…''Eh?

She noticed a certain fact and a certain contradiction.

First, the fact.

Who did she most want to understand her even as she felt she did not matter?

Wasn’t it Harakawa, the one who had chosen to entrust this with her even though she did not matter?

But that created a contradiction.

Why did she need to choose the end if Harakawa understood her?

Why would that be the case if he had given her his understanding?

She had no power. She was physically weak, she was young, she was short, and her breasts were small. Her breasts and her butt had grown a little recently, although she did not plan to announce that fact until it was more visually noticeable and she had no idea what she was thinking about anymore, but in short, she was powerless.

But she was not alone.

So what should she choose now: the stars visible in the sky or the motionless boy?

“…”

She gulped as she fell.

She was already passing below the edge of the cliff.

The blanket wrapped around her began to flutter in the wind and gravity pulled her downwards.

It was too late.

She had noticed her contradiction and what she wanted, but it was too late now.

However, she saw a new crimson flower blossom in the sky.

In that brief moment, she moved. She reached her hand toward the sky as if to pluck those flower petals.

She thrust her hand skyward and she received an answer.

A power forcibly stretched her body.

It was Harakawa’s hand grasping her own hand.

“It’s all right.”

Her body shook and her entire weight bore down on her right hand and shoulder.

But her entire body was lifted upwards. It was a slow movement that could not quite be called an ascent.

“Yes, there is only one reason, Heo. As I said, it’s ‘all right’. In other words, everything is ‘right’. So it’s all right, Heo.”

She saw him raise his eyebrows in a smile as he pulled up her hand.

“Let’s get to the battlefield, Heo. The idiots will be there soon, too.”

Light raced through darkness.

The light rushing through the forest at the bottom of a mountain was a high speed train.

However, it was already late at night, so no such train should have been running.

Nevertheless, the streamlined front car towed the rest of the cars as they broke through the wind on their westward journey.

Not all of the cars were for passengers.

A few specialized transportation cars were positioned right after the front car and behind the passenger cars.

Also, the passenger cars were covered in armor and figures were visible on their roofs.

Those figures were automatons wearing combat maid uniforms.

Two automatons stood atop the transport container loaded on the second car. They stared sharply forward and sent out their shared thoughts.

“Our current speed is two hundred and seventy kilometers per hour. I have determined we have made up for the time lost transferring over from the transport helicopter.”

“This is an excellent train. But I never knew IAI was developing anything like this.”

They looked down at the racing vehicle below their feet.

“This next generation high-speed train has a top speed of four hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, and yet it is a high-speed stealth train that counteracts the sounds of collisions by creating buffer bands between the cars.”

“They wanted to name it after the fact that riding it is so nice it actually feels good, so they had someone sum up that idea in a single word.”

The automatons looked to the side of the car.

Someone had used a brush to paint “Creepy” in large letters.

“I have determined this is incomprehensible.”

“Testament. We are about to leave the Tokaido Line, so get ready down below.”

Those shared memories were sent to #8, the automaton inside one of the armored passenger cars.

Inside the long passenger car, #8 listened to the report from the automatons on the roofs.

It was almost time to enter the battle.

However, she tried to be considerate. So as not to rush those around her, she served tea and coffee to the people in armored uniforms sitting in the rows of three seats and then slowly spoke.

“Okay, break’s over.”

“Ehhh! Already!?”

Hearing them shout, she wondered if she had worked a little too hard making the break seem nice.

But she refocused and looked across everyone there.

“The Creepy is about to enter autonomous mode. We will accelerate to gain some inertial force, so I have determined the drinks I just served will be your last time to rest.”

“Testament,” replied everyone inside the white light of the car.

They were all from Japanese UCAT’s special division and most of them were from Team Leviathan.

Izumo and Kazami were amusing themselves by playing cards with Sibyl and Boldman while the others were looking down at their card version of mahjong or their handheld game systems.

“Report. American UCAT failed to achieve air superiority over the Mount Ikoma region. They now plan to send their mechanical dragons in by land.”

Everyone clearly focused on the incoming transmission.

After a moment, light boards were handed over the backs of the seats and passed out to everyone. They displayed the documents that each platoon and company used to confirm with their commander what they should do.

Each time a new announcement came in, the text would gain details or additional opinions. By the time they set foot on the battlefield, each commander would know what they needed to do.

…''But…

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> looked to her side.

Sayama sat alone in the very first row of seats.

His seat was fully reclined, a towel covered his eyes, and Baku sat on his head as he slept.

…''Will he be okay?

She had heard that Shinjou was badly injured and also in conceptual danger.

He received regular updates on her state by cellphone, but the situation did not look good. He had finally gone to sleep after Ooki had promised to email him if anything changed.

There was nothing #8 could do, but the very fact that she could not think of any kind of plan made her painfully aware of the wasted cycles of her activity clock.

But he asked nothing of her.

She felt this time waiting for instructions was wasted, but…

…''This means that he is okay.

She upped the thought priority level of that fact she could take from her records. She told herself not to think about anything else or to make unnecessary decisions.

A maid only had to trust in her master because an automaton would not serve someone she could not trust.

Suddenly, she thought of the Moirai.

The Gear reservations had decided to maintain their silence on the current situation.

That was obviously because they had decided the conflict between Top-Gear and Low-Gear was still ongoing.

They had entrusted everything to the Leviathan Road meeting and had said they were waiting for the results.

The Concept Cores must have had a similar understanding because they did not display any kind of desire to be saved.

The only people from other Gears taking part in this attack were the automatons and the people from 2nd or 6th who had joined UCAT and Low-Gear.

But #8 sent Moira 1st access to her shared thoughts and asked what to do when her master looked about to lose heart.

They had given each other access permissions when they had met the other day. She had assumed she could make use of her downtime by receiving some new information or tips.

“Moira 1st-sama.”

After connecting, auditory information streamed in from Moira 1st.

“Yes, Lady Miyako, tonight’s dinner is your favorite instant ramen: Drenched #1 – Soy Sauce Flavor. Say ‘ah’, Lady Miyako.”

“Hold on. That’s really not something you do with ramen.”

“Ehhh? You don’t want to? Does it have to have mayonnaise for that?”

“That isn’t the issu-... What do you think the rest of you are looking at!?”

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> did not listen any longer because it would be an invasion of their privacy. She determined it was an event mission to raise their master-maid intimacy level.

…''If only Sayama-sama would give me that kind of opportunity.

''No,'' she determined. ''Those opportunities are probably being given to Shinjou-sama.

''In that case, I want to set things up for the two of them,'' she thought while closing her eyes.

She cooled her thoughts with a sigh and looked to Sayama.

She simply pulled a blanket from the container above the window and placed it over him, but she felt that was enough. The train would enter autonomous mode in just a few minutes.

With the blanket on him, Sayama stirred a bit and spoke in his sleep as if groaning.

“Ahhh, Shinjou-kun, you are so bold… Y-you cannot mean it. You’re taking it all in your mouth…and…and swallowing it? Yes, if you are going to drink all of the soup, it has to be this high-calorie, high-sodium Drenched #1!”

After noticing he seemed to be having a good dream, she debated whether she should inform Moira 1st of this synchronicity or plainly tell him that instant ramen made you fat. But before she made a decision, she heard someone speak from the opposite seat.

“Are we almost to the battlefield, #8-kun?”

She turned around to find Ooshiro and simply glared at him.

“Why are you here?”

“Wah! You’ve already decided I’m an outcast!? Are you shunning me!? You are, aren’t you!?”

“Please quiet down. More importantly, Ooshiro-sama, are you familiar with the word ‘useless’?”

He raised his hands as a sign of protest.

“I-I am to useful!”

She nodded and accurately reproduced an expression she had recently learned.

“Ooshiro-sama, is this the appropriate way of expressing disrespect? I am still not used to this expression.”

“That’s not just disrespect! That’s a look of pure contempt!”

“Testament. Thank you very much. As it was received much better than expected, I will make ample use of it from now on. Anyway, Ooshiro-sama, you are too thin to act as a shield and get in our way too much to act as a wall, so can’t you do something about that?”

“W-well, you see… I’m quite useful. I have intelligence, strength, and beauty!!”

He stood up and struck a flirtatious pose, so #8 looked around.

She saw the others waving their hands in front of their faces, so she nodded.

“Ooshiro-sama. Please choose one of the following: 1. Pretend you never said that. 2. Take back what you said. 3. Die and apologize. …Which would you like?”

The others all wrote “3! 3!” on their light boards and raised them high, but #8 shook her head.

“You mustn’t do that, everyone. I have determined this is a problem Ooshiro-sama must solve on his own.”

“#-#8-kun, you are surprisingly fair. I’m a little moved.”

“Testament.” She nodded and slapped his head thrice. “Now, please think carefully. 3 is the only real option, after all.”

“How is that thinking carefully!?”

''The majority already decided for you, so stop being so selfish,'' she thought just as an electronic tone played from the car’s speakers.

“Um, uh, um, in thirty minutes, the, uh, Creepy will…enter autonomous mode. Uh, we will begin, uh, accelerating soon, so, uh, all passengers had better stay in your damn seats!! …Uh, I mean please remain seated.”

They all sat back down and #8 started to sit in a nearby seat but hesitated.

However, she ultimately took the seat behind Sayama instead of her usual one.

At the same time, she saw the boy slowly sit up in the seat in front of her.

He raised the seat, so she could not see him, but she heard him.

“#8-kun, thank you for the blanket. …It was short, but I had a wonderful dream. I appreciate it.”

She compared his voiceprint with one from the past but found it was lacking something.

''But,'' she thought. ''If he is willing to thank the one who serves him, he must have regained his awareness that he is my master.

''So he should be fine,'' she decided while speaking with the others via shared memory.

“Get ready. We are about to accelerate.”

A moment later, that was exactly what they did.

The automatons standing atop the high-speed train created a wall of gravitational control to combat the pressure of the wind as they accelerated.

Their clothes, hair, and everything else fluttered and bent in the wind.

“And our hearts only bend to the will of our master!”

The maids saw the track turn a bit to the north. The Tokaido Line turned north to the Kyoto region and then south toward Osaka.

The track had no sharp curves, so the trains could maintain their speed. It was a gradual but definite northward turn.

However…

“That will not take us to the Mount Ikoma region in south Osaka!”

Then what were they to do?

The answer was given by the shouts of the two automatons standing on the front car.

“Prepare autonomous mode!!”

They were answered by the maids standing on the transport container on the second car.

“Prepare!!”

An automaton rushed from both emergency exits on each car.

They pushed at the wind with their gravitational control. There was one on either side of the twelve cars for a total of twenty four.

They all spread their hands outward.

“Contact!”

As soon as they yelled that word, the white pallet covering the second car suddenly leaped into the air.

The wind carried the giant lid into the night sky and something was revealed below.

“Track Facility Mechanism ‘Moirai’! Begin deployment!”

A giant spindle machine rose from the car.

The mechanism was seven meters tall, twenty meters long, and shaped like an upside-down iron. It had twelve giant spindles on either side, but those spindles were not wrapped with thread.

They were wrapped with rails and the front spindles launched those iron threads.

The two metal rails broke the sound barrier as they flew forward.

The twin lines of steel tore through the night and passed the front car, but the automatons on the front car did not overlook them.

“Begin spinning!!”

Those front two used their full gravitational control to draw the flying tracks toward their hands.

They bent the metal thread down as if rotating it around to the nose of the front car.

“Contact!!”

At the same time, the four automatons standing to the front of the second car stepped down on the back of the front car’s roof.

The high-gravity attack bent the roof, but it also noticeably lifted the nose of the car.

And the car landed atop the track being released from that very same train.

Now that it was on its self-laid path, it only had to continue on.

The spinning machine spun out the track, the automatons on the front car pulled it in, and the maids on the back car supported the bottom of the autonomous track with their gravitational control.

All of this created one thing.

“A high-speed train which can choose its own path!”

The two on the front car accurately bent the track toward the sky.

The sonic train moved at greater than four hundred kph as its own track carried it into empty air.

One of the spindles was exhausted in no time at all.

“Only twenty six kilometers until we arrive!”

“I have determined we have enough to spare!”

The automatons smiled amid the roar of the wind and the creaking of metal.

Gravitational control was their own technique and they were measuring levels of output they had never seen before.

Where did their limits lie?

As the moonlit automatons learned just that, they expressed the feeling with a single word: pleasant.

After all, they were fulfilling their job. That job was to transport the fighters to the battlefield.

And this was a job only they could do. What word would better describe that than pleasant?

The overheating, creaking, excessive calculations, and all the other burdens felt truly pleasant to them.

The train raced through the night sky.

The wind was cooling, the night was heavy, and the sounds were those of work.

“———!!”

They flew through the dark night toward some moonlit mountains.

They had already passed over the fields and reached the forest at the base of the mountains.

An expressway was visible below and they used that asphalt as a stepping stone.

“Here we go!”

The train leaped once more.

This time, they flew beyond the southern forest and into the mountains.

Based on the information gathered before leaving, there was a river there and they could follow it to the eastern Mount Ikoma region.

It was a fifteen kilometer journey which would take less than three minutes at their current speed.

They flew.

As if throwing their entire bodies forward, the automatons become one with their speed and desired to advance.

Shadowy trees raced by on either side and a river reflected the moon below.

They continued on.

The roaring sound and the wind bent the trees and the shockwave of their passing sent a reverse cascade of water and leaves into the sky after they passed.

The automatons had linked their sight and hearing devices as they focused only on their destination.

They kept on a straight line toward the mountains that had produced the river below.

…''Here we go.

They all thought the same thing.

…''We pull the humans onward to mountains filled with nature.

This was something they had been unable to do in 3rd-Gear.

It was always near the top on the lists of things they wanted to do, but it was always pushed further and further down the list.

They had made all of the food and drink being handed out inside the train.

It would have been perfect had it been daytime and sunny.

It did not matter whether they were heading into battle or not.

The goal was for the master to decide. The means was for the maid to decide.

A trip to the mountains required a box lunch.

And now, they were pulling the humans onward. Just like a maid leading her master to some flowers she had found in the mountains, they predicted what would make their masters happy and guided them to the battlefield.

Such a happy battle.

But…

“———!?”

The automatons on the front car saw an explosion.

The trees on either side of the river up ahead were suddenly blasted into the sky.

There was no sound. When breaking the sound barrier, that was to be expected.

Something charged toward them at faster than the speed of sound.

“That is…a mechanical dragon!” shouted an automaton’s mind.

A mechanical dragon with red, white, and blue armor flew their way with its main cannon mouth already opened.

It had been lying in wait to attack them.

There was only an instant until the attack, but the automatons continued their work. They continued spinning the track without fear.

“Good luck!!”

Alex did not hesitate.

Eighty percent of his armor had been replaced, but his frame had only had charms for the automatic healing of metal attached and his injuries were not yet healed.

Even so, he did not hesitate.

While Typhon was being worked on, Tatsumi had let it throw her so she could hold onto their air superiority. Similarly, it was his job to prevent Team Leviathan from rushing in.

Mikoku had already entered Babel on Noah’s guidance.

After ensuring their air superiority, Tatsumi had shifted to defense.

The others were deployed in formation and plenty of dolls had been sent out.

So Alex did not hesitate.

“This is a showdown!!”

He flew straight toward the train that acted like a long, subsonic shell.

He had no intention of firing on it from hiding or from the side.

…''Justice is justice because it brings its righteousness head-on!<ref>A play on words using the kanji for “justice”.</ref>

So he accelerated.

“Destroy the enemy on sight! Alex Forcer!!”

He prepared to fire his main cannon, but he saw something just before he did.

As the train continued to spin its track and rush forward, the roof of one of the back cars blasted into the sky.

The white lid was cast aside like a cloak to reveal what lay below.

“A black god of war!?”

That was precisely what stood up.

However, this was not Tatsumi’s enemy, Susamikado.

It was a similar yet different model.

“Is that Susahito Custom!?”

As if to answer, Susahito Custom calmly moved.

It forcefully stood in the wind and water vapor trailed from the corners of its armor.

“…!”

It held an anti-god of war rifle.

Alex recognized it as one of those used in the fight against Typhon.

Normally, it would not have been enough to break through a mechanical dragon’s armor.

However, their relative speeds and his imperfect state could change that.

“Bring it on!!”

He shouted and they both fired.

A moment later, the earth and the sky exploded along a straight line and that signaled the beginning of the battle.

<noinclude>
===Notes===
<references/>
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|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume14_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume13 Chapter 42

2015-05-10T06:11:01Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 42: Their Respective Conclusions */

==Chapter 42: Their Respective Conclusions==
[[Image:OnC_v13_0553.png|thumb]]
''The two of us are close

''And that is exactly why we are so distant

People remained in the Kinugasa Library even after night fell.

A lot of the school’s students lived in the dorms and the year-end festival had a lot of late-night stands and events because no one had to worry about tests or classes. And with the chill of winter outside, people naturally filled the library which doubled as a large rest area.

Currently, Shinjou sat across from one of those guests.

“Why are you here, Ryouko-san?”

Ryouko’s outfit consisted of a leather jacket over her kimono.

“Hm? We run a stand here every year. All of the shops in the area do. We sponsor the festival, you know? I think Kouji’s running a yakisoba stand today. He said something about it being superb since he has someone from the dish’s homeland working on it. How about we go mooch some off of him later, Setsu-chan?”

''What country is yakisoba from?'' wondered Shinjou, but she decided not to ask.

Ryouko looked around and smiled.

“But you know what? This is my first time at the school’s festival.”

“Really?”

“I think I had some issues holding me back.”

She waved a hand with a smile, rested her head on her hand, and continued looking around.

“I was really missing out.”

She looked deeper into the library where students from the weightlifting club were cosplaying as nudists and getting into a philosophical argument with the public morals committee over whether their state of undress counted as a costume or not.

“We only look nude because you’re looking with your eyes! Stop being so filthy and look at us with the eyes of your heart!!”

“You look just as naked to our hearts!!”

The public morals committee wielded stun guns and the muscular nudist cosplayers held barbell weights like cymbals. An excited crowd gathered around them and Ryouko gave a comment while watching from the side.

“Can’t they just hide their crotches behind those round weights? Right, Setsu-chan?”

“D-don’t ask me about that… And if they did, what do they do with the bars?”

Ryouko stared up at the ceiling and thought for about three seconds before a surprised look came over her.

“Wow, you’re so dirty, Setsu-chan!!”

“H-how!? I am not dirty!”

However, Ryouko bent back as if she could not endure that response.

“You! Pass!!”

She then slapped Shinjou on the shoulder.

…''She’s a lot like an old man.

Ryouko laughed, leaned back forward, and looked at Shinjou.

She then suddenly looked down at the desk in front of Shinjou.

Shinjou had placed a laptop and something else there.

“Setsu-chan, what’s that pile of paper?”

“Hm?”

Shinjou looked down at the paper that was still warm from when she had printed it off.

The stack was over ten centimeters thick and had the same full softness as fresh-baked bread. Each page had about twenty lines of text on the left and right sides.

It was a novel.

It was the novel she had written and just now finished.

When she realized Ryouko had noticed it and remembered what she had accomplished, she could not keep her cheeks from relaxing.

“Well… I made one.”

“A baby!?”

“You would fit in pretty well at this school, you know!?”

“Really!? Then I think I’ll enroll! I’ll be your and the young master’s underclassman starting next year, okay?”

Their raised voices drew the attention of the surrounding people and the nudist cosplayers.

A naked third year placed his weight-holding hands on his hips and frowned their way.

“Now, now, you two. You need to stay quiet in the library.”

“But…you can be naked?”

“What does nudity have to do with being quiet?”

“Understood,” weakly replied Shinjou as she and Ryouko bowed.

After about seven seconds, Ryouko leaned her way and looked at the novel.

“That’s the first time I’ve been scolded by a naked person. Now, let’s get back on topic. …So it’s a novel?”

“Yes.”

Hearing that, Ryouko’s eyes opened wide and she straightened up.

“Wow. You wrote all this?”

“I-is it that much? I knew what I wanted to write and, when I let it all out, it ended up like this…”

Ryouko nodded and gave an impressed cry.

“So you had a whole bunch building up inside you and you worked hard to get it all out of you?”

“D-don’t say things people will take the wrong way, Ryouko-san.”

However, Shinjou could sense what Ryouko meant.

The woman was surprised and was praising her.

Ryouko of course did not know ''what'' Shinjou had written.

And Shinjou had no intention of getting it published. It was just a personal hobby.

However, Ryouko had commented on the mere fact that she had written a novel.

''I see,'' she thought.

…''I’m being praised for something I did myself.

She did not know what that meant, but it briefly reminded her of the previous night.

They had done something for the world and that would link them all together.

And just now she had made Ryouko think something about her.

“…Is that how it works?”

She nodded and woke from her thoughts to see Ryouko give an impressed sigh and look back and forth.

“Is the young master at work?”

“Yes. I don’t think he’ll be back until late at night today.”

“I see,” said Ryouko. “Want to go get some yakisoba from Kouji?”

Shinjou started to wonder if she should, but Ryouko said something more.

“Shi-chan’s helping him right now, so should I call for her?’

“Shino-san is?”

It surprised her to know that girl was at the festival.

And she also knew Sayama was inside a concept space set up within the school.

He had chosen the location of his beginning for the final showdown.

Shinjou did not know who his opponent would be, but it would definitely be someone Shino knew.

…''It might be bad if she notices.

So Shinjou shook a hand side to side.

“Um, no, thanks. Yeah, you don’t have to buy me any yakisoba.”

“Really?”

Ryouko’s doubtful tone meant she did not believe Shinjou, so Shinjou panicked a little and stood up.

“Oh, but maybe I should go take a look. Then I can decide if I’m in the mood.”

“So I’ll be waiting here?”

Ryouko shrugged and looked to the laptop and pile of paper.

“Can I read it?”

“Sorry, but I already know who I want to read it first.”

“It’s the young master, isn’t it?”

She asked with a smile and Shinjou smiled back and nodded.

“I’ll be right back,” she said while rushing toward the library exit.

As she did, she wondered what Sayama and the others were doing at the moment.

A dividing line between light and darkness existed on the edge of the festival.

The light was filled with enjoyment while the darkness supported that light from outside.

That borderline between light and darkness was made up of festival stands surrounding the dancing ground.

One stand on the southwest end of the large schoolyard was selling yakisoba. Its sign said “Festival Stand Detective – Yakisoban” as well as “Agedama Blade”.

The stand was run by a foreigner who spoke a mysterious Swahili-like language, someone in a red and yellow Festival Stand Detective costume with lots of lit decorations, a young man easily speaking with them in Japanese, and a girl sitting in a seat next to them and chopping vegetables.

The detective costume must have been hot inside because he would occasionally crouch down and stop moving, but it did not affect the stand.

The transistor radio hanging from the top of the stand informed them it was now half past six.

After handing a customer their change, the young man looked to the girl.

He pulled a few coins from the bamboo basket he kept the change in and held them out toward the girl.

She turned around and was noticeably surprised to see the coins. She tried to refuse a few times, but the young man pointed at himself, the foreigner mixing soba with amazing skill, and the detective directly cooling himself by shoving his head in a bucket of water. He then held out the coins again.

The girl still hesitated, but she did take the coins.

She held them tightly as something precious and a gentle smile came to her lips.

She then grabbed the crutch leaning against the chair and began to walk.

She bowed toward the men in the stand, placed her jacket over her shoulders, and opened the canopy placed over the side of the stand.

Supported by the crutch, she seemed to move away from the darkness behind her.

She walked into the light and all the people there.

The school was empty.

Only the reserve lights and the outside lights were on, so the schoolyard was poorly lit.

However, a few forms were visible on the athletic grounds in front of the school building.

One was a boy in a suit.

The other was a girl in an armored uniform.

And the others…

“The Concept Cores have gathered here.”

The boy turned toward the transport pallets and the swords stabbed into the schoolyard.

“Are you all here to see the conclusion?”

As if to agree with the girl, the Concept Cores all glowed faintly. It was a pale light, much like moonlight.

“My side has 7th-Gear’s Dragon Balls and 9th-Gear’s B-Sp,” said the boy. “And you…”

He looked at the forms that resembled differently sized towers.

“3rd-Gear’s Keravnos and 5th-Gear’s Vesper Cannon, hm?”

“You cannot judge them based on their size. And the other four Concept Cores are surrounding the two of us. …This must mean there were two draws, one victory, and one defeat. In other words, the world is still in equilibrium.”

The boy looked to the sword standing before him.

It was a wooden sword, but it had not been carved. It was a branch that had naturally taken that form.

“Mukiti chose this and resides within it, so that he could ‘be with Sayama’.”

“Then,” replied the girl with a long sword standing before her as well. “I will take Totsuka, 2nd-Gear’s Concept Core. I will use the power of my name…and carve life.”

She seemed to be asking for confirmation in the dim light, but the boy only nodded at first.

“I see,” he said before tilting his head. “Where is your dog?”

“He is not my dog and I did not want anyone to think I had help here, so I had him wait at the concept space’s boundary.”

“The students with nothing better to do will be unable to leave him alone. Those who live in the dorms are always starving for a pet.”

“They eat dogs?”

“You just said something amazing, you know?”

“Did I?” She smiled a bit and must have recalled the festival outside. “But anyway, this is a nice place.”

“It is,” agreed the boy.

The two of them then slowly breathed in and reached for the weapons in front of them.

“Sayama Mikoto, Low-Gear Representative and ruler of the world.”

“Toda Mikoku, Top-Gear Representative and someone who wants to live a simple life.”

After naming themselves, they prepared their weapons.

“En garde!!”

Shino walked through the festival with her crutch.

She was on the way back from buying four canned drink she held under her left arm below the jacket draped over her shoulders.

…''Kouji said I could buy something and eat it, but…

She had not known what would be best to buy, so she had instead had fun seeing as much as she could.

The schoolyard was large and there was a dance at the center. Their stand was to the southwest and the vending machines were near the school buildings to the north. She had intentionally chosen the longer counterclockwise route to the east, so it had taken her nearly half an hour.

After making her purchase, she had taken the shorter western route instead.

On the way, she had seen the general pattern of the stands.

There was yakisoba, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, water candy, chocolate bananas, candied apples, target practice, human target practice, die cutting, 3D figurine die cutting, string lottery, nude string lottery, fortunetelling, and “exciting” fortunetelling.

Shino had seen a lot of it on her way there, but it was all new enough to her that it still felt fresh.

In the distance, she heard a muffled moan followed by a ringing bell.

“We have a first prize winner in the nude string lottery! Oh, they’re passing out. They’re really passing out!”

''Someone was lucky,'' thought Shino with a deep nod.

A soccer goal had been moved almost to the edge of the schoolyard. It was shoved between two stands and it seemed really big to Shino.

Also…

“Why is there a surfboard here?”

A surfboard was stuck in the ground about sixty centimeters from the edge of the schoolyard. It almost looked like some kind of sign, but then she noticed a color there.

It was the color white. It was the color of a beast. Despite all the food stands surrounding it, the color intently faced the center of the festival.

“…Shiro?”

The large dog turned toward her.

Its black eyes looked at her and they both reacted.

Shiro gave a start, suddenly got up, and ran toward her.

Shino gasped and watched the dog approach without moving.

“Why are you here?”

Deep down, she knew the answer.

She had last seen Shiro on the night of the attack. The landslide had separated them.

And who had been with them then?

…''No.

She told herself to forget it, that this was not the time to approach that, and that she needed to think about something else.

“———”

The next thing she knew, Shiro had circled around to her left. Without looking at her face, he pressed his shoulder to her waist and tried to push. It was almost as if he was trying to move her away from the center of the festival.

That clued Shino in

“Is she…in the festival?”

Shiro did not answer. He simply tried to push her away from the festival.

And as Shino looked to the center of the dancing, she realized something.

…''No, she isn’t actually in the festival.

The person who she was still not willing to draw up from the depths her heart was not skillful enough to dance with these Low-Gear people.

She was someone who could not face Shino until she had settled everything.

She was someone who refused to face her even though she knew it was a necessary part of settling everything.

She was someone who refused to face her not ''despite'' the power she had, but ''because of'' that power.

She was someone who believed she would harm someone and something precious.

Shino knew she would not be here now if that person had faced her.

Shino knew she would also not be here if she had tried to face that person.

That person refused to face this world and thus could not dance with this world.

She refused to face them but desired to fight them.

She thought she only had to avoid harming what mattered most to her, so she fought without even looking at those precious things.

And so she would choose to fight somewhere where no one could see her.

…''A concept space.

Shiro knew where she was and what she was trying to do.

…''Is it a showdown between Low-Gear and Top-Gear?

Sayama and Shinjou had said they were searching the past in order to oppose Top-Gear.

That meant they were going to settle everything once and for all.

…''It can’t be…

Shino sensed a certain conclusion.

“Mikoku is fighting to end it all?”

She realized the cans had fallen from her left arm.

That hand was now holding the blue stone that hung from her neck.

That cracked stone had lost most of its power, but…

…''I can still enter a concept space one more time!

She started forward with her crutch, but Shiro held her back.

He seemed to be telling her not to go and not to stop the conclusion that so many people wanted.

“Shiro! Please…”

She raised her voice, tried to move her knee forward, was pushed back, and realized something was getting in her way.

A moment later, she threw away the crutch.

Strength filled her trembling left leg and she brushed the dog out of the way.

“Shiro…please. Mikoku might leave me!”

She took the blue stone from her neck and wrapped her left hand’s fingers around it.

She thrust it forward with her left palm as if pressing it into midair.

“Let me go! I need to…”

She released the thought she had tried to seal in the bottom of her heart.

“I need to stop the conclusion Mikoku has chosen!”

Shinjou saw a girl and a white dog near the gap between festival stands created by a soccer goal.

The dog was the one that had accompanied Mikoku.

“———!”

Shinjou reflexively broke into a run. An uncertain but bad feeling filled her chest.

She was about fifteen meters away, so it would not take her long to get there.

She assumed she would make it if she ran, but the girl was already moving.

Shinjou saw the girl raise her left hand toward the center of the festival with a tearful and desperate look on her face.

…''She threw away her crutch!

When she took a weak step and reached out toward the festival, Shinjou cried out.

“Wait! Someone…stop her!!”

But her voice did not reach anyone.

There was sound.

There was light.

A firework had been launched into the sky from the bonfire at the center of the festival.

It whistled up into the midwinter night sky and the explosion briefly filled the festival with blue light.

“———”

The girl had vanished.

Only the white dog remained, tail lowered and looking bored.

Shinjou gulped.

She let out a rough breath and pulled her cellphone from her pocket.

With eyebrows raised, she clenched and ground her teeth, using the sound to suppress her emotions.

“Sibyl-san! We need backup! Send everyone out!”

“!? …Wh-what do you mean? Don’t tell me it’s Ooshiro-sama again.”

“This might be worse than that…”

“Y-you mean the entire earth is about to be destroyed?”

“That’s not what I mean,” began Shinjou as she slowly chose her words. “Someone’s trying to get in the way of Sayama-kun’s conclusion.”

She thought about what she had seen and what it meant.

She wondered if it was what she had actually wanted to do.

“An intruder entered the concept space.”

“An intruder?”

“Yes,” confirmed Shinjou.

She chose not to say anything more, hung up, and looked to her left arm.

A black watch was strapped to her wrist.

Mikoku moved through the night.

The battlefield was a school.

The school was empty and it was nighttime.

But if one looked closely, faint shadows of people were visible.

A festival was underway beyond the concept space.

Mikoku did not overlook the presence of those people.

She ran across the schoolyard, attacked, threw a knife to put some distance between herself and her opponent, and dashed inside a school building.

Darkness covered everything, but human shadows moved through that darkness as well.

It was not difficult to imagine the sounds they made as they moved.

Two faint shadows stood in the hallway ahead of her, but what were they discussing?

…''They are peeking inside the classroom in front of them, aren’t they?

A shadow stood at the wall to the side of the stairs, presumably waiting for someone.

As Mikoku ran up the stairs, a shadow rushed down them and seemed to be riding a bicycle despite being indoors.

Everyone moved out of the bike’s way and a few raised their arms and seemed to be saying something.

Mikoku smiled bitterly because it felt like she was a part of their group.

She imagined she was participating in the festival.

She crossed blades with the person who either pursued her or was pursued by her and imagined participating in the festival as the blow shook her body.

No one noticed her.

No one turned toward her.

No one said anything to her.

''But,'' she thought. ''This is easier on me. After all, I don’t have to hurt anyone this way.

To avoid her enemy’s next attack, she made a feint toward a classroom.

They exchanged attacked as one pursued and one turned around.

She used her skill, judgment, and physical strength to swing her sword from her lowered stance. She sliced through the ceiling and wall but was unable to hit her opponent.

“———”

While falling back and making her sword strike, she saw a window to her left.

It was a classroom window.

The classroom was too small for this kind of fight and the window was the one view out of it.

The thick window blocked her way and she was bound to this fight by obligation, but…

…''Everything looks so calm out there!

She of course had a view of the school at night. The next school building cast a dark shadow and the moon had risen in the dark blue sky.

But in her imagination, Mikoku participated in the festival.

While inside the classroom and listening to the clashing of swords, she thought.

…''This is the windowsill at the very end of the line.

It would have felt nice to rest her head in her hand and stare out that window.

She then realized she probably would not have been able to speak with anyone even if she had gone to school. She was sure she would have remained silent and stared out the window.

…''All while wondering what I could do or if I was alone.

She had continued to wander through the supposed freedom of not going to school, so if she had been faced with even more guidelines, would she have hesitated even more?

''But,'' she thought.

She had lost her world, naturally wished to fight, worried over so very much, and was now fighting.

…''But if I had gone to school, I definitely would have ended up staring out a window like that one.

No matter her situation, she felt that would not have changed much.

No one would have spoken to her, she would have been fine with that, and she would found herself walking through the festival all alone.

She would have been alone, but she still would have felt like she was participating by walking through it.

That would have made her painfully aware that she was a part of this world.

If she had bought something at a festival stand, it would have been proof of her existence.

It would have been proof that she was an element of the festival.

…''I am such a cheap person.

She liked things simple.

''Or maybe I am surprisingly spoiled,'' she thought as she swung her sword outside of her imagination.

A close look showed a faint shadow cut by in front of her.

It was likely a waitress for the café being run from the classroom. The shadow on her hand had to be a tray.

Mikoku directed her attack around the waitress.

Her opponent received the attack and made an attack of his own, but his slash was the same as hers.

“…”

She realized that both of them had been avoiding the faint shadows throughout the entire fight.

…''Are you participating in the festival, too?

In a way, treating the unseen and invisible no differently from anything else was restrictive.

As they fought, they eliminated the primary advantage of the empty concept space.

''But what is wrong with that?'' thought Mikoku as she ran out into the hallway.

Her enemy pursued and she made an attack from behind the door, but his wooden sword passed over his head to block her blade with a solid sound.

She back-stepped and rushed down the hallway toward the emergency staircase.

She held back her opponent by throwing a knife hidden on the back of her armored uniform.

She then reached backwards while making sure not to get in the way of the barely-visible shadows.

She reached toward the end of the hallway and the emergency exit.

She grabbed the knob, turned it as her enemy approached, and pressed her back against it to move the heavy door.

“—————”

She ran outside onto the concrete emergency staircase and sensed something.

It was not the night air, the moonlight, the wind, or the darkness.

She only sensed a broader version of the scene glimpsed through the classroom window, the height of her vantage point, and…

…''Yes.

From that second story landing, she looked out on the schoolyard, the neighboring school building, the people there, the scenes of morning, noon, and night that had to exist there, and the current festival.

She imagined it all.

And she sensed something about this place.

…''It is a little different.

This was not a classroom, it was not closed off, and it gave a splendid view.

There were other elevated spots and other locations exposed to the breeze, but this was the only one a few steps from the classroom.

She was certain someone had a habit of gathering here.

People who found their position inside the school to be somewhat lacking would come here as a privilege of knowing about it, and they would speak with the people walking down below and the people who arrived through the door.

She suddenly realized some writing in the schoolyard sand plastered on the wall.

…''What is this?

She tried to check the ten or so lines of text, but the door suddenly opened before her.

It was her enemy.

“So you will not let me take my time!?”

She clicked her tongue once, intercepted with her sword, and thought as she immediately jumped down from the landing.

This was a fun time, but the festival would eventually end.

…''How will the festival end?

She knew how it needed to happen.

Deep in her heart, she pictured a certain girl for the briefest of moments.

She was certain that girl would be happy and that her happiness was completely unrelated to Top-Gear or Low-Gear.

So Mikoku carved into herself a method to end this that would allow for that.

She had a power of her own.

And as she sensed her parents with her here, she made up her mind.

This was a conclusion that only she could bring about.

Sayama ran alongside Mikoku as he chased her into the schoolyard.

He slipped through the dancing and rotating shadows, spun around in his pursuit of Mikoku, and was sometimes pursued himself.

…''What a strange opponent.

He felt her skill with the sword was a bit higher than his own. He was a skilled martial artist, but he simply did not have as much experience with swords.

Rather than blocking and striking back, Mikoku more often evaded and charged in or evaded and moved away.

She primarily fought at close range, as if assuming she could always dodge.

…''Perhaps that is due to her regeneration concept.

Even if she could not avoid an attack, it would not be fatal for her.

But a normal person was different.

If they failed to avoid an attack and the blade cut even a centimeter into their wrist, they would never hold a sword again.

She did not need to worry about that, but…

…''Oddly enough, I sense no carelessness in her.

According to Gyes, Mikoku’s regeneration had reached abnormal speeds. She had speculated that not even the mechanical speed of the automatons would be enough to fully destroy Mikoku.

For Mikoku itself, it would have distanced her from death.

She could afford to be careless.

And yet she moved vigorously and confidently while making sure to avoid the surrounding shadows, as if following Sayama’s own lead there.

…''She is not careless. She is confident.

She knew that she would not die and that she was protected by her power, so had that relief widened her field of vision?

''This is dangerous,'' he thought.

When people on the verge of death were shown their impending doom, they generally gave up and fell into that doom. When they knew they were on the verge of death in the first place, they would give up more quickly when it was placed right before their eyes.

It was the ones who overcame that fate that were the most dangerous. Even when death was right before their eyes, they would sometimes fail to notice it or shrug it off as irrelevant.

Mikoku had taken a step into that territory.

…''This is bad.

However, there were a few ways to defeat someone with powerful regeneration.

To regenerate was to not die, but that still allowed them to be defeated or beaten.

Grabbing and restricting their joints would prevent them from moving, which was enough for victory.

Strangling them and cutting off their brain’s oxygen supply would knock them unconscious, which was also a way to victory.

Both were an extension of martial arts and something he excelled at.

That was why he stayed close to her but backed away when she got too close.

And at the moment, he moved in to attack.

She would occasionally throw a knife to keep him away, but he kept up with her otherwise.

Before long, the two of them reached the center of the schoolyard.

Mikoku was to the south and Sayama to the north.

They were both near their staring points, their heavy breathing appeared white in the air, and they were covered in sweat.

“There is…”

“…no need to stop.”

They spoke in unison and they both leaned forward.

“…!”

They ran toward the conclusion.

They ran toward the conclusion of the world they both supported.

“The clashing of swords sounds wonderful.”

A voice joined the sound of wood on metal and the sound of quick evasions.

“It is a nice sound.”

One or the other of them spoke from the darkness and shadows.

“To be honest, I have no real grudge against you.”

The other replied as if accepting those words.

“I feel similarly about you. You are my opposite, but I have no further connection to you.”

Their swords clanged together.

“Then why are we fighting?”

Their feet sounded loudly on the ground.

“Because our respective positions demand it.”

They stepped away from each other on the sand and raised their swords.

“Then it would seem we both enjoy troublesome things.”

The metal sword produced a metallic noise.

“We may be similar.”

The other took a step.

“If we are similar, are two of us really necessary?”

They moved forward.

“If you could fulfill my role, then perhaps not.”

The wooden sword attacked.

“It is too bad.”

The metal sword attacked.

“We have reached an impasse.”

The wood blocked and repelled.

“There are enjoyments that only I can do. …What about you?”

Next, the metal blocked and repelled.

“Yes, I too have things that only I can do.”

The opponent spun around to attack repeatedly.

“And you cannot give them up?”

Footsteps blocked them with a wind of evasion.

“I cannot.”

A pursuing strike rang out.

“Nor can I.”

A second strike followed.

“If neither of us can give those things up, then what are we fighting for?”

Someone side-flipped over the ground to dodge.

“That should be obvious.”

They stood and began to move again.

“To ensure the things which we cannot give up.”

They pursued.

“I see.”

They pursued some more.

“I am glad you were my opponent.”

One of them ran.

“Crushing something which someone refuses to give up will pain my great heart, but…”

The other also ran.

“You are willing to do so if it is your other self?”

One moved in to attack.

“Yes, that is right.”

They attacked each other.

“Hey… What were our parents like in your world?”

They evaded at the same time.

“What about in yours?”

They attacked at the same time.

“So they were the same.”

They locked swords at the same time.

“Yes, they must have been the same.”

The two weapons creaked from the strain they put on each other.

“Hey, don’t you think this fight might be meaningless?”

A short silence followed.

“What a coincidence. But don’t you also think that this fight can be given meaning?”

One of them breathed in.

“Then…”

They repelled each other to put some distance between them.

“Yes, you understand, don’t you? The two who will cause the least possible damage to the world should settle this.”

As soon as they landed, they kicked off the sand to dash.

“Hey, Sayama Mikoto.”

Running footsteps approached.

“What, Toda Mikoku?”

They continued to approach.

“Are we the same?”

The approached without end.

“Well…”

They approached too close to measure.

“Answer me.”

They prepared their weapons.

“We are…”

The wooden sword was held at the ready on the left side.

“…the same.”

The metal sword was raised up and back in two hands.

“We are the same person.”

And the two swords were swung.

“We are nothing more than that.”

Mikoku swung her sword straight down toward Sayama.

Her sword could carve life, but he did not hesitate.

He stepped forward and drew his wooden sword from a crouched stance.

Getting the distance of a sword strike right was tricky while running, but he calmly pulled it off.

His blade would arrive directly below the wide crescent moon arc of hers, but it would not arrive in time.

She briefly narrowed her eyes, but followed through with her attack.

She immediately heard a certain sound.

It was the dull sound of something tearing into the ground.

She then saw Sayama charging toward her from his lowered stance.

“Totsuka!”

For some reason, Totsuka had not swung all the way down. It had instead stopped about a meter off the ground.

The reason was obvious: Mukiti’s wooden sword.

Sayama’s weapon was stabbed into the ground like a stake.

He had not been preparing to attack Mikoku with it.

He had instead drawn Totsuka in and caught it on the bottom of Mukiti.

Totsuka’s power attempted to carve into the life of the wooden sword, but…

“————!”

Air blew out as it resisted. The powers of two Concept Cores collided, trembled, and cried out.

“!”

Mikoku reflexively fell back with Totsuka in hand.

In that instant, Sayama straightened up after charging in below Totsuka.

His left shoulder hit the weapon and tore his clothing, but he continued running regardless.

His forward movement cut his clothing further and blood sprayed from his shoulder.

“By the name of Mikoto, I command the concepts of 2nd-Gear.”

He punched Totsuka’s blade from below.

“Fly!!”

Mikoku realized her weapon had flown up and out of her hands.

She had been holding Totsuka’s hilt, so her arms were pulled up and her body left wide open.

Sayama charged toward her and she immediately realized this could lead to the conclusion she desired.

Sayama did not hesitate.

He threw a right hook into Mikoku’s gut.

“…!”

Just as she doubled over and her chin lowered, he unclenched his left fist.

“———”

And he threw a chop.

It hit.

Her face wobbled and her body was knocked backwards thanks to the previous hit.

The flat-handed blow to the chin had shaken her head on her neck.

The greater the speed, the more her brain was shaken in her skull and the more control she lost.

This was known as a concussion and that was what had happened to Mikoku.

She might still have had control of her limbs, but with her brain taken out, she would not be able to stand.

But to win, Sayama would need to pin her down or something along those lines.

That was the way to defeat this immortal girl, this other version of himself, without giving her a chance to resist.

And at about the same time, he heard a sound.

It was the sound of breaking wood and it came from Mukiti’s wooden sword.

To the left, mist rose from the broken sword and it moved like a cobra rearing its head.

“!”

It flew toward the collection of Concept Cores to their right, where Mukiti’s small transportation pallet waited.

According to the rules, he would lose if he lost the Concept Core.

But Totsuka had been knocked into the air and Mikoku was unable to fight, so if he restrained her here…

…''It will be a tie.

Everything would end in equilibrium.

And…

“That is the conclusion I wanted!”

Sayama had decided he would not allow a division between winner and loser, even if he had to force it.

He was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure everyone was on equal footing.

Low-Gear and Top-Gear had their own circumstances and righteousness.

…''But we must face each other and accept that we are equal!

They had held a trial and fought, so he felt there could be nothing more they had to do. And…

“You feel the same, don’t you!?”

He shouted his question and ran over as Mikoku’s knees gave out and she began to collapse.

But…

“———!?”

As he started forward, Sayama saw hostility before his eyes.

It was the tip of a blade.

It was a knife.

It was one Mikoku had hidden on the back of her armored uniform.

He reflexively jumped back.

“!”

And he grabbed the knife from midair.

His eyes had focused on the blade and it took them a brief moment to focus back on the girl.

In that vague but instantaneous time, he asked a question in his heart.

…''Why?

The question came from the knife in his hand.

She had to have thrown the knife after letting go of Totsuka.

It would have been when her arms were raised, leaving her body unguarded. She had to have thrown the blade while receiving his attack.

''But,'' he thought. ''That is not something she could have suddenly decided to do.

At the very least, she had to have made the decision before the pair of attacks leading to the concussion.

And that suggested something to Sayama.

…''Did she predict my attack?

But that question brought two new questions.

First, if she had predicted it, why had she let it hit?

And second, what had she been trying to do by taking an attack that would keep her from moving?

At the same time, his eyes focused on what lay before him.

From seven meters away, he saw Mikoku collapsing backwards as her knees lost their strength.

But that was not all.

Only then did he realize what she was trying to do.

She held a knife in her right hand.

As she fell, she forcibly moved her right arm via brute strength.

A moment later, Sayama saw his other self swing her blade.

Having predicted what she would do, he cried out.

“Wait!”

She held the knife in a backhand grip and pressed it against the back of her own head.

He heard a dull sound as she plunged the knife up to the base into the back right side of her neck.

“!!”

And she pulled it forward, toward Sayama.

She was trying to cut through her medulla oblongata to reset the trembling of the concussion.

“———”

And she did just that.

Mikoku felt her mind grow instantly clear, so she calmly stood up.

She had a smile on her face and sweat covered her brow, but she kept her eyes pointed straight forward.

Totsuka spun as it fell from overhead and the pieces of the wooden sword lay abandoned on the ground.

Now that she was alive and could move, the result was obvious.

“If I catch Totsuka as it falls, I suppose I will win.”

Sayama shook his head and remained in a defensive stance.

“Wait.”

“I will not wait. If I catch that sword, I will win.”

She extended her right hand up toward the falling blade.

She slowly bent backwards as she did.

“Sayama Mikoto, you were attempting to incapacitate me so that we would tie, weren’t you? It is true that I cannot be defeated in any other way…generally, anyway.”

“…Wait.”

Sayama took a half step forward, but she shook her head.

She tried to catch Totsuka as it spun down from directly overhead, but he gave a shout at that exact moment.

“Wait, Toda Mikoku!”

“I will not wait. I made the same decision as you…but chose a different method.”

She had her own way of bringing the world into equilibrium.

“I know my only skill lies in fighting and that everyone sees me as Top-Gear’s final leader.”

So…

“Sorry, but I will take all of the responsibility onto myself. …Accept this tie and forgive them all. You understand, don’t you? Even Hajji was a victim.”

“Wait!!” shouted Sayama. “Death is the worst possible option, Toda Mikoku!!”

As he stepped toward her, she threw a knife with her left hand to keep him away.

With both her arms raised, she spread those arms, leaned back, and left her chest entirely defenseless to the falling bearer of the conclusion.

Totsuka.

In this concept space, that sword was aligned with the one whose name carved life.

The metal tip fell to pierce her chest and the philosopher’s stone embedded there.

Her regeneration power and her life were there.

But Totsuka’s blade could carve life, so if it broke the philosopher’s stone and stabbed her, she would die.

This was the conclusion Mikoku desired.

If she was gone, Top-Gear would lose its leader. Shino would choose a life of happiness and so would Tatsumi. Even Alex would be able to live out his remaining life in peace.

And if she bore all responsibility herself, Hajji and the others who had fought alongside her would not be harmed.

Low-Gear would be unable to demand any other sacrifices or anything else unreasonable.

She was still worried about the negative concepts, but if Noah began to wake up, she was certain that ''Noah herself'' would do something about it.

…''It will be okay.

Shino was not by her side, but with her parents’ power inside her, she was not alone.

That knowledge was enough.

Even if she lost her life, she would not feel lonely.

Her fight would end here.

So she raised her head toward the heavens and held her chest up toward the blade that would pierce her.

Just before it all happened, a girl rushed onto the battlefield.

She ran a short distance to charge in from outside the field of vision of the two focused on themselves.

“No!”

The girl embraced Mikoku who was trying to end it all by taking her own life.

She embraced her, pushed, and a moment later, the falling metal sword pierced through her bent back and toward her chest.

With a dull sound, the girl stopped moving as if she had tripped forward and her outstretched arms clung tightly to Mikoku.

After a rustling of cloth, the sword in her back collapsed under its own weight.

It fell toward the girl’s waist, which also moved the girl.

It moved the girl’s raised body closer to Mikoku.

The movement was accompanied by a wet sound as the thick blade sank into her gut and fell out through her back.

The sound of the sword falling to the sand-covered ground rang heavily through the air.

Afterwards, only a breath could be heard.

It sounded like all air was leaving the girl’s lungs.

Mikoku did not understand.

What had just happened before her eyes?

What had happened to her?

Why was Shino here?

Why had Shino stopped her?

She did not understand any of that, but she did understand one thing: what was going to happen to Shino now.

Mikoku stood in a daze as Shino leaned up against her. Her bent arms caught on Mikoku’s armored uniform and she finally managed to stand on her trembling legs.

But Mikoku did not know what to do.

“Ah…”

Only a tenseness that was not even a breath escaped her throat.

But she could feel the heat and trembling coming from Shino.

Shino’s heat was spilling on Mikoku’s stomach and dripping down her waist and thighs.

…''!

She did not know what, why, or how. She could not even go mad, she could not run away, she could not breathe in or out, and so she said nothing. All she could do was somehow listen to Shino’s faint voice.

“Mikoku…”

''Ah.

“Thank goodness.”

''How is this good? There is nothing remotely-

“Mikoku, you’re a coward, so I thought you might do this. Because you’re a coward…”

''Wait. Wait. Please wait. Don’t…don’t say anything.

''If you do… If you do… If you say it… If you say it…it will sound like goodb-

“And because you’re kind.”

She heard a voice say “I’m sorry”.

She tried to say “wait” but could not. She could not say it, so she remained silent. And as that silence felt like some kind of punishment, Shino’s voice continued with a hint of happiness and even some faint joy mixed in.

“I’d always known it…but it was so obvious…that I’d forgotten.”

Shino raised her lowered head.

''Don’t look at me. Don’t. I have no idea what kind of awful look I have on my face.

But Shino did look at her and gave her a smile that made her want to tell her to stop.

“You’re actually the kindest person of all, aren’t you? That’s why you’re so fearful and why you try to avoid hurting anyone. …That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

Shino mouthed the words “I’m sorry”.

She closed her eyes as she smiled.

Seeing that smile, Mikoku’s face crumpled and she opened her mouth.

“Shino!”

Her voice – her trembling voice – finally escaped.

Shino’s eyes opened a bit, but she only nodded with a gentle smile and lowered her head.

“From now on, you can be kind without having to fear, okay? After all… After all, I’m already living without my concept…and everyone is so kind to me.”

Shino’s body sank into Mikoku’s chest. She felt like nothing more than a limp mass of lingering heat.

“I won’t be a burden on you anymore, so…”

With those words, the last hint of strength left Shino’s body.

So Mikoku embraced her.

And she realized Shino wore a red cloisonné pendant along with her half-broken blue pendant.

She realized Shino had continued to wear it all this time.

Sayama found himself collapsed on the ground.

He did not know what had happened.

He remembered trying to stop Mikoku and that she had thrown a knife when he had tried to approach.

Just as he had tried to brush it out of the way, a girl had run out in front of Mikoku.

It had been Shino.

She had likely used an unstable method to enter the concept space because an odd distortion had accompanied her appearance and it had happened so suddenly.

Confused by the sudden event, the knife had approached before his eyes.

“And…”

He looked down at his own collapsed form and found a face there.

He also saw long hair bound by a ribbon and a school uniform.

“Shinjou-kun?”

“…Yes.”

Shinjou smiled bitterly as she clung to his chest.

“Sorry about interrupting.”

Those words left him speechless.

It was true she had interrupted. She had interfered while the representatives of Low-Gear and Top-Gear settled their dispute.

Seeing Shino had surprised him enough to briefly lose sight of the knife, but that was his responsibility. He could not let the interference of someone other than the Low-Gear representative help him avoid a weapon thrown by the Top-Gear representative.

But…

…''It is true she saved me.

As he wondered what he should say, he noticed something.

He held up his left hand which had been wrapped around Shinjou’s back.

“Blood…”

Enough dark-red covered his left palm to drip from it.

“Shinjou-kun!”

He got up and realized Shinjou’s body was limp and heavy.

“Shinjou-kun!”

Her bitter smile was the soft expression of someone about to fall asleep.

“Shinjou-kun!!”

He looked past her smile and saw Mikoku’s knife sticking from her back.

It was on the left side of her back and the red stain grew with the same timing as her pulse.

“———!!”

''It will be okay. Calm down. Yes,'' he told himself.

…''This situation…

He suddenly remembered his mother.

She too had protected him from an attack and embraced him. What had happened to her afterwards?

“…”

The pain inside him linked with reality.

The pain in his chest linked not to his mother and the others he had lost but instead to Shinjou who he held to his chest.

“…!!”

He embraced her and let out a yell.

A pair of cries rang throughout the dark space.

And something answered them.

The girl’s bestial cry was answered by two objects that flew down from the sky.

One was a badly-damaged mechanical dragon and the other was a similarly-damaged white giant.

The white giant fell down almost vertically and the girl standing on its shoulder looked down to the ground.

“Mikoku…”

The girl in Mikoku’s arms was covered in scarlet.

Mikoku’s chest was bared.

She was trying to use a knife to dig out the philosopher’s stone buried at the base of her throat so she could give it to the girl in her arms.

But every wound she made was instantly filled, she could not fulfill her wish, and she simply opened her mouth and wailed.

Her voice sounded like a scream or cry of anguish and the girl falling with the white giant closed her eyes.

She wrinkled her brow and audibly gulped.

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

“Do not apologize, Tatsumi. I am here to make sure you do not have to.”

“I see.” Tatsumi nodded with the ends of her eyebrows lowered. “I will take Mikoku’s side no matter what happens.”

After all…

“My emotions are nothing compared to hers.”

“Neither are mine. If this comes down to a conflict between reason and emotion…then I prefer the latter, Tatsumi.”

“I see,” said Tatsumi with another nod.

She then opened her eyes, looked down at the girl crying on the fast-approaching ground, reached out a hand, and raised her eyebrows.

“Mikoku!!”

Tatsumi gave a shout to drown out the cries coming from the depths of the earth.

“Release your desire! This is a place of conclusion! You are Top-Gear’s representative, so we will follow whatever decision you make!”

Mikoku looked up.

Her eyes wavered from the tears and her hair was a mess, so Tatsumi briefly closed her eyes again.

But Tatsumi quickly brought her expression in order and breathed in to gather strength.

“Wish for whatever it is you desire!!”

At the same time, Alex and the white god of war slammed wind against the earth and landed.

The two of them heard Mikoku’s voice in the whipping wind.

They were quiet yet distinct words.

“Give her back…”

Mikoku shouted words of emotion that were impossible yet that everyone had wished for at some point.

She extended her bloody right hand toward Tatsumi and strongly spread the fingers.

“Give her back!!”

In that instant, Tatsumi closed her eyes, accepted it all, and nodded.

She then took action to grant her leader’s request.

A gust of wind raced across the earth and ascended into the sky.

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Owari no Chronicle:Volume13 Chapter 41

2015-05-08T18:12:54Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 41: Title of the Heart */

==Chapter 41: Title of the Heart==
[[Image:OnC_v13_0503.png|thumb]]
''Where nameless regret takes you

''What you want to a maddening degree

''And the crest of a heart that desires once more

A clock rang six times in a large space.

The people in that underground room of Japanese UCAT’s Kanda Laboratory were watching two worlds reach a conclusion.

They all glanced upwards as the six tones continued to sound.

A single red light could be seen on the map of Tokyo displayed on the ceiling.

“So the two remaining battles will be Mikoto-kun and Hiba-kun against Hajji-kun and Mikoku-kun.”

Ooshiro nodded, took a sip of the tea sitting on the desk, and gave another gentle comment.

“This is bitter. Where is it from?”

“Testament. I had tea leaves hand-prepared especially for you shipped in from India.”

“Hand-prepared?”

“The region emphasizes sincerity, so they squeeze the tea leaves in their fists to draw out their power. …We have named it Stubborn Old Man’s Fist Tea.”

Ooshiro immediately tried to run from the room, but #8 grabbed his collar.

“Ooshiro-sama, why are you leaving your post?”

“I-I couldn’t possibly say that.”

He wiggled around but his expression suddenly grew serious and he collapsed limply to his knees.

Sweat poured down his face as he hung his head to look toward the floor.

“#8-kun, I think that sudden movement sped up the process.”

“You are imagining it. And they say one’s imagination can bring illness. …Not that we can understand such unscientific ideas. At any rate, please explain the current situation.”

“Oh, well, um, uh…”

He crawled below the desk and rocked back and forth as if bearing with something.

“Low-Gear has two ties and one loss. ''To win,'' we must win the remaining two battles.”

“Testament. I am surprised you calculated that out correctly.”

“…How stupid do you think I am?”

She did not reply. Instead, she raised her right palm toward the surrounding automatons and gently waved it back and forth. She then turned back to Ooshiro.

“We have nothing to say about that.”

“Y-you just made sure you didn’t, didn’t you!?”

“Calm down, Ooshiro-sama. To be blunt, Low-Gear is in trouble, isn’t it?”

Her expression grew slightly more serious.

“Hiba-sama is a problem.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Testament. He does not have Mikage-sama with him at the moment, so he will have to fight on his own. His odds of victory are extremely uncertain and his odds of defeat are high,” she said. “So I hope his opponent is Mikoku-sama.”

“Why not Hajji-kun? He lost pretty badly during their attack on UCAT.”

“He pushed back Abram-sama on the surface, defeated Kashima-sama and the other defense units, fought Abram-sama a second time, and then finally faced Sayama-sama. And both Arnavaz-sama and Shinjou-sama provided assistance. …One could say that he was only stopped after all those people were thrown at him.”

After pausing for a breath, she continued.

“In a one-on-one battle, Hajji-sama may be Top-Gear’s most powerful representative.”

White clothing fluttered in the city at night.

It was in front of a large building’s tiled entrance which created a small plaza of empty space.

The white clothes were atop the guardrail protecting the trees lining the road.

An elderly Arab man sat on the guardrail with a cellphone to his ear.

He was looking to the building in front of him.

“Meiji University’s Surugadai Campus.”

It was located in Kanda, down a southern slope from Ochanomizu Station which bordered Akihabara on the east.

It was to the west on the way down to the Imperial Palace.

The school building was covered in nearly olive-colored tiles and it stood twenty-three stories tall.

The university’s winter break had begun at this time of year, so not many people left even at six in the evening.

But he spoke regardless. He spoke into the cellphone held to his left ear.

“Abram…no, Sarv. Can you hear me? Hm?”

After a short delay, his carefree question received a response.

“Testament. I can hear you…Hajji.”

“Oh, is that so?” Hajji nodded. “Then I’ll call you Abram. …That sense of distance is a relief.”

“Do you really have nothing better to do?”

“We’re only ever busy when engaged in battle. Isn’t that right?” He looked to the sidewalk as he spoke. “I visited the Imperial Palace’s garden today. I realized I never had before. …I’m not going to say it looked artificial or that the security seemed far too lax. Once we change the world, it won’t need security at all. Yes.”

He gently kicked the asphalt sidewalk.

“Did you know this sidewalk was paved with bricks and Westernized about forty years ago?”

“Yes. But people began throwing the bricks during student riots involving thousands of people, so it was paved over.”

“Were they sealed away because they were thrown? Or was it because of history? Or…might it have been their will?”

“I’m not a politician, so I don’t know. But Hajji…”

“What?” he asked.

“First the attack on UCAT and then the meeting yesterday. You really do like playing the villain.”

“You sound just like Mikoku. And I’m not playing anything. This is who I truly am.”

“After the meeting, Sayama told me to keep an eye on you to make sure you didn’t kill yourself as the villain in an attempt to take all the responsibility with you.”

Hajji froze for a moment at that, but he soon responded.

“Everyone is far too kind. Have you forgotten what I did to 1st and 3rd as the Army?”

“Neither of those Gears would have been able to survive without you.”

“That was only due to our agreements. …Please stop treating me like a good person. I thought I understood Top-Gear, but I understood nothing and I used my blind hatred to borrow Top-Gear’s authority and oppose you all. Once all of this is over…I suppose I’ll be burnt at the stake or something.”

“Then let me ask you a question Sayama left with me.”

Hajji stiffened at those sudden words, but he still let out a long white sigh.

“What is it?”

“Do you think Shinjou Yukio had realized the truth of Top-Gear and the true creation of the world?”

“…”

Hajji fell silent.

“If she had, then your actions were truly those of a villain committed to evil. Sayama said that would be truly regrettable. And…he also said you do not need to answer that question.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” said Abram. “According to him, Sayama Kaoru once said that people become villains when they experience circumstances that leave them not wanting to touch anyone but those closest to them. And Sayama Kaoru had lost the person closest to him.”

“I see,” said Hajji as he closed his eyes and let out another white breath. “You are soft, Abram.”

“Not as much as you. Nor am I as hard on myself as you are.”

“You are imagining things. More importantly, have you and the wife you chose had a child?”

That question remained unanswered, but a response came in another form.

“My wife wants to build schools.”

“Schools?”

“Yes. In the sandy desert she comes from and in many other places. …She wants them to be places of shade where people are taught how to live and, in some cases, how to change or fight against nature.”

“I see,” muttered Hajji. “If it was your idea, I would have called you a hypocrite. Yes.”

He kicked the asphalt sidewalk again.

“Hey, does that land resemble ours?”

“Yes,” replied the other man. “It was just as I’d heard: no water, a drastic difference between day and night, dark shadows, sand everywhere, and the people are swept away by the wind and sand. But…”

Hajji heard him breathe in.

“There were people there who tried to change that land, lamented or tried to stop the conflict, wished to go elsewhere, or…waited for someone to arrive from elsewhere. So…”

So…

“I no longer knew what was important and I began to wish it could all be important.”

“So you did know.” Hajji placed his feet on the sidewalk. “You did. You are a hero, Abram Mesam. …You are the hero who chose this world, so you can continue on ahead. I on the other hand…”

Hajji smiled bitterly, trailed off, and said something else instead.

“Let me answer that question and you tell Shinjou and Sayama. …Tell them that Shinjou Yukio was a woman who only ever said the truth.”

With those words, he ended the call.

He stood on the sidewalk and reached out his left hand. He grabbed a long bundle of white cloth that was leaning on the guardrail and turned around.

“I on the other hand will remain in the past.”

As he turned around, he saw a short figure on the sidewalk across the two-lane road.

The boy, Hiba, wore a backpack and had walked here from Akihabara.

Hajji looked to Hiba and Hiba looked to Hajji.

Their eyes met and Hajji opened his mouth, but Hiba cut him off with a shout.

“Th-there is nothing inappropriate in this backpack! Just because I came from Akihabara d-doesn’t mean it’s filled with inappropriate DVDs and games!! A pure minor such as myself…”

He tilted his head and almost seemed to be asking Hajji for his opinion.

“...w-wouldn’t buy anything like that?”

Hajji immediately attacked with the long object in his right hand.

The surveillance plane flying over Kanda reported on the beginning of the battle.

“H-Hiba-sama has…”

The report was broadcast out to the world.

“…done something stupid!!”

Hiba ran through the nighttime city.

He ran full speed down a slope.

He chose to travel down the very center of the two-lane road because the surrounding cars were moving.

There was no one driving them because he was inside a concept space, but their residual speed kept them moving and crashing before slowing down in clumps.

As they moved so unpredictably, Hiba raced down the road while ignoring the traffic lights and letting the lights of the roadside stores wash over him.

He had pictured Kanda and Ochanomizu as a region of musical instruments and books, but he decided to forever abandon that enjoyable image.

Attacks flew in from behind him.

The attacks demonstrated the powers of fire and darkness.

A pillar of fire shot his way from behind and it burned away anything it even grazed.

And the reverberating darkness stopped all things and shattered them like ice.

The sounds of spreading flames and shattering reached him from behind, along with footsteps far wider and calmer than his own racing ones.

…''I can’t believe this.

“Miki isn’t my opponent?”

Even as he said that, he asked himself what that meant.

Was he disappointed or happy he was not fighting her?

To lighten his load, he threw out the contents of his backpack.

…''Ahh, and there were some rare DVDs and games in there.

He cried as he ran and tossed the items backwards.

“A worthless diversion!” shouted a voice behind him.

Multiple flames raced through the air and incinerated Hiba’s rare finds.

Hiba thought to himself as he watched the wind scatter the white DVD ashes into the night sky.

…''Perverted things are being dissolved into this concept space.

The next attack was directed at him, so he took a leap.

“Wah!” he shouted while jumping like a frog, stepping atop a nearby car, and jumping again.

A pillar of fire immediately swept by below his feet.

“!”

The Ochanomizu street was instantly annihilated.

Within a radius of about three hundred meters, everything along the path of the swing was turned to ashes: the trees, the buildings, and even the air itself.

The ephemeral white remnants scattered like confetti.

Hiba ran below all of those paper blossoms filling the dark city.

…''What do I do?

He jumped from car to car as he thought.

…''How do I fight?

He built up the flow of the battle.

His opponent was Hajji. The man’s combat experience far exceeded his own, the man was physically larger than him, and the man had a weapon.

Most of the factors that influenced a fight came down to one’s build.

A height difference of thirty centimeters created a full fist’s worth of difference in reach.

Hajji was about forty centimeters taller than Hiba and he was probably more than thirty kilograms heavier.

On top of that, Hajji had a weapon. The spear was likely B-Sp which Abram had used against American UCAT’s mechanical dragons during the battle with Black Sun.

Hajji had the upper hand in experience, size, and weaponry.

…''So what do I do!?

Just as he wondered that, his vision opened up.

The large intersection leading to Jinbocho came into view down the hill.

This created a valley in the dully glowing buildings straight ahead and to either side. The valleys seemed to be waiting for him there.

“———”

The cars that had collided in the intersection were stopped there, clogging up the road.

Once he reached the intersection, he would run into that group of stopped cars.

One of them was sitting below the traffic light, facing him.

As soon as he began to jump over it, he sensed a presence behind him.

…''Is it coming!?

Something like intent to kill or a premonition stroked his back and flames powerful enough to pierce straight through the car were fired toward his jumping back.

Hajji broke through the darkness that could not be fully banished by the artificial lights.

A pillar of fire shot ahead of him and instantly set a car on fire further down the slope.

The ground beyond the car did not escape that piercing incineration either.

Flames rose from the center of the intersection as the asphalt burned.

A pillar of fire rose and the explosion of air sent the car flying.

As it rose five meters in the air, even the metal parts of the car burned to ashes like kindling and the lingering flames illuminated the surrounding area.

That illumination revealed the burning intersection.

There was the sound of burning, a heated wind, a scorching pressure, and a flickering light.

They all reminded him of old times.

However, something of those old times was missing.

There was something he had always felt with each attack.

“Why didn’t I feel it hit anything!?”

As soon as he shouted, Hajji realized he could not hear his own voice.

…''No, not just my voice. My entire surroundings.

The scenery, the sounds, the temperature of the air, and every sensation besides that on the soles of his feet had vanished.

This was one of the powers of 7th-Gear’s Concept Core.

Hiba kicked off the hood of a car and flew up above Hajji.

He used the sinking and recoil of the car’s suspension to propel himself ten meters high.

The strength for this great leap had come from Nijun’s red sphere which he had pulled from the bottom of his backpack.

He had also pulled out Mitsuaki’s black sphere to seal his opponent’s senses.

Ten meters below, Hajji had stopped moving.

He had only kicked off the hood of the car and jumped after drawing Hajji’s flames in to hide him from view. And as he began to drop, he was certain that Hajji had still lost track of him and had also lost his senses.

…''Even Kazami-san and the others had trouble with this concept.

He knew what the most effective attack was when your opponent had ample experience.

…''You put them in a situation they’ve never experienced before.

[[Image:OnC_v13_0519.jpg|thumb]]

He had run and drawn in Hajji’s attacks before doing this.

Hajji would not have realized he had 7th-Gear’s concepts, so this attack was key. He knew this would not work against this man more than once.

He chose to move straight in and dropped toward his right knee.

But in that instant, he heard a quiet sound like a creaking glass door.

The sound gradually grew like a swinging pendulum.

“!!”

And it broke.

Space…no, the power of the concept shattered.

Hiba saw Hajji remove his eyepatch and…

“You stopped and shattered the portion of the concept space around you!?”

“Did you think I couldn’t?”

Hajji directed his voice up at Hiba and spun B-Sp around in his right arm.

“Now, answer me! Are you a hero!?”

A pillar of fire shot straight up toward Hiba.

“———!!”

In a split-second decision, he chose one of the four colors: blue, red, black, or white.

He chose white.

He pulled Yonkichi’s sphere from the backpack. That white sphere instantaneously swapped his and his opponent’s positions.

Hiba looked up at the rising pillar of fire and saw Hajji in its path.

It was on a collision course, so Hajji would be burned away by his own flames.

However, a denial of that fate appeared before Hiba’s eyes.

B-Sp’s all-consuming fire was stopped.

It was stopped by Hajji’s eye.

The fire stopped moving and became a glowing shape.

“Toh.”

Hajji calmly kicked the pillar of fire, breaking it.

With the sound of shattering glass, the fire crumbled away.

It looked like red and yellow flower petals scattering in the wind.

Surrounded by what sounded like small bells, Hiba realized Hajji was dropping back down with his spear aimed at him.

…''This is ridiculous!

A month and a half earlier, 7th-Gear’s Concept Core had given them so much trouble, but it did not slow this man down in the slightest.

Not only that, but he could freely destroy and manipulate his own attacks.

Hiba leaped down the hill toward the intersection to escape Hajji’s attack, but then he saw something from above the ash-filled intersection.

Hajji had kicked off empty air and was catching up to him.

…''!?

It was only after that when Hiba heard the metallic sound.

Hajji had used his eye’s stopping power to solidify empty air so he could kick off it.

The air shattered and Mitsuaki’s power shattered around him as it continued to expand.

There was no escape. Hajji descended from midair as if descending a flight of stairs.

…''He’s right in front of me!

He back-stepped as if looking up the slope just as the tall form in white dropped down in front of him.

The white cloth seemed to flap around him and he landed on the white ash-filled land in a crouch.

“You do not show your back when you run. You must have been trained well as a soldier.”

Hiba only realized a slash was coming once the man had finished speaking.

Hajji raised his right arm and swung down B-Sp2 without any flames.

“Ah…”

Hiba felt cold air running from his right side to directly above him and from the right side of his chest to the right side of his collarbone.

He also felt chilly air stroke his right cheek.

It felt cold because there was heat there.

The thought of “oh, no” came later.

“!!”

As his heart beat, the clothing covering the right side of his body was torn and color burst into the air.

It only burst out at first, but it did not stop.

He took a step back as if pushed by the pressure of his blood, but then Hajji spoke.

“You did well to dodge that.”

''I didn’t dodge it,'' thought Hiba. ''You intentionally missed.

And that was why Hiba breathed in, wiped the blood from his right cheek, and looked to Hajji.

''That’s right,'' he thought. ''I can’t hope to match him.

''But,'' he also thought.

…''I can’t let myself die here.

“Because a future of flirting with Mikage-san awaits me!”

“Did you perhaps you think what you meant to say and vice versa?” asked Hajji. “And can you not take this fight seriously since I am not Tatsumi?”

Hiba gasped at the sudden mention of Tatsumi’s name.

He looked to Hajji’s face and found the man was not smiling as usual. He was staring intently and quietly back at the boy.

“Even if this battle comes to an end and the world is changed, you will still have to face Tatsumi. …And at the very least, you cannot stand before her if you are cut down by me.”

Hiba reflexively asked a question.

He maintained his defensive stance but frowned and tried to ask what Hajji was getting at.

“Why do Miki and I have to fight each other!?”

“Well,” began Hajji. “That is probably because Tatsumi chose you as her opponent.”

“B-but that’s so selfish! Then again, Miki was pretty selfish!”

“Then aren’t you also selfish for not answering her? No matter how weak you are or how much you run away, she has continued to choose you as her opponent. …But have you even once answered her?”

Hajji’s words slammed into Hiba who remained still.

“She is asking a question that can only be answered by fighting you, so until she does so, she has never once allowed herself to lose and she waits all alone. …She is waiting for your true self once you have sought true resolve.”

“But why-…?”

He swallowed the rest of his question.

The answer to that question was something only she would know.

…''I can’t believe this.

He had heard a number of reasons, but he still could not accept it.

However, he had a general understanding that she was indeed waiting for him.

“If I don’t go face her, will…”

He asked his question.

“Will Miki continue to win?”

Hajji gave him a single answer.

“Can you win?”

That question gave Hiba a single thought.

“…Can I not run away?”

“You can,” said Hajji. “But Tatsumi will wait for you even then.”

And…

“Just as you wait for another girl to awaken.”

Hiba hung his head at what Hajji said.

…''I can’t believe this.

He suddenly thought of Mikage.

He pictured her waiting for him at home, in an alley, and in the UCAT lobby.

He quite liked that she waited for him and she said she liked it too.

But that was due to a certain promise.

…''That I’ll definitely be there.

So…

“What does Miki think?” he slowly asked. “Does she think I’m coming?”

He knew the answer without being told.

…''Yes.

''What a troublesome person,'' he thought. ''She really is my opposite.

…''Is she the version of me that likes waiting?

“———”

Hiba sighed and his lungs cooled.

…''I don’t know.

He had yet to decide whether he should fight or what he should do, but…

“Miki will continue to wait for me even if I don’t know, won’t she?”

Hajji slowly nodded and lightly threw out his chest.

“Then do you know what you will do here?”

“Yes,” nodded Hiba.

''What I’m going to do and say here is outrageous,'' he thought. ''But if I don’t go through with it, she’ll probably be waiting forever.

“Please.”

He raised his fists, faced Hajji, and breathed in. As the air entered his lungs, strength filled his gut and he gathered his resolve.

He spoke to the man who had travelled much farther than him down the path of combat.

“Please be my opponent so that I might continue on to where Miki is.”

“You might lose here, you know?”

“She will still wait for me even if I do. But I don’t know what I should do for her. All I know is that I’ll lose again if nothing changes.”

“So you want to grow at least a little stronger by defeating me?”

“Yes,” said Hiba while realizing how outrageous this really was. “Miki is undefeated, but you have lost once. So at the very least, I can’t stand before her without defeating you first!”

Without hesitation, he crouched down, stomped a foot down, and used the recoil.

“…!!”

He charged forward as he wondered if he could reach the person…no, the two people who were waiting for him.

A combination attack required speed and endurance and it could only be pulled off after learning how to segue one movement into another.

It all came down to linking one attack with the next.

For example, if one sent their right fist forward, the right side of their body would also move forward.

The left side of their body would be pulling back, so it became difficult to send their left fist forward.

But what if, when stepping forward on their right foot, they twisted their heel inward?

Their body would slide rightward and it would more easily rotate clockwise.

If they kicked forward with their left foot in that instant, they would be able to move their entire left side forward along with their fist.

By repeating similar actions, they could pull off more than just a series of punches; they could put their hips behind the blows and each attack in the series would be strong enough to actually defeat an opponent.

Hiba was able to do this.

He had the speed, endurance, movements, and experience.

But in his case, that experience was not from flesh-and-blood combat.

Most of his battles against 3rd-Gear had been fought between gods of war and none of his training in the dojo or at UCAT had forced him to put his life on the line.

But he still had definite experience: experience of defeat.

…''How lame.

That was how he viewed himself. He felt he had yet to mature into a proper fighter.

''But,'' he thought. ''But what’s wrong with that?

He just could not let himself be content with that position.

…''I want to grow stronger.

He let loose his combination attack and Hajji received it.

In Hiba’s case, having his fist blocked did not mean his attack had been stopped.

He redirected the recoil of the blocked fist into his next attack.

His fists flew while he seemed to quickly spin. His knees, his legs, and especially his elbows were perfect for this high-speed rotation.

And Hajji put some distance between them.

He put a car between them and then sent his stopping concept toward the car.

But Hiba swung his body toward the slope and side-flipped out of the way.

Once he landed, he leaped towards Hajji and threw a backhand blow.

He heard a solid sound as Hajji blocked with B-Sp’s shaft.

The tip was pointed down and it flew up to scoop Hiba upwards.

Hiba kicked the tip and jumped straight up on his own.

At the same time, B-Sp collided with the car behind him.

However…

“…!”

Hajji continued swinging B-Sp.

As if he were playing golf, he hit the fallen red car toward Hiba.

A tremendous noise rang out and the “golf ball” flew.

Hiba kicked the side of the flying car and prepared to jump from it, but the car fell to pieces.

Hajji had planned this. By destroying the car just as Hiba was going to jump, he had canceled the boy’s jump.

Hiba would inevitably fall without having time to prepare for a landing.

“————”

Except he did not.

He was not acting based on reflex.

He had predicted what Hajji would do and had prepared for his landing while damp with cold sweat and warm blood.

Once he landed, he would charge toward Hajji who had just finished swinging B-Sp. The man’s eyes were turned upwards toward the car, so he would be wide open.

Except that did not work out either.

Hiba suddenly realized he had stopped falling.

“Eh?”

It lasted just a brief moment and then he heard something like shattering glass coming from the empty air below his feet.

…''He used his stopping power to create a path for my fall!?

That meant the man had predicted what Hiba would do two steps in advance.

And as Hiba’s slightly delayed fall resumed, he saw Hajji charging his way. The man rotated B-Sp once and swung it horizontally as if to scoop up the boy.

“…!!”

The spear tip hit.

The automatons in the surveillance plane heard a solid impact coming from one section of Kanda.

An electronic tone came from the surveillance system.

“Hiba-sama was hit!!”

That announcement filled the plane with tension.

Hiba had not been holding back.

When none of a fighter’s attacks could reach their enemy and they were hit first, one thing was more frightening than the injury: the loss of momentum.

Their focus would drop and they would be unable to move as quickly again.

And as if to prove that, an automaton spoke up quietly.

“Hiba-sama is not moving. He is alive but motionless.”

''I can’t believe this,'' thought Hiba.

He could see the sky. The night sky was slanted.

He thought about where he was.

…''Where is this? It looks like the school building of some university.

He was probably on the seventh floor and he was lying face-up near the window of an unlit classroom.

His moonlit bed was made from a windowsill, glass, and a broken wall.

He tasted blood in his mouth.

His back had broken through the window and was intermittently convulsing from the impact.

Pain filled his entire body and he could barely breathe.

This was the result of just one mistake.

…''I can’t believe this.

Suddenly, something blocked the moonlight.

The pale light backlit Hajji and his white cloak. The man’s shoulders rose and fell as he caught his breath and his spear was lowered in his right hand.

“What’s the matter? Hm?” he asked. “Didn’t you want to be a hero?”

Hiba just about apologized because he felt he had been rude to this master fighter.

But the voice that left his lungs said something else.

“You…”

His voice was trembling and scratchy.

“You’re so strong…but can you not become a hero yourself?”

His question brought silence.

For a few seconds, he simply tried to catch his breath and saw Hajji hang his head.

But then the man spoke from the moon’s backlighting.

“That is none of your concern. …Besides, some people do not wish to be a hero.”

Hiba thought about calling that a lie. This man had so much strength and the power to lead.

…''So why does he try to make people hate him?

Hiba did not know.

All he knew was that Hajji had not once done anything remotely unfair during their battle. He had done a few things like that during the attack on UCAT, yet he had done no such thing during this battle that he absolutely had to win.

That meant he was not willing to win at all costs.

“Kh…”

Hiba tried to get up. His entire body ached and he was frozen with pain.

His body was telling him not to move.

And Hajji’s words seemed to respond.

“How about we end this? How about we declare this my victory and thus Top-Gear’s overall victory?”

After a pause, he spoke more quietly.

“You go pursue Tatsumi.”

''Dammit,'' thought Hiba. ''I can’t let it end like this.

…''This man…

''This man still hasn’t gone all out. He still hasn’t put up a fight worthy of the title hero.

''A hero,'' thought Hiba.

''If I was a hero, I’d be able to reach Miki.

He now realized the opponent before him was a shortcut to that goal and he wanted to face him as a hero.

But his body ached and refused to move.

“————”

And then he heard a sudden noise. It came from the cellphone he had dropped on the floor.

After ringing twice, it automatically answered and he heard new sounds: hurried footsteps and a female voice.

“This is Tsukuyomi of Japanese UCAT’s Development Department. …Am I interrupting? Or did I make it in time?”

''For what?'' he wondered as he slowly breathed in and listened to the fallen cellphone.

“Listen. I’m about to let you hear something very important.”

Another sound immediately followed.

It was a heavy, deep, muffled sound, but it was also very short and it played again shortly thereafter.

…''Is this…?

It was a pulse.

“Now that we’ve made it this far, I’m sure she’ll wake up. So…so make sure you come back.”

He heard a hint of a smile in Tsukuyomi’s voice and also heard a chair move.

“Knowing you, you’re probably on the verge of death. But you know what, Hiba boy? The people who return from the verge of death, are the ones who still have something to do in this world. If you die, then why is she even trying to wake up? She has something she still wants to do here and she’s waiting for you.”

So…

“Climb up the hill leading from the underworld. Climb up that hill and you’ll find the land of the living.”

“———”

Hiba breathed in just as the call ended.

But he had managed to breathe in.

He forced in the air he needed to move.

“Ah!”

And as if tearing his own body, he moved.

Two figures jumped out into the dark city.

They attacked in midair, put distance between themselves, and landed on the slope.

They were Hajji and Hiba.

Hajji was to the west and Hiba to the east.

Hajji stood calmly while Hiba’s trembling body doubled over and blood spilled to the ground.

However, Hiba did not hesitate to charge forward.

By taking in a quick breath, he kept his body as tense as he could manage. He used the breath to keep the bleeding to a minimum and began the battle with a fist.

Hajji blocked and then attacked.

Hiba avoided the rising blade with quick footwork.

He moved in by reversing that footwork.

As the two of them continually attacked, dodged, and defended, they raced up the slope.

The top of the slope came into view, along with Ochanomizu Station and the bridge crossing the river next to the station.

The two of them arrived within one hundred meters of there.

Hiba was able to focus, so he gave a yell.

“Why!?”

He asked a question of a man who had fought more than he knew.

“Why did you give up on being a hero!?”

“Because I couldn’t protect them!”

“Neither could I!”

“But you have someone waiting for you to return. …Two, in fact.”

Hiba’s bloodshot eyes saw Hajji smile in a way he had never seen before.

During the meeting, he had seen the man smile normally several times, but never this closed-mouth smile that simply narrowed his eyes a little.

“But…”

Hiba moved quickly so his combination attack would reach.

It was as if getting a blow in would convey his thoughts.

Solid sounds rang out, his evasion and attacks flowed together, and even his own blows shook his entire body.

“But that’s too sad!”

“Emotions that can be described in words lack reality, Hiba. You know what? I no longer have anyone to protect.”

Hiba thought about the man’s words and smile.

''Oh, he might be a different form of me.

''I can stay as I am because the people I care about are still alive, but after losing the people he needed to protect, did he no longer know what to do?

''Did he give into desperation and decide to become a villain?

''Then did my step-sister who now goes by Tatsumi do the same?

He had recovered when he heard Mikage’s pulse, so it was possible he could not understand them.

''But,'' he thought about what Hajji had said.

“Then…”

Then…

“Why did you make your sister’s power a part of yourself!?”

“————”

''Yes, that’s right.

''I’m certain of it. I understand. Or at least I feel like I do. On this point, he’s definitely just like me.

“Once, I put a barely-conscious girl in a wheelchair, took her outside, and showed her this world.”

He sent out another blow that would not reach the man, but still wanted this to hit home.

“You too showed that eye this world! And you must have promised to show her a new world! And…and when you did…”

His voice rose to shout.

“You decided to become a hero, even if no one would know it!!”

His blow hit, but Hajji blocked it with B-Sp.

However, the man’s defense was slightly different from before.

This time, he pushed Hiba away as he blocked.

The next thing Hiba knew, they had reached the top of the slope.

They both let out white breaths and faced each other from a distance of ten meters.

They looked straight at each other with the light of the surveillance plane overhead.

Even as he trembled, Hiba gave a powerful nod with a serious expression.

“I will win. …So that I can continue on to those who are waiting for me.”

So…

“Please lose. …So that you can face those who waited for you.”

Hajji smiled bitterly, but…

“So you have two people waiting for you? …Kids these days are spoiled.”

The bitterness left his smile just before they both leaned forward and moved.

Hajji fought.

He blocked his enemy’s attacks, sent forth his own power, moved his body, and continually searched for an opening to victory.

Sounds reverberated around him. They were the sounds of battle and they were familiar to his mind and body.

It had only been a month and a half since he had fought Abram, so he felt fortunate to hear these sounds again so soon.

His weapons were the eye in which his sister resided, 9th-Gear’s Concept Core, and his own body.

He had no real grudge against his enemy.

That enemy saw himself in Hajji, but it was a one-sided view.

As an emotion, it was sentiment. As a color, it was green. As a texture, it was soft.

However, Hajji felt something nostalgic in that.

He and the others had once been like that.

While attacking again and again and pursuing his enemy’s movements, Hajji recalled days long past when he had fought and trained like this in the sand and below the bright sky.

His enemy here was young. The boy could easily have been his grandson.

As they fought, that boy was catching up. He had caught up in speed, he made up for his weak attacks with combinations, and he would circle around behind Hajji before sending in his fists.

To land a blow, he would make feints, throw decoy attacks, use tricky movements, and do whatever else it took.

But none if it felt underhanded. After all, Hajji was overwhelmingly more powerful.

Hajji’s blows were stronger, the speed of his straight-line movements was greater, and he had the advantage in reach, endurance, build, experience, and so much more.

So the boy used everything available to him as he faced the man.

He moved around Hajji and slipped his own attacks in. A few of them grazed Hajji, but he never managed a solid blow.

All that reached Hajji were the sounds, movements, and breaths of battle.

''Wonderful,'' thought Hajji.

''Do whatever you can,'' he thought. ''I will receive it all head-on.

''I am fighting with my full strength, but you are desperate. I will do nothing to damage that desperation.

''Why? Because a desperate opponent feels that defeat is the same as death.

''It is like a glass knife.

''Strike it on the side and it readily breaks, but to do that is to forcibly break it.

''If the glass knife breaks when received head-on, then it broke due to its own weakness.

''In the former case, the knife will never be made again. No one will know whether it was a poor-quality knife or not, but the fact that it broke still remains.

''But in the latter case, someone will surely decide to make an even stronger knife.

''This boy is the latter.

''I really do think I’m a teacher, don’t I?'' thought Hajji before thinking about his sister.

If she had lived and married the hero, would he have taught her how to use a sword?

That could never be now.

He had not taught Mikoku or Shino how to use a sword. So that they could live in the new world, he had felt they should not wield any more power than they themselves desired.

But lately, Mikoku had chosen to enter that territory and seemed to have gained some kind of confidence.

''If,'' he thought.

…''If I had trained those two, would they have become like this boy?

This enemy was filling all of his inadequacies with desperation in order to defeat Hajji.

This enemy was forming attacks from his desire to defeat Hajji.

These attacks did not come from hostility.

They were the product of a pure desire to overcome him.

''Wonderful,'' he felt.

''A wonderful enemy.

''This boy has something he must protect. He has someone who protects him, who he protects, and who creates a place for him to return to.

''He is a hero,'' thought Hajji.

And he had self-importantly asked Hajji to lose.

…''So I can face those who waited for me, hm?

''Don’t worry,'' he thought. ''You are a hero.

''And I can no longer become a hero.

''That’s right,'' he muttered in his heart. ''I am no hero.

“I am simply a man with strength.”

But his comment received a response.

“No!!”

The shout ran to the side.

“That can’t be true. After all…”

Hajji caught sight of the opponent who quickly back-stepped away.

The boy twisted his eyebrows and looked on the verge of tears as he created the space he needed to charge in.

“Why do you always think about how you can’t be with anyone!? Why don’t you ever think about being somewhere for others to return to!?”

They were ten meters apart once more. Without taking a breath, the boy shrank down like a spring.

“The people you lost are looking at this same world with you and the world you lost gave you this world you stand in now!”

“Do you really think they and their world would rejoice in a world that paves over and hides everything?”

Hajji forcefully prepared for his next move.

He decided to end this here and to win no matter what it took.

“This is a world of lies!”

“But as a false version of yourself, you spoke of them on the night of that attack!”

A voice rang through the air and Hajji calmly saw the boy take the first step of his charge.

“Are you saying even that was a lie!?”

Hajji saw an explosion of speed.

The boy had chosen to dash forward.

In what was likely his final move, he ran in a straight line in order to simply win and overcome Hajji.

The boy’s blood sprayed into the air and his body overcame his speed.

He rushed in and Hajji launched an attack on the coming conclusion.

Hiba no longer hesitated.

He used his power as he ran.

The first thing he used was Mitsuaki’s concept of non-understanding.

The concept’s power was unleashed with a metallic noise, but Hajji immediately shattered it with his stopping power.

Hiba had known it would not work.

But Hajji’s use of that power had made him waste some time, no matter how slight.

Hiba had done it because it could lead to even a tiny chance for victory.

He swung his body, propelled himself forward with the bottoms of his feet, felt a sticky sensation as the soles of his shoes left the asphalt, and continued forward.

Hajji raised B-Sp.

There was still some distance between them, so Hajji would be able to thrust B-Sp forward and send out the flames before Hiba arrived.

That was why Hiba used his next power: Nijun’s concept of truth.

There could be no lies, so all feints and diversions were sealed.

…''My movements will accurately guide me!

His body felt a bit restricted because the feints burned into him by experience were being restrained as unnecessary.

But that restrained power brought his feet more strongly to the ground and Nijun’s bodily reinforcement power raised his speed further.

However, Hajji was faster.

At seven meters apart, Hajji’s arm was just about to complete its swing.

With the nighttime city in the background and the lights of the shops and streetlights as his backlight, the tall figure targeted Hiba.

''Amazing,'' thought Hiba. ''He always uses his full strength to defeat his opponent.

He fully focused on the fight and produced the greatest movements, power, and speed he could.

This was how he had forced back Abram and the others and reached the lowest level during the attack on UCAT.

With the enemy before him, Hiba had another thought.

…''Can I become like that too?

Could he become that strong?

Hajji did not have the divine protection Izumo did. Nor did he put up with the kind of pain Sayama did.

But even without the stopping power of his eye, he would still be powerful. His physical build was a part of that, but he primarily fought with nothing more than his own body.

No one in UCAT had defeated him one-on-one.

''So,'' thought Hiba.

''I want him to be a hero.

''I don’t want him to create a false version of himself because he couldn’t protect what mattered most to him. I want him to protect what matters most to him even if it means creating a false version of himself.

''And isn’t that what he did during the attack and during the meeting?

…''Wasn’t he a hero going by the name of a villain?

Hajji had claimed to have set up bombs when negotiating with Sayama.

Hiba was certain he had intended to press that button.

But in the end, he had not pressed it.

''Why not?'' wondered Hiba.

If he would have pressed it had been willing to press it, then…

…''He changed his mind.

Hidden below the surface, this enemy had the will needed to ''not'' press the button.

And he still did. No matter what methods Hiba used, the man was willing to receive them.

He seemed to be saying that was the proof of a truly powerful warrior.

And the man sped up his counterattack. At this rate, Hiba would be unable to reach him.

So Hiba took action. He too sped up, but once he saw he would not make it, he used his next power.

“Yonkichi-san!”

A moment later, Hiba and Hajji switched places.

Hiba stood still where Hajji had been and Hajji raced toward Hiba from where the boy had been.

The situation was simple: Hajji was moving his weapon forward while approaching Hiba.

So Hiba leaned forward.

“———!!”

And he closed the gap between them.

He used their relative speeds. Hajji had been given Hiba’s speed and Hiba created that speed in himself once more, so they rapidly approached.

But even after that, Hajji was faster.

“Ohhh!”

Before Hiba could reach the man, the muscles of Hajji’s right shoulder swelled out and he thrust his spear forward.

“Go forth, light and darkness of my mother world!!”

As he shouted, B-Sp’s flames and his eye’s stopping power shot toward Hiba.

Hiba did not have time to evade, so they were sure to hit.

Hajji realized he had released his power.

This excellent enemy had faced him head-on and he had overcome the speed that was that enemy’s greatest asset.

…''What will you do about that?

Hajji silently asked while looking at the flying flames, the expanded stopping power, and Hiba beyond them.

…''What will you do about that!?

He had launched the perfect attack to overcome this enemy.

“Can your desperation overcome my best!?”

A moment later, Hajji saw Hiba display his final power.

He threw a blue sphere from behind him. That sphere raised all attack power to maximum.

''But,'' thought Hajji. ''What will he do with that?

Hiba was unarmed.

While he might be able to negate B-Sp and the stopping power with his two fists, his arms would be destroyed and his defeat made certain.

But in the following instant, Hajji saw Hiba throw two weapons.

They were…

“Philosopher’s stones!?”

“Yes,” answered Hiba. “These are the pieces of Mikage-san’s evolution stone!!”

As if to protect Hiba, the pair of blue stones flew with maximum attack power and collided with the flames and stopping power.

And they destroyed them.

The flames and stopping power were shattered by the evolution stones that protected him.

“———!!”

Hiba’s momentum carried him right up to Hajji.

Hiba clenched both his fists and stepped forward.

Mikage could no longer evolve, but she would wake up.

One day, surely she would wake up.

That had already been determined. And once she did, he would be with her.

And at the moment, he felt she had protected him.

He also felt what he had done was selfish, but…

…''If I don’t do this, I can’t protect her!

He avoided Hajji’s B-Sp just before it reached his face.

His bandana tore and the night air reached his forehead.

He had not felt this sensation in a long while. He had worn the bandana ever since being unable to protect Mikage so long ago, but he felt like it had just been removed for the very first time.

The chilly air seemed to wake him up and told himself to redo things.

Even if Mikage could no longer evolve, they could begin much like they had when they had first met, but redone as the people they were now.

And…

…''I need to face Miki!

He would not run. He might hesitate or feel doubt, but he would no longer run away.

He would not fear fighting or try to avoid it and he would try to listen to what she had to say.

And to do that…

“…!”

He stepped forward and sent his fist forward.

In the instant of impact, he saw a smile of resignation on Hajji’s face as the man looked down at him.

Hiba had not hesitated.

He simply produced the greatest strike he possessed.

“————!!”

And he let out a roar.

Even after he was the only one left standing atop the hill, his wavering roar continued on and on without end.

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Owari no Chronicle:Volume13 Chapter 33

2015-04-17T17:38:54Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 33: He who Speaks of Pain */

==Chapter 33: He who Speaks of Pain==
[[Image:OnC_v13_0289.png|thumb]]
''It exists within pain

''So even as they ache

''People can reach out

According to the library’s clock, it was 2:30 PM.

An hour and a half had passed since the afternoon question-and-answer sessions had begun.

It was a good time for a short recess.

However, no one in the audience seats stood, spoke, or even stirred. Only Hajji’s calm voice filled the meeting room.

He spoke as everyone watched.

“Now, let us reconfirm the destructive sins Low-Gear committed against Top-Gear.”

Eventually, he received a reply.

At the bottom of the library, Sayama added in his own words.

“Then you can hear my opinion while we are at it.”

“Of course,” expressionlessly replied Hajji “First.”

Everyone listened as he began his previous list of seven sins.

“What do you have to say about Low-Gear’s existence causing the time of destruction?”

And Sayama answered. He gave the answer he had likely already prepared in his heart.

“About that one…”

Everyone listened.

“If you can call the world’s creation a sin, then wouldn’t the greatest sinner be god, who is ranked just below me? It would be one thing if it was something we could have changed, but this was unavoidable, wasn’t it? There is no room for redemption here, so why even talk about it as a sin?”

“I see,” said Hajji.

He seemed to be aware how utterly silent the audience was because he did not raise his voice even as he suddenly continued on.

“Then what about the second sin, killing your neighbors by destroying the ten Gears?”

The next question brought about even greater silence.

Sayama frowned and asked the very question that had brought on that silence.

“Does this mean you accepted my answer concerning the first sin?”

Despite the question, Hajji remained expressionless and said something else.

“Can we move on?”

What did that question mean in relation to Sayama’s doubts?

No one knew and Hajji simply repeated himself.

“Are you listening? I asked about the sin of killing your neighbors.”

After being asked again, Sayama finally nodded and gave an expressionless answer.

“That has already been settled with the ones involved. There is no need for an unrelated Gear to speak out about it now.”

“I see,” everyone heard Hajji say.

And without altering his stance, he immediately asked the next question.

“Then what about the third sin, killing your parent by destroying Top-Gear?”

Sayama’s eyebrows moved slightly when the man continued to the third question without adding anything to the previous one.

However, he slowly and cautiously answered that third question.

“I plan to go over the facts of that issue in a moment.”

Everyone once more heard Hajji say, “I see.”

And that answer filled the audience with some slight movement.

That movement was known as unrest.

Hajji had claimed he would answer Sayama’s reason using emotion.

However, he had said nothing about any of the three answers he had received, even though Sayama’s last answer had not been an answer at all.

Nevertheless, Hajji said nothing more. Enough people found this unusual that a slight stir was running through them.

What was going on?

However, Hajji asked his next question as if to drown out that slight noise.

“Then what about the fourth sin, the killing of your other selves?”

“I think we should lament that one side was lost as a result of our battle.”

Sayama gave a purely dutiful answer, but…

“I see.”

Hajji let it slide again.

Everyone watching over the meeting reacted further.

“…?”

Their doubts and suspicions grew.

They had assumed Hajji would speak from the side of emotion about was lost, yet he was letting Sayama’s answers go with no further comment.

Once again, they wondered what was going on.

And then they realized Sayama’s brow was ever so slightly furrowed as he faced Hajji.

That was proof that he too had assumed his answers would receive some kind of argument.

He had assumed a debate between reason and emotion would begin.

But Hajji was asking nothing more of him.

Just as everyone wondered why, Hajji spoke again.

“Then what about the fifth sin, bringing a disaster to your own world?”

Sayama thought for a few seconds, and…

“The residual effects of Top-Gear’s destruction were unavoidable and I believe the damage was kept to a minimum by sending Noah into the void. As such,” he said, “I feel Low-Gear did nothing wrong there.”

Everyone could tell his use of the word “feel” was an invitation.

Because they had done the best they could, he did not “feel” anything wrong with what they had lost.

That was an unforgivable statement from the standpoint of emotion.

Nevertheless…

“I see.”

Hajji let even that go.

Everyone held their breaths at Hajji’s confounding responses.

How did he want this question-and-answer session to go?

And as they all watched him, Hajji spoke lightly as if trying to hurry the topic along.

“Then what about the sixth sin, covering it all up to escape responsibility?”

Sayama gave a direct answer.

He seemed to be saying he felt a need to answer no matter what Hajji might be hiding.

“Listen. We too were affected by our predecessors’ secrecy. That is how we managed to complete our negotiations while looking to the future. …That is all there is to it.”

He was essentially stubbornly refusing to justify it, but…

“I see. Then…”

Sure enough, Hajji asked nothing of emotion and moved on.

“What about the seventh sin, attempting to rule the world while hiding your sins?”

“To rule the world? I believe we were negotiating to stand on equal footing with the other Gears, but do you see it differently?”

He answered the question with a question of his own, but Hajji responded no differently.

“I see.”

When they heard that answer, everyone had a feeling they knew what was coming.

Was even the judgment of those seven sins part of the “emotion of what was lost” that Hajji spoke of?

And to prove them right, he gave Sayama a nod of understanding and spoke.

“Reason is a troublesome thing, Sayama. If you try to use reason to answer even a tiny question produced by emotion, you can only provide a specific means of resolving the problem.”

He crossed his arms.

“And reason is a sad thing. After all, even if you answer each individual question and then try to solve each of the problems, it does not change the fact that Low-Gear destroyed the other
Gears.”

Everyone heard Sayama respond.

“I am aware of that. That is the entire point of the Leviathan Road. It allows us to move toward a resolution without letting our emotions get the better of us.”

“Is that so?” asked Hajji while scratching his head. “Is that so? Then there is one problem I would like for you to resolve.”

Hajji looked up and everyone stiffened.

It was coming.

The emotion was coming.

This was the emotion everyone felt when they lost something.

Even the judgment of the seven sins had come from this, so they were but the opening act.

He was about to speak of a means to resolve that emotion.

As they all wondered what that could be, they saw motion.

The girl sitting next to Hajji nodded with her arms crossed and eyes closed.

Pushed on by her nod, Hajji opened his mouth.

“Reaching a resolution is the logic of those who survived, so I will respond to that with the logic of those who died.”

This was Top-Gear’s demand.

“This is the one and only way to resolve the emotion of losing something precious. This is something that cannot be resolved with emotion, so I ask that you resolve it with reason, Sayama.”

Hajji asked for just one thing.

“Please return everything that we lost.”

In the depths of the silence and stillness, Hajji clearly asked for what emotion demanded.

As Top-Gear’s substitute representative he presented his demand to Low-Gear’s representative. This was Top-Gear’s demand for the Leviathan Road.

[[Image:OnC_v13_0299.jpg|thumb]]

“Return everything and everyone that was lost or that died.”

He took a breath.

“Yes, we do not need anything other than that.”

He closed his eyes.

“We simply want it back. If you do that, we will have no more reason for hard feelings. So…”

He placed his hands on his desk and bowed deeply toward Sayama.

“Could you please return everything that you have taken from us?”

Kazami clenched her teeth.

…''Now he’s done it!!

He was making an attack of pure emotion.

There was no way of bringing the dead back to life. Everyone knew that.

…''But it’s what everyone wants. They want their loss to have never happened!

Kazami understood this all too well after her tears a month and a half ago.

The words “what if” were powerful.

Unattainable hope hid behind them.

And as Kazami watched, Hajji said more with his head still bowed.

“What if? What if our lands and skies still remained?”

He used them.

“What if? What if the birds and beasts still lived?”

He used them.

“What if? What if those precious people still lived?”

What if?

“What if we still held all the misunderstandings, things we wanted to say, things we wanted to do, and everything else that we only now realize were so important?”

As soon as Hajji straightened up, Sayama’s voice rang out.

“Those are words of retreat that deny all of the inherited words and inherited people!”

“Then yours are words of attack that can only be spoken by those who can still move ahead.”

Hajji calmly answered Sayama’s shout.

“Listen.”

He breathed in and let Sayama’s shouting go without comment. He seemed to say there was no need to speak in such a disgraceful manner here.

“What if?”

''Here it comes,'' realized Kazami.

This was what lay on the opposite end of a demand. If that demand was not accepted, he would ask for…

…''Compensation!

The compensation brought about by the greatest emotion would be a resolution created by the greatest reason.

A moment later, Hajji gave his true demand.

“Here is what Top-Gear demands. The other Gears have lost everything, so if Low-Gear cannot return anything to them, you must hand over this entire Gear as a substitution. …That is Top-Gear’s demand for the Leviathan Road.”

His words filled the library and the air grew clear.

Almost everyone looked to Sayama, but Kazami noticed someone who reacted differently.

In the moderator’s seat, Sf still looked out across the entire room.

“Low-Gear representative, give your answer.”

“Very well.”

Kazami listened as Sayama puffed out his chest and gave a succinct answer.

“That is impossible, you fool.”

Hajji looked to Sayama without even frowning.

“Impossible?”

Sayama nodded.

“Indeed it is,” he began. “Listen. Why are you making such a big deal about demanding something we could never provide? No one could do that. If you can bring back the dead, then I will attempt to answer your ‘what ifs’. But you cannot and this is not something that can be replaced by a substitute. That is why… Yes, that is why we have chosen to clear it all away by letting it be inherited by the next generation.”

He took a breath.

“Emotion is a troublesome thing, Hajji-kun. And it is a sad thing.”

“How is it sad?”

Sayama nodded and spoke as if working to understand his opponent.

“Do you have anyone to inherit who you are once you die?”

“…”

“It would make no sense if you did. After all, you have told the people you leave behind to forever regret your death.” Sayama breathed out. “That is a sad thing. Have you never heard of the Bon Festival system? How about Easter, or memorial services, or graves, or memorial portraits, or memorial tablets, or prayers to your ancestors, or thinking of the other side of the Sanzu River, or the sorrowful day of the number seven and its multiple? …They are all a way of reconfirming what was lost, keeping count, and continuing on.”

Hajji heard Sayama continue and saw him place his right hand on his chest.

“But you are telling us not to keep count of how much time has passed.”

“I see,” said Hajji. “Then,” he began.

He went on to ask a question that seemed perfectly natural to him. From his emotional standpoint, he felt the need to ask this of the boy who faced him from a reasoning standpoint.

“Sayama, does your reason treat the dead as a number?”

This was his question.

Hajji remembered those who had been lost. He could not treat them as mere numbers.

''But what about Sayama?'' he wondered with a bitter smile in his heart. He seemed to be hoping Sayama would be in the same place as him.

But Sayama did not immediately respond.

''It’s coming,'' he realized. ''He’s going to try something now.

…''Bring it on.

No matter what answer the boy gave, he would reply with emotion.

Soon, Sayama slowly opened his mouth and held his hand to the left side of his chest.

“It is true that reason would treat the dead as a number and that is what I will do. But…”

He lowered the ends of his eyebrows, smiled, and stared directly at Hajji.

“But then why do I feel this pain?”

Sayama inhaled.

With that one breath, he attempted to control the binding pain filling his body.

Memories of his parents filled the back of his mind. He had remembered them in order to count two of the dead as a number.

And as close as those dead were to him, he did count them as a number.

Still, he ached.

''Why is that?'' he wondered.

Was it because his mother had sacrificed herself to save his life?

When he asked why his mother had done that, he found an answer.

“I asked why I feel this pain when I use reason to think about this, but the answer is simple. …My parents and my grandfather are telling me not to feel this pain forever.”

And…

“This pain is what brought me here. Do you understand what I mean?”

He spoke to Hajji who was trying to listen to him.

“Why do I still try to use reason even as I ache? Let me answer that as it relates to another story: the truth of Top-Gear’s destruction.”

Brunhild listened to Sayama.

“I will now provide Low-Gear’s view of Top-Gear’s destruction. And let me provide the conclusion up front: Top-Gear’s destruction was not a one-sided attack; it was the result of many people’s pains.”

This meant one thing.

He was going to prove that Top-Gear’s destruction had not been caused by Low-Gear’s invasion.

…''He’s going to eliminate the advantage Top-Gear has as the victim of destruction?

Brunhild frowned just as Hajji spoke.

As usual, it was a quiet almost suppressed voice.

“Are you trying to justify your destruction of Top-Gear?”

Kashima listened as Sayama ignored Hajji, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth.

“Those of you who have read the report likely have a few questions. I assume the greatest of those is why Shinjou Yukio did not actively work on creating the negative concepts after moving to Top-Gear. And why she failed to make them once she did try.”

Someone replied.

It was of course Hajji and, as if forming a duet with the boy, he filled in what Sayama had left unsaid.

“That is because your father took revenge. He altered the negative concept data he sent to Shinjou Yukio so that they would activate once made.”

Kashima nodded.

The report contained evidence to support that view of the past. Sayama Asagi himself had said as much before Low-Gear had begun their attack.

Kashima thought that was proof enough that Low-Gear had destroyed Top-Gear.

But Miyako listened to what Sayama expressionlessly said with his eyes closed.

“Shinjou Yukio was able to use the incomplete positive concepts to calculate out the missing portion. Why was someone that skilled unable to accurately create the negative concepts in a world containing the opposite example that were the positive concepts? Was she really misled by the data? It is quite the mystery. And Shinjou Yukio left behind another mystery.”

He took a breath.

“She said this world has three things that Top-Gear does not.”

''Yeah,'' thought Miyako. ''I heard about that from Wanambi.

So she knew what Sayama was about to say.

Under her breath, she said exactly what Sayama did and paid no heed to Gyes who turned toward her.

“Babel, the Biblical mythology, and one other.”

But Miyako did not know the rest.

''Oh,'' she thought. ''Are you here to find that out?

The plant creature listened to Sayama’s voice which seemed to reverberate in its thoughts.

“But what is the final one? Shinjou Yukio, the woman so closely involved with Top-Gear’s destruction, was pursuing that mystery.”

“Shinjou?”

Sayama seemed to reply to the creature.

“Yes. That is Shinjou-kun’s mother who defected to Top-Gear. And she had found the answer to that mystery.”

From 5th-Gear’s representative seat, Harakawa listened to Sayama while transmitting the voices to Heo using his cellphone.

''Keep talking, villain,'' he thought.

“So what is the final thing that only Low-Gear has?” asked Sayama. “The answer is…Shinjou-kun.”

Izumo listened while leaving the infirmary with Hiba.

“I don’t really get it, but if that idiot isn’t just praising his girlfriend again, he’d better explain himself.”

Sayama could not hear his voice or the bitter smile it contained, but the boy almost seemed to answer him.

“If this world has a concept unique to itself, what do you think it is?”

Hiba asked about that while tilting his head and walking with his legs turned inward.

“Does this negative Gear really have a concept?”

Izumo was not the one to answer him; it was Sayama over the cellphone.

“Had you never thought about it? Anyone from Low-Gear had to have wondered this at least once after learning of the Concept War: how can this world exist with nothing but negative concepts?”

And…

“How can Low-Gear continue to exist without losing its balance even after the positive concepts were brought here?”

Hiba realized what Sayama was trying to say.

“Is that because Low-Gear has some kind of special concept?”

Sayama’s voice replied.

“Yes. Negative concepts can exist all on their own under the effects of this concept. In fact, it is thanks to this concept that negative concepts, positive concepts, and anything else are allowed in this world.”

Wanambi listened to the answer of the riddle that Shinjou Yukio had given him more than a decade ago.

Sayama was giving that answer in its most accurate form.

“And under the effects of this concept, even the god-like act of creating concepts becomes possible. …That is what Low-Gear alone has. It is a concept that allows for positive, negative, creation, and anything else.”

He declared its identity.

“It is…”

He took a breath.

“The concept of contradiction allowance.”

Hajji listened as Sayama raised just his left forearm.

“Why did Shinjou Yukio move to Top-Gear? That is simple. Because thanks to the contradiction allowance concept, the normally impossible concept creation was possible in Low-Gear.”

He listened to Sayama’s words.

He accepted them as a reply to the argument he had made during his attack on UCAT.

He silently listened to the boy’s words.

…''I see.

''So this is his answer,'' he thought. Sayama felt pain while using reason, so he had chosen a way to suppress that pain.

…''To swallow up the pain, he is attempting to learn and accept everything.

Sayama was doing nothing more than reasoning his way through the issue, but Hajji knew what the boy was trying to do.

This reasoning would allow him to accept emotion.

So…

…''Doesn’t that make you the bearer of emotion!?

Even as he had that thought, Hajji continued to listen to Sayama.

“Therefore, Shinjou Yukio realized her existence would be a deciding factor for Low-Gear. Yet if she revealed the existence of the contradiction allowance concept, who knows what Low-Gear’s hawks would try to use it to create. So she kept it a secret, altered her concept creation theory, and defected to Top-Gear.”

''Why defect?'' silently asked Hajji.

As if to answer him, Sayama looked his way and gave a small nod.

“Top-Gear had no contradiction allowance concept, so concept creation was impossible there no matter how much they struggled. Doing so would be playing god, so it was only possible in a world that allowed for anything. Therefore,” he said again. “It may seem backwards, but she would not be a deciding for Top-Gear if she sided with them. And with no knowledge of the contradiction allowance concept, Low-Gear concluded that they could no longer create concepts since she had left and altered her theory.”

He breathed in and chose his words carefully.

“But Top-Gear asked her to create the negative concepts there, even though doing so was impossible. And if they created them regardless,” he said. “They would be unstable negative concepts that would inevitably activate.”

That statement contained a certain truth, so Hajji opened his mouth and asked for confirmation.

“Then is this what you are trying to say? Top-Gear was destroyed because they had Shinjou Yukio create the negative concepts without knowing the truth?”

However, Sayama did not nod in agreement.

He simply paused for a moment to look at Hajji.

“In the past we saw in Sakai, Top-Gear’s Shinjou Yukio had realized the truth about the contradiction allowance concept. After all, he seemed to know why his other self was refusing to create the concepts there. But he wanted to do his very best despite knowing that,” said Sayama. “As for Low-Gear, I think my father had also realized that truth. And when the two Shinjous decided to create the negative concepts, my father sent them the modified negative concept data. …Why do you think he did that?”

Hajji thought on that.

But…

“I would like to hear what you think, Sayama.”

Hajji watched as Sayama held his chest with his right hand.

His shirt could be seen twisting below his suit’s collar as he grasped the pain in his chest.

“My father had a single reason for sending them the modified data despite knowing the whole truth. If the worst case scenario played out, he wanted to take all responsibility for Top-Gear’s destruction onto himself rather than letting it fall on Top-Gear.”

After all…

“The surname Sayama indicates a villain.”

Jord listened to Hajji speak.

“Then are you saying Top-Gear destroyed itself?”

“I do not know.”

Sayama spoke clearly and Jord saw strength in his raised left arm.

“In the past we saw, Top-Gear was already attempting to create the negative concepts without Shinjou Yukio. And at that stage, she finally decided to help. …I am nearly certain that she first insisted that it would be impossible. But,” he said. “The higher ups most likely ordered both Shinjous to create the negative concepts regardless.”

“Why would they insist on creating the concepts after knowing it is impossible?”

Jord noticed something off about the tone of Hajji’s question.

It sounded like the man wanted to reveal the truth.

…''Don’t tell me…

A possibility came to her mind: did he actually just want to know the truth about Top-Gear’s destruction?

She looked to Hajji and his expression.

He was staring straight ahead at Sayama.

She started to say something when she saw it.

“…”

But she stopped.

Instead, she sighed and watched the man continue to stare at the boy.

He asked the boy a question while seeming to enjoy the questioning.

“Why did the two Shinjous try to create the concepts in Top-Gear despite knowing they could not? And why did your father try to take on all of the responsibility?”

Jord saw Hajji cross his arms and give an exaggerated tilt of the head.

“Why did one world choose self-destruction and the other choose to bear all responsibility?”

With her eyes closed, Mikoku listened to her other self.

“Hajji-kun, what kind of Gear was Top-Gear when you were there?”

''Yes,'' she thought before thinking exactly what Sayama said next.

“Was it an appropriate Gear to lead an alliance of every Gear?”

''If it was,'' she thought.

“Top-Gear would have tried to fulfill its responsibilities. Meaning…”

Mikoku took a breath just as Sayama did.

“They may have been unable to create the concepts, but as the Gear to lead all others, they had to create a place for Low-Gear.”

''So,'' thought Mikoku while squeezing her eyes more tightly shut and holding a hand to her chest.

“My father responded in kind. If they failed, he made sure Low-Gear would bear the responsibility for their destruction. …After all, Top-Gear was only lost because it attempted to prepare a place for Low-Gear.”

And Mikoku heard Hajji slowly breathe in and then speak.

“Is this what you are trying to say, Sayama? Top-Gear tried to restrain the activating negative concepts using the positive concepts held inside Noah, but Low-Gear determined that would never work and instead chose to eliminate Noah?”

“Yes. That is what led to that battle in Osaka. The people of Top-Gear attempted to preserve their Gear’s existence, but the people of Low-Gear attempted to prevent the negative concepts from reaching their Gear. …They were both trying to protect what they held dear.”

“I see,” said Hajji.

Mikoku noticed a satisfied note to Hajji’s tone.

…''Father?

But her doubt did not continue. She felt she should not delve into Hajji’s thoughts.

At the same time, she once more wondered how she should settle all of this.

And with her eyes still closed, she heard Hajji’s voice.

After going out of his way to make himself Sayama’s enemy, he spoke his honest thoughts.

“Sayama, you have reasoned through this quite well and I can accept quite a lot of it. But,” he said, “Where is the proof? I understand you deduced this from the past you saw in dreams and the documents you have found, but as your enemy, I require proof. Proof is needed to convince emotion.”

“Well…” trailed off Sayama.

He finally continued with a bitter tone.

“There is not yet any definitive proof.”

Mikoku heard a certain sound.

It was Hajji gulping.

“That is not good enough,” he said. “And either way, it does not change the fact that Top-Gear was destroyed. If Low-Gear eliminated Noah, then it is possible to say you destroyed Top-Gear which was supported by the positive concepts contained within the ship.”

“So the crime of destroying Top-Gear, the mother of all Gears, is that great, is it?”

“It is.” Hajji agreed. “With Top-Gear, every Gear could live together without releasing the concepts. …The creation of the world tells us as much. Top-Gear is the greatest of all Gears and the rebirth of the mother element.”

“So proof is needed to overturn it all.”

“Yes.”

For some reason, Mikoku noticed a hint of disappointment in Hajji’s voice.

“Without proof, everything you have said means nothing.”

At that point, Mikoku was able to guess at something.

And if she was right, the debate would end here or someone would stop it.

And a moment later, she heard a girl’s voice from the library entrance.

“Objection!”

Everyone turned toward the library entrance in surprise.

A girl stood there with a laptop.

Heo stood petrified and her face was completely pale.

She was clearly trembling with nerves and fear of something.

But her eyebrows rose and her footsteps rang through the room.

She passed the counter, passed the representative seats, ignored Sf silently aiming her heavy machineguns to keep the girl from interrupting, came to a stop between Sayama and Hajji, and turned toward Sf.

“I object to what Top-Gear’s substitute negotiator just said.”

“What is your objection?”

“Well,” she said while pulling out her cellphone. “I summoned Thunder Fellow and he’s sending the data over while reconfirming my findings. I’ll explain while we look at that. It’s kind of hard to say, but, um…”

She took a breath to eliminate her hesitation and then spoke clearly.

“There is a way for the twelve worlds to be created other than the theory given by Hajji.”

Heo handed her laptop to a nearby automaton and told her to project its video onto the counter’s whiteboard.

“Top-Gear was destroyed by the negative concepts running out of control.”

Everyone knew that. She saw Diana nod from the audience seats and hold up the report in her hand.

She felt like her teacher was telling her it was okay, which helped further eliminate her hesitation.

“But the negative concepts overtook Top-Gear too quickly, so Low-Gear made use of a certain plan. They…used a reverse seal to send Noah into the void.”

“And? Hm? What about it?”

She heard Hajji’s voice behind her.

“That is why Low-Gear only suffered the Great Kansai Earthquake, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. But doesn’t everyone have a question about that?”

She asked that question.

“What exactly is the void?”

It was…

“It is a place with no time. …It lacks even nothingness.”

Behind Heo, darkness was projected onto the whiteboard.

At the same time, the library’s lights lowered and the dark light on the whiteboard was the only light left.

Heo’s words alone filled the library.

“Not even time has appeared there, so it is the starting point of the world. And…”

She took a breath.

“The starting point of every world is where Noah was sent!”

Shinjou breathed out into the waiting room.

Heo had run out of the room, but Thunder Fellow remained where he had broken through the classroom wall.

In Thunder Fellow’s cockpit, Harakawa was checking over Heo’s theory.

…''We’ve gotten so busy all of a sudden.

Shinjou was busy putting together an additional report regarding Heo’s theory.

It was short, but Ooki had worked hard to translate it and she was adding the publication data for the citations to increase its credibility.

She was copying over the publication data from Kinugasa Tenkyou’s mythology encyclopedia, which Kazami or Harakawa had handled previously.

She typed it in and then reached Kinugasa Tenkyou’s name.

Suddenly, she noticed something odd about the characters written in the publication data.

“Huh?”

She tilted her head and looked at the publication data of the other encyclopedia volumes.

She checked the second, third, fourth, and then skipped to the eleventh. That was when she realized something.

“Is this…?”

She stood up and ran from the room holding the report she had just printed out.

Ooki shouted after her.

“Wh-what is it, Shinjou-san!? This is the kind of suddenness I expect from Sayama-kun!”

“That is a horrible misunderstanding, but, um, uh… I have something important to take care of!”

She shouted back and ran down the hall toward the first floor and the library.

“I’ve realized something! Something incredibly…incredibly important!”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_32|Chapter 32]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_34|Chapter 34]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume13 Chapter 31

2015-04-15T18:37:09Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 31: Strategy of Consideration */

==Chapter 31: Strategy of Consideration==
[[Image:OnC_v13_0247.png|thumb]]
''Yes

''We attempt to attain victory

''By thinking of each other

Izumo and Boldman’s fistfight ate up nearly fifteen minutes.

Sf ultimately drove them back with a stream of bullets, so they were being carried to the infirmary on stretchers.

Including the five minutes spent on that and the five minutes for the question-and-answer session itself, they had taken up a total of about twenty-five minutes.

But Hiba was worried as he watched Izumo’s stretcher disappear out the library entrance.

…''Is this really going to work out?

He also wondered how he was going to buy more time.

He could not pull off the same forcible physical comedy as Izumo, but Sayama had asked him and Izumo to buy him fifty minutes of time.

…''I have to get the remaining twenty-five. Can I really do that?

He stood next to the representative chair and four colored spheres floated above the desk.

The spheres could not speak. They did seem to have wills of their own and they could move in response to questions, so some simple communication was possible.

…''But they can’t argue. How am I supposed to buy time like this?

The light above him turned on.

Once he realized everyone’s eyes were on him, he briefly put up his guard, but…

“Um… I am Hiba Ryuuji, 7th-Gear’s assistant representative.”

Once he began speaking, he somehow made up his mind: he would do this normally.

The right thing to do in this situation was correctly identify himself, so…

“I belong to Japanese UCAT, I’m a first year at Taka-Akita Academy, I’m part of the automobile club there, I’m 168 cm tall, and I weigh 61 kilos, but I have low body fat. Also, my blood type is A and my hobby is peeping. My favorite food is anything Mikage-san has started making recently. Mikage-san is just so cute that I-…”

“Hiba boy, the world is recording this exposure of all your embarrassing secrets.”

“Eh? D-did I say anything weird!?”

He looked around in surprise, but every single person there averted their gaze.

An unbearable silence fell and he could not bear to stand in the center of it.

“Ah! The entire world is ignoring me! Is this a first for humanity!?”

They were ignoring him, so naturally, no one responded. Instead, he looked to the seat on his right.

“C’mon, Kazami-san. Please turn this way. Look, it’s your cute underclassman.”

Kazami remained facing away from him, but G-Sp2’s tip poked over her shoulder and toward him.

The weapon was already in firing mode and the console had a message for him: Stay back.

“Wow, even your pet weapon is cement-like!”

“Hiba boy. Do you have any questions for me?”

Hiba turned toward Sayama’s voice, realized the other boy was looking at him, and gave a toothy grin.

“Sayama-san, you at least understand me, don’t you!?”

“Yes,” he said before looking to the audience seating on the left and right and giving a dry snap of his fingers.

“Stenographers, our previous statements could be misunderstood, so please strike it from the record.”

“Ahh!! You monster!!”

“Continuing on, does anything come to mind as a request from 7th-Gear?” asked Sayama. “We inherited 7th-Gear during the previous battle and they already knew of the battle between Top-Gear and Low-Gear. Nevertheless, they personally gave us their Concept Core, so-…”

Before Sayama could finish, Hajji’s voice rang out.

“Objection! Moderator, that Concept Core was created by a member of UCAT!”

His voice roared from the 9th-Gear seats.

“I believe the creator was acting on the 7th-Gear residents’ instructions when she created it, but if they had known of Top-Gear’s existence, don’t you think they would have given their Core to Top-Gear instead!?”

Everyone gasped and Sf responded.

“Tes. I will allow this. …7th-Gear representative, please answer the question.”

Hiba understood what the question meant.

…''Doctor Chao was chosen to create the four brothers’ Concept Core, but if 7th-Gear had known about Top-Gear, they would have chosen Top-Gear instead of her.

''I see,'' he thought while Sayama gave him an expressionless look.

“What do you think as 7th-Gear’s assistant representative?”

''Eh?'' he thought. ''How am I supposed to know about something that happened so long ago?

But as he wondered that, he saw the spheres floating around him.

The four colored spheres were the Concept Core the four brothers’ had become.

“Oh.”

He realized what Sayama meant, so he turned toward Hajji and spoke.

“Sorry, but that is not the case. If you think it is, then please make a correction! After all,” he began. “The four old men that were 7th-Gear’s Concept Core tested us to see if this world was worthy of inheriting their Concept Core. And they knew about Top-Gear. …If they had thought Top-Gear was ideal, they would have gone to Top-Gear and fought to be inherited there!”

Which meant…

“They stayed in Low-Gear of their own free will and here they still are!”

He yelled his conclusion, but Hajji asked another question.

“Then what if that desire to stay was implanted within them when they were created?”

''Damn, he’s persistent,'' thought Hiba. ''There’s no way I can answer that.

But at that moment, Sayama’s voice interrupted his hesitant thoughts.

“Moderator, the 9th-Gear representative is asking a leading question with no evidence to back it up!”

Hiba saw Sf react to Sayama’s words by raising her machineguns.

“9th-Gear representative, do you have any evidence of that?”

Hajji shrugged.

“I take back my question. But…how fair is it to stick with Low-Gear’s interpretation when there is no evidence either way?”

“If there is no evidence, then you stick with the interpretation of the one who brought it up, Hajji-kun.”

“I see,” muttered the man and Hiba sighed in his heart.

If Sayama had not cut in, Hiba probably would have fallen for Hajji’s tricks.

And as he sighed in relief, Sayama faced him and placed a hand on his chin.

“Listen, Hiba boy. 7th-Gear will be an important case.”

“How…exactly?”

“There are no survivors of 7th-Gear’s people and the Concept Core will likely lose its form if it is released. That means we will be erasing all traces of 7th-Gear.”

Hiba fell silent, as did everyone else, so Sayama continued speaking.

“Does 7th-Gear find it acceptable to be erased?”

Hiba thought for a brief moment, but answered before any real thoughts reached his mind.

“That…would be fine.”

“Why is that?”

Hiba looked across everyone watching.

“7th-Gear left themselves to Low-Gear. They wanted this world to become the kind of world they yearned for: one they would never lose interest in.”

“I see.” Sayama nodded. “Then what do you think 7th-Gear wants of Low-Gear?”

“To always remain an interesting world.”

“In what way?”

Hiba thought about the four brothers they had fought.

“A law forcing everyone to adopt silly speech patterns that change on a daily bas-…”

The four spheres floating around him tackled him from four different directions: one to the chin, one to the right side, one to the solar plexus, and one to the crotch.

The sounds of impact were difficult to listen to. Especially the last one.

Hiba adopted an overly serious expression with his upper lip stretched down a bit.

He groaned, began hopping up and down, and heard Sayama speak.

“It would seem they punish you if you say anything they do not like. This helps show us what 7th-Gear thinks, so I suppose it is two birds with one stone.”

For about three minutes, Hiba bent over with his legs turned inwards, trying to catch his breath.

…''Sigh. Am I actually buying some time here!?

For some reason his voice sounded high-pitched even in his mind and he looked to the clock.

Fifteen minutes had passed since the question-and-answer session had begun, so the question was whether he could buy another ten.

He began to think. He thought hard enough to begin sweating and forced up his doubled-over body.

Impressed cries came from the men in the audience seats.

“I-I really don’t understand why Yonkichi’s sphere attacked me for that one…”

“Everyone is harsher on other people’s jokes than on their own.”

That made an odd amount of sense, so Hiba lowered his hips and looked to Sayama who asked him a question.

“Do you think the trick to maintaining an interesting world is to let the world evolve?”

He just about said yes.

It made sense that an ever-evolving and thus ever-changing world would remain interesting.

…''But…that’s not quite right.

“I don’t think evolving is the only way to keep the world interesting.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” he answered.

He suddenly reached into his pants pocket.

He grabbed two things and placed them on the desk in front of him.

“This is the philosopher’s stone in charge of Mikage-san’s evolution. It isn’t working anymore, though.”

Out of the left corner of his eye, he saw Tatsumi ignoring him and eating some grilled chicken from a festival stand.

He realized she was not acknowledging him and he knew his injuries had yet to heal, so he thought back to the night before last, the battle the previous day, the vision of his father’s battle, and…

…''Mikage-san.

She was sleeping at the moment.

The development department was trying to wake her, but she would no longer evolve once she did.

However…

“Why does the world have to evolve ''to keep us from losing interest in it''? Doesn’t that make the world a slave to its audience? What matters is for both sides to work to make sure they won’t lose interest in each other no matter what might happen.”

He took a breath.

“You need to be able to think you’d never get tired of sleeping alongside the other person.”

Hiba looked to the two stones in front of him.

“Evolution is only one way of changing. Because we’re seeing, hearing, and touching so much, talking about those things, asking about them, doing them together, thinking about really perverted things, and staying in motion the entire time, we have a word for the occasional spots of boredom: a holiday.”

“I noticed something odd mixed in there, but it would seem you know fairly well how to keep things interesting.”

“Yes. After all,” he declared with a smile, “Even if you’ve seen her naked countless times, it still seems fresh when you peep.”

His crotch was hit twice from the front, once from below, and once from behind.

He regained his previous serious expression but with his eyes opened wide, grabbed onto the desk, and trembled.

“A-automated crotch shots? And I feel like they’re focusing more and more on that area!”

“Why are your jokes always so focused on physical comedy?”

“I wasn’t actually trying to make a joke… B-but I feel kind of happy that you think it’s funny…”

Hiba breathed in, gathered strength in his stomach, and scolded his body that was ready to collapse.

However, he heard a voice from the representative seats to his right.

“C’mon, Kashima, why not tape that? Look at how he’s twitching. This would be some rare footage.”

“No. I’d rather not. …It’s too pathetic.”

''I-I really don’t like that kind of consideration,'' he thought with sweat pouring down his face.

…''Honestly, whose fault is this!?

His heart lightened a bit when he gave the punchline, ''It’s my own fault.

And so he raised his trembling body.

“To sum up what 7th-Gear wants…”

As he spoke his next words, he collapsed onto the desk and then to the floor.

“Let’s all have fun, ge…l…ge…”

When Hiba was carried out on a stretcher, Ooki went with him.

The library and the infirmary were connected by a concept space, but just in case, the special duty men carrying the stretcher were disguised in Taka-Akita Academy uniforms.

The men were so large that the standard size of skirt did not even arrive within twenty centimeters of their knees, but Ooki did not call them on it. She assumed it was just their personal preference.

However, Hiba spoke from his doubled-over position on the stretcher.

“Wh-why do I feel like I’m being carried into a nightmare?”

“Well, um, not to worry, Hiba-kun. You did your job.”

Ooki held out a wristwatch which showed fifty-two minutes had passed since the beginning of the afternoon question-and-answer sessions.

He had bought as much time as Sayama had requested during lunch.

“You did your job and everyone else is doing theirs. Heo-san left the library earlier and said she’s continuing her verification of the world’s creation.”

“I see,” he said and closed his eyes in a look of relief.

The apparent leader of the school uniform-wearing men, a Russian man, nodded as Hiba prepared to drift off to sleep.

“You fought well, so it is time for you to rest.”

''That’s how men speak with each other, isn’t it?'' thought Ooki as she saw the infirmary down the corridor.

A large mohawked German man disguised as a female doctor waited for them with crossed arms.

“Leave the rest to me!”

For some reason, Hiba sprang up and tried to run away, but the men restrained him.

They all laughed and grabbed the short boy like a log.

“It won’t hurt! It won’t hurt at all, so don’t worry, boy! I am incredibly skilled!”

“I-it’s not your skills I’m questioning!”

Ooki watched as Hiba was swallowed up by the infirmary.

''He should be fine now,'' she thought.

“They’re the ones that treated his wounds after Tatsumi-san attacked, after all.”

Just as she started back toward the library, an automaton walked up from the other end of the hallway.

Some of the automatons were charged with informing the Gear reservations and foreign UCAT headquarters what was going on. They were currently distributing an extra report to the personnel stationed in different parts of the concept space meeting area made from the school facilities.

“Oh, Ooki-sama. You should return as quickly as you can.”

“Hm? Is 8th-Gear’s session over?”

“It will be soon,” replied the automaton.

She seemed to focus her ears and listened to the other automatons via her shared memories.

“It seems Sayama-sama will provide 8th-Gear with a workplace. A central control system will be created for the Messengers of Wanambi to live in and they will form an ultra-high speed network.”

The Messengers of Wanambi possessed a thought network much like the automatons’ shared memories.

UCAT used the automatons and their shared memories for a lot of high-level control operations, especially management of troops and strategy, but Sayama was attempting to take another step forward by including Wanambi.

The centralized control system itself would be Wanambi’s workplace.

Wanambi was a powerful shared mind and if he spread across the entire world when the concepts were released, Sayama seemed to think they might be able to communicate their thoughts at greater than the speed of light.

“Sayama-sama said that network and its calculation power would be freed up for civilian use when it was not otherwise in use and each individual Messenger of Wanambi would have access to the civilian side.”

“You mean…?”

The Messengers of Wanambi existed on the level of sand, but they would each have access to the network to play around.

UCAT had a recreation room and an arcade. People played on computers and game systems at schools. Each individual person was given that kind of freedom, but the Messengers of Wanambi were different.

However, Sayama was saying they would be given that now.

“They must have been delighted.”

“Yes. They are apparently saying: ‘Wonderful’ ‘Splendid’ ‘Horosho’ ‘Banzai’ ‘Can do it’ ‘Each one’ ‘Individually’ ‘Can play’ ‘Can play!!’ ”

“Oh?” Ooki nodded. “If that plan is realized, the world will become a much livelier place, won’t it?”

“It will,” agreed the automaton. “Take care, Ooki-sama. 8th-Gear’s question-and-answer session will end soon, but that leads into 9th-Gear, 10th-Gear, and Top-Gear’s sessions. …Izumo-sama and Hiba-sama bought Sayama-sama the time he asked for, but…”

“Are you worried?”

The automaton shook her head.

“I do not have the emotion of worry. I simply have some negative predictions.”

“Yeah, I guess you would.”

Ooki sounded carefree, so the automaton looked up at her.

“Are you not worried?”

“No. After all, Hajji-san is sticking to being our enemy.”

She thought back to the conversations she had in UCAT’s underground cafeteria.

“He’s with the people he trusts now and I’m sure the strength of his words as our enemy are what those people need. He’s sure to step forward as the enemy who will lead us to some kind of answer.”

And…

“I’m sure they’ve already realized Sayama-kun is desperately trying to stall for time.”

The automaton’s expression grew entirely blank as Ooki spoke.

“Ooki-sama,” she said. “Will Sayama-sama be okay?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that they are both trying to reach their answer.”

Ooki took a breath and scratched her head in resignation.

“And both of them will probably use any means necessary to get there.”

Back in the library, 8th-Gear’s question-and-answer session came to an end.

Wanambi and the Messengers had agreed to use their communication and calculation power for the coming new world. They said they would see the world through the network they shared with the information people created.

“Play” “We can play” “Let’s play” “Let’s play!”

That was the final answer Wanambi reached.

Once Sf announced the end of that session, Sayama placed his hands on the central desk and sighed without letting anyone else notice.

An hour and two minutes had passed since the afternoon question-and-answer sessions had begun.

…''I have sorted through a lot of what I want to say, but I still have a long way to go.

He needed another hour. There was not much hope with 10th since they had already submitted to UCAT, but 9th was Hajji. If Sayama could stretch things out with him, he could probably get the hour he wanted.

He could use that hour to complete his arguments before the Top-Gear question-and-answer session with Mikoku began.

He watched the automatons carry the Messengers of Wanambi back to their seats.

…''Once it’s over, I will have Shinjou-kun praise me.

He also wanted to visit the Tamiya house. Now that they had seen the past, he felt they might feel more meaning in visiting the shrine to the Shinjou family in the backyard there.

Shinjou Yukio had never visited it, but they could still send their thoughts to her from there.

“Yes… And I want to flirt with Shinjou-kun.”

After muttering under his breath, he looked up.

Two lights fell on the representative seats. One on Hajji and one on the elderly manager.

Sayama nodded toward them both.

“Now, Hajji-kun. How about we begin 9th-Gear’s Leviathan Road?”

“That’s right. Yes. …Let’s do that.”

Hajji stood up with a bitter smile and, with a rustle of cloth, raised his right hand.

“Moderator.”

A wave of puzzled looks turned toward him.

Sayama however gave him a look of conviction. It was the look one gave an enemy.

''Could it be?'' he briefly thought. ''But,'' he added.

…''Does he have some kind of plan?

As Sayama thought, Hajji turned back toward him.

He was no longer smiling and had a serious look in his eyes.

“Listen. …9th-Gear transfers all of its rights concerning its concepts to Top-Gear. In other words, I want to treat 9th-Gear’s Leviathan Road and Top-Gear’s question-and-answer session as one and the same.”

A moment later, Mikoku stood up, nodded, and spoke to Sf.

“Moderator, as Top-Gear’s substitute negotiator, I appoint Hajji as Top-Gear’s negotiator!”

Everyone grew intensely silent at those shouted words.

“Objection!” yelled Sayama, while distinctly feeling the weight of his wristwatch. “Hajji is a resident of 9th-Gear and not of Top-Gear!”

Sf replied calmly.

“Low-Gear has also appointed substitute representatives from other Gears. I have determined that both 9th-Gear and Top-Gear have consented to placing Mr. Hajji as Top-Gear’s substitute representative.”

Therefore…

“I accept Mr. Hajji as Top-Gear’s representative. …Low-Gear representative, complete 10th-Gear’s question-and-answer session and then complete Top-Gear’s session with Mr. Hajji.”

A swell of gasps filled the room and Sayama saw Hajji’s one eye looking directly at him.

But that was not all.

Someone else stood up. Jord stood to Hajji’s right and also looked to Sayama.

She shrugged, looked at everyone else, looked back at Sayama, looked at Sf, and spoke clearly.

“Let me make one thing clear first: 10th-Gear will not hold a question-and-answer session.”

“Are you refusing to negotiate?” asked Sf.

Jord shook her head.

“10th-Gear was working with UCAT from the beginning. Also, 10th’s Concept Core has taken a liking to this world and we’re all in the reservation. And with all that, we’ve realized something.”

“What is that?”

“We shouldn’t say anything careless. And for that reason, we don’t worry much about what happens outside. Still, if we have anything to say, it’s to not oppose 10th-Gear and to treat our Concept Core with care.”

With that said, Jord turned to Sayama and showed off her teeth in a smile.

“Sorry about this. …Try to focus on dealing with Top-Gear, okay? And without stalling for time negotiating with 10th.”

Sayama remained silent and finally nodded.

He only spoke after looking at his watch.

“Your demands have been noted.”

''Here it comes,'' he thought.

His final hour had been taken from him.

The enemy had used time to their advantage and eliminated the time he needed to confirm the truth and solidify his argument.

They had worn down his time once by showing up in Sakai and now they had done it again.

And so he told himself he could not afford to lose here. But on top of that…

…''Interesting!!

This was essentially an unplanned opportunity to test his ability to adlib and put together arguments.

This was the stage to test his skills.

Here, he could not let his guard down and he had to be serious.

Ahead of him, Jord sat in her seat, Mikoku remained sitting, and Hajji was still standing.

The lights only illuminated Hajji and Mikoku and the latter quietly closed her eyes with a white dog next to her.

Without smiling, Hajji brought a hand to his chest and spoke.

“Now, how about we begin?”

He bowed and Sayama opened his mouth.

It was time to speak the words that would settle everything with Top-Gear.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_30|Chapter 30]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_32|Chapter 32]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume13 Chapter 22

2015-03-15T05:04:53Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 22: Looking Back in the Snow */

==Chapter 22: Looking Back in the Snow==
[[Image:OnC_v13_0059.png|thumb]]
''As if afraid of the white snow

''My voice seeks the darkness

''But the voice of the darkness refers to me as snow

A large room was decorated for Christmas.

Even the sign in the cafeteria that said Soukou House had chains of colored paper hanging from it and those colorful chains covered the ceiling as well.

Below the white lights, Shinjou sat on a white bench with notebooks and letters spread out before her and Sayama held a cellphone to his ear.

Shinjou saw the director walk past the cafeteria entrance, so she gave a quick bow.

The woman nodded back and Shinjou smiled before facing forward.

The documents in front of her were the records of Shinjou Yukio that she had not had time to read before or that they had brought with them. The director had found more since Shinjou’s last visit, so there was a small pile of notebooks, albums, and letters on the table.

…''It’s nice being able to learn as much as I can.

She felt like she was filling the gaps left inside herself.

The others seemed to be taking action in their own ways and Sayama was currently on the phone with Heo.

It had been a long call, Sayama occasionally spoke up so Shinjou could hear, and Heo was telling him what Harakawa’s mother had told her about the past. However, that was reaching its end.

“I see. Then are you about to head home, Heo-kun? …Yes, take care.”

Sayama ended the call and Shinjou turned toward him.

“It sounds like they’re having trouble over there. Did Ryuuji-kun do something again?”

“Yes.” Sayama nodded and crossed his arms. “From what Heo-kun said, he renegotiated with 2nd-Gear by letting a 2nd-Gear man penetrate him with his sword, which produced a lot of blood. Currently, he is stuck in bed, defenseless against all the ‘attacks’ the others are sending his way.”

Shinjou frowned and the two of them thought on what he had said.

“Was part of that a euphemism?”

“Shinjou-kun, are you suggesting that the Hiba boy’s heart has migrated to the side of men?”

“N-no, of course not. I was only kidding. Heo must have said it wrong.”

“But would she really say anything wrong to us after the ‘thisp’ incident?”

They fell silent for about a minute but eventually cleared their throats.

Deciding not to think about anything unpleasant, Shinjou gathered together the documents on the table.

“Come to think of it, Sayama-kun, you were speaking with the director earlier, weren’t you? Do you mind if I ask what about?”

“Oh, she was only talking about my grandfather.”

He brought a hand to his chest and smiled bitterly.

“I only confirmed that he did know how to keep up the appearance of being a good person.”

“He was apparently the one who delivered my mom’s letters.”

“Heh heh heh. Being someone’s gofer is perfect for that wicked old man. Work until you die. Although I suppose it is too late for that.”

“You’re as twisted as ever.”

“If you twist far enough, you end up facing straight forward again, Shinjou-kun. But anyway, were you able to hand over the gift you brought?”

“Yes.” Shinjou smiled. “The director gave me so much last time, so I bought our school cafeteria’s famous Kinugasa Gelatin. It’s amazing. It has 0% fruit juice, but it apparently still tastes like fruit.”

“Heh heh heh. Shinjou-kun, your ignorant naïveté is lovely and right in my strike zone. But…it is disappointing that the item I prepared in the cafeteria did not catch your eye.”

“Yes, yes. …Wait. Is that why there was ‘Shinjou Konjac Gelatin’ in the cafeteria gift corner!?”

“All the fiber is gentle on the stomach.”

“You aren’t backing down, are you? Are you? You instantly decided not to back down and moved about three steps ahead, didn’t you?”

“Calm down, Shinjou-kun. I know it is a disappointment that I was only able to prepare the Se-chan flavor in time. But do not fear. I secretly drew myself on the underside, so we are inseparable. No matter what happens, you are still mine and mine alone.”

“But that means we have our backs to each other.”

“How careless of me! But the way our backs are pressed together is unbearably delicious!”

''He isn’t going fix this even if I warn him,'' realized Shinjou. ''In fact, I feel like he’s actually pulling me in.

So she instead flipped through the documents again.

Among the letters sent here, one had been brought from Top-Gear by Sayama’s grandfather. It of course said nothing about Top-Gear or concepts, but it mentioned that she had begun to manage a church of her own.

…''The funding was given by someone calling themselves “The Pair’s Daddy-Long-Legs”.

The letter said Shinjou Yukio did not know who that was but that she was thankful.

''Given the name, I wonder if it was that world’s version of Sayama-kun’s grandfather,'' speculated Shinjou. ''No, if it was, it would Mommy-Long-Legs or Granny-Long-Legs.

“I wonder what happened.”

“What happened with what?”

Sayama casually urged her on, so she gave voice to her thoughts.

“I must have been on Noah with my mom, but why was that? My parents weren’t getting along.”

“And yet you were born. Is that a problem?”

She did not nod because even she was doubtful whether it was a problem or not.

“What if I was an unwanted child?”

She turned around and saw Sayama accepting her words with his usual expressionless look, so she spoke with the new letter in hand.

“My mom had people who were cheering her on, but she didn’t get along with my dad because she did not want to actively help them. She had allies, so why was I born between her and the man she was trying to keep her distance from?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. But…I do wonder why.”

The letter in her hand eloquently described a moment in the past. It was from the time in which her mother had had trouble with her father.

“I always refuse, but he keeps showing up. My hymns are gradually spreading through the local people, but he keeps his distance from all of them and watches me. And when I approach him, he only ever says he wants my help with his work.”

Shinjou checked to make sure Sayama was reading the letter and let her shoulders droop.

“To be blunt, your father may have been something of a stalker.”

“I was thinking about saying the same thing. …I bet the two of you would have gotten along well.”

“What are you talking about? Stalking is a crime.”

“Then what is it you’re always doing?”

“If you and I are not in the center of the world together, the world could very well fall out of balance and receive irreparable damage.”

Shinjou was speechless and she blushed a little.

“Y-you really like making up weird theories about the world, don’t you?”

“Checking on the answer does not change that answer, Shinjou-kun. Now…how about we set the world in motion just a little?”

Sayama stood up and forcefully tugged on her hand.

She hesitated for a moment.

“Wh-where are we going? I haven’t read all of the documents yet.”

“Not to worry. Right now, we must go to the place Shinjou Yukio, your mother, stood.”

He looked through the cafeteria’s glass door and outside.

There was a gate at the park’s exit, an asphalt road filled with the darkness of night beyond the gate, and…

“The answer must lie in the wreckage of the collapse.”

Sayama and Shinjou stepped out into the dark yard.

He was pulling Shinjou along, but she quickly moved up alongside him.

“We’re going to see the past?”

“Some kind of impetus is needed to see the past. Baku uses that impetus to show it to us. That is how we will check to see if our reasoning about the past is accurate.”

“You mean…”

Sayama nodded and continued for her.

“It is simple. We only need to find proof that your parents came to understand each other.”

He turned toward her and held out his empty hand.

“Can you give me the letters you have already read?”

“S-sure.”

Sayama belatedly realized their breath appeared white in the cold air as they exchanged words.

''The gas synthesized within Shinjou-kun is dissolving into the air,'' he realized.

“Shinjou-kun, may I stand downwind of you?”

“''Why''?”

He thought up an excuse. ''This happened when we were exchanging drinks at the train station before,'' he recalled. ''I went with the direct truth then and that was a failure.

''In that case, I merely need to be less direct,'' he decided while smiling to lower her guard.

“Because your white breath smells sweetly of mint.”

“That sounds like a perverted comment in some schoolboy’s journal!!”

She shoved the letters toward his face and he tilted his head.

…''Complaining about a compliment? She is so very shy.

''Well, modesty is a very Japanese virtue,'' he thought. ''And Kenjou, Japanese for modesty, sounds quite a lot like Shinjou.

“Sayama-kun, are you going to read them or not?”

“I am,” he replied to her glaring eyes while walking toward the park’s exit.

He looked down to the text and found it had been sent to his father.

“Something good and something bad happened today. First the good thing: I can build a bell tower thanks to someone’s donation. Apparently, the director who actually runs the church knows who donated the money, but she won’t tell me who it is. She apparently signed a contract with the donor and she can’t tell me until the church is complete. But on her suggestion, I had a sign set up at the gate. The director named it the Nisho Church. I’m guessing she took the first character from ‘The Pair’s Daddy-Long-Legs’ and added on the last character of my name.”

The next letter described some conflict with her other self.

“Something bad happened again today. I ran into this world’s version of me. He says the funding for spreading the Bible is going to be redirected toward developing terminals for Noah.”

''I see,'' thought Sayama.

Shinjou’s mother had defected to Top-Gear, but she had not promised her full cooperation.

She had worked to create a place for Low-Gear there, but before Shinjou’s birth, she had not helped with their concept creation and had been uncooperative.

She had likely wanted to stick to her role as advisor and allow Top-Gear to maintain its dignity.

At the same time, the higher ups of Top-Gear had not wanted her full cooperation. More than anything, they seemed to have wanted to show off that they had a defector from Low-Gear.

That may still have been a peaceful and relaxed time.

…''But as an actual researcher, Top-Gear’s Shinjou Yukio had realized the difficulty and danger of concept creation.

That had led to conflict between them.

And Sayama imagined Low-Gear’s Shinjou Yukio must have made a decision after that conflict.

…''She decided to take personal command of the concept creation and to give birth to Shinjou-kun.

''What led her to do that?'' he wondered while nodding again.

Meanwhile, Shinjou produced an odd footstep next to him and asked a sudden question.

“Sayama-kun, why…why are you trying to learn about my parents?”

“You have doubts about your parents, so is it wrong to want to eliminate those doubts?”

He did not turn toward her as he asked that and she paused for three seconds before responding.

“It is. After all, you won’t look at me.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded and slowed his pace a bit.

The ground was solid below his feet and he sensed her to his side.

He showed her his expression by letting her stand by his side rather than by turning back toward her.

Even as she spoke, he thought that was a cowardly way to show her his emotions.

“Why did my father choose my mother?” he asked.

“…”

“As a result, I was protected by my mother and survived. There is nothing wrong with the result.”

He found it was difficult to speak without allowing his white breath to become a sigh.

“But I would appreciate it if that decision was made for a happy reason. My father realized he should choose my mother, but he likely did so because your parents chose each other.”

He took a breath.

“I want your parents to have chosen each other for a happy reason. That way, my father would have celebrated the decision and noticed my mother’s presence. He would have realized she was the only one he had.”

“Sorry.”

“Thank me instead, Shinjou-kun.”

“I-I don’t think that would get the right meaning across.”

“But I would prefer to have your thanks than your apology. The meaning does not matter as far as that is concerned.”

Sayama picked up his pace again.

He could see the gate ahead.

He pulled Shinjou’s hand in close, pulled her body in close, and placed an arm around her shoulders.

She spoke quietly as he helped keep the cold away.

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you.”

As they exchanged thanks, they approached the gate and walked through.

The streetlights briefly cut off their view, so it felt like stepping out into another world.

But that other world had an asphalt ground and a cliff.

“You can see so much.”

The night scenery opened up down below.

The nearby lights were from houses and cars driving along the roads. The more distant lights were from the port and the boats on the sea.

Shikoku, through which they had travelled that afternoon, was visible as a band of light past the bridge over the Naruto Strait.

“Your mother must have seen this scenery in both Low-Gear and Top-Gear.”

Sayama and Shinjou stopped in front of the gate remaining before the cliff.

Sayama then breathed in and faced Shinjou.

“Now, time for some questions.”

“Eh? W-wait. Where did this come from?”

Shinjou frowned in confusion, but Sayama ignored it.

He raised three fingers in front of her.

“You must answer three questions. If you do not…”

“I-I have to strip?”

“…That is a great idea, Shinjou-kun!!”

“Oh, no! Why did I have to say that!? Forget I said anything!!”

She quickly tried to flee, but he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back.

“Now, for question one.”

“W-wait a second! I haven’t pressed my mental start button yet!”

He waited a little, so she slowly turned around and tilted her head worriedly.

“Y-you won’t really make me…right?”

He immediately nodded with a smile.

“Unfortunately, that is incorrect. The correct answer was ‘Artluman’s seventh special attack is the eye jab’, Shinjou-kun.”

“What kind of question has an answer like that!?”

He ignored her and held out his hand as if asking for her to give him something.

She forced a smile and jabbed a finger into his palm.

“What’s this hand for? Money?”

“Of course not. This is for something which has a value that cannot be bought, Shinjou-kun.”

She sighed and resignedly removed her tie.

“Fine, fine. Make do with this.”

As suggested, he made do. Namely, he wrapped it around his forehead.

“Now, time for question two, Shinjou-kun.”

“Y-you’re still doing this!?”

“Unfortunately, that is incorrect. The correct answer was ‘Kamen Vader 1 died by-…”

“O-oh! Oh! He held a nuclear bomb in his arms, bungee jumped off Tokyo Tower, and destroyed Tokyo!”

“I am really not sure what he was hoping to accomplish with that. …But how did 2 die?”

“Ah, that’s a cheap question!!”

“The answer was ‘he collided with 1 after performing a Super Headbutt to catch him from below’.”

As he spoke, Sayama removed another piece of clothing from Shinjou.

“Eh?”

After about seven seconds, Shinjou looked down.

“Um…”

She frantically held down the front and back of her skirt and crouched down. She was also blushing.

“S-Sayama-kun!? Wh-what was that for all of a sudden!?”

“These are not the panties you wore this morning, Shinjou-kun. …Strings? Were you expecting something to happen!?”

“No, I’ve changed clothes since this morning and I thought these would be easier to walk in. …More importantly, give them back!”

“Restrain that which has at long last found freedom? I could never do something so cruel! I must protect this.”

“Protect? Come to think of it, I’d noticed some of my underwear was vanishing from the closet.”

“Yes. To make sure they would not be stolen and to ensure I would have some on hand whenever you needed them, I placed them under my strict supervision.”

“So it was you!!”

“W-wait, Shinjou-kun! You misunderstand! I am pure!”

“Yes, it was a misunderstanding to ever think you were innocent. You’re obviously pure here. Pure guilty!”

''This makes for a nice daily life too,'' thought Sayama as he received a moderate strangling. But just as he began to give in to the asphyxiation, he restrained himself and quickly tapped Shinjou’s hand.

“C-calm down, Shinjou-kun. And at any rate, it is time for the third and final question.”

Shinjou stopped moving with her arms still reaching toward his neck.

She must have assumed saying anything would lead to further clothing being removed because she remained silent.

So Sayama exhaled and opened his mouth for the final question.

“Question 3: In the Kinugasa Library, we saw Miss Shinjou Yukio standing in the snow. The building next to her had a concert hall and bell tower. In other words, that was the completed version of her church. The gate likely had a sign calling it the Nisho Church. But…”

He looked over to where the cherry tree had to have been.

“She spun around in front of that completed building. So why did she do that? Why did she spin around and spread her arms as if to show off the completed building?”

He asked his question.

“Who was she showing it off to?”

Shinjou raised her eyebrows at Sayama’s question.

…''Come to think of it…

That dream of the past had only lasted a moment, so it had looked like the woman was dancing.

But that was unlikely to be the case. Below that snow-covered cherry tree, she had turned toward someone.

After looking into Osaka’s sky where Noah floated in the darkness, she had turned toward someone behind her with a look of joy over the completed church.

“Was that…my dad?”

“What do you think?”

She heard the toe of Sayama’s shoe tap hard against the ground.

“He must have been standing here, below the gate. Most likely without an umbrella.”

“Without an umbrella?”

“Your mother did not have one either. Don’t you think your mother had a childish side to her in that way?”

Shinjou thought about the mother she had no memory of.

“You’re right.”

When her mother had turned around, the look in her eyes had been confident that someone was there watching her.

Shinjou looked to her mother who had once turned around here in another world. She directly returned the woman’s gaze.

“I had a thought, too.”

“And what was that?”

“Well, whenever my mom was faced with something painful or unpleasant, she would hide it behind a weak smile,” she explained. “So why did she write about my dad in her letters? She said she had trouble with him and did not like him without trying to hide it.”

“That is a new fact I had not noticed. And on that snowy day…”

She knew what Sayama was saying, so she nodded and continued for him.

“She must have been announcing to my dad that the church was finished. She would have said something more sacred than Noah had been built. …And she would have said they might be able to create the Biblical mythology in that world.”

Shinjou spoke her thoughts while fully aware it was only a convenient hope.

“My mom may have been trying to put Top-Gear and Low-Gear on the same level by giving Top-Gear the Biblical mythology they lacked. Instead of creating concepts and waging war, she wanted to provide each world what they lacked as well as something they could believe in. …And so she pretended to defect.”

Sayama said nothing, so she breathed in.

She touched the metal gate and looked into the distance where she pictured her mother’s gaze in midair.

“My mom must have turned my dad away. She would have told him they would be just fine without Noah and she must have asked him to stop inviting her in and to instead listen to ''her'' invitation.”

She took a breath.

“That wasn’t mentioned in the letters, but I’m sure of it. She had to have given him an invitation, too. If not, he wouldn’t have continued coming here.”

She hesitated, but she decided to say it.

She gave the identity of the individual who her mother had wondered about, the one who had donated to have the church built.

“If not, he wouldn’t have secretly funded the construction of the church.”

She breathed out and told herself not to cry. She willed the tears back because she had not reached the conclusion yet.

But next to her, Sayama placed an arm around her shoulders and asked a question.

“Why do you think Top-Gear’s Shinjou Yukio was ‘The Pair’s Daddy-Long-Legs’?”

“It’s simple. The name Nisho Church partially came from that alias.” She gave a powerful nod at her own words. “And if you place the characters for ‘Pair’ on top of each other, they become the final character in Top-Gear Yukio’s name.”

Shinjou looked up toward that space in an alternate world where a gate with that name would have existed.

“When the church was finished, my mom would have heard the truth from the director. There’s no, no, no way the director would have been able to just watch on after seeing her turn my dad away.”

''I would have done the same,'' thought Shinjou as her voice rose to a shout.

“My mom chased after him when he silently left without looking back, didn’t she!?”

Her question roused Baku on Sayama’s head.

He gave her the answer to her question about the past.

A snowy slope was a poor place to run, but she ran.

It was night, but the snow filled the air with pale light and Low-Gear’s Shinjou Yukio ran down the slope in a lab coat.

Snow got in her shoes and chilled her feet as it melted.

But she still ran. The snow snatched at her feet, but she kept herself from slipping by continuing ever onward.

“Wait!”

Her white breath and her voice did not reach him.

The back of a lab coat walked away through the snow and did not turn around.

“Wait up!”

She breathed in, felt the cold air stabbing at the back of her throat, and stumbled through the snow.

Her slow pace frustrated her and she could tell she was not catching up.

She wondered if it was curiosity or interest driving her to reach him.

“Wait.”

The lab coat up head did not wait, so she pushed herself even faster.

“Ah!”

Her foot got caught in one of his footprints and she tripped.

Instead of falling to her knees, she fully collapsed to the left.

She was lucky the snow had accumulated as much as it had. The asphalt did not scrape at her skin and she actually scraped away the snow. She sat up to knock away the snow that had been pushed up onto her.

She sighed while sitting in the snow and she finally realized she was sweating.

…''Why?

Why was she so desperate? She did not know.

“Wait.”

With that word, tears spilled from her eyes for some reason.

She sobbed and her shoulders rose and fell.

“Wait…”

She muttered the word and brought her hands to her eyes like a child.

She saw a tall figure in a white lab coat standing before her.

He was there.

His sharp eyes looked directly at her and seemed to pierce right through her.

“…!!”

She blushed and quickly stood, but she slipped on the snow she had packed down and she almost fell backwards.

Swinging her arms was not enough to keep her balance, and…

“—————”

She did not fall.

She noticed he had grabbed her right hand. And with almost painful strength.

…''He saved me.

She wanted to say something and wondered if she should thank him.

But as soon as he let go, she used her left hand to slap him.

The high-pitched sound filled the air, the snow accumulated on his shoulders scattered away, and she shouted.

“What is the meaning of this!?”

She planted her feet on the ground and slapped him again. The sound of the second strike permeated the snow.

“Why…Why would you do something like that?”

He returned her gaze and relaxed his shoulders.

“What would ‘that’ be?”

She felt her body temperature rising at that question and she swung her left arm to point up the slope.

“You don’t know what you did!? You funded the construction of that church!”

She breathed in and formed words at the volume of a yell.

“Were you taking pity on me!? Or were you trying to bribe me!? Did someone order you to do it? What were you trying to do!? And…what were you thinking!?”

With her firm expression intact and unexpected tears in the corners of her eyes, she forced a laugh.

She wiped away the tears with her sleeve and took a shrill breath, but forced a smile with her eyebrows raised.

“That must have been amusing! You got to watch a silly woman go on and on about how proud of the church she was without realizing you had paid for it all! She had been manipulated by you the entire time, but she ignorantly acted like someone important!”

After that, she lowered the ends of her eyebrows, and asked the true question she had saved until after the unnecessary complaints.

“Why!? Why would you do that after we tried so much to distance ourselves from each other!?”

That shouted question produced a reaction in the man.

He looked up a bit toward the heavens.

At the top of the slope was a church and past that was Noah.

He stared in the distance beyond the snowy darkness.

“It wasn’t some impressive reason.”

“Just tell me!”

At her urging, he closed his eyes, breathed in, and spoke with an exasperated tone.

“I simply wanted you to succeed.”

“For me to!?”

His eyes were closed, so he did not see her expression.

He only lowered his head and continued.

“No matter what, I have to create concepts and prepare this world to fight. And eventually, Top-Gear will be unable to trust visitors from the other world like you. Once the enemy could arrive at any moment, the world will begin to think fortifying our defenses is the best way to spread peace.”

He did not stop there.

“But most likely, you are right, Shinjou Yukio. No matter what happens, you will still be right, Shinjou Yukio. You did not choose Top-Gear or Low-Gear. You made the right decision and chose to be a bridge between all Gears. You chose something I could not and you are undoubtedly right.”

He then said “but” and “so”.

“I wanted to see just how much your way of thinking could change the world. I wanted to see how much the true feelings of my other self could change the world.”

“…”

“Listen,” he said. “The donations I made to you might as well have been made to me. Your pride in the completed church gave me joy. I got to see just how much my other self could accomplish.”

He opened his eyes and looked to her.

For the first time, he narrowed his eyes with a small smile on his lips.

“That is why I funded the church, my other self. I chose to remain a man of this world, so you outdid me. From now on, I will be able to see the light of your church from Noah. I will also hear its bell. And that will be proof that there is at least one thing in this world that someone wished for. That will be one thing I truly managed to create for this world.”

With that, he turned around and bent his back a little.

“Farewell.”

The man in a lab coat took a step away into the falling snow.

As soon as he did, she did not hesitate.

“Wait!”

She wrapped her arms around him from behind.

She embraced the lab coat to stop him from continuing down the slope.

She knew she could not force him.

…''This man…

He had already restrained himself for the good of this world, so he would not give into force.

She would need a will that surpassed his if she was to stop him.

So she shouted loud enough for her voice to pass through his back.

“Please tell me!”

She breathed in.

“Someday, god will reside in this place! You built the very first place for god’s voice to be heard in this land! No lies are permitted there and anything you confess will be forgiven. So…so please tell me. What do you want from me!?”

And…

“You understand, don’t you? Someone on your level has to know the data I gave you was modified and you have to know why…why I won’t create concepts in this Gear!”

“I do know. You are another version of me, after all.”

He slowly chose his words.

“I understand why you are making it so we cannot create concepts.”

She nodded at his answer.

“You understand, but you can’t do what I’m doing?”

“The higher ups would never accept that Top-Gear is inferior to Low-Gear in any way. That is why I have chosen my path and left you to do things your way. I have now settled things with you, so you can continue doing things as you please. And…”

She felt him sigh.

“Are you going to waste everything I have given you?”

“We still don’t know if I can waste it.”

To erase his trembling sigh, she pressed her own breath into his back.

“Are you afraid of your own words? Are you afraid of the words that will ruin everything I have?”

Tears spilled out as she exhaled.

“Tell me. Please tell me, my other self. I have always chosen to give instead of receive, but if I am truly wanted in this world, then tell me what that means.”

He slowly took a breath. He breathed in instead of out.

The oxygen was cooled by the snow, so it pricked at his lungs as he spoke.

“I want you to help me settle everything for this world…no, for all worlds.”

She listened to his trembling voice.

These were the words of her other self.

“I truly have no interest in bringing an end to conflict or in what is right or wrong. I simply want all Gears to care for the world.”

After all…

“If every Gear is righteous, then no Gear has erred. The destruction was not brought on by people’s mistakes. I want to say that the destruction came about because they were right.”

So…

“Please help me, Shinjou Yukio. Help me make sure this world does not err in the righteousness it so desires. I want your knowledge, your skills, and your songs. That way the light and sound you have created and all else that was born of true righteousness will never vanish from the remaining world.”

“Is that…what you wanted?”

“Yes,” he said. “When I first learned about Low-Gear as a child, I thought about your presence there. And when I saw you playing the organ in that church, I wished for your happiness. I remember the very first words you spoke from the pulpit: Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

He asked a question.

“Answer me, my other self. Was I wrong? If so, I will apologize for funding what you have made.”

She did not answer, but she did let go of him and circled around in front of him.

In the snow, the two of them slowly moved in close.

“—————”

The bell rang. The brand-new bell rang.

The ringing permeated the snow as it carried into the distance.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_21|Chapter 21]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume13_Chapter_23|Chapter 23]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 19

2015-03-04T03:44:45Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 19: Worn-Out Anticipation */

==Chapter 19: Worn-Out Anticipation==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0539.png|thumb]]
''Do your best

Below the darkening evening sky, two men stood in a rectangular clearing made in a forest.

One was a young man wearing a white coat and holding a white sword.

The other was a boy wearing a black T-shirt and black school uniform pants.

The young man had a cigarette in his mouth and blew out some smoke.

“Hey, Hiba. You sure you don’t want to do any meaningless warming up?”

“Y-yes, Atsuta-san. I’m fine.”

“Is that so?” Atsuta rested the Cowling Sword prototype named Kusanagi on his right shoulder. “Then let’s get to 2nd-Gear’s renegotiation.”

“What are the rules?”

“Do we need any?”

Atsuta sounded like he was spitting out the contents of his heart.

He repeated “c’mon” several times while adjusting Prototype Kusanagi’s position on his shoulder.

A moment later, the air around Hiba suddenly grew clear and a certain phenomenon occurred.

He heard a pulsation.

The earth and the air that made up everything shook a bit around him.

From Hiba’s perspective, a tremor spread from his feet to his knees and shook his entire body.

…''Eh?

As soon as he questioned it, the sensation vanished as if he had only imagined it.

“Wh-what was that strange feeling?”

“Oh, that was a side effect of Prototype Kusanagi’s cutting power.”

Atsuta let a smile show on his face.

“The earth and air are trembling in fear of the blade. …Don’t you get it? This isn’t like your fists there. Being handed something crazy like this is the true pleasure of being a swordfighter. But…”

He erased his smile and held Kusanagi forward in his right hand.

“It’s a prototype and that cuts the fun down some. Listen, kid. I’ll set a rule that’s not really a rule, so I hope you’re thankful.”

“What is that?”

Hiba frowned and Atsuta clicked his tongue toward the sky.

“Y’see, a friend of mine made a prototype Cowling Sword like this once before. It had issues on the durability front, so it broke unexpectedly and got him a wife.”

“I feel like you’re omitting quite a bit there, but I take it a lot happened.”

“I’m not omitting a damn thing! Why can’t you figure it out from what I told you?”

''Why is everyone in UCAT like this?'' wondered Hiba while hiding his misfortune behind a smile.

…''I’m not sure I can put up with how excitable this guy is. He’s a lot like Sayama-san or Izumo-san.

His worry was interrupted by Atsuta’s annoyed voice.

“Three times.”

He held up Prototype Kusanagi.

“After releasing its power three times, this Prototype Kusanagi will break. It’s made that way so it won’t cause any accidents, so…”

He rested the sword back on his right shoulder.

“If I don’t cut you down in the first three attacks, 2nd-Gear loses. But if you can stop me, then it counts as your win. How about that!?”

“My win? But, um…!”

He had thought this was to help him train, but it had suddenly become an issue of life or death.

He gulped, forced strength into his stomach, and opened his tense throat.

“I-if we both fail, it won’t resolve anything!”

“That’s what a fifth-rate failure would say, you idiot!!”

That shout of anger seemed to stab through Hiba as he made excuses.

“In a fight, killing your opponent or stopping them are the only options, little monkey! The only people who start talking about failing are the lukewarm one’s who don’t want to do either. Lukewarm’s only any good when you want to soak some squid for drying!!”

Atsuta used his left hand to press a finger against his own head and moved it in a circle.

“Listen, idiot! Is there anything at all in your head!? Any brains!? Then is there anything in your stomach!? If you don’t have any guts in there, you won’t even make third-rate! And if you can do that, you should at least be able to be cut down by me and lose!”

“Third-rate? Fifth-rate?”

Hiba searched his memories.

He remembered being unable to protect Mikage the night before and he remembered Tatsumi’s laugh.

…''She called me weak.

“Then are you first-rate!?” he asked.

“I’m a sword god, stupid. Why are you trying to measure me by human standards?”

Atsuta’s voice gave Hiba a chill even in the wintery air.

And it came from behind him.

“…!?”

…''The Art of Walking!?

The man had vanished in front of him and the voice had come from behind him. That meant he had used more than just the Art of Walking.

…''He moved really fast.

“C’mon now. Don’t misjudge me, little monkey.”

The shadow on the ground had Kusanagi raised to the upper right.

“Recite a poem, kid. A death poem. I’m always singing, right? Make it something like that.”

“But I can’t do something that, um, tricky on such short notice…”

“Don’t bother praising me, idiot. You don’t have to give it much thought. Just say whatever’s on your mind.”

Hiba thought and spoke the first thing that came to mind.

“Heh heh heh. C’mon, stop. It’s not like I’m a young girl of fifteen.”

Immediately afterwards, a great roar ran through the sky.

The deep sound travelled through the sky.

It reached some newly prepared land one level lower than the source of the sound.

The prepared land was raised slightly above the surrounding forest, a blue tent was set up there, and two men sat on a mat laid out in front of the tent.

One was an elderly man in a navy blue Japanese outfit and the other was a young man in a lab coat.

The young man looked through his glasses to view the source of the sound through the mountain forest.

“Oh, sounds like it’s begun. I asked you for help setting this up, so what do you think of the fight, Hiba-sensei?”

“How does it look to you as a military god, son of Kashima?”

“Well…” Kashima smiled bitterly and realized what Ryuutetsu had said. “Son of Kashima? Do you know my father?”

“We’re field buddies. Especially since last month when our idiots went at it with Chao’s idiots.”

He looked to the tent behind him and the recently levelled earth there.

“My house was blown away pretty spectacularly. I came back from the field and found it gone. Toshi was so confused she tried to hit me with a hoe. …After that, your parents and the others around there shared a lot of food with us. Those squashes were really good when cooked.”

“Th-those were grown by my wife. I imagine they were quite good.”

“Yeah, they had a really nice flavor.”

“Yes, they would have. I remember Natsu-san saying she had given my portion to someone in need. …So it was you that stole a portion of my happy family life! Give back those squashes! Please give them back!”

“Why did you even come over here?”

Kashima hung his head, sighed, and opened the laptop sitting next to him.

“Ahh, ahh. I hope your grandson will be okay.”

“Don’t make that sound so forced. And are you sure that first attack didn’t already kill him?”

“I don’t know. Whatever the case, I hope he can get out of this with no regrets.”

“Fat chance of that. …Ryuuji’s too soft.”

Ryuutetsu lay on his side and Kashima asked him a question.

“That would be a problem for both of us. But are you serious about that?”

Kashima showed the old man his laptop monitor.

The window only showed a gentle pulsation on a horizontal line graph.

“That sound wasn’t from the Prototype Kusanagi.”

He remained expressionless but turned toward the mountain forest.

“Well, I’ll be hoping he puts all of his effort into this.”

Hiba swung his body back and to the right as if twisting it and then stopped moving.

He had made a backwards jab with his right elbow.

He aimed directly below where he had heard the voice. He lowered his hips and twisted his feet to send the strike directly into Atsuta’s solar plexus.

The roar of the attack was the combination of his foot stomping on the ground and his elbow striking.

He had chosen his elbow for attack.

A surface attack would not penetrate the anti-shock ability of Atsuta’s combat coat. The wider the surface, the more the impact would disperse and grow dull.

The end of an elbow was sharper and thus more powerful than the surface of a fist.

…''And I won’t turn around, so it can catch Atsuta-san off guard.

It was the very first attack, the enemy was behind him, and he was being treated like a weakling.

All of that increased the odds of success for a rear attack.

And the attack had indeed succeeded.

Hiba felt the blow land perfectly.

However, he heard a voice from above and behind his head.

“The hell was that?”

It was Atsuta’s voice.

The vibration of the voice passed through Atsuta’s stomach and Hiba’s elbow.

Hiba felt that vibration coming from his elbow.

…''It isn’t…stopping?

“Are you even listening?”

Even after the question ended, the vibration coming from Atsuta did not stop. In fact, it grew stronger.

Hiba realized this was not the vibration of a voice or of pain.

…''This is anger.

“Did you really think that puny elbow would work on me?”

Hiba’s elbow felt something other than the vibration. It was a compact sensation much like a weight or pressure.

Atsuta was disappointed in the attack, his body trembled in anger, and he built up pressure in his body.

Hiba reflexively turned around and took a step back to check on the man.

Atsuta’s eyebrows were raised, he was looking straight forward, and he had a smile on his lips.

No, it was not a smile at all. His face twisted as he gathered strength and it simply resembled a smile.

“Just so you know, if that was your full strength, then none of your attacks will work on me.”

So…

“Just let me cut you three times and then scatter in the wind!!”

This time, a true roar shook the air.

The Prototype Kusanagi produced silence.

After swinging the sword, Atsuta initially felt something fire from the blade.

…''The hell was that?

Normally, a Cowling Sword cut using the power of the concept contained within. When swung, it would either emit the power from the blade or have it reside in the blade.

But the Prototype Kusanagi was different.

As a sword god, Atsuta could become one with a sword when he swung it, so he understood.

As the strike descended, it created more than mere concept power.

…''Energy.

But this energy did not surround him like an aura.

Like murderous intent or one’s gaze, it continued on and on into the distance.

…''Shit.

''This thing’s dangerous,'' he realized.

He came to an instinctual understanding of how Kusanagi worked.

It was unlike a normal Cowling Sword.

The difference came in the instant after swinging it.

…''Kashima!! What was that son of a bitch thinking!?

''Not even he could use this Cowling Sword,'' he thought.

…''This Cowling Sword isn’t a sword at all. This Prototype Kusanagi isn’t a sword at all!

It did not produce power from its blade.

…''Swinging it intimidates the surrounding space itself into becoming a sword!!

The ruler’s sword filled the world with fear and then cut through it.

A moment later, Kusanagi activated.

Instead of sending a cutting power along the path of its gaze, it brought its own presence there.

It did not matter what stood in its way, whether it was the air, the earth, or anything else. Not even sound, light, or empty space was an exception.

Kusanagi’s might shot through the area that was filled with its energy.

“————!!”

Atsuta’s arm trembled.

The hand on the hilt shook, his muscles distorted, and his flesh leaped like splashing water.

…''Whoa!

He could become one with a sword, but Kusanagi was too powerful a blade even for him.

The hilt and blade before his eyes was only Kusanagi’s temporary form. The gaze it sent out was where the true Kusanagi would appear.

His right hand trembled violently. It was almost jumping around or undulating.

The idea was simple. Kusanagi’s presence was so great that it was sending recoil back into his arm.

This sword was too great for even a sword god to hold it one-handed.

…''I see.

Atsuta realized why Kashima had given him this sword.

As a military god, he had created a sword that only Atsuta, a sword god, could use properly.

…''Are you trying to turn me into your sword!?

“If that’s how it is…!”

Atsuta placed his left hand on Kusanagi as it raged at the bottom of its swing.

He pressed in from the left to suppress his shaking right hand and a powerful smile reached his lips.

“Then I’ve gotta use this thing right!!”

With that yell, he squeezed Kusanagi in his grip.

“Ahh!”

With a shout of focus, he lowered his hips a little, and worked to restrain the struggling blade. As a sword god, he instantly grabbed the hilt like a man is meant to wield a sword.

“————!”

As soon as Kusanagi stopped trembling, a cutting blast covered an area of several hundred meters ahead of him.

It looked like it was suddenly placed inside the scenery, but the earth was instantly torn up, the air was split apart, and explosions filled it all.

The forest and slope were swept aside and felled with a sound resembling surging waves more than a roar.

It all happened in an instant and Atsuta let out a breath once it was over.

“Now this is interesting!!”

A figure adjusted his two-handed grip on Kusanagi.

He relaxed his entire body, raised Kusanagi without any excess movement, and stepped forward.

He moved toward a boy lying on the ground.

It was Hiba.

The previous attack had been aimed at the boy, but he had only been blown away by the after effects since Atsuta had not known how Kusanagi activated.

He had missed.

A normal Cowling Sword emitted concept power or cut with its blade.

But Kusanagi required a proper intent to cut on the wielder’s part.

Atsuta realized that Kusanagi was not a sword that obeyed a sword god. It was a sword on the same level as a sword god.

So if that sword god wielded it halfheartedly, it would only manifest itself halfheartedly.

That was what had happened just now.

If Kusanagi had truly activated…

…''Everything along the line of its gaze would have transformed into cutting power as I swung Kusanagi.

This Cowling Sword could only be wielded by a sword god and it manifested itself in accordance with that sword god’s will.

…''This isn’t cutting with the power of a concept. It’s more like cutting with your own gaze.

He was now directly connected with a blade that could cut through even a dragon.

Atsuta expressed that feeling as follows:

“This is what I call interesting.”

He sensed movement seven meters ahead.

In the shower of scattering fragments of crust, a boy slowly stood up.

He was gasping for breath, covered in sweat, and trembling.

But Atsuta’s thoughts made a 180 when he saw Hiba.

…''How boring.

His interest was in Kusanagi, not in Hiba.

The best part about this prototype Cowling Sword was its power and the fun of using something so hard to control, but…

…''It does have a weakness, too.

He had to check on that.

However, he still had this match to take care of, so…

“Hey, little monkey.”

He addressed Hiba who somehow managed to get to his feet.

“…”

He was too out of breath to reply, so Atsuta began to move.

He used the Art of Walking to vanish from Hiba’s eyes.

“Hey.”

The very next moment, Atsuta had moved up to Hiba and lifted the boy up by the collar of his T-shirt.

“————!?”

Atsuta saw him shrink back in surprise as he dangled down.

Whether from the previous impact or from fear, there were tears in the corners of the boy’s eyes. They filled Atsuta’s heart with disgust.

…''Pathetic.

“Listen up, you. …Just lose this thing already.”

Hiba’s eyes opened wide and Atsuta wondered what there was to be so surprised about.

“I had decided to take you on, but Kusanagi here’s way more interesting than you. So lose this thing already. I’ll let you off if you bow down to me. …It’s better than dying, isn’t it?”

“I…I can’t do that,” quietly said the boy.

It sounded like an excuse and Atsuta felt his heart cool.

''This ain’t good,'' he thought of himself. ''It’s fine when I’m excited. I try to enjoy things with my opponent then.

…''But…

Things changed when he got oddly calm like this.

Even as he wished he could regain his excitement, he could tell his eyes were narrowing.

…''This is hopeless.

The boy dangling before his eyes was trembling in fear of what he might do.

…''This guy’s hopeless.

“Know your place.”

''Oh, I’m pretty cool when I’m criticizing people. But this still ain’t good. This is where I’m supposed to lecture him. I’m supposed to yell at him, hit him, and give a good punch.

''This really ain’t good. Don’t think like that. It won’t lead anywhere good. It isn’t like the Great Atsuta at all.

''This guy’s nothing. He stood up to me, thinking he’s some kind of big-shot, but one attack later and he’s flinching back. He’s this close to me, but he isn’t doing anything other than watching to see what I’m gonna do. He’s that pathetic.

''Don’t tell yourself you don’t want to fight him. You know that won’t end well.

…''But I don’t want to fight him anymore.

''Didn’t I just say not to tell yourself that?

''Yeah, that’s right.

''Sigh, tilt your head, and look down on him. This is when Ryouko would’ve stopped you in the past.

“Apologize.”

He opened his mouth.

“If you won’t apologize for yourself, I’ll give up on you as the most pathetic of the pathetic who can’t apologize for being weak or even really reach the level of being ‘weak’ in the first place. How about it?”

He paused.

“I’ll give you five seconds. Five.”

Once he said that, something appeared before his eyes.

Realizing it was a fist, he caught it.

He used his forehead to stop the fist Hiba swung at him.

The blow landed, producing a nice reverberating sound, but Atsuta was a sword god at the moment and that alone nullified any human attack. This attack was no different from the elbow from earlier. Plus, an attack thrown while dangling in midair was not going to be very effective.

“Four.”

A leg arrived and that movement seemed to signal the beginning.

“…!”

A fist arrived, then a chop, an elbow, and a knee.

The attacks hit his head, his neck, his shoulder, his side, his gut, his crotch, and his vitals.

But none of it did anything.

“Three.”

As Atsuta counted down, Hiba continued his meaningless attacks like a child.

''That idiot,'' thought Atsuta as a chill filled his mind. ''He’s crying.

…''He really is stupid.

This was no time for sympathy and Atsuta had no intention of showing any. This boy had agreed to fight a sword god.

Despite the difference in strength between a god and a man, he had set foot into this arena where he could easily die.

The boy had misjudged what that meant.

He had completely failed to realize he would be blown away by the very first attack or just how much damage it would do.

Most likely, his body was recalling another incident.

…''His defeat from last night.

He had been knocked away by a god of war and slammed to the ground.

That was much like being hit by a car and his body remembered that damage in the form of fear.

“Two.”

Atsuta could feel the boy trembling, but it was not caused by his present fear. It came from the fear of the damage he had received the night before and from the realization that the one he cared for had been injured.

With his wounds healed, he must have assumed he had forgotten that fear.

…''But his body remembers when he received similar damage.

“Ah!”

Hiba’s strikes and kicks no longer had any proper form.

Tears flowed down his face and his mouth opened as he sobbed.

His movements were nothing more than protests at the fact that his strength was hopelessly insufficient.

''Does it seem unfair?'' wondered Atsuta. ''But you’re the one at fault here.

After all, he had lost the night before and had yet to shake off that fear.

“One.”

Atsuta sank down so he could toss Hiba into the air and immediately swing Kusanagi down at him.

But he still spoke to this pathetic enemy.

“If you’re gonna hate anyone for this, hate yourself. This was your fault for not realizing how weak you are.”

And…

“Zero.”

Just before the final number was given, Hiba stopped moving.

…''Weak…

Tatsumi had called him that the night before and this opponent had done so again.

''Yes,'' he agreed while relaxing his arms and legs.

…''I really am weak.

He also relaxed his clenched jaw and felt tears spill down his cheeks.

What was this? Whatever the result, there was nothing he could do.

…''But I still don’t like it.

He did not like it, but he had to accept it. He had no way of changing it, so that was his only option.

…''But if I had more strength, it wouldn’t have turned out like that!

The words “what if” entered his mind.

But there were no “what ifs” when it came to the past.

He knew that. He knew it, but he still did not like it. And that regret definitely did exist in his heart.

So he thought about what to do to keep himself from feeling that regret again.

…''What if I could get stronger?

Instead of thinking about the past, he turned his “what if” toward the future.

What if? What if he could rid himself of his weakness?

…''No.

His attacks were of no use against the sword god before his eyes. No matter how strong he grew, there were some things he could never overcome.

''I am weak,'' he told himself. ''Even if I grow stronger, I’ll still be weak.

Even with the help of Susamikado and Mikage, he was only borrowing their strength and he had no more strength than any other human living in the real world.

''That’s right,'' he realized. ''Then no matter how hard I work, I’ll still be weak.

But in that case…

…''Isn’t that perfectly normal? Then why?

Why?

…''Why is everyone acting like I’m not allowed to try and fight when I’m still weak!?

If he could be strong when wielding a great power or weapon, wasn’t that enough?

“————”

He did not even hear Atsuta speak the final number.

But he did hear the word in his heart.

…''That isn’t right!

He did not know what was not right or how it was not right, but he knew that it was not.

Once, a white god of war had made a pursuit and fought despite being outmatched.

An American UCAT mechanical dragon unit had fought a large black mechanical dragon. Hiba’s own upperclassman and a girl younger than he was had even fought the dragon.

And another of his upperclassmen would face enemies of any number or any size with nothing but a pair of wings and a spear. Yet another upperclassman would confront his enemies while declaring his righteousness and without carrying a single weapon.

That was why it was not right.

It was not right to remove him from the battle just because he was weak.

One could be removed from the battlefield when…

…''When they let out a scream and run away.

The others did not do that.

And the night before, he had held the person who mattered most in his arms to the very end.

He was afraid. His entire body was still experiencing a refrain of the impact and noises of Typhon’s strike.

…''But I didn’t do that! I didn’t let out a scream!!

That transformed into another sentence inside him.

He fought ''because'' he was weak. And he announced what that meant in his heart.

…''That’s what you call struggling!!

Atsuta finished his countdown and prepared to throw Hiba into the air.

But…

“!?”

Before he could instruct his hand to move, his fingers reflexively let go of the boy’s collar.

…''What?

He felt pain. A stabbing pain filled his left thumb.

He looked down and saw a chunk of flesh bitten out of the thumb’s base.

“Oh!” he said in surprise before realizing what had happened.

Hiba had kicked off his arm and, when he landed in a crouch, he spat something to the side.

…''C’mon, really?

''That’s a part of my body.

''Don’t be tearing that off and throwing it away. Aren’t you going to at least give it back?

But at the same time, Atsuta felt a slight strength pulling up on the corners of his mouth.

…''C’mon, really?

''What do you think you’re doing, me?

“Hey!!”

He held Kusanagi tightly in both hands and raised it overhead.

And he literally jumped toward his prey.

…''Now this is getting interesting!!

Hiba could tell he was trembling.

…''I’m afraid.

He had acted on a sudden impulse much like anger, but fear had taken ahold of his body.

Just a slight graze from that sword’s attack had pummeled his entire body, so a direct hit would end this immediately.

It had been the same the night before. He had only survived because Tatsumi had not really seen him as her opponent. She must have only been after 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core.

He felt she had implied he was not even worth killing.

…''But I need to stop her.

Tatsumi was his Top-Gear counterpart and she claimed to have killed his father.

That made it his duty to stop her and those working with her.

He had to stop her no matter what.

It did not matter if he was afraid, if he was pathetic, if he was tossed through the air, or if he could not move.

He had to stop her regardless.

This was the same. The attack was preparing to drop down before him.

…''What should I do?

He had no power and his attacks could not reach his opponent, but that did not necessarily mean he could not stop the man.

…''So I can’t give up here!

He always had the strength known as Mikage by his side. That gave him access to striking power, piercing power, weight, speed, defense, flight, size, beauty, and coolness.

He did not have any of that now. All he had was…

…''My own way of fighting!

He had been taught not to rely on the god of war as he fought and he had been taught to assume the battle never came to an end.

The sun king and moon princess had taught him to fight to his very limits and the youngest of the four dragon brothers had taught him strength was independent of size.

He refused to believe he had not gained anything from those battles.

He lifted his trembling body, starting from the back, and leaned forward.

He almost toppled forward, but he could form a running stance by moving his knees forward.

“Oh…”

He kicked off the ground behind him.

“Ohhh!!”

He charged toward Atsuta with enough force to leave behind his shaking.

He did have some things: speed, his short frame, and the combat techniques passed down by the Hiba family.

Altogether, those gave him overwhelming mobility.

His low weight and height did not put much force behind his attacks, but he was second to none in speed and quick turns.

His opponent was a sword god. A military god might have been able to keep up with him, but…

“———!”

As he ran, he tilted to the right and jumped.

He shot past Atsuta to the right.

The man had yet to swing Kusanagi.

As Atsuta started to turn around, Hiba twisted his body.

To throw a reverse roundhouse kick, he turned his body by 180 degrees as he ran.

Kusanagi caused the earth to pulsate below his feet.

The sword’s tremor filled the wind.

A tremor of fear remained in his body. If he let down his guard for even a moment, he would be assaulted by the phantom sound and pain of the blow he had taken the previous night.

He just barely made it. He felt like he was running on the edge between himself and the world.

As soon as he spun around, he leaped right, which was to Atsuta’s left as he turned around.

Atsuta was right-handed, so the raised sword was tilted to the right.

By jumping to his left, Kusanagi’s strike would reach Hiba slightly later.

“————!!”

Hiba lowered down and poured all of his strength into his body. And he used it all to turn around.

But the sword god made his move.

Atsuta used a simple method of swinging Kusanagi more quickly.

While facing straight toward Hiba, he got down on his left knee.

By lowering his body, he sped up Kusanagi’s fall by that much more.

“!?”

Atsuta’s decision surprised Hiba, but it did not matter.

Hiba bent back and to the right before jumping into the air. He swung his arm and leaped as if trying to lean back and pass through the pulsation shaking the air.

Immediately afterwards, Kusanagi’s strike arrived.

Atsuta watched Hiba.

…''He’s a fast one!

Not even a low level military god could move that fast.

Not even a mid level sword god would have been able to keep track of his movements.

But Atsuta worked alongside a top level military god and was a similar level of sword god himself.

He could follow Hiba’s movements and he could predict what the boy was trying to do.

So he went down on one knee and swung his sword while planted solidly on the ground.

Kusanagi’s energy shot out much like a gaze.

It was filled with intent to kill.

Atsuta twisted his arms and fired Kusanagi while feeling the delicious sensation in his entire body.

However…

“!?”

Something unexpected happened.

Kusanagi’s intent to kill was deflected as he swung it down.

“What!?”

The feel of the sword told him Kusanagi’s killer intent had gotten jammed in something that could stop a gaze.

That something was a fist-sized stone.

It had come from Hiba’s hand.

Hiba had run and leaped while turning toward Atsuta, but he had also thrown a stone that had been exposed when Kusanagi tore into the ground earlier.

Hiba’s speed and Atsuta’s focus on Hiba himself had prevented Atsuta from noticing the stone.

Kusanagi’s blade struck the stone.

…''Dammit!! I’m still not used to using this thing!

He lost control and Kusanagi activated early. Its power sliced through the sky.

“———!!”

The scarlet sky was split for several hundred meters into the heavens.

The air rumbled and wind blew in.

Hiba ran through the descending scarlet wind as he circled toward Atsuta’s kneeling back.

Atsuta stood up and took a quick step forward to move away from Hiba.

The movement of the wind told him what Hiba was doing.

…''This is getting interesting.

He heard something a lot like a sharp blade, but it was Hiba picking up another stone.

He could tell Hiba was trying to win by having him activate Kusanagi a third time.

The boy was trying to stop Atsuta by doing that.

“This really is getting interesting!”

Atsuta turned forcefully around to face Hiba.

“If you can stop this blade, I’d like to see it!!”

Hiba spun around and charged in while Atsuta swung Kusanagi down toward him.

The boy was five meters away.

And that distance shrank as Hiba approached.

In an amount of time one could call an instant or a moment, Atsuta saw something.

Hiba had thrown a stone toward Kusanagi’s raised blade.

It was a snap throw from the left hand rotated behind his back.

The throw took a parabolic arc from behind him and over his head.

If Atsuta had only been watching Hiba, he would not have noticed it.

But Atsuta saw it.

And so he switched his stance. He placed his left palm on the bottom of Kusanagi’s hilt and pried the blade into a low position.

He also shifted his body to the left so Hiba would pass by to his right.

When Hiba did so, Atsuta would cut through him from below.

With Hiba’s speed and Kusanagi’s activation, Hiba’s torso would be cleanly sliced in two.

Even if Hiba tried to attack, none of his blows would affect Atsuta.

Dodging was the boy’s only option and the best he could do was take a wide circle around the man.

“This is over!”

Atsuta held Kusanagi like a bat and began to tilt the tip behind him.

At the same time, Hiba made his move.

He neither dodged nor made a meaningless attack.

“———!?”

Atsuta was briefly unable to react to Hiba’s action.

However, his reflexes as a sword god chose the most effective attack.

“Ohhh!”

A moment later, their clash came to an end.

In the forest below, Kashima looked up from in front of the tent set up on a raised area of land.

He was frowning a little.

“Is it…over?”

Next to him, Ryuutetsu stared up into the scarlet sky while still lying on the mat.

“It must be,” said the old man. “I don’t hear anything anymore.”

He sat up and rotated his shoulders to loosen them.

“How about we go check on them? They’ll get cold if we leave them there.”

Atsuta saw Hiba’s face so close that their foreheads were about to hit.

Hiba was smiling a little, his forehead was drenched with sweat, and he was not moving.

“Is he unconscious?” asked Atsuta.

He shook his head, clicked his tongue, and checked on their situation.

They were facing each other.

Atsuta held Kusanagi near his right shoulder with the blade thrust forward.

And Kusanagi had stabbed into its target.

That was Hiba.

Kusanagi’s blade had pierced the left side of the unconscious boy’s chest up to the hilt.

Atsuta had not done that.

“Did he run in and stab it into himself!?”

Atsuta realized what Hiba had done.

…''You idiot.

Before the third attack, Hiba had not dodged or attacked meaninglessly.

He had chosen to accelerate.

He had moved almost too quickly for Atsuta to follow and ran right up to the man.

In that instant, Atsuta’s training, characteristics as a sword god, and emotions had produced a single reaction.

He had counterattacked.

When holding Kusanagi like a bat, what was the quickest way to counterattack?

A thrust.

By dropping Kusanagi’s tip forward, he had been able to attack the boy as he charged in at him.

He had acted on reflex and used the sword like a normal Cowling Sword.

By the time he had realized his mistake, it had been too late.

He had already realized what Kusanagi’s biggest flaw was. He was not used to using it, so he had yet to fully grasp how to release its energy when it began to activate.

He knew how to release the energy for a slash. He had done that twice already.

But what about for a thrust?

…''Dammit.

He had acted without thinking. As a sword god and expert swordsman, he had attacked almost subconsciously, so he had not focused and released the killer intent.

And thus, Kusanagi had not activated.

He had simply stabbed the blade forward like any other Cowling Sword.

Hiba had not hesitated as he charged in.

He had grabbed Kusanagi’s blade with both hands and directed it toward the left side of his chest.

“He stabbed himself.”

…''Is he stupid?

Hiba’s hands were now holding Atsuta’s hands on the hilt.

And Kusanagi’s entire blade had pierced through his body.

“———”

If Atsuta released Kusanagi’s energy to slice through the boy’s left shoulder, he could only cut either upwards or downwards.

That would not be enough to kill Hiba.

“You idiot.”

Atsuta clicked his tongue again and took a step back.

He let go of Kusanagi. It now simply looked like Hiba had grabbed Kusanagi and stabbed himself in the chest.

He had lost consciousness, but he remained standing and the area below his chest was wet.

Seeing that, Atsuta pulled some gum from his pocket.

It was a high-class nicotine gum advertised as “monkfish liver flavor”.

He heard footsteps from the forest behind him and put the gum in his mouth without turning around.

He reached for Kusanagi and grabbed it.

“Make sure to record this.”

He spoke to the person behind him and swung Kusanagi downwards.

It cut through Hiba’s left side and a red spray filled the air.

“———!!”

Lastly, the cut shot several hundred meters behind Hiba.

The attack roared and Hiba’s unconscious form was knocked through the air.

“Atsuta!”

Kashima’s voice reached him from behind, but Atsuta did not care.

He looked down to find Kusanagi broken in his hands.

“Looks like it broke right on schedule.”

“Atsuta! The battle was already over! Why did you have to attack again!?”

Atsuta sat down without bothering to turn around.

He looked to where Hiba lay collapsed on the ground and held up the broken Kusanagi.

“I said I lose if I didn’t kill him after three attacks, remember?”

Atsuta stood back up and tossed the remains of Kusanagi.

He heard them hit Hiba and roll away.

“You stopped Kusanagi, so you win. And I didn’t kill you after three attacks, so I lose. …That clearly settles the wins and losses on both sides.”

He laughed quietly and yelled into the scarlet sky.

“Why is this world so damn boring!?”

The colors of evening filled a city.

The city had a port and an inland sea to the west. This was the city of Sakai which contained the ports of Sakai and Osaka.

The city contained a slope with a residential area at the top.

Two people stood at the bottom of the residential area as the setting sun shined on it.

They were Sayama and Shinjou.

They both held documents or letters and they looked at the houses on the slope.

Shinjou pointed behind the row of houses toward the top of the slope.

“Um? If we follow this road, turn right, take that walking path, turn left, come out on top of the hill, and then take that road a while, we’ll be at our destination.”

“Heh heh heh. Shinjou-kun. thank you for those directions that were even more indirect than I ever imagined. …You are so cute.”

“What you’re saying is too indirect and disconnected to have any idea what you mean!!”

Shinjou sighed and looked back up at Sayama with a look that seemed to say “anyway”.

“Can we get going, Sayama-kun?”

“Yes, we can, Shinjou-kun. …Let us continue to where you discovered your past.”

She gave a small smile and nodded, but quickly hid her smile behind her documents.

“I’ll have to show you everything I found here back when I came before you.”

“Of course. And when you say that, it sounds really dirty.”

“What is wrong with your ears?”

She sighed again and lowered her shoulders next to Sayama who was holding a handheld recorder.

“Honestly, if you like things like that, why not go somewhere that will do it for you?”

He nodded and looked her way.

“Are you sure you want me doing that?”

Shinjou groaned and stopped moving, but she finally answered.

“On second thought, no.”

“I would not want to either. Not if it was anyone other than you. And…”

He pulled on her hand and began walking up the sloped sidewalk.

“Ah.”

She was surprised by the tug on her hand and he turned back toward her.

“Now, it is time we got going. We can continue reading these documents on our way to our destination…on our way to where your mother was.”

“R-right.”

She hesitated but gave a definite nod. As if to say this would be okay, he gave her a refreshing smile and spoke.

“But I am a lucky man. Once we reach our destination, I get to see exactly where it was you ‘came before me’! Make sure to spread your legs!”

With a wordless smile, Shinjou took a running start and kicked the rear of the suit pants in front of her.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Afterword|Afterword]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 16

2015-02-27T15:42:47Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 16: What One Has While Alone */

==Chapter 16: What One Has While Alone==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0445.png|thumb]]
''By realizing I had a thought

''I realized I could think

''That is why realization is said to be a virtue

The north wind blew down from the gray sky and filled a plaza.

The plaza was divided up by a moat and white walls.

A giant structure filled the center of the plaza.

The structure was a castle.

It was Osaka Castle.

Quite a few tourists looked up at the castle tower and its aqua-blue tiled roof.

Below the castle, Osaka Castle Park was split up by the waterways and walls. That winter afternoon, it was filled with tour groups and couples.

At the north end of Osaka Castle Park was a bridge crossing the northern moat and allowing passage to the city.

The cement bridge had wooden railings and it gave a view of Osaka Castle’s north side.

From the north, the castle was backlit by the sun, so it was covered in shadow.

However, one person did look up at the shaded castle.

A girl in a black suit stood at the center of the bridge, leaning against the railing.

She had a large white dog with her which was staring up at her as if waiting to be fed.

However, the girl was not looking at the dog. She frowned and glared at the letter in her hand.

It began with “To Mikoku” and it was the one that had been attached to a knife.

“I am about to go steal 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core. Team Leviathan’s negotiator and Shinjou plan to complete the Leviathan Road with 8th-Gear before visiting Sakai. Confront them and tell them what we intend to do once we have 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core. It is up to you to decide what exactly that will be. If anyone is to gather us together, it has to be you, the one positioned directly below Master Hajji. Give this careful thought.”

Mikoku summed up what the letter told her:

“I’m supposed to think about how we will use 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core to confront UCAT?”

She looked up into the gray yet bright sky.

“But why is she making me the leader?”

She had her doubts about that.

Tatsumi had her easily beaten in both combat skill and popularity.

She had been late to make her debut in the Army and she was still mostly viewed as everyone else’s junior.

Tatsumi said she had been chosen due to her position below Hajji, but she only had that position due to her young age at Top-Gear’s destruction and her need for someone to look after her.

It was still a mystery whether the others would accept her as leader.

…''I hope she is not simply shoving this onto me because she does not want to do it herself.

Regardless, Tatsumi had undoubtedly taken 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core.

She would not say she would if she could not. Some might call her manly, but Mikoku had tried that once and ended up knocked seven meters backwards by a wooden sword jab to the forehead.

Some might say she could not take a joke, but Mikoku had tried that once and ended up meeting a similar fate. Mikoku decided not to continue digging through her memories of Tatsumi.

“Now, then.”

She sat on the railing and set down the bag containing her extra clothes.

…''3rd-Gear’s Concept Core, huh?

That could strengthen Typhon, Alex, and the dolls, so it could be seen as the most useful of the Cores for Tatsumi and the others.

…''And she’s left it to me to decide how to use it against UCAT.

She could imagine the scene. The factory manager and the others would be maintaining Alex and such somewhere and Tatsumi would show them Keravnos.

“Finding space for this is a lot of work,” she would say. “I hope Mikoku does something about it soon.”

That was exactly the sort of selfish thing she would say.

“But how am I supposed to know what to do with it?”

Should they hold 3rd’s Core hostage and demand they hand over the other Cores?

Should they trade 3rd’s Core for Hajji and the prisoners?

Should they use 3rd’s Core as a weapon and battle UCAT once again?

…''Or…

Mikoku did not know what was best, what made the best use of their resources, or whether she should be the one deciding this.

There was also more she did not understand.

“Shiro.”

She spoke to the dog that had circled in front of her and he suddenly stood up as if to embrace her.

“Ha ha ha. You’ve been play-biting me so much lately, but have you finally accepted me?”

However, he was unexpectedly heavy, so she lost her balance and started to fall backwards.

“Nh.”

She took a position much like throwing Shiro backwards in a front suplex.

“…”

And they endured. She kept herself from falling backwards and Shiro stretched out so he would not lose his balance.

The two of them maintained their position for five seconds. Then ten. And thirty. Finally, a contest of force vectors was established.

“Nwah!!”

And she forcibly returned Shiro to the bridge like swinging down a hammer.

…''Did it!!

The two of them gasped for breath while holding each other in their arms on top of the bridge and its railing.

“Sh-Shiro, try not to play around too much.”

The dog’s entire body was tensed up and he was obviously not going to nod in agreement, but he seemed to have learned the danger of that situation.

He quickly tapped her shoulders with his front paws, so she let go of him and he panted while lying down on the ground like he was wilting.

Seeing that reminded Mikoku of Shino.

…''I wonder what she’s doing.

''That worry is probably a sign that I’m dependent on her,'' she thought, which only depressed her further.

She seemed to have entered a negative cycle and she knew perfectly well why.

“I have lost my confidence, haven’t I?” she asked Shiro.

The dog raised his lowered head.

He seemed worried about her which lightened her mood a little, so she spoke quietly.

“The thing is, I once thought I was the very strongest.”

She brought a hand to her chest.

“My mother made me this philosopher’s stone with a regeneration concept inside. I will never die with it, so I assumed I would always win in the end.”

She smiled bitterly.

“But you know what? That does not meant I will win in the end. It only means I will survive to the end. I cannot believe this,” she said quietly. “To win when necessary and give victory to someone, I need my skill. This philosopher’s stone is only a part of that skill, but not all of it.”

She reached for the cloth cover leaning up against the railing next to her.

And she looked up at Osaka Castle.

This castle had also existed in the Top-Gear Osaka she once lived in.

It would have been destroyed on that final night.

Everything in their city had been.

…''Including my parents.

Her parents had been concept and philosopher’s stone researchers and their concept research had led to her mother embedding this philosopher’s stone in Mikoku’s chest.

Despite knowing it was a misplaced complaint, she held a hand to her chest and thought to herself.

…''Would I have been stronger without this stone?

“I am awful.”

But it was true she had little aversion to the idea of death. She had to accept that fact in order to improve herself and there was no real reason to hate that stone which was a part of her, but she could not help but wonder “what if”.

What if she had been a boy? What if she had been taller? What if she had been stronger? What if Top-Gear had not been destroyed? What if she had been more-

“What would have happened?

There was no one here to answer her questions.

“Because I am all alone now.”

She stepped down from the railing, sensed Shiro standing up at her feet, and looked to the false version of a destroyed castle.

She would travel to Sakai now.

Sayama and Shinjou would arrive there that night with 8th-Gear’s Concept Core with them. They would be there to learn about Shinjou’s past.

Tatsumi expected Mikoku to face them there and announce how they would be using 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core. Would she seek a rematch, the release of the prisoners, or something else?

…''I somehow doubt I will find a very good answer.

She turned her back on the castle.

She was glad she had stopped by here instead of traveling directly to Sakai. The names of stores and surnames on houses were different, but the place had still brought back a lot of sentimental memories.

“It is time to go, Shiro.”

As soon as she faced the streets of Kyobashiguchi, a sudden voice reached her.

—'''Metal is alive.

A moment later, she realized the enemy was here.

Gyes had detected Mikoku the night before.

She had noticed while taking Miyako and the Moirai back from Yokosuka via god of war.

A bullet train had been travelling east through the mountains below them, so Miyako had leaned out from the god of war’s shoulder.

“Go, Gyes! Pass it, pass it!”

Gyes had responded by passing the bullet train at extreme low altitude.

A child had noticed them out the window and Miyako had struck a triumphant pose, so Gyes had frantically sped up and away from the train.

…''It was then!

A familiar concept reading had come from somewhere within the train and that reading belonged to the killer of her fellow Hecatoncheire.

“Toda Mikoku!!”

Currently, she looked down from the top of Osaka Castle which was surrounded by a concept space.

The castle’s shadow fell on the bridge over the northern moat where Mikoku and a dog looked up at her.

Gyes leaped down regardless.

She used her gravitational control to quickly descend toward her target.

She was glad she had checked for the girl based on the bullet train’s schedule. She had been unable to resist saying she had business to take care of and leaving Izumo UCAT that morning. She regretted missing her chance to say hello to Sayama and Shinjou, but…

…''This is a personal battle!

Gyes accelerated and swung her arms backwards.

She did not bother drawing the swords from her suit.

She summoned her god of war straight away. And…

“Go, swords!!”

She drew the six giant swords from her fixed concept space.

She sent those half dozen blades forward to attack.

She swung her arms down as if to strike Mikoku.

And the swords flew.

Meanwhile, Mikoku took a defensive stance and breathed in slightly.

She was somewhat panicked. This had come suddenly and she knew she had let her guard down for anything to seem “sudden”.

However, she knew she was still fine.

She was inexperienced and she tended to use that as an excuse, but she knew she could still fight.

She knew she had to be stronger than before.

…''I can win!

With that thought, she gathered strength in her legs.

Her aim was simple.

…''I will counter her attack.

As Gyes dropped down from above, she swung down a giant attack.

So Mikoku would quickly fall back to dodge Gyes’s blades and then step forward for a counterattack.

Gyes’s actions had a flaw. She was assisting herself with her gravitational control, so she could not immediately shift into her next movement upon finishing this one.

Once Mikoku saw through the swords’ movement, she could duck through them and charge forward. That way, she would not need to jump over the holes smashed by the massive swords and she could always regenerate if one of the swords did graze her.

''I will be fine,'' she told herself. ''I can manage on my own.

With that thought, she opened the cloth wrapper in her hand.

She pulled out a Japanese sword treated with philosopher’s stone and tried to draw it.

[[Image:OnC_v12_0457.jpg|thumb]]

“…!?”

But for some reason, the sword did not move even with the usual flick of her thumb against the guard.

…''Eh?

It felt less like it was glued in place and more like this was a single object with no blade that was never meant to be drawn in the first place. More importantly, she had not expected this at all.

“————”

''I cannot fight like this,'' she thought, before immediately erasing that thought from her head.

Nothing but a question mark filled her mind. She tried flicking the guard with her thumb again, but it remained motionless.

“What is-…”

She tried to ask what was going on, but then she saw a small form sitting where she had not long before.

It was a childish form in a maid uniform. It was a girl with blonde hair.

She was looking over at Mikoku.

“Sorry, sorry. Are you panicking?”

She lowered the ends of her eyebrows in a bitter smile.

Only then did Mikoku realize she had no idea what to do.

She was trying to fight back against Gyes and that much was right, but she could not draw the sword she had pulled from its cloth wrapping.

…''I cannot do something I assumed was a given.

The path to victory she had painted in her mind had been closed off.

If she could draw the sword, she could bring that victory into reality, so her thumb was entirely focused on flicking up the sword’s guard.

However…

“Sorry. Gyes said some confusing stuff about this being a personal fight and not a duel. And well, I used to play with Aigaion a lot too, so…”

The girl raised her hands which seemed to be grabbing an invisible tube in midair.

“You won’t be able to draw that,” she said with a troubled smile.

Mikoku realized the six giant blades were descending from above.

The six swords split the concrete bridge.

“————!?”

And they sliced through what stood on the bridge as easily as slicing through empty space.

The first two severed Mikoku’s arms at the shoulder, sending them flying. The blades went on to slice through her feet, smash the concrete, and pierce through the bridge.

A solid sound filled the air, Mikoku’s left arm flew with the Japanese sword still in its grasp, and the next two blades dropped down.

Those two both split the front half of Mikoku’s body. They sliced through her lungs and every last rib and slid down the inside of her thighs while tearing a bit into the bone.

Soon thereafter, the final two slammed into her. And they used the back of the sword.

The rapidly falling blades provided blunt but powerful impacts that contained enough force to smash what remained of her.

She had already been sliced apart by the previous swords, so her left side, right side, and inside splattered everywhere. The inside was especially bad. The impacts on the left and right caused her insides to burst.

“————!!”

As the bridge began to collapse, Mikoku let out a scream mixed with the color red.

Her voice rang out.

The sounds of impact joined it.

But the bridge did not collapse. The girl sitting on the railing held out her palms.

“That was for Aigaion.”

She scooped her hands upwards to preserve the shattered bridge.

With her limbs scattered through the air and across the ground, Mikoku was released from the impact and began to fall.

“!”

But she was stopped.

Gyes had pinned her in midair with a sword through the abdomen.

“This…”

Gyes spread her arms wide to either side and nine swords spread out behind her.

“This ends here, Toda Mikoku!!”

With that shout, she used her gravitational control to stab Mikoku with the nine swords.

However, Mikoku was not yet dead. She was still conscious, still breathing, still pumping blood.

The blue light of a philosopher’s stone shined through her tattered clothing at her chest.

“I can still…”

Mikoku managed to speak. To keep her consciousness from fading in the intense pain, she spoke aloud to herself without understanding what exactly she was saying.

“I can still make it…on my own…”

She spat out some blood with those words and tried to hold on to her consciousness.

“Yes, you have that regeneration ability. You may regenerate quickly when healing a single body part, but it takes time to regenerate everything.”

Gyes saw several colors and objects gathering together atop the bridge that remained standing despite collapsing. They were reconnecting into a single body.

“You are defenseless during that time, but Aigaion did not know about your ability and assumed he had won. That led him to let down his guard and lose. But you know what? If he had known, Aigaion could have killed you.”

“Kill…ed…?” weakly asked Mikoku.

“Yes,” replied Gyes. “All one has to do is destroy that philosopher’s stone in your chest.”

Mikoku trembled at those words.

She tried to twist around and bend over.

“!!”

But something pierced through her head from front to back.

She had tried to bend over and hide her chest, but the impact caused her to bend backwards instead.

She felt like her thoughts were knocked out the back of her head and she saw a maid sitting on the ground beyond the bridge.

The maid had short hair, sharp eyes, and a needle in her right hand.

A rapidly fired needle was what had pierced through Mikoku’s head.

“…!”

Still bent backwards, several hundred needles stabbed into her, fixing her in midair.

At the same time, something moved from below the bridge and into the air.

The giant object turned out to be a blade.

The six belonging to Gyes’s god of war were stacked up on top of each other. Together, they formed a single extra-thick sword.

They sent a roar through the air as they dropped down as a massively heavy blade.

Their target was the philosopher’s stone in Mikoku’s chest.

At the same time, Gyes jumped on top of the six combined swords.

She added on her own weight to accelerate them further.

“Do not worry! I will make sure not to harm your face any further!!”

Mikoku saw it.

There was nothing she could do. She had lost most of her body, most of what even formed thoughts had been smashed, and she could only think vaguely about the scene before her eyes.

Her thoughts never actually stopped. They simply relaxed and allowed what was hidden in her heart to spill out.

…''Ah.

She saw a giant blade.

It dropped from the gray sky and a woman stood on it.

It had a machete-like tip and the corner was falling straight for her chest.

…''Sto-…

She tried to say “stop”, but her mouth would not move.

She could only think “stop” and “no” like a child while twisting her nonexistent body.

The sword arrived.

''It can’t be,'' she thought. ''Why?'' she asked.

''There is no avoiding it,'' she also thought.

…''No…

Her eyes saw the blade dropping from the gray sky and the shadows of the surrounding buildings.

Those buildings were the castle and the more distant city.

Long ago, she had lived in a similar place, her parents had been with her, and she had had plenty of friends.

She had always been taught they were in the right. When she had asked why, she had been given the following answer:

“Because we are trying to accept everyone.”

Her young self had accepted that answer.

However, her mother had embedded a certain stone in her young chest.

Afraid of the pain, she had resisted the idea, sobbed, and cried, but after being drawn in by sweets and dolls, she had undergone the surgery.

Three days later, the world had been destroyed.

All that had remained were the other members of the Army and this.

However, a lot of those others had been captured.

Shino had likely gone wherever it was she wanted to be.

Mikoku was now alone.

She was alone, she could do nothing, and a sword was about to smash her to pieces.

…''No.

She finally let out a voice. However, there was no strength behind it and she could not even reject anything that was happening.

“No!!”

Her shout was answered by the blade colliding with her chest and her body being torn apart.

But just before that, she remembered a great many things: her father’s face, her mother’s face, her friends, her life in Noah, the city she had lived in, the people she had lived with, herself as she had lived there, and…

…''Shino.

She cried out the name of that girl who was no longer by her side.

However, that cry was never heard.

The lungs that would produce it had been sliced apart.

The afternoon sunlight reached a certain location.

A materials storage area was filled with the colors of shadow.

An area of a forested mountain slope had been dug out, pillars driven down, and a metal roof added.

It was big enough for three large dump trucks to fit inside.

However, it was currently filled by something other than trucks, sheet metal, or other materials.

It contained a metal dragon and a white steel giant.

A girl sat on top of the crouching dragon that was colored red, white, and blue.

The girl stared forward at the white giant kneeling in one corner of the dark storage area.

No, she was actually looking at the men in work outfits surrounding the white giant.

“Manager, how is it? Can you get it moving?”

“Can’t you tell at a glance, Tatsumi? This isn’t a pendulum and there are no spares, so it isn’t moving right away.”

“I see,” said Tatsumi.

The mechanical dragon she sat on raised his head slightly.

“How was the enemy?”

“Nothing worth mentioning, Alex. But if I had to say something…troublingly weak. I need him to be strong.”

“Strength is quite a complicated topic.”

“Is it really? I don’t think it’s that-…”

She trailed off and looked down at a small object touching her shoe.

It was a bolt. It had likely been holding on one of Alex’s parts, but it had come free of its nut.

However, she placed the bolt in her pocket and waved down below.

“Manager, one of Alex’s bolts has-…”

“Typhon comes first,” replied the manager.

“But Alex is alive.”

“Stop it, Tatsumi,” cut in Alex. “You make it sound like I will fall apart from losing a single bolt.”

“But,” she said with a frown.

“This much is nothing to worry about. …I am in far better shape than when the negative concepts washed over me and left me on the verge of death. I have to thank your mother for replacing my dying body with this.”

“Your body was remade, but it’s still falling apart. This bolt may look perfectly normal on the outside, but it will fall right back off even if we put it back on.”

“That is the dreadful side of negative concepts. My actual body has grown almost entirely negative. It is merely being held at bay with new bolts added onto the outside.”

After a pause, Alex continued.

“But without this body, I never would have met you and I would have died. So the only thing I can do is continue on such that I leave no regrets.”

“…”

“That is nothing to fall silent over, Tatsumi. And more importantly…”

He turned his head toward the corner of the storage area.

Beyond the white giant named Typhon was a pile-driver wrapped in blue chains.

“You brought it back with you, but aren’t you going to attach it to Typhon?”

“Mikoku will decide that.”

“I wonder if she is doing well.”

“She isn’t at all. I tailed her and did a little dance behind her, but she didn’t react. I even played ding dong dash at her hotel room and she didn’t notice a thing. …She’s doing much worse than before the battle,” quietly said Tatsumi. “With Master Hajji and Shino gone, she must think she’s alone. She thinks she has no allies and the only people left are enemies or people who force troubles onto her.”

A voice answered her from below. It was the manager who was brightly lit by his welding.

“Tatsumi, how about you quit teasing her and teach her a thing or two?”

“She’s far past the point where she can be taught. Even when it comes to fighting, she can think for herself now.”

“Then why is she feeling so down?”

“She has no confidence,” declared Tatsumi as if she had seen it for herself. “She had always relied on others to provide her a reason for her actions. She had always entrusted herself with Shino, Master Hajji, or even us, so she has no idea what to do now that she’s alone and without a set goal.”

Tatsumi brought a hand to her neck and smiled bitterly.

She then crossed her arms, looked down at Alex’s face, and narrowed her eyes.

“But what do you think someone’s true strength is?”

“That would be their own strength as opposed to something given to them by anything external,” answered Alex.

“Then is a fighter only demonstrating their true strength if they fight barehanded?”

That question silenced Alex.

Tatsumi laughed, crossed her legs, and swept a hand through her hair.

“Mikoku still has allies.”

“Hm? Even though she has no one nearby?”

“You have allies, too. So do I and so does everyone else. That’s how I see it anyway. Everyone has at least someone who will unconditionally side with them no matter what,” said Tatsumi. “And Mikoku’s case is more powerful than anyone else’s. She has simply forgotten about it and lost her nerve. And remember one thing, Alex.”

She nodded.

“One’s true strength is what is hidden inside them and forgotten.”

The impact sounded like music to Gyes’s ears.

She loved these sounds of slicing and destruction.

It felt like the commotion of the old festivals of the gods condensed into a single instant.

The sound carried into the distance and rose into the sky. The wind created by the moving blades and shattering impacts felt wonderful and the splattering chunks acted as proof of her fun.

And if it led to victory, that was all the better.

Mikoku’s philosopher’s stone had undoubtedly been smashed.

Gyes had felt the hit and she had confirmed it while compressing her combat speed several thousand times.

Mikoku was dead.

…''No, I killed her.

Was this her first time to lay a hand on someone from Top-Gear?

Or had she unknowingly done so in the past?

She did not know, so she chose not to think about it and lowered her shoulders.

She began to switch her body parts from combat mobility mode to normal mode.

“————”

But she suddenly realized that something was not right.

She was standing on the stack of six swords, but her vision was located too high.

…''That means…

Something was supporting the swords from below.

She tried to peer down to see what, but something stopped her.

“Sister Gyes!!”

She heard Moira 3rd’s voice and she saw Mikoku’s body in the spot the six blades had struck.

Mikoku wore the tatters of her clothing and almost seemed to have grown up from the ground.

“She’s regenerating!?”

…''Impossible!

The philosopher’s stone had been broken. She had felt it happen through the blades. And yet…

“…!?”

Gyes saw Mikoku’s philosopher’s stone supporting the tip of the fallen blades.

The pinky-sized blue stone had definitely broken

“That blue light…”

Despite being broken, it was emitting light.

…''It’s repairing itself!?

Gyes understood what Mikoku’s philosopher’s stone was doing.

“It regenerates both her body and itself!?”

That stone could regenerate itself.

It was likely a product of combining concepts from 3rd and 10th.

It was a philosopher’s stone that could only have been made in Top-Gear.

''This is dangerous,'' warned Gyes’s artificial mind.

However, she did not know where exactly the danger lay.

She saw no problem in the fact that this philosopher’s stone could regenerate itself.

Mikoku’s regeneration took time, so she only had to use that time to smash the stone again and destroy the girl’s body.

If it came to it, she could drop the girl in a vat of powerful acid or a pool of lava. The stone and her body’s regeneration speed would be unable to keep up.

And to do any of that…

…''I need to smash it now to prepare for my next move!

Mikoku’s regeneration was nearly finished. Her body stood as if pulled up by the philosopher’s stone. Some gravitational control may have been at work because Gyes’s swords were lifted up as well.

Mikoku was not conscious, so Gyes decided this was her chance. But just as she began to take action, she realized something.

Her movements were slow.

…''I’m still using my combat speed.

She had yet to switch back to normal speed.

That meant everything she was seeing was in the realm of her combat speed.

In that case…

…''I’ve compressed my speed several thousand times, but her regeneration speed appears unchanged.

That thought led to a single answer.

Mikoku’s regeneration speed was rising. That was the only explanation.

''Why?'' she asked.

“Does that philosopher’s stone include an evolution concept!?”

She shouted the answer she had reached as a resident of 3rd.

At the same time, Mikoku slowly opened her eyes with blue light filling her chest.

Mikoku’s vision cleared.

The first thing she saw was a torrent of blue light.

…''Eh?

The blue stone embedded in her chest pulsated with a piercing light that travelled in every direction.

A forceful wind whipped around her.

As if delighted by that wind, the blue light surged outwards.

…''Why?

Why was she alive?

There was only one possible answer: a power hidden inside her philosopher’s stone.

…''Is this what my parents were researching?

They had been researching immortality.

However, they had not succeeded. After all, every Gear contained a concept of destruction.

Evolution and destruction were two sides of the same coin, so to hold the possibility of one was to hold the possibility of the other.

Thus absolute immortality was impossible. Instead, they had created a false immortality. Rather than healing the root cause that was destruction, this philosopher’s stone filled in the gaps and healed the symptoms of that destruction.

However, there was one thing Mikoku had not known.

…''This stone regenerates me, but even if it is destroyed, it regenerates itself and further evolves?

She had not known about this ability.

She soon felt strength fill her entire body.

This strength had not been there before. She could begin moving immediately after her resurrection.

Her body was working perfectly and this gave Mikoku a certain thought for the first time.

…''I can fight?

With this regeneration speed, she could instantly heal any wound and keep moving.

However…

“…!”

At the center of the blue light and swirling wind, she sensed something. A pain was squeezing at her entire body.

Rather than the usual intense pain, she felt like her entire body was creaking.

This hastened regeneration was adversely affecting her body.

That was when she realized why this ability had not shown itself before.

…''I was young, so my parents gave me a slower regeneration to protect me from this pain.

So why had it sped up now, giving her this pain?

Why had the stone been created with this change in mind?

“…”

She realized she had something after all.

She had been left with something. She had thought she had nothing, but she did have something.

She had this strength.

She had an incomplete immortality concept.

It was not perfect, but it could only have been built up this far inside Top-Gear.

And it was the one thing her parents had left for her.

Even if the world was destroyed, this power would rescue her from destruction.

…''And yet I cried and protested so much back when they were going to give me the surgery.

She wondered what her parents had thought of her.

She distinctly remembered the sensation of being hugged and told it was going to be okay.

Inside Noah, her parents had sung to her and comforted her along with everyone else and the automaton that managed Noah.

Everything came back to her, both the memories and her body.

As her body quickly regenerated, her mind grew clear.

She could see the sky beyond her pain.

She breathed out into that false winter sky.

The breath formed words.

“Thank you.”

She was not addressing anyone in particular.

As if answering her, light and wind blew across her and filled her with strength.

That rising strength was like a voice telling her to wake in the morning.

No matter how isolated she was, the strength of this self-created world would never leave her.

''I was spoiled,'' she thought inside the blowing wind. ''I was so used to being spoiled that I forgot what it was to think.

After thinking about herself, she thought about the person she cared for most.

…''Shino.

Her thoughts continued.

…''Even without you, I will not die.

So…

“Will you…?”

She took a breath, lowered the ends of her eyebrows, and sounded on the verge of tears.

“Will you be just fine without me?”

Even as she asked that question, she began to move.

A bitter calm filled her heart.

Soon, a thought in her heart rose to the surface.

It was the task Tatsumi had forced onto her. She was to be Top-Gear’s leader and…

…''What will I do with 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core?

As soon as she felt she had an answer, she found the solution to it all.

She would settle things between Top-Gear and Low-Gear once and for all. One could call it a last resort.

She decided this was an answer only she could have reached.

A moment later, a large sword arrived within striking range overhead.

Mikoku clenched her regenerated left fist.

She quickly drew the Japanese sword it held.

She was determined to make good use of 3rd’s Concept Core.

She took action as the first step toward the last resort she had just come up with.

She intercepted the falling sword with her own philosopher’s stone treated blade.

Her sword broke and the cutting concept contained within lost control.

“———!!”

The surrounding space was smashed to pieces and the automaton’s gravitational control could no longer support the bridge.

“…!!”

Immediately afterwards, the bridge exploded, sending out a destructive and noisy wind.

Gyes closed her eyes against the wind.

Mikoku had finished regenerating, so she would have easily been able to see through Gyes’s attack.

She could have readily made a counterattack and no one would have blamed her had she taken Gyes’s life.

However…

“…?”

Gyes was still alive.

''Why?'' she wondered as she opened her eyes. She looked on the broken bridge and through its gaping holes, but Mikoku was not there.

''Why?'' she wondered. ''Why didn’t she attack me?

She looked around from atop the stacked swords and below the dry sunlight peeking through the clouds, but both Mikoku and the dog really were nowhere to be found. She only saw Moira 3rd turning her head back and forth to look around.

Moira 3rd also seemed confused by Mikoku’s absence.

“What happened?”

She tilted her head.

“That was her chance, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“I know, right? You would’ve been pathetically cut down while filled with false triumph.”

“Don’t call me pathetic!!”

She got the girl in a headlock and poked at her, but Moira 2nd silently walked up to stop her.

Gyes sighed.

…''What does this mean? She had the perfect chance to finish me off.

A broken sword was stabbed into the bridge at her feet.

Mikoku had forcibly scratched at the bridge to leave behind a message.

It said…

“Sorry?”

''Why?'' asked Gyes. ''Why did she apologize and run off when she had effectively won?

Unfortunately, Mikoku was not around to answer.

She had left that single word and disappeared.

Only the blowing wind remained.

Only the chilly winter wind.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 15

2015-02-25T00:05:01Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 15: The Ordinary Extraordinary */

==Chapter 15: The Ordinary Extraordinary==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0421.png|thumb]]
''I thought

''I understood

''And finally, I decide

A room had a blackboard on the wall and several lines of desks.

The desks and chairs were filled by boys in black school uniforms and girls in navy blue uniforms.

However, the back of the far left row by the windows contained a color not seen in the rest of the room.

Everyone else’s hair was black, but this girl’s short hair was blonde.

The nametag on her uniform said Heo T.

Heo placed her notebook, textbook, and pen case on her desk before facing forward.

The windows on the left side of the classroom provided a view of the courtyard and the back of Building B. The classroom was located on the third floor of Building C, which was the farthest north of the buildings.

Despite the view of the gray sky, the air conditioning kept the chill out.

…''It’s actually a little too hot inside, so sitting by the window feels nice and cool.

With that thought, Heo began copying down what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.

This was modern Japanese class and they were working an interpretative problem.

She enjoyed class. She learned a lot and…

…''It helps me forget about last night, at least a little.

She remembered what Harakawa had said as he left.

He had told her to stay away from the Leviathan Road because she was safe.

He had said someone who was safe did not need to head into danger.

…''But…

She wondered what she was supposed to do if she saw something she wanted to protect in that danger.

She did not know the answer and that was why she had said nothing as he had left.

She suddenly realized something from that. ''Oh,'' she told herself.

…''He left because I couldn’t give him a proper answer.

In that case, had her anger been nothing but a misplaced outburst? She had already consumed a lot of their snacks, so…

…''C-calorie-wise, I’ve made a horrible mistake!

''No, I’ll be fine. I’m still young,'' she told herself just as she heard a voice.

“Heo? Troubled? Troubled?”

Surprised, she lifted her drooping head.

She looked around, but no one else had noticed the voice. She could only hear the air blowing in from the heater and the teacher’s chalk scraping on the blackboard.

She also heard the occasional turning of a page in a student’s notebook, so she relaxed her shoulders a bit.

…''Looks like they didn’t notice.

Her usual bag sat to the left of her desk, but she had brought an additional black backpack today and it was slightly opened.

A green point peeked out of the backpack. It was the nose of a plant creature.

The nose moved back and forth as if sniffing around and Heo whispered at it.

“Um, sorry, but I’m in the middle of class right now.”

“Outside.”

The creature unexpectedly began to leave the backpack as if peeling it away.

“!”

Heo frantically grabbed its shoulder and shoved it back inside.

“S-sorry, but it isn’t quite time to come out yet.”

“Heo? Panicking?”

…''Yes, I am!!

For the time being, she zipped up the bag with the creature’s nose sticking out.

She quickly looked around, but she only noticed a few people giving her curious glances.

They seemed to think she had only impulsively decided to take something out of her bag.

She nonchalantly faced her notebook again, stretched her back, and picked up her mechanical pencil.

She steadied her breathing and began copying down her notes again, while fully aware of the gazes on her.

…''I-I’m a delinquent. I really am a delinquent today. How could I bring an animal to school!?

When she thought about it, she realized not even delinquents brought animals to school.

Plus, this was not an animal. It was the resident of another world.

…''I-I’ve packed up what you could call a person. …I’m a world-class delinquent!

But this was part of her job as a member of Team Leviathan. The plant creature had showed up at her home, asked for her specifically, and asked to redo their negotiations.

Kazami had contacted her that morning and given her the following advice after hearing about the situation:

“Try to get along.”

That was about as vague as one could get and Kazami had also told her that Hiba and Mikage had been taken to the hospital the night before and that Top-Gear had stolen 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core.

It also seemed Sayama and Shinjou had arrived at Izumo UCAT.

That meant Heo had to deal with this on her own.

She could not leave a guest alone all day, so she had brought the creature with her.

“Heo. Water. Water.”

The worst part was its need to soak up water once an hour, so she quickly raised her hand.

“Excuse me! I’m not feeling well.”

Her elderly female homeroom teacher smiled bitterly.

“Miss Thunderson, don’t push yourself too much in your everyday life.”

The others gave her looks of pity, so she began to worry just what kind of character they saw her as.

At any rate, she left the classroom with the plant creature’s backpack in hand and she made her way to the building’s central hallway.

She opened the girl’s bathroom in the cold air and entered a stall.

She closed the pale green door and opened the toilet lid.

“U-um, you need water, right?”

She pulled a thermos of hot water from the backpack’s side pocket.

She then opened the backpack and the plant creature pushed its way out.

It bent itself toward the center of the open toilet.

“Water.”

“Y-you mustn’t use that water. You mustn’t.”

She gave the creature the same lecture for the third time that day and placed it across the toilet.

It placed its six feet along the open toilet seat and she poured a cup of the thermos’s hot water over it.

“Feels good.”

By the time the water passed through the plant creature, it had lost its heat.

The splashing sound would continue until the water ran out.

Heo breathed a sigh of relief that she was pulling this off.

…''D-dealing with other worlds isn’t easy.

She stretched while making sure her back did not touch the wall and the creature asked a question.

“Heo? What were you doing?”

“Studying Japanese.”

“Japanese?”

“That’s this country’s language.”

“Hard?”

She knew what it meant. They spoke directly via thoughts, so they used what one could call a perfect language. From their perspective, having to use many different languages might sound like a lot of hard work.

“I think it’s a lot of fun.”

“Then 4th boring?”

Heo gasped at that tremendous reversal.

She started by making sure she maintained her smile.

“Heo. Sweating.”

“Y-yes. It’s a very unpleasant sweat, too. N-no, you don’t need to absorb anything from me. You don’t. Th-this much is normal for me.”

''I can say some bold things when cornered, can’t I?'' she thought while finding an answer.

“4th’s language is fun too.”

“Why? Only one.”

Heo thought about the plant creature’s use of the word “one” and she chose her words carefully.

“In that case, languages are a means of conveying your thoughts, so Low-Gear’s languages and 4th-Gear’s language may take different forms, but they’re the same kind of fun in the end.”

After a while, the creature answered.

“4th and Low-Gear the same? Why?”

She knew the answer to that thanks to living in Harakawa’s home.

“Because we’re living together. Languages are meant to convey thoughts to each other, so even if they take different forms, they’re the same if we can properly convey our thoughts.”

“Living together makes the same?”

“Yes, together makes the same.”

''I’m speaking like it now,'' she thought with a bitter smile.

“Even if we’re different, we can be the same.”

“But Harakawa not together. Not the same?”

The ends of her eyebrows lowered at that question.

The plant creature had not seen Harakawa. She did not know where it had learned about him, but it was bothered by the fact that he was not with her.

Why was he not with her?

That was the question she most wanted to know the answer to.

…''Why?

However, she had to be a proper representative of Low-Gear when speaking to the 4th plant creature.

If 4th-Gear viewed Harakawa and herself as Low-Gear, then they were going through a slight civil war. She believed that it was only a temporary split and that it would not be permanent.

“Harakawa isn’t with me for the moment.”

“The same, but not with you? Always?”

She almost answered “maybe”, but…

“…”

She swallowed the words. She wanted to say no and she tried to come up with an excuse for doing so.

…''Oh.

After a realization, she gave her answer.

“Perhaps.”

“Really? Heo and Harakawa are not together?”

“Yes, perhaps.”

She gave a clear answer.

“But perhaps not.”

“Which one?”

Her voice was steady as she replied.

“I don’t know because it’s up to me.”

She was not sure, but she had a feeling this was the answer. She felt like this would lead her to the answer.

…''Yes.

If Harakawa had rejected her, she had to figure out why and fix whatever she needed to fix.

She had ended up crying because she had not tried to figure out what it was and she had assumed there was nothing wrong with her.

And as soon as she realized that, a knock came on the stall door.

“…!?”

The plant creature was not done with its water, so she was thankful she had locked the door.

“O-occupied!”

“Is that you, Heo T? Are you okay?”

The voice belonged to her class’s health committee member.

Heo nodded at the nickname her nametag had produced.

“Y-yes, I’m fine. What is it?”

“Our teacher told me to go check on you, Heo T. You’ve been talking to yourself a lot today and doing weird things. …Are you sure you’re okay? I’m been, um, hearing quite a lot of, uh, water in there.”

“Ohh…”

Oddly calm thoughts of “that’s a misunderstanding” and “what should I say?” entered her mind, but her silence must have worried the girl.

“U-um, Heo T? By any chance, d-did you really have to go?”

“Eh? Well, um…”

Heo looked down at the plant creature standing across the toilet and accidentally spoke aloud.

“This big green thing wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Eh!? Have you been eating a lot of fiber and a lot of beta-carotene-rich vegetables!?”

“Ah! N-no, ignore that! Ignore that! I didn’t say anything!”

“No, Heo T. You need to take care of this properly! Go to the infirmary and get a suppository!!”

“Suppository?” asked the plant creature.

“I-it’s a type of medicine,” replied Heo.

“Ah, Heo T’s talking to herself again! Teacher! Teacher! Heo T’s in trouble!”

Heo brought a hand to her forehead as she heard the bathroom door open and footsteps run out into the hallway.

“Today’s troubles are getting going earlier than usual…”

“Heo T?” asked the plant creature.

“Um, yes. Some people say my name that way.”

She sighed and touched the plant creature.

It had already gone through all the water.

Shinjou and Sayama stood in a dark corridor.

Shinjou held a fist-sized stone. It was the Messenger of Wanambi, but…

…''It’s warm.

The hard stone was emitting a gentle heat from within.

…''It’s been cold lately, so it would be nice having something like this under the covers at night.

Meanwhile, she saw something up ahead.

It was a long white console with a bookshelf and a cupboard for dishes.

“My mom’s workplace.”

The coffee cup she had seen in the past was in the cupboard.

She hesitated briefly.

“…”

She placed the stone on the console, opened up the cupboard, and pulled out the white cup with both hands.

It was cold, but she felt an imagined warmth in it.

The ends of her eyebrows lowered as she held up the cup and lowered her head.

“She was here.”

Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and she realized how prone to tears she had been lately.

So she breathed in, tensed her gut to hold in the tears, and embraced the cup.

“You can cry if you want, Shinjou-kun.”

“No.”

She forcibly shook her head, causing the drops in the corners of her eyes to waver.

“We’re going to Sakai. I’m sure I’ll cry there, so…I don’t want to cry until then. That way I can cry a whole bunch.”

She raised her head and forced a smile. ''The tears never left my eyes, so it doesn’t count as crying, right?'' she told herself as she wiped at her eyes.

She then gently set down the cup on the console.

“Are you sure?” “You won’t take it?” “Belongs” “to” “Yukio”

“My mom didn’t leave this for me and she didn’t spend her time with it after I was born. It belongs to her from the time she was here.”

“Tes” “Understood” “Yukio” “Different” “Shinjou” “Name” “Name?”

“Sadagiri,” she said firmly.

After a while…

“Shinjou” “Sadagiri” “Shinjou” “Yukio”

And…

“Individual” “Inherit” “Understood” “Tes” “Testament”

She nodded at that with a smile.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you” “Thank” “Thankful” “Grateful” “Great” “Amazing” “Maze” “Labyrinth”

“Does your excess intelligence sometimes send your associations out of control?”

“Sorry.”

And then…

“Speak to ourselves” “Happens a lot” “Try not to” “Endure” “Entertainment” “TV” “Video” “Osaka” “Arm”

They started playing shiritori.

…''I feel like I could watch them all day, but have they always been doing this?

She imagined Wanambi and them all rapidly playing shiritori to increase their heat while living in their empty world during the Concept War.

…''Actually, where did they learn that game?

''Probably Sayama-kun’s grandfather or my great-grandfather,'' she decided.

“I wonder if my great-grandfather was like your grandfather, Sayama-kun.”

“Sh-Shinjou-kun, please do not insult your ancestors like that.”

“Insult” “Insulate” “Insulation” “Too cold?”

“No, no. I’m fine,” answered Shinjou as she rubbed the head of the stone in front of her.

She then looked up.

Sayama did the same next to her.

They both looked to the darkness beyond the console.

In their dream of the past, it had been filled with a jungle of piping and walls of giant tanks, but now…

“What is this empty space?”

A spherical area fifty meters across was gouged out of the darkness.

The empty space had eaten into the surrounding machines and pipes as well. The neighboring machines and tanks all had the edge of a sphere torn into them and their internal components were exposed.

Shinjou could only think a massive space had utterly vanished.

Some panels were laid out at the bottom of the empty space to create a level area and futons were laid out on them. The automatons hiding out below ground were likely using it as a place to sleep.

“I bet that higher bed with a canopy is Miyako-san’s.”

Miyako’s voice reached them from the distant entrance.

“Don’t go peeking at our stuff!”

Shinjou tensed her shoulders and grabbed onto Sayama’s arm.

She questioned how they were supposed to investigate this area without seeing the beds, but…

“What is this hole? It wasn’t there in the dream, was it?”

“No,” Sayama shook his head and Baku emulated it from his head.

Suddenly, a voice reached them from further in.

“This was the result of creating a concept and then eliminating it. That prevented the facility from ever being used, but it also means the concept creation theory was completed.”

Shinjou turned toward the voice coming from down the corridor and the voice continued.

“Hi. You’ve seen a lot here, haven’t you? So can you tell me what you think of it all? Has it cheered you up and made you feel like you can keep going after all? Has it?”

The owner of the voice appeared from the darkness.

“That guy in the white suit.”

“That’s right. The name’s Izumo Retsu, so try to remember it if you can. I’m more famous than my son, after all. Anyway, since I fell down, I decided to wait for you on my way back up.”

The elderly man in a white suit revealed what he was hiding behind his well-built back.

It was a white, A4-sized touchpad, but…

…''It has the same cowling as a concept weapon!

''In that case,'' she thought.

Retsu smiled. It was a troubled smile with lowered ends of the eyebrows.

“8th-Gear’s Wanambi is in here. You can carry it back with you and complete the Leviathan Road on your way.”

His tone made it clear there was a “but”, so Shinjou stiffened.

Sayama spoke up as if responding to her tension.

“You sound like you have something else to say.”

“I would expect no less of Old Sayama’s grandson, Mikoto-kun. …Yes, there is something I want to say and something I want to ask.”

“Tell us what you want to say first.”

“I will.” Retsu nodded and looked to Shinjou. “Shinjou-kun, now that you have come here and seen that large empty space, have you noticed a certain mystery?”

Before she could ask what he meant, he looked to the large hole, narrowed his eyes, and continued.

“That was 1st-Gear’s writing concept. It was a pre-existing concept, but it was created as an original rather than a copy. But to make sure the double presence of that concept did not destroy the world’s balance, the concept created inside of an experimental concept space grew negative and caused that.”

“Then…my mom really did create a concept?”

“Yes.” Retsu’s voice was quiet and he stared into the distant darkness. “By constructing a theory based on the available data, she created a working theory.”

Those words led Shinjou to realize what he meant by a mystery.

There was indeed a mystery here. If her mother had successfully created a concept…

“Why was the facility below Okutama never completed?”

They would have had all the data and her mother would have had her theory near completion.

“Why?”

“That is simple. She went to Top-Gear and…she made some clever alterations to the data she left behind.”

His use of the word “alterations” left her speechless.

However, he looked her way and spoke with a calm expression.

“I feel like making a joke here. Should I?”

“No. I think that’s due to the pervert genes of the Izumo family, so just keep talking.”

Retsu hung his head and sighed, but he quickly looked back up with a troubled expression.

“Well, anyway. By the time we checked over the data, it was too late. Once we had reason to doubt some of the data she left, all of it started looking suspect, so Asagi-kun decided to end the project. All that remained was the wasted facility on Japanese UCAT’s sixth basement…and the fact that Low-Gear was in trouble.”

“B-but why? Why did my mom do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m not your mom, so I can only guess.”

She fell silent at that and he shrugged.

“Was that a little too harsh for you? But it’s the truth. And none of us know why it happened. Was she telling Low-Gear to die? Or did she not want Low-Gear to use concepts as a weapon? That’s for you two to find out.”

“For us to find out?”

“None of us want to remember those times, but you want to investigate it, don’t you? And you’re their kids. You have more right to know and to think about it than I do.”

With that said, Retsu straightened his back, tossed up the PDA in his hand, and caught it.”

“I just gave you ‘the past’ as a gift. So next…”

“You want my brilliant self to give you ‘the present’ as a gift?” asked Sayama.

“That speeds things up.” Retsu smiled and brushed a hand through his gray hair. “Yes, I just have one thing I want to ask you. …If, hypothetically, Top-Gear turned out to be 100% in the right, would there be any point in lending you Wanambi? There wouldn’t, would there? So I want to ask you why you would borrow Wanambi and complete the Leviathan Road if Top-Gear is in the right. Or to put it more bluntly…”

He took a breath, spun around for no reason, and pointed at Sayama.

“Prove to me you can complete the Leviathan Road even if Top-Gear is entirely in the right!”

Shinjou thought about what Retsu’s question meant.

…''That’s what Sayama-kun was talking about, isn’t it?

She remembered their conversation on the emergency staircase the day before.

…''He told us he has a last resort against Top-Gear.

It was something that even Sayama had referred to as “treading on thin ice”, but that was exactly why it was a last resort.

…''What is it?

Sayama crossed his arms in the face of his questioner.

“Father of Izumo, what a silly question. What if I were to say I simply hate quitting something without finishing it?”

“Your need to ask ‘what if’ is enough to know that isn’t the case. Get on to what you really think.”

Shinjou was taken aback by Retsu’s reasoning.

…''He isn’t letting Sayama-kun have his way.

''I probably would have fallen for it,'' she realized.

“Mikoto-kun,” said Retsu with a bitter smile.

“Please, there is no need to use ‘-kun’. You can simply call me ‘Mikoto-sama’.”

Sayama ignored Shinjou’s glare and Retsu’s bitter smile grew.

“Then, Mikoto-sama, I’m sorry to say that I’ve known your father and grandfather for a long time. I’ve come to learn quite a few verbal tricks in that time. …Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes. You are saying you have an overabundance of terrible memories.”

“Wow, the grandson’s the same? That’s three generations in a row!!”

“Heh heh heh. It won’t be long until Shinjou-kun and I produce the fourth generation. Prepare yourself.”

That comment surprised Shinjou.

She took a step back and brought a hand to her chest.

“But they’ll be like me too. Then again, your side might be so strong it overpowers my side.”

“Hmm. I seem to have misspoke, Shinjou-kun. That is not what I meant. I would want our child to have your beauty, eroundism, intelligence, hardworking spirit, rejecting acceptance, and blessing from the butt spirit.”

“I’m not sure all of those are compliments.”

At any rate, Shinjou pointed down the corridor.

Sayama looked down that way and saw Retsu crouched down and playing shiritori with the Messenger of Wanambi.

“Fox. Ha ha ha. How do like the suffering of all these x’s? …Oh, are you done over there?”

“Yes, can we continue speaking?”

Retsu nodded and stood up. He looked over at them from his great height.

“Right now, my stupid son’s bridal candidate says the other kids are renegotiating with the other Gears. So you can finish the Leviathan Road with 8th-Gear, learn of the past in Sakai, and put together a plan to deal with Top-Gear. …But when are you going to handle 9th’s Leviathan Road? 9th is pretty much the Army’s main force. And…”

His mouth opened wide and bent up in a smile.

“When are you going to do Top-Gear’s Leviathan Road?”

That question brought something to mind for Shinjou.

…''First, Kazami-san and the others have to defeat the other Gears in their rematches to preserve the previous parts of the Leviathan Road.

“And if we finish the Leviathan Road with all of the Gears except for 9th-Gear, which was the Army, and Top-Gear…”

…''The Gears will either take Top-Gear’s side or Low-Gear’s side.

She quietly spoke her conclusion aloud.

“The world will split into two factions which can meet for a negotiation.”

She brought a hand to her mouth and raised her voice to a yell.

“Every Gear can gather and hold a negotiation over whether Top-Gear or Low-Gear is right!”

“Indeed,” agreed Sayama. “We can create a venue for more than just Top-Gear’s view!”

He looked to Retsu.

“No matter what sort of righteousness Top-Gear has on their side, we can hold it back. …No matter how righteous the past may be, it is limited in number. If a greater number support the present’s righteousness, the past’s righteousness has no choice but to restrain itself!”

“You mean you won’t let the past rule unopposed?”

“Yes. I do not yet know what form this meeting will take. I do not even know if Top-Gear will agree to it, what topics to discuss, or how to set it up. Not knowing if such a thing can be arranged at all is the biggest challenge at the moment.”

Based on their periodic contact with the others, they knew 3rd-Gear’s Concept Core had been stolen, 4th was renegotiating with Heo, and 2nd was still a mystery. There were too many unknowns for concrete plans at this point.

“Also,” said Sayama. “At that meeting, we will be competing with Top-Gear to see who is in the right. We just received a large hint from Shinjou Yukio’s past, but we must solve those mysteries in our negotiations with 8th and the further information on her we find in Sakai.”

Shinjou listened to him talk about her mother.

“We must face whatever led up to Top-Gear’s destruction and determine the truth.”

She gave a deep nod at that because the past he was searching for was closely connected to her.

…''I want to find the truth about my mom and the others.

Sayama smiled a bit and nodded toward her.

“Yes,” he began. “We know two things for sure. First, the end of the Leviathan Road comes at the conclusion of the Leviathan Road meeting where each Dragon’s representative is gathered. And second, we will use the past and future we have gained to battle Top-Gear there.”

He extended his left hand toward Wanambi in Retsu’s hand.

When Retsu saw his outstretched hand, he showed off his teeth in a smile.

“An excellent idea. In that case…”

Just as he was going to say something more, he stopped.

''Eh?'' thought Shinjou as she noticed where he was looking.

…''Below?

She looked at his feet where the Messenger of Wanambi’s sand was forming letters.

“Hurry it up” “Hand it over”

“It sounds a little like the yakuza,” commented Shinjou as Retsu reluctantly and silently passed them Wanambi.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 14

2015-02-24T21:01:58Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 14: A Place of Old Memories */

==Chapter 14: A Place of Old Memories==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0391.png|thumb]]
''That is a path to the past

''Nothing can return

''All one can do is think

The underground portion of Japanese UCAT was filled with hectic activity.

It was mostly work to restore the facility and the people moving from floor to floor shook the entire building.

But one area near the center of the underground space remained still: the development department.

The large room was filled with people wearing lab coats who would leave when called over an internal line, but would return after about an hour.

A single voice spoke for all of them. It came from the woman sitting at a large desk by the back wall.

“It isn’t easy being considerate.”

The elderly woman’s nametag said Tsukuyomi Shizuru and she crossed her arms behind her head.

…''Just because the other Gears are taking action against UCAT or holing up doesn’t mean you have to as well.

But none of them were doing a thing and had been like this the entire time. They were all giving it a lot of thought, going to work, and doing their jobs, but they were not actively making an appearance anywhere.

“I suppose none of us knows quite what to do. We can’t exactly become their enemy again at this point, but the other Gears keep going for it and it makes us think maybe we should too.”

Tsukuyomi spoke her thoughts to the entire relaxed development department.

She felt they had finally returned to their old attitude, but at the same time, something had begun to move today.

That movement came from beyond a partition near the center of the room, it was centered on two men, and it was noisy.

They were still whispering, but their voices were picking up speed.

“Like I was saying, Kashima, you just have to make a sword! One that can cut all sorts of stuff!”

“What are you talking about, Atsuta? I was only released from the hospital three days ago. Think about this. I was hospitalized for a month and a half with all those broken ribs.”

“What? You mean you’re still in rehabilitation?”

“Yes, I am. This is an important period of rehabilitation. I have to recover from the lack of Natsu-san nursing me in the hospital room. Although, she has been rewarding me with way more videos than usual ever since I got out of the hospital.”

“This isn’t about your damn videos!!”

Tsukuyomi saw short hair dyed blond rise above the partition as someone stood up.

“With you gone, I haven’t had a weapon, so I’ve been stuck sitting her silently!!”

Hearing that, every single person in lab coat or work outfit stood up from the partitions.

“That last part is a complete lie!!”

Sitting in his chair, Kashima nodded at the entire development department’s unified opinion.

He looked to Atsuta who was resting his elbows on the partition entrance.

“Besides, Atsuta. Ooh, look. Here’s a video of Harumi. What do you even need to cut?”

“For starters, I could cut out the center of what you just said.”

“What are you talking about? Oh, she’s so cute. If you’re going to cut out anything, it would be the start and end.”

He watched his laptop’s screen and it began to play a video of Natsu in a hospital room.

…''Hm, I can’t let anyone else see this one. This is the one that goes from her casual silence to a kiss. She closes her eyes and stops just before kissing the monitor.

“Hey. Hey, Kashima. Earth to Kashima. Why are you kissing your monitor, you ape?”

“Ha ha ha. I feel sorry for you, Atsuta. You can’t understand or even see this sense of closeness.”

As he spoke, Kashima transferred more and more of the data he had filmed at home onto the laptop.

He set a few of the important files so they would only play with his fingerprint and then he faced forward.

“What’s that weird look for, Atsuta? You’re ruining your usual weird looks.”

“Are you looking for a fight?”

“I am. It’s going to be quite a fight to convert all 672 GB of data before tomorrow.”

“Wait, just a damn second. Have you never heard of trimming the fat?”

“Of course I have. …This is what was left after I carefully selected only the essentials!!”

“That’s not how it works and don’t look so proud! …Listen!”

Atsuta grabbed at the air and set it down.

“Put those videos down here! Here!”

Kashima did as he was told and set his laptop on the floor.

“Yes, the floor is cold and will keep it from overheating. …That was a great idea, Atsuta! Looks like you know what it takes to work with videos. I’m glad I can finally call you a video buddy.”

Kashima showed off his teeth in a smile, looked up at Atsuta, and held out his hand for a handshake.

“Welcome aboard, my video buddy!”

“Y-y-y-y-you bastard! …Who are you calling your video buddy!? Well!?”

Atsuta knocked Kashima’s hand aside, but Kashima gave a serious expression and slowly pointed at the center of Atsuta’s forehead.

“Wasn’t it obvious? I was talking about you. Why are the veins on your temple bulging out like that? Besides, I just sent Natsu-san an email saying you started making videos thanks to Harumi.”

The cellphone at his waist vibrated, so he pulled it out.

“Here’s her response: ‘Then from now on, today will be Atsuta-san’s video anniversary, won’t it?’ ”

“See? You have my wife’s approval. Isn’t that great?”

He held out the phone, but Atsuta snatched it and bit into it. After three crunching chews, the phone had completely lost its shape and he suddenly bent backwards.

“Kwaaah! The electronics are shocking my teeth!”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. It may be rich in minerals, but eating something that hard is bad for your jaw. And pay me back for that. 5,800 yen for the phone itself and 1,780,000,000 for the lost emails from my wife.”

Hearing that, Atsuta bared his teeth and clicked his tongue.

“Do you have any intention of holding a serious conversation!?”

“Hold on. What about you? If you were listening to me, then tell me what I was saying.”

“Videos, videos, videos, Harumi, Natsu.”

“D-don’t you dare refer to Natsu-san without an honorific!!”

“And you don’t have anything to say about the rest of that!?”

The two of them grabbed at each other’s collars, heating up the room, but a voice suddenly reached them from beyond the partition.

“You two certainly are full of energy.”

They looked over and saw Tsukuyomi standing with her arms crossed.

“Heh.”

Atsuta turned his head her way and then turned back to Kashima.

“Hey, Kashima. I think some kind of monster’s come to scold us. What’s that one called? The Development Hag?”

“I’m pretty sure she only wants to scold you. I’ve been doing work even while I was out.”

“Is that so?” asked Tsukuyomi. “Then what were you developing?”

Kashima used his laptop to display a text project report with illustrations that he had made in the hospital.

“A passionate supplement for the father who wants to film his child’s growth both day and night! I call it the Royal Vita-Video!”

“Then make it yourself and take it yourself.”

“D-don’t be ridiculous! It would only work if Natsu-san made it for me!!”

“Then how are you going to mass produce it!?” shouted everyone else in the room.

“With that, how about we start talking seriously.”

Kashima pushed his glasses up his nose and sat down. For some reason, he heard sighs from his surroundings.

He looked up at Atsuta and Tsukuyomi who were glaring at him.

“Basically, things are a lot like they were before, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

“Then this is simple. The other Gears live in the reservations and let UCAT manage their Concept Cores.”

Kashima did not hesitate to speak as he crossed his legs in front of Atsuta who frowned.

“But 2nd-Gear is different. Yamata is sealed inside Totsuka which is under our control. And we are members of UCAT, so we can fully manage Yamata and we have no problem living in Low-Gear.”

He made sure everyone else in the room could hear him.

“We won’t gain anything from complaining and we lose our control of Yamata if we leave UCAT.”

“But Low-Gear bears the crime of destroying Top-Gear.”

“Unfortunately, the development department was primarily run by 2nd-Gear even during the blank period. Just as Director Tsukuyomi’s husband was in the department then, many other 2nd-Gear residents worked with UCAT.”

He let out a breath.

“We can’t escape it. If we look into the blank period, I’m sure we’ll find just how much our families were involved with UCAT at the time. So the only thing we can do now is…”

“Oh! Slice up as much stuff as we can!?”

“It must be nice to have such a one-track mind.”

Kashima smiled bitterly, crossed his arms, shook his chair, and turned to Tsukuyomi.

“We need to prepare ourselves. There is no denying the past, so to face that past and clear the way for the future, we can only fight in our own way. …I suggest we help Team Leviathan.”

He called Atsuta’s name.

The man frowned and turned toward him from the partition entrance.

“What got you so serious all of a sudden? Are you picking a fight with me?”

“Why are you even here? …But more importantly, you keep saying you want a weapon, right? In that case, I have a bit of interesting job for you.”

“A job?”

Atsuta frowned again and Kashima reached a hand to his desk.

He had a month and a half of mail piled up there, but the very top of the pile was a single fax paper and a white origami crane.

“I don’t know what this crane is, but this fax arrived from a convenience store at the base of the mountain this morning.”

He toyed with the crane in his right hand as he grabbed the fax paper with his left and held it up in front of Atsuta. It then passed effortlessly between them as if slipping through the air.

“That fax is a request for some help, but I’m still not fully recovered. But if you’re willing to go help for me…”

Atsuta snatched the paper from the air as if trying to cut it.

At the same time, Kashima opened the wings of the origami crane with both hands.

“I’m willing to lend you the prototype to a new Cowling Sword I was working on.”

The underground corridor was white.

It was about four meters wide and two meters tall.

The walls were white, the ceiling was white, and the fluorescent lights on the ceiling were fully lit.

Four pairs of footsteps walked below that light and the lead set came from a woman in a lab coat.

“I’d love to conserve energy since we’re keeping everyone out, but Moira 1st and the others insisted.”

The lab coat’s nametag said Tsukuyomi Miyako and it reflected the light.

A blonde woman in a maid uniform walked next to Miyako and she turned toward the two walking behind them.

“Sorry, Master Sayama, Lady Shinjou. We would love to conserve energy because it costs a lot to keep the lights on inside the concept space, but it is necessary for security reasons.”

Sayama, who wore a suit, gave the maid a small nod.

“Not to worry, Moira 1st-kun. We will pay the power bill.”

“Hold on,” cut in Miyako. “Don’t go easy on us. I’ll take out an extended loan to pay.”

“View it as a sign of our friendship with 3rd,” insisted Sayama. “After all, if you were to trip in the dark, it could erase the proof of the connection between Low-Gear and 3rd.”

Moira 1st nodded.

“He is exactly right, Lady Miyako. Think of it as a way to celebrate.”

“Sure, sure.”

Miyako crossed her arms behind her head as she walked and Shinjou elbowed Sayama in the side.

“Sayama-kun, I really don’t think you should be so direct about that.”

“My apologies.”

Shinjou heard Moira 1st and Miyako laugh bitterly at that.

''Am I worrying too much?'' she wondered while bringing a hand to her own stomach.

…''People can be so different. I wonder what I’ll be like when it happens to me.

With that thought, she relaxed her shoulders and noticed writing on the wall.

“BF2? So this is the second basement?”

“You went to the first basement last time, right? That’s where the reference room is.”

Before, she had been looking for her family. This time, they were here for the Leviathan Road and to search for her mother’s past in hopes of learning about Top-Gear’s destruction.

…''It feels like we’re heading further into the dungeon after levelling up.

Suddenly, Moira 1st pulled a flag from below her apron. It said “Team Leviathan Tour Guide” on it.

“Now, to your right, you will see Izumo UCAT’s famous relaxing sand dune room.”

Shinjou looked over and saw a large sand pit with holes for sand bathing.

Sand and stones were left in the corridor like strange works of art, providing common decorations for the second basement’s corridors.

The automatons waiting in the sand pit pointed toward a hole and crouched down as if urging her to climb in, but she pretended not to see it.

“Isn’t Tottori the place known for its sand dunes?”

“Shinjou-kun, Shinjou-kun. This is much like how Tokyo conquered a portion of Urayasu, Chiba.”

“I see.”

She nodded and turned to Moira 1st who had stopped with a smile frozen on her face.

After a long silence, the automaton cleared her throat.

“Now, to your left, you will see Izumo UCAT’s miniature aquarium which is fun for the whole family.”

Shinjou looked over and saw a large fish tank with an underwater corridor.

She recognized some of the fish swimming in it and she gasped in awe at seeing them so up close.

“Look, Sayama-kun! Sea bream! There are sea bream in there! I’d heard their colors look really faded, but it’s true!”

As soon as she pointed at a large one, a net suddenly scooped it up.

“You like the looks of that one, do you?” asked a smiling Moira 1st. “We can serve it to you for lunch, so how about it?”

“Sayama-kun! Sayama-kun! I think I was just traumatized in another new way!”

“Ha ha ha. Shinjou-kun, eating them is the same as holding a memorial service. Has this been an educational experience?”

They continued walking and suddenly noticed someone standing at the other end of the corridor.

It was a well-built elderly man. He wore a white suit, his arms were both held upwards, and a smile covered his face.

However, Moira 1st and Miyako ignored him and passed him by just like all the sand and stone decorations.

Shinjou picked up on that and walked past the man along with Sayama.

After about three steps, she heard him turn around and snap his fingers.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you sure you should be doing that or whatever? Well!?”

His voice caused Miyako to pick up her pace and lean forward a little.

“Sayama, Shinjou, don’t worry about him. Don’t answer him either. He’ll possess you if you do.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Miyako-kun! Isn’t that a mean thing to say? C’mon! C’mon!”

The man walked up to their left, continued to say “c’mon”, struck a pose for some reason, and removed his coat.

“Can you say my name!?”

A straight kick from Miyako slammed into his torso and he crashed into the fish tank to the left.

After a deep sound of impact, the glass cracked and Miyako turned around faster than the fish could flee.

“Okay, that bought us some time. Let’s get going.”

“A-are you sure? I’m pretty sure that’s Izumo’s-…”

“Don’t say it. He’ll possess you. Just a bit further.”

“Just a bit further?” asked Shinjou before hearing a voice from behind them.

“Wait, wait, wait. Miyako-kun! How can you do this when my old friends’ living products aka children are here?”

Miyako pulled a remote from her pocket and hit the switch.

The floor behind them audibly opened and the man in a white suit gave a gentle scream as he vanished into the abyss.

Shinjou turned around in surprise, but she could only hear a loud crash as the man landed.

“Why was there a trapdoor there?”

“I don’t know the specifics, but it seems this place is designed a lot like Japanese UCAT’s underground area.”

“Oh, I get it now.”

Shinjou gained a baseless sense of understanding and Miyako pointed at their destination.

It was a large door leading to the third basement.

“The secret area is up ahead, but it seems that old guy from before is opening it up for you. He’s also letting us from 3rd live in some empty space. And…”

Miyako slowed her pace and gently walked forward. She looked back over her shoulder while approaching the door.

“What do you think is back here?”

“I would assume Concept Core storage facilities, starting with 8th-Gear’s,” answered Sayama. “After all, Gram and the Cores for 6th and 10th were originally stored here.”

“Then why do you think those storage facilities were created here?”

Miyako arrived at the door as she asked.

That door led downstairs. She tapped on it with the back of her hand and gave Shinjou and Sayama a sharp look.

Her next words were more than enough to make Shinjou tremble.

“Shinjou Yukio.”

When she saw Shinjou gasp and look up, Miyako nodded.

“I said this place is a lot like Japanese UCAT, remember? Put that together with what I just told you. …Now, what do you think is back here?”

Shinjou worked to bring her breathing under control.

She removed the backpack containing her binder, documents, and laptop and she held it in front of herself.

She thought about what that question meant, nodded once, and made up her mind.

“Is there a concept creation facility in there?”

Miyako’s expression did not change, but that was the only possible answer based on what she had said.

“There is, isn’t there? My mom moved to Izumo UCAT, but that was because this is where her mother and my grandmother lived and she must have tried to build a concept creation facility based on what she saw inside Babel.”

When Miyako nodded, something seemed to move in approval.

But oddly enough, Shinjou could not see anything around her that could have moved.

“?”

Still, she sensed what she could only describe as the lingering scent of movement.

And so she looked both ways and asked about it.

“What is this? Some kind of weird presence reacted to what you said, Miyako-san.”

Yet there was no one around.

However, she did hear a voice. Miyako bent over with laughter by the door.

“Ha ha. They’re delighted that you got the answer right.”

“Th-they’re delighted? What are?”

“Well.” Miyako straightened up and shrugged with a bitter smile. “There’s no way I would know all that on my own. I had a little guidance.”

“You mean…it wasn’t that weird guy in white?”

Miyako shook her head and cleared her throat.

“Listen. Someone like that isn’t going to know the answer. It was-…”

Suddenly, Sayama moved to Shinjou’s right.

She took a confused step back just as he picked something up from the floor.

It was…

“A stone!?”

At some point, several of the stones decorating the corridor had arrived at her feet.

And they had moved there on their own.

Sayama frowned, held up the one he had picked up in both hands, and carefully observed it.

“Did you come out to greet us?”

A sound on the floor answered him. A stone rolled along the white plastic to line up and sand crawled along with it and spread out.

“It’s forming letters.”

“Hi.”

The stone and sand created a quick greeting and then spelled out its name.

“Messenger” “of” “Vanambi.”

“Eh?”

“Sorry.” “Messed up.” “Don’t worry about it.”

The writing was spelled out with greater and greater speed, but the previous letters were erased and replaced.

“Messenger” “of” “Wanambi.”

The sand and stone spelled out its name in only three seconds, and it created new words between the two visitors and Miyako who smiled bitterly.

“Well done” “coming here.”

A moment later, two things happened.

First, Miyako opened the door behind her and revealed the facility inside it.

And second…

…''Baku.

From Sayama’s head, Baku raised his front legs while looking at the Messenger of Wanambi.

It almost looked like he desired the past they held.

And then Shinjou saw that past.

Sayama saw a dark, large, and yet cramped space.

…''Is this the concept creation facility we saw beyond that door?

The dimly-lit area was covered in equipment from the floor to the ceiling. The floor contained white consoles, controls, and machinery measuring around a dozen meters each that were packaged in white and were clearly meant to process or manage something. There was also piping connecting it all together and…

…''What is this that I thought were the walls?

Tanks and containers measuring several meters tall were visible through the darkness.

It was all packed in tightly, creating a jungle of machinery with gangways allowing passage.

But below the cables that hung like ivy, space was cleared down the center for a main pathway.

A single console was located at the center of that pathway and at the very center of the space.

It was about four meters long and resembled the console to a built-in kitchen.

Some more controls had been added later, along with a bookshelf and…

“A cupboard? You sure like to be comfortable, Shinjou Yukio.”

Sayama recognized the voice that filled the room. It came from the individual sitting in the chair in front of the console.

…''Doctor Chao.

She rested her elbow on the console, rested her head on her hand, and stared past the console with her eyes only half open.

“I went out of my way to bring the four brothers here so you could gather some data on the Concept Core, so make sure you put it to use.”

Sayama heard someone respond. It was a female voice located beyond the console.

“Thank you very much, Doctor Chao. If I can investigate 7th too, I’ll be only a step away.”

The voice resembled one he knew quite well.

…''Shinjou-kun?

With that question, he saw who Chao was looking at. It was a woman in a lab coat with steam rising from the cup in her hand.

“Do you want some coffee?”

Her long black hair swayed below the faint lighting.

He could see a hint of Shinjou in the slight bend to her eyes and the smile on her lips.

This was Shinjou Yukio.

Baku had previously shown her to them for just a moment in the back of the Kinugasa Library.

Shinjou had said nothing, but it was clear to Sayama that she was her mother.

…''I wonder how Shinjou-kun feels about seeing this.

[[Image:OnC_v12_0411.jpg|thumb]]

''I need to support her once this is over,'' he decided. He contemplated whether to place his arm around her shoulder or her waist, but he was interrupted by Chao’s voice after she took the coffee cup.

“Don’t you have any cigarettes?”

“This is an important research facility, you know?”

“Asagi smokes like crazy, though.”

Yukio smiled and weakly tilted her head.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure Yume-san will get after him for it.”

“Yume’s in the Kinugasa Library to gather all of the documents you or Asagi ask for. Lately, Itaru’s been working as her assistant when he has the free time.”

“That must be nice.”

Yukio smiled bitterly and rested her upper body on the console. She also tapped on her cup with both hands.

“Ahh… I wish I could live surrounded by books too. Something like Diana’s room.”

“You don’t understand the meaning of work, do you?”

Despite her words, Chao was smiling bitterly.

As she smiled, a slight sound came from down on the floor.

Sayama looked down and saw a fist-sized stone and sand at Yukio’s feet. Chao’s smile vanished.

“Is that…?”

“That is the Messenger of Wanambi, 8th-Gear’s Concept Core. …It came out when I opened the container.”

“I hear it chose for itself to leave the reservation. …Does it like you?”

“Yes, it seems they’re silicon lifeforms, or something like it. My grandfather taught them the language, so they can speak. …Oh, but you were there, so I guess you already knew that.”

“Yeah,” muttered Chao and the Messenger of Wanambi spoke to her.

“Remember,” “but” “still” “young” “Strange” “Some kind of trickery!”

“Are you picking a fight with me?”

The stone rolled behind Yukio to hide.

Yukio smiled and pulled a book from the console’s bookshelf.

It was a university physics textbook.

“Here’s your dinner. Your dinner of knowledge.”

“Understood” “Yukio” “Good” “person” “Good person”

The stone and sand carried the textbook on top of itself and vanished into the darkness.

Yukio waved goodbye.

“It’s amazing. Every single grain of what looks like sand is a lifeform with the ability to think. And by sharing their mind, they gain tremendous calculation power. They’re a lifeform that takes the shared memories of 3rd’s automatons and further focuses it on calculations.”

“While 4th’s plant creatures are a single lifeform, these ones are truly split into individuals yet share their mind to create a single lifeform, hm? It’s a lot like the relationship between a whole human body and each individual cell, isn’t it? According to Sayama, 8th-Gear had a single planet, but the planet itself was a single lifeform.”

“Yes,” replied Yukio. “They have a collective mind and the ability to duplicate and manage information is held by Wanambi, the Concept Core. To 8th-Gear, Wanambi is probably a lot like a human’s DNA.”

Yukio took a breath, looked into the darkness it had vanished into, and placed her hands on her knees.

“I wonder how Old Sayama brought them back from that empty world they floated in. …Well, I doubt it was anything good.”

She shrugged.

“Apparently, the people of other Gears used to borrow 8th-Gear’s calculation power. 3rd and 5th had their help in designing the mechanical dragons and gods of war. That’s all they could do because they can’t fight and they’re very nice. Also…they remember doing that. Do you know what that means?”

“Those stones remember every Gear they went to, right?”

“Yes.” Yukio crossed her legs and faced Chao again. “They could grow accustomed to any Gear and were useful there. Once they realized that, the clever things decided to not take an active role in the Concept War. Their Concept Core, Wanambi, is their collective mind itself and it decided it could survive even if it meant moving to a new world.”

“So they’re a nomadic race, are they? …That’s a lot different from those that clung to their own world to the bitter end.”

“They had a lot of freedom in that way, so it’s still a mystery how Old Sayama managed to guide them here.”

Sayama then heard Yukio say they were helping her.

The feeling that gave him was not bad and a sudden thought came to him.

…''This is so easygoing.

He had expected the blank period to have a darker atmosphere what with the impending fight against Top-Gear.

Regardless, this was still a place meant to prepare for that fight.

''I suppose everyone is different,'' he concluded and looked forward again.

Chao brought her cup to her mouth, sipped, and took a breath before speaking.

“You know, that idiot Kaoru managed to contact the other side with a group from 10th.”

Yukio collapsed onto the console again.

“Ahh,” she began. After a pause, she continued. “Top-Gear is asking for either me or Asagi-kun to visit, aren’t they?”

“They technically only asked for your generation as a group, but it’s obvious what they want. They’re afraid of you since you entered Babel and built this facility.”

“Getting into Babel was a complete coincidence for both Asagi-kun and me. We still don’t know how why we can get in. …So I’m not sure what to say when that’s why they’re interested.”

Her words brought Sayama’s mind to the surface.

…''They don’t know why they can get in?

That was written in the report, but the inclusion of “still” suggested they had done so more than once.

She had likely done so to complete her concept creation theory and build this facility.

And she said more while still lying on the console and stroking her cup.

“It was supposedly created in Top-Gear, so if only they still had some information on it.”

“They must be desperately searching through their history. But…”

“Babel is a really old artifact. …You know the result of the tests on its exterior, don’t you?”

“You said it has no concept of time, right?”

“Yes,” confirmed Yukio while slowly sitting up. “The inside is still functioning without any corrosion. It was clearly built by humans…or at least intelligent lifeforms the same size as us. And to gain the most space inside, the walls are used as the floor via gravitational control.”

“That’s what you said. And there’s enough space for an entire city inside, right?”

“We saw what must have been a park and residential area. Most of it was made from natural materials though, so it had rotted away.”

She smiled bitterly and lightly tapped the console.

“But everything made from inorganic materials was still up and running and there was something much like this. Its design was more refined and efficient, though. …If only we could take that equipment outside, I’m sure it could create concepts right away.”

“What, do you want to take the negative concepts out of Babel? Or are you going to lug all that equipment out on your own?”

“Couldn’t I get Asagi-kun’s help?”

Yukio shook her chair, placed her hands on the console, and gave a small smile.

“This must be tough for Top-Gear. Something they made is being studied by us…and it’s sure to be the key to our confrontation.”

“It’s best not to think about it too much. In the off chance the positive concepts are annihilated by the negative concepts, your concept creation is needed to create new power.”

“I wonder if I’m trying to play god by doing this?”

“Don’t say that when you pretty much already are, idiot.”

“You’re right.” Yukio smiled. “But I’m really interested in the idea of god. …For example, who created the concepts in the first place?”

She turned toward Chao as she spoke.

“Do you know why Top-Gear is so afraid of Low-Gear?”

“Isn’t it because of Babel and you? If we can create concepts, they lose the advantage the positive concepts give them.”

“But we have the positive concepts, too. Not all of the Gears have sided with UCAT yet, but we can always negotiate with them to borrow their Concept Cores.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Yes.” Yukio looked up at the ceiling and shrugged. “Guessing at the construction of the concepts for the Gears we don’t have the Cores to is really hard. I have to look through all of the records on past battles with them. It would be a lot easier if we could just negotiate for the Cores.”

“That’s the opinion of someone working on this here. More importantly, are you going to answer your question for me?”

“Oh.”

Yukio lowered her shrugged shoulders.

Sayama’s mind recognized the motion as one Shinjou made.

…''Why Top-Gear is afraid of Low-Gear?

Yukio held out her right hand and raised three fingers.

“Your answer of Babel is part of it, but there are a total of three reasons they fear us. The first is Babel and the second is a fact they stumbled upon when searching for any records of Babel in their world.”

Her eyebrows bent a little.

“Their world lacks the Biblical mythology.”

“What?”

Sayama’s mental heart leaped when he heard Chao’s question.

…''Top-Gear lacks the Biblical mythology?

''Why is that?'' he wondered.

…''And what does it mean!?

As if to answer his questions, Yukio leaned forward a little and smiled.

“Old Sayama and the 10th people who have visited have yet to notice because they’re focused on the negotiations and not doing any sightseeing. But think about it. If Low-Gear’s various mythologies come from contact with the other Gears, the Biblical mythology would not just be the historical truth of Top-Gear; they would be what made Top-Gear itself. In other words…”

“Top-Gear should be the world of the Bible, but it’s just a normal world much like this one.”

Having said that much, Chao gasped and Yukio gave a troubled smile.

“If it was the world of Biblical mythology, they could just check their history to learn about Babel. If those myths were existing things there and not just something from the past, there would be existing objects to act as records and they would still be using similar things. …Assuming their culture or civilization was never lost, that technology would still exist there,” said Shinjou. “But Top-Gear wants Asagi-kun and me. …Yet to Top-Gear, Babel should just be a relic of the past. Why do they want to hear from people who went inside it? If Top-Gear had Babel’s knowledge as part of their living mythology, they would be able to create an even greater Babel…and they would have attacked us as soon as we entered Babel.”

“But that didn’t happen, so…”

“Yes.” Shinjou got up and held her cup in front of her waist with a smile. “I think Top-Gear lacks the Biblical mythology. For some reason, they seem to lack something we have. That is why they cannot find any ancient records for this. They have lost the clue they need to create Babel, despite having supposedly created it in the first place. And that is why they fear us. They fear that the Biblical mythology they lack will become the strength that defeats them. …After all, it is one of the things Low-Gear has that they do not.”

She moved her right hand by lowering the last of the three raised fingers.

“And there is one other thing Low-Gear has that Top-Gear does not.”

“Is it another mythology?”

“No.” Yukio shook her head and smiled with the ends of her eyebrows lowered. “I still do not know what it is. …Most likely, no one knows. But I do know that it is something that Low-Gear and only Low-Gear possesses.”

“Hm? …There’s something like that in this negative Gear?”

“There is.” Yukio’s smiled changed. Her eyes bent and the ends of her eyebrows returned to normal. “I want to know what it is and that is what I’m working on. I believe it is directly linked to the meaning behind Low-Gear’s existence.”

Sayama heard confidence filling her voice.

“I believe it is a value given by god that allows this world to exist despite being negative.”

…''Value? Low-Gear has something like that?

As Sayama asked that, his mind’s vision grew dark.

He was returning to the present. He was waking from this brief and important dream.

And as he fell into that dozing darkness, he thought.

…''Top-Gear lacks the Biblical mythology.

But Yukio had said Low-Gear possessed something the other Gears did not.

He had another thought as well. Yukio had realized so very much, so…

…''Why did she go to Top-Gear?

He suddenly sensed something in that thought.

Shinjou Yukio had to have had a reason for going to Top-Gear.

He felt that her actions and deeds were a common thread connecting everything they had discovered about the past.

“Then were we right in thinking that pursuing Shinjou Yukio is the key to reaching Top-Gear’s destruction?”

Would they be able to find a truth that allowed them to oppose Top-Gear?

“Let us follow her path and her deeds.”

With those words, Sayama’s mind awoke.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 10

2015-02-10T22:29:59Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 10: A Comfortable Place */

==Chapter 10: A Comfortable Place==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0295.png|thumb]]
''I may be feeling down, but you’re full of energy

''Even if it’s really annoying

A small six square meter room faced the east.

The fluorescent light on the ceiling had a Japanese-style cover and two people moved below it.

One was a woman in glasses and a blue kimono. The other was a girl in a gray kimono.

The two of them were laying out a futon in the room.

However, the woman in blue was having trouble getting the kimono in place and the girl in gray could not use her right leg well enough to fix it.

“Um, Ryouko? The sheet is out of place on your end.”

“Oh, sorry, Shi-chan. But don’t you think that’s the sheet’s fault?”

“No, I don’t see how it could be-… Anyway, how about I do it all?”

“You can’t. It would hurt the reputation of the Tamiya family.”

The girl in gray, Shino, looked at Ryouko.

Ryouko frowned as she stared at the sheet and groaned as she fixed its position.

“And we have to treat you right when Kouji of all people took you in.”

“Eh?”

Ryouko brought a hand to her chin and looked at the sheet’s position.

“He doesn’t have a tendency to take people in like I do, so someone like you is rare.”

“R-really?”

“I wonder why he took you in.”

“Well, um, I was lying injured on the road.”

“That’s too boring.”

She gave Shino a serious look and raised her right index finger.

“You have to at least say it’s because he has a thing for little girls! Otherwise it isn’t exciting enough.”

“I-I’m not that little!!”

“You’re right. We did take a bath together when you first got here.”

“Wah.”

That unexpected response made Shino lean back in surprise.

She had needed some assistance because of her broken leg, but Ryouko had handled most of it. She could not let the leg get too warm, so she had started with only using the shower. However, Ryouko had often spoken to her from the bath. She had initially ignored the woman, but…

“You were so quiet, but you finally said something when I tickled you.”

“B-but…”

“It’s easier to talk than to stay silent, isn’t it?”

Ryouko smiled.

“And you know what?” she continued. “Talking about what you decided not to say is a lot of fun. In an immoral way.”

She spoke with a smile, but her tone was even sharper than with her previous serious expression.

Shino was a little surprised, but Ryouko’s smile remained.

“Is everyone treating you well?”

“Eh? …Oh, yes. They’re giving me plenty of food.”

“Tch. They’re all trying to get on your good side.”

“Eh? D-d-did you say something!?”

“Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it. But Shi-chan?”

Ryouko tilted her head while still smiling.

“Do you like it here?”

Shino was unsure what to say.

They had taken her in, they let her stay without asking anything, they made food for her, and lately she had helped with that too.

Kouji was indirectly inviting her to venture outside for rehabilitation, but she had not yet worked up the resolve to face the world, UCAT would be looking for her, and…

…''The others from the Army might find me.

That kept her from wanting to head outside.

All those things kept her here, but on the emotional side…

“It isn’t a bad place…”

''What do I think?'' she wondered.

She had met Kouji, Ryouko, and other unique people here.

…''So what am I supposed to think about the people of this world?

Before, she had thought about the school near this house and the lives of the people living in this area.

What was she supposed to think now?

…''I’m supposed to be their enemy.

But she could not even say that and she could not join the others because she did not want Mikoku to push her away.

“…”

She had come to her own understanding of what Shinjou had said about her “graduating” from the Army.

…''My feelings are still with the Army, but I now belong here instead of with them.

However, did that mean she was no longer part of the Army?

“————”

That thought made her gasp and she felt a dull sweat on her back.

“Shi-chan?”

She was brought back to her senses by Ryouko’s voice and the eyes leaning over like a cat to peer at her.

Her eyes focused and she saw Ryouko’s face close enough to feel her breath.

“Sorry, Shi-chan.”

“No, um, you don’t have to…”

“But I do. I shouldn’t have said something that got you so lost in thought. I forgot you’re the serious type.”

Ryouko brushed back her hair, laughed quietly, and narrowed her eyes.

“But you sure are cute. When you’re worried about things, it shows on your face.”

“P-please don’t tease me. I’m trying to take this seriously.”

“Wow, you’re actually mad. I’m so happy.”

Ryouko clapped her hands in joy, but Shino sighed and lowered her shoulders.

“I already knew I couldn’t stand up to you…”

However, she then said “um” to begin a new question. She asked about the greatest reason for her mixture of relief and doubt concerning her current situation.

“Why are the people here so kind to me?”

“Why do you think?”

“I was asking because I don’t know.”

“I see.” Ryouko glanced up at the ceiling. “It’s because they’re only interested in girls below the age of 15.”

“Eek.”

“Just kidding, just kidding.”

“O-of course.”

“Yeah, that’s only a few of them. …Just kidding, just kidding. But I don’t think they mean any harm, so go easy on them.”

Shino wondered how she was supposed to “go easy” on them and she saw Ryouko smile bitterly.

“Well, I think it isn’t really kindness if there’s a reason for it. …Did you think we were showing you that ‘other kind’ of kindness? Did you think we were getting something out of it?”

Only then did Shino realize what her question had meant.

She sensed something nasty behind the thought that created the question.

“Sorry…”

“You’re so cute, Shi-chan. That was a leading question.”

“Eh?”

“You only asked if there ''was'' a reason. But when I asked what you thought, you had to start thinking ''of'' a reason, right?”

“Oh.”

Shino was at a loss for words and Ryouko lowered the ends of her eyebrows.

“Sorry about that, Shi-chan. I should be the one apologizing. But make sure you only fall for that kind of thing when it’s me. Otherwise you’ll get abducted by some bad men.”

“…”

A moment later, Shino felt a weight on her head. It was Ryouko’s hand as she rubbed her head.

“And Shi-chan? Because of what happened to our family in the past, we make a point of helping people.”

“In the past?”

“Yes,” replied Ryouko. “It was the kindness of a complete stranger that allowed our family to survive.”

“What happened to that stranger?”

“They died before we could thank them. Since my parents didn’t know who to thank, they decided to be kind to everyone just in case it would reach that person somehow. That gave us a habit of being kind and…”

A quiet laugh reached Shino’s ears.

“More recently in the past, I learned that the stranger had a granddaughter, but that granddaughter didn’t know anything about what had happened.”

Shino thought about what that meant.

…''Ryouko knew something that person didn’t.

Shino felt she shared that trait.

And that made her wonder what Ryouko had done about that important fact.

Ryouko gave the answer before she could even ask.

“I never told her. If I had…it felt like it would have placed her above me.”

“Th-then do you ever wish you had told her?”

The fact that she held such an important secret led Shino to ask, but…

“I don’t know. Because no matter what I think now, there’s no way I could have said it at the time.”

Ryouko answered with a bitter smile, leaving Shino slightly dumbfounded. Shino had started leaning forward, so she straightened up.

“Do you not…regret it?”

“Hm? Of course I do. I didn’t say it at the time, she ended up leaving for somewhere far away, and I was actually relieved by that fact. I regret every part of that and I seriously worried about it for a long time, but…”

Ryouko rubbed Shino’s head again.

“Our young master brought back someone who had inherited that person’s surname. The Tamiya family was finally able to give its thanks and repay them. After sixty years, we finally did it.”

“Wait…”

Shino belatedly realized who Ryouko was referring to.

“You mean Shinjou, don’t you?”

“Yes. And I would be happy if you could get along with our young master and Setsu-chan.”

Ryouko finally let go of Shino’s head.

She straightened up on the futon, smiled, and opened her mouth again.

“Are you listening?” she began. “If you’re worrying about whether you should be here or not, remember that we don’t mind at all. If there’s a problem, it’s on your end. Kouji, the others, and I don’t care what kind of person you are. You may be a bad person, you may have run away from home, there may be a search for you underway right this moment, and it may be a crime to keep you here, but… None of that matters as long as you do one thing in addition to getting along with our young master and Setsu-chan.”

“One thing?”

“Yes.” Ryouko nodded. “Don’t force yourself to do anything. Forcing yourself to do something is painful.”

She took a breath.

“And what you’re worrying about is your problem, so don’t hold it inside. You can’t make it someone else’s problem, so you should just do whatever it is you want to do. And…”

Ryouko said one last thing to Shino.

“I think you should be fine going with whatever answer that gives you.”

A ten square meter tatami mat room was prepared for a meal.

The round fluorescent light had a Japanese-style shade and a round table sat below it.

A girl in track shorts and a T-shirt was wiping off the table.

The chest of the T-shirt said Heo in magic marker.

“Harakawa, I’ve finished cleaning the table. I’ll go clean up the closet now, so you go take your bath.”

“You take your bath first, Heo Thunderson. I’m busy fixing our late dinner.”

She heard Harakawa’s voice and the sound of a knife on a cutting board coming from the kitchen.

He could not see her, but she still shook her head at his suggestion.

“A package should be coming for me soon.”

“You called UCAT after we left the school, didn’t you? What’s in the package?”

“A laptop.”

“I see. Then we’ll at least have to check it for bugs and hidden cameras.”

“You’re following a pretty strict set of rules, aren’t you?”

Heo’s shoulders drooped as she slid open the closet door.

“And Heo,” continued Harakawa. “Don’t tell me…”

“I’m only borrowing it. I didn’t buy it or have someone give it to me.”

As a freeloader, she made that clear up front.

“There’s something I want to look into. …Back before November, Hajji of the Army explained how the world was made, remember?”

“What about it?”

“That’s been bothering me. I don’t really understand it all, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s really true or not.”

“We do know that Top-Gear existed, so it must be true.”

“Yes,” agreed Heo while asking herself where this doubt came from if she thought it was true. “I’m not trying to say that explanation of the world’s creation isn’t true. But…it scares me to think it all happened the way Hajji said it did.”

“Are you looking into it because you’re scared? Are you borrowing a computer, running simulation after simulation, and wasting your time until you give up, Heo Thunderson?”

Harakawa’s words briefly caused Heo’s heart to shrink back.

She thought that was a more realistic way of looking at it than her own and she wondered if he would ever understand her worry.

“I don’t want to give up. I want to be prepared.”

To make sure he did not reject her opinion, she continued before he could say anything.

“I want facts to support the truth. I want to solidify our footing. After all, Top-Gear isn’t our only opponent anymore. We have to speak to Low-Gear’s crimes when facing the other Gears as well.”

“That’s not quite accurate, Heo. They aren’t Low-Gear’s crimes. They’re our parents’ crimes and they’re crimes that never would have been found out if no one had said anything.”

“Yes,” agreed Heo, but she said nothing more.

She did not want Harakawa to reject her doubts or thoughts any further.

She had a feeling he would not accept a mere vague uneasiness.

…''I really should talk it out with him, though.

She had nothing to support her doubts. She simply felt that something about it did not sit well with her. It could be nothing more than a desire to oppose Hajji for rejecting their world without giving them a chance to speak.

But she wanted to investigate it and find an answer she would accept. And she did not want anyone to keep her from doing that.

With that in mind, she crawled into the closet. The bottom shelf acted as her bed and bedroom and the walls and floor were fully equipped with insulating mats now that winter had arrived.

She would sometimes hit her head on the top, so Harakawa had added a polyurethane cover.

She turned on the light to reveal a bookshelf filled with textbooks and other books and a shelf containing her clothes and other small belongings.

The drawing board she had originally used as a study desk had been added to the wall after Harakawa told her to maintain a proper posture while studying. She now used the living room table as a study desk, just like Harakawa did.

She pulled a board from between the books on the bookshelf.

It was a mirror of about A4 size and a photograph was held in the skinny wooden frame. It was from when she had won 1st place at the athletic festival race and accidentally ran over to Harakawa in the stands instead of lining up by the numbered flags.

She was satisfied that her current self in the mirror resembled the smiling self in the photo.

“…”

She returned the mirror to the bookshelf.

Her surroundings were dimly lit and the kitchen’s sounds reached her.

The chopping had changed to the washing of a pot.

Harakawa always used cold water to wash the dishes and he never let Heo help.

She had yet to decide how to interpret that.

…''Should I help?

But a sudden sound cut off her thoughts.

It was a cellphone.

Hers was sitting in the charger at the back of the closet, but Harakawa’s was in his pocket.

Before she could climb further into the closet, the water stopped and there was a short pause for Harakawa to dry his hands.

“This is Harakawa. Heo’s here too.”

She heard him speak and then silently listen to something.

“…?”

Sudden confusion filled her as she crawled out onto the tatami mats.

…''Huh?

She felt distinct unease in his silence.

There was a reason for that.

This silence came from complete motionlessness.

She knew Harakawa’s habits when he listened to people, but she did not hear him cautiously crossing his arms or leaning up against anything to urge the speaker on.

What was UCAT telling him that warranted such silence?

…''Did someone else fight one of the other Gears like Kazami and Izumo did?

But why would that make him so silent? He had received word of Izumo and Kazami’s battles before heading out to the school, but he had still conversed with the caller then.

So where did this motionless silence come from?

“Um…”

Unable to endure the silence, Heo started to speak.

But at that exact moment…

“Understood. You take care of things there.”

She heard Harakawa’s voice from the kitchen and the sound of him putting plates in the sink to soak.

“Heo.”

Hearing her name came as such a surprise that she found herself unable to respond.

“Can you hear me, Heo Thunderson?”

“Y-yes. What is it?”

“I have work to do. I’ll be going to Yokota. Make and eat dinner on your own.”

“Eh?”

''What is going on?'' she wondered.

She had heard her cellphone ring too.

That call had been from UCAT, not from Harakawa’s part-time job at the US base.

As if to answer her doubts, he left the kitchen. He balled up his khaki apron, tossed it toward the washing machine, and removed his leather jacket from the hanger by the entrance.

“Heo, let me tell you one thing. Until Sayama returns…no, until Sayama returns and settles things with Top-Gear, don’t get involved with the Leviathan Road.”

She stiffened at that sudden command and he continued as he put on his jacket.

“You should stay away from the Leviathan Road altogether, Heo Thunderson.”

After Harakawa verbally pushed her away, Heo breathed in yet did not lose her voice.

“I don’t want to do that! Wh-what came over you all of a sudden!?”

He did not answer her reactionary shout. Instead, he picked up the keys sitting on the shoe-holder at the entrance.

The jingling of the keys sounded awfully cold among the living sounds of him dressing to go out.

So Heo got up from the floor.

“Harakawa! Please say something!”

“I’m saying it’s dangerous, Heo Thunderson.”

She thought she heard him sigh.

“Continuing with the Leviathan Road will create hatred directed at us. …Until now, all the hate was caused by what our grandparents or parents did, but from here on, it will be us they hate. Are you sure you want that?” he asked. “Is the power you were given meant to spread hate? Think carefully, Heo Thunderson.”

“Think carefully? But about what?”

“Luckily, there are no survivors of 5th-Gear. You are the representative of 5th-Gear and its Concept Core is safely stored in the Vesper Cannon below UCAT. That gives no one a reason to attack you. …And as 5th-Gear’s representative, you need to be protected, Heo.”

So…

“If you stay put, you can avoid having anyone hate you.”

As he spoke with his back turned, Heo realized two things.

“Someone was attacked, weren’t they? And had their Concept Core taken.”

The answer to her question was simple.

“You can stay in a safe place, so that is none of your concern, Heo Thunderson.”

He put on his shoes, sighed toward the floor, and gave an additional comment.

“There is nothing for you to do now. Taking any careless action would only put you in danger. …You understand, don’t you? This apartment is protected by the Americans, so don’t make their job any harder than it already is.”

“But-…!”

She tried to shout in protest, but he cut her off.

“Do you really think I don’t know you about the dreams that wake you up in the night?”

“…”

“Who is it that still has nightmares of Black Sun or the Army’s attack? Do you want to add more bad memories to the list? That isn’t a duty of yours. Would your parents have wanted that?”

“B-but without us, the others won’t have any large aerial firepower if there ''is'' a battle! Kazami can’t handle it all on her own.”

“But that would place the sins on your own back.”

He crushed her words and she could not deny what he was telling her.

But she still wanted to object, so she took a breath and a step forward.

“Why are you saying this all of a sudden? We’ve fought alongside the others until now!”

“Because I’ve realized doing that any more would be too dangerous. From here on, you would be accepting the world’s hatred.”

With his shoes on, Harakawa stood up and kept his back to her.

“This is no longer a battle against the hatred created by our grandparents or parents. This is about us changing the world ourselves. Heo, are you really prepared to do that just because someone you know is?”

She had no logical argument against his point.

It was true that the others were fighting as Team Leviathan, yet she could avoid being targeted herself.

Even her investigation of the world’s creation with that borrowed laptop was only for her own personal satisfaction.

So if possible, she should remain safely in UCAT as much as possible.

…''And try to head out only in an emergency.

But that was definitely the plan of someone in a safe place.

And if she left that safe place, she would be placing hatred onto herself.

“So, Heo. Is your power truly necessary at the moment? There is no hatred directed at you, so are you really going to go out of your way to find some? Well?”

With that last word, Harakawa turned back toward her in the entrance.

She wanted to say something and stepped forward.

“———”

But no words left her.

The boy standing before her had his eyebrows slightly raised and a sharp look in his eyes.

…''He’s serious.

He seemed to be telling her not to make any pointless arguments.

“But…”

Her words crumbled.

“Why are you trying to hold me back?”

Just before October, he had kept American UCAT from doing exactly that.

Instead of feeling satisfied at being holed up in a safe place, he had told her to go wherever she pleased.

That was why she was here in the first place.

“If I’m trapped here, I can’t go anywhere anymore.”

Even she knew that was an odd thing to say, but that was all she could say.

This was the only place she had and yet she was being imprisoned here.

She brought her trembling hands to her cheeks and felt tears spilling from her eyes.

“Why?”

She wiped the tears away as she asked.

“Why would you say that, Harakawa? You were the one who pushed me to go somewhere dangerous, so why are you holding me back now?”

“Think about that for yourself, Heo Thunderson.”

He stood up and looked at her without holding out his hand.

She felt like he was testing her, but in that case, what was he testing her for?

“Do you not want me here?” she asked.

His eyebrows moved a little at that.

“If that is what you think, then you can leave, Heo Thunderson. You might think you have nowhere to go, but you have plenty. You could go to Japanese UCAT or American UCAT. But…”

She listened to him.

“At the very least, this is not the kind of place you’re looking for.”

“Th-then where am I supposed to go!?”

“Pay attention, Heo. What do you think I’m doing right now?”

She looked to him, sniffed her runny nose, and saw him in his leather jacket.

She then remembered what his mother Yui had once said.

…''If he really did mind, he would leave on his own.

What that meant reached her all the more because he had not told her himself.

And so her words came from deep in her heart.

“No…”

Not even she had expected herself to sound so dazed, but she still tried to step forward into the entranceway.

“N-no! If anyone…if anyone should leave, it’s me!”

If he left, she could no longer stay here.

And that would ultimately mean she would be trapped.

But he gave a single answer with his back turned.

“I’ll be back late. This job will probably take a while.”

Those words were accompanied by the chill of the winter night.

Harakawa opened the door and stepped out into the rectangle of night beyond it.

She tried to follow, but the outside air turned her breath white and her T-shirt and bike shorts were not enough to protect her.

Her trembling legs stumbled on the room’s divider frame.

“…!”

She tripped onto the entranceway floor just as the door closed.

“Ah.”

She bent her body and pushed herself up with both hands.

“Harakawa!”

The closed steel door bounced her words back at her.

She had been abandoned and left behind.

She had been left alone.

That meant…

…''He thinks I’m someone he can just leave behind. He doesn’t care if I’m left alone.

She wanted to think that was not true, but the sound of a motorcycle starting up said otherwise.

So she stood up. She grimaced at having fallen on her knees, but it was not an issue of any actual pain. There was a different, invisible pain coming from somewhere else.

A heavy, sinking, and inescapable feeling filled the bottom of her chest.

“Harakawa!”

She shouted for him not to leave her behind and stepped barefoot into the entranceway.

She turned the steel doorknob and prepared to push her body against the door to open it.

“Ah…”

But she heard the motorcycle driving off into the distance.

He was leaving. The sound of the engine shook the door and permeated her body, but it quickly faded away.

“Ah.”

And it was gone.

It had completely vanished.

Even when she strained her ears and held her breath, she could not hear a thing.

''He’s gone,'' she thought.

However, she had no idea where to place that fact in her mind. She simply went limp and leaned against the door.

“No…”

The green door would not open. She removed her hands from the knob and covered her face.

She did nothing but raise her voice and cry.

She had been abandoned, she had been left behind, he was not coming back, this was all she had been to him, and she no longer knew what her life here had meant. All of that mixed together and weighed on her heart.

“Ahh…”

She doubled over, slid down the door, and found her elbow had reached the cement. She had fallen onto her side in the entranceway.

She curled up, forcibly kicked away the shoes in the way of her body and legs, and cried some more.

“Why?”

She sobbed and let her covered face sink into the center of her curled-up body.

She then let out a trembling voice.

“Harakawa.”

There was no response and she eventually stopped calling his name.

However, she did hear a sudden sound in the quiet entranceway.

“Eh?”

It answered her doubt by sounding again. This time, she realized it was a low and quiet rumbling.

It was her stomach growling.

“Uuh…”

Still crying and with her face red, Heo stopped moving.

However, her stomach did not care.

It quietly growled again as if asking for something.

So she got up and brought a hand to her stomach.

“H-honestly. Why do you have to do this now? Why when I’m feeling so down?”

She willed it to stop and gathered strength in her abs.

But it did not hesitate to growl again, so she sadly collapsed back onto the floor.

“Honestly… Does my body not know how to take anything seriously?”

Feeling ashamed of herself, she stretched out on the floor.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 8

2015-02-09T20:45:01Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 8: The World’s Entrance */

==Chapter 8: The World’s Entrance==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0225.png|thumb]]
''Where do we go from here?

''Where did we come from to get here?

Even after clearing out the books, the room was still small.

The wood floor did not even cover ten square meters. It had the door-less entrance to the front and the bookcases in the back.

The scarlet light on the ceiling filled the room which smelled of damp dust.

“There sure were a lot of books in here.”

Those words came from one of the eight people inside the room.

It was Shinjou.

She and the others were not looking to the central work desk or the snacks and drinks sitting on it.

They were focused on the bookcases and the books filling them.

There were four of them beyond the piles of old books that remained on the floor.

The bookcases reached the ceiling. The two on the far left and right were placed farther forward while the two placed between them were kept in the far back.

“That’s clearly a double-layer bookcase.”

Kazami rolled up her track suit’s sleeves and Shinjou felt the girl had spoken for everyone there.

There were no rails on the floor for the bookcases to move along, but according to Sayama…

“The two in the front are likely fixed in place, but if the back two have rails to slide to the side – that is, between the front bookcases and the wall – then those back bookcases are effectively doors. In other words, there is a hidden room or a concept space behind them.”

He gave a troubled smile.

“Shinjou-kun and I are about to leave for 8th’s Leviathan Road and to search for her mother’s past in relation to Top-Gear’s destruction, but I never expected to begin a treasure hunt for this ‘Study’ before we left.”

Shinjou smiled a bit and nodded at his words.

“Well, we already told them about Noah and your mother, so let’s do what we can before we have to leave for the train.”

When she had arrived with Sayama earlier, most of the books on the preparation room’s floor had already been removed.

They had all ignored the snacks laid out on the work desk, discussed how to move the bookcases, and discussed the information Shinjou and Sayama brought from the Tamiya house.

The front and back bookcases were both filled with books, but the top left of the left one in the back had an open space.

An old globe had been placed there.

They had learned three other things in their investigation.

There was no switch hidden in the back of the bookcases.

When they tapped on the back panel, it made a light sound that indicated there was empty space beyond it.

And…

“We can’t break through it even though it’s made of wood.”

It had been Izumo who had discovered the bookcases and the surrounding wall were protected by a concept.

After returning from the hospital and hearing Kazami had fought a battle, he had tried to reach inside her track suit to make sure she was not injured.

He had subsequently crashed into the bookcase, but he had bounced off without it breaking or even creaking.

However, that had not improved the situation.

Sayama frowned and crossed his arms next to Shinjou, Harakawa and Heo stood by the wall, Hiba and Mikage leaned against the left and right bookcases, and Kazami and Izumo gathered up the remaining books on the floor.

Shinjou groaned in thought as she observed the contents of the bookcases.

“This is a strange mixture of books. I wonder why.”

“Have you figured something out, Shinjou-kun?”

“No, um…”

She hesitated and looked around.

The others turned toward her and her shoulders shrank down.

“Well, I’m probably way off base here, but…”

She tried asking the question that had occurred to her when she noticed the strange mixture of books.

“These books seem almost random, so why are all of the shelves nearly full?”

“Didn’t they just put them on the shelves randomly until they ran out of space and had to use the floor?”

Izumo did have a point, but…

“Look.”

She pointed at one shelf and the colors formed by the arrangement of books.

“It looks random, but the series are all lined up together.”

It was obvious if one paid attention. Clumps of a single color formed groups on the shelves.

As for the seemingly random books that filled the gaps between them…

“They all have the same author or publisher. …It’s all grouped together.”

“Then,” replied Sayama. “Are you saying the books here have some kind of meaning and are only meant to appear random?”

“I can agree with that,” cut in Harakawa. He crossed his legs while still standing by the wall. “Something caught my attention too. Can I pull out the books?”

“Something caught your attention? What is it, Harakawa-kun?”

He shook his head at her question.

“You’ll understand once I pull out the books. Wait until then. …Assuming I’m not imagining things.”

He moved from the wall in order to pull out the books, so Hiba and Mikage left the bookcases they stood in front of.

“Um, Harakawa-san, do you want some help?”

“Hiba Ryuuji, have you ever worked as a mover or shipper? For those jobs, you need to remove books from a bookcase and put them back in the same order at the destination.”

Without even looking at Hiba, Harakawa walked to the back bookcases and rolled up his sleeves.

“There might be a trick to the order of the books, so someone who can put them back how they were needs to do the work. And that’s me.”

''He always says things like that,'' thought Shinjou as he spoke with his back turned.

…''But…

Before she could continue her thought, Heo stepped up next to him.

Heo helped him line up the removed books behind him.

“In other words, Harakawa, you’re an expert cleaner?”

“Don’t put it like that, Heo Thunderson. And stop plotting a change to our division of work at home. Got that?”

She groaned and fell silent, but they continued working without speaking.

They lined up the even piles of books behind them which formed a wall between them and the others.

As she watched them, Kazami gave Izumo a puzzled look.

“Hey, Kaku. Is it just me or are they making a wall of flirting with those books?”

“Yeah, their love comedy aura has gone beyond all acceptable levels. It’s enough to actually feel cold.”

“Ha ha ha. But, Izumo-san, Kazami-san, you two practically wrote the book on that kind of thing. Ha ha. Maybe that book is on one of these shelv- I’m sorry. I’ll go buy you a drink, so please stop giving me that look of scorn.”

“That wasn’t scorn. That was just a terrible joke.”

“Th-that’s even worse!”

Shinjou thought calmly to herself while watching that exchange.

…''We really have a unique cycle set up here, don’t we?

She decided to stay out of it so she could stay normal, but she suddenly realized someone else was staying out of it too: Sayama.

He was the strangest of them all, so why was he not taking part? She thought about that for a bit.

“Ah. D-don’t tell me it’s weird ''not'' to take part in this strange conversation!”

“How did you reach that bizarre conclusion, Shinjou-kun?”

Sayama tilted his head and Baku emulated him.

He quietly looked her way and thought about something for approximately three seconds.

Immediately afterwards, he gave an understanding nod, removed his coat, and slapped his opened chest with one hand.

“Now, come at me!”

“With what?”

“With what? With what, you say? Heh heh heh. I suppose it would be hard for you to say it out loud!”

“Yes, the decidedly negative feeling I want to throw at you right now definitely is incredibly difficult to describe.”

Meanwhile, she heard some whispering voices.

“Look, Harakawa. Sayama and Shinjou have started their weird kind of flirting again.”

“Don’t let them influence you, Heo Thunderson. More importantly, do something about this, you stupid president.”

“I’d love to, but my divine protection doesn’t help against whatever has infected them. …How about you, Chisato?”

“No, I don’t like criticizing other people’s tastes.”

“You say that, Kazami-san, but why are you giving me that look saying I should go do it?”

Shinjou’s danger meter quickly filled, so she frantically spoke up.

“W-wait a second! Why is the cycle surrounding me now!?”

“Ha ha ha. Shinjou-kun, the others are merely jealous. They can sense the happiness exuding from us.”

She tightened a nearby necktie and the windpipe releasing that “happiness” closed up and fell silent.

She then sighed in that silence.

“You know, Sayama-kun?”

“Chisato, I think we’re being tricked here.”

“You’re right, Kaku. They’re trying to alter their world for us.”

“E-enough of that! Let’s focus on this!!”

Shinjou pointed at Sayama.

“He’s been sitting there silently this whole time! Isn’t that weird!? You need to ask him why!”

“How’s he going to answer?” asked Kazami.

Shinjou looked to the boy she was pointing at.

For some reason, he was collapsed limply on the work bench with his red tie wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Stop turning this into a mock crime scene, Sayama-kun! You can’t just go to sleep and abandon your duty, so let’s take this seriously!!”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. That’s one hell of an interpretation there, Shinjou.”

However, Sayama loosened his tie while still pretending to lie limply on the desk.

“I am suffocating, Shinjou-kun. Heh heh. I believe I need mouth-to-mouth.”

She dropped her fist straight down on his stomach.

His body shot up from the desk, landed on his feet, and caught Baku out of the air.

“Sh-Shinjou-kun, I said mouth-to-mouth, not fist-to-gut.”

“Yes, yes.”

Shinjou nodded with the biggest smile she could manage and slowly opened her mouth.

“Will those be your last words?”

“Now, how about we take this seriously?”

Sayama nodded and stepped up alongside her.

He calmly faced forward as the others glared at him.

He crossed his arms, placed a hand on his chin, and looked to one person in particular.

“Harakawa, have you reached your answer yet?”

“Once I remove this shelf, my suspicion will be effectively confirmed.”

The boy turned back and Heo looked back too. She tilted her head toward Sayama from beyond the piles of books with almost equal heights.

“I don’t really get it either. What is this?”

“Well, Heo-kun, it is nothing much. Also…that is Harakawa’s answer to give.”

They all turned toward Harakawa and Shinjou noticed that he had stopped removing the books.

''Why?'' she wondered.

“Ah,” said Heo as she faced the wall of piled-up books.

She raised her right hand with a look of surprise.

She spread her fingers and lowered them on top of one stack.

Each stack in the row was made from one of the shelves and there were six shelves’ worth.

However…

“They’re almost even.”

Each stack came from a single shelf, so Shinjou felt it made sense for their heights to generally be the same.

However, that was not what Heo meant when she said “almost”.

Of the six stacks in front of her, four were one book shorter than the other two.

However, that was not the problem.

[[Image:OnC_v12_0235.jpg|thumb]]

The problem was the height of that difference.

“It’s too exact,” concluded Harakawa.

Everyone watched as Heo nodded.

The four shorter stacks were about the same height and the two taller ones were also about the same height.

The books formed two separate groups of equal height.

…''Why is that?

After helping Harakawa, Heo tilted her head as if responding to Shinjou’s silent question.

“What does this mean?”

She brushed her hands along the lower stacks to compare their heights, but the top books formed a perfectly horizontal surface.

“This equal height is intentional, isn’t it? But why would you do that?”

She almost seemed to be talking to herself, but it gave Shinjou a sudden thought.

However, she was doubtful of the answer in her heart.

…''Huh? Can I really say this?”

She was not sure, so she frowned, lightly crossed her arms, and felt a little concerned that her actions were identical to the dangerous individual next to her.

But in the end, she opened her mouth and spoke.

“You see this kind of thing in video games.”

Heo listened to Shinjou from beyond the stacks of books.

“Video games?” she asked.

She did not know much about video games. She had moved so often when living in the United States and she had been too busy with various daily tasks to have much free time. Her great-grandfather had always asked if there was anything she wanted, but she could borrow books from the library and visiting a new library was always something to look forward to each time they moved.

After moving to Japan, Harakawa did not ask if she wanted anything, she could still visit the library, and she had yet to complete the bookshelves in the closet.

Her friends seemed to play some games, but with her club activities, everyday tasks, books, Harakawa, and the other strange people around her, there was unfortunately no space left for games.

However, she did often hear her friends at school talking excitedly about the female-oriented games they played.

…''They’re always talking about which guy they “won”.

''The Japanese seem to think of people as something to be conquered. Is that the influence of the previous world war?

''If I’m going to date Harakawa properly, do I have to use Thunder Fellow to fire on him while he drives his motorcycle down the road at night?

''But based on the games I’ve seen Ooshiro play, a Japanese girl is supposed to be a younger step sister, have pink hair, and have absurd speech quirks. But I don’t think I can do that and I still don’t know what Harakawa wants, so what’s going to happen between us?

“H-Heo? You look like you’re thinking a little too hard, but the kind of game I was talking about is-…”

“Oh, y-yes!!”

She came back to her senses.

“If it’s about a blonde uninvited guest, then everything’s fine already!”

“That is not fine at all, Heo Thunderson.”

“Eh? Th-then I’m not the right genre for you!?”

“Calm down, Heo. Write the character for rice on your palm and then lick it.”

“Oh, I know that one. It’s a Japanese custom that’s supposed to calm you down, right?”

“No. If you do that, you’ll realize how stupid you are.”

Feeling dejected, she hung her head.

Harakawa sighed and stood up.

“Okay, what did you mean, Shinjou?”

“Heh heh heh. Harakawa, if you want to hear Shinjou-kun’s wonderful idea, you will have to get through me firs- gh.”

“Sorry, Harakawa-kun. There was a bit of background noise there. Now, what I’m saying is…there’s that game, right?”

“There? Where is there?”

…''He always has to say things like that, doesn’t he?

Heo gave a silent nod of understanding at Harakawa’s comment.

After sighing in her heart, she looked up and tilted her head toward Shinjou.

“What kind of game? I don’t really know the details.”

“Y’know, the one where you place Ls on top of Ts and stick a long red one into the hole.”

“I-is this some new 18+ world of spread legs!?”

Harakawa hit her on the back of the head.

“Ow. Wh-what was that for!?”

“Think of it as removing the poison from your brain. And for some general education, I’m going to get a game system from someone I know at the base.”

“Thank you very much.”

Heo bowed and found a hint in Shinjou’s explanation.

She realized what the girl had been trying to say.

“This bookcase had two kinds of shelves: incomplete ones with a single book missing and complete ones?”

She seemed to be speaking to herself, but she then asked the others something.

“But…what books are missing?”

Everyone but Sayama – who was still collapsed on the work desk – tilted their heads.

They did not know.

Of course they did not. A few books were missing, but the Kinugasa Library was overflowing with books.

They needed to fill the empty space, but they had no way of knowing which books would work.

However…

“Don’t worry. Someone give us an idea. It can be anything.”

Kazami was the first to speak.

Heo looked up and saw the girl’s eyebrows lifted with a powerful smile.

“If it’s wrong, someone else can think up something. Since there’s no clear answer, whoever says it first is the winner.”

Someone agreed with Kazami with an “Nn.”

It was Mikage and she raised her hand.

“Then that.”

She pointed above Heo.

“Eh?”

Heo turned around and saw the top shelf of the left bookcase.

A globe sat on the far left end of that shelf.

In case there was some trick to the globe, they had not touched that shelf.

But as Heo looked up at the untouched shelf, she heard Mikage speak.

“That shelf is different. It has the globe and books filling the rest of it.”

Sure enough, the entire shelf past the globe’s base was crammed full of books.

…''That top shelf is a completed one.

''In that case,'' she thought.

Before she could continue, Sayama’s voice filled the room.

“There are nine shelves on each bookcase, which is eighteen between the two. And other than the completed shelf on the top left, we have found that two of six shelves are entirely filled. That means,” he continued. “A crude ratio calculation gives us an incomplete to complete shelf ratio of four to two. There are eighteen shelves in all, so twelve of them have empty spaces and six do not. However, one shelf is already completed by the globe, so that shelf can be eliminated from the calculation.”

“So either eleven have empty spaces or five don’t?”

“Correct.” Sayama nodded. “Does the number eleven ring any bells? For example, a set of eleven books in this very library?”

Heo saw Sayama kneeling on top of the desk.

He formed a small smile as everyone focused on him.

“The answer is simple. Bring in all eleven volumes of Professor Kinugasa’s mythology encyclopedia. Perhaps the bookcase door will open if we place them in the proper gaps on the shelves.”

“B-but Sayama-kun, where in the bookcases do we put them?”

Heo nodded in agreement with Shinjou.

There were gaps in the shelves, but would the bookcases really move just from filling them?

If there was a switch…

“I think where we put the books might be a riddle.”

“The answer to that is also simple,” replied Sayama.

He knew the answer from the current situation.

…''What here gave him the answer?

That thought somewhat filled Heo with a desire to continue on.

Just like her previous timid suggestion, she wanted to find the answer here.

…''But I need a hint.

She found one.

It was the object Mikage had pointed at earlier and it was on the completed top left shelf of the incomplete bookcase.

She could now speak the word that led to the answer.

“The globe. No, the world and the eleven mythologies found there!”

She saw the corner of Sayama’s mouth rise in a smile as he nodded.

“I see. In that case, what should we do, Heo-kun?”

“Well,” she answered.

She glanced over at Harakawa. He was already holding the top and bottom of the stacks of books between his hands and returning them to the shelf.

Realizing her words had led him to do that, she spoke.

“Based on the globe in the top left, we can view the two bookcases like a world map…and we put the eleven mythologies in the appropriate place on that map.”

She realized confidence filled her face.

“I think the entrance to Professor Kinugasa’s study is one with a view of every Gear and its mythology!”

About three minutes after Heo’s confident statement, they had placed the appropriate books on the shelves.

However, the bookcases did not move.

The eleven books were in the proper regions for their respective mythologies, but…

“Eh? Wh-why aren’t the bookcases moving? Um, uh, well…”

Before Heo grew completely flustered, Shinjou had a thought.

…''The usual cruel show is about to begin.

After putting in the books, Kazami and Hiba expressed their confusion.

“Huh!?”

Kazami held her head in her hands and her tone said this had to be some kind of mistake.

“Why isn’t it opening!? And after Heo had such a good idea!!”

“This is strange, Kazami-san! And after Heo-san worked so hard to come up with that answer!!”

“No, um, I only, uh…”

“What is going on here!? Hiba, put some more effort into this for Heo’s sake!”

“You’re right, Kazami-san. I don’t know how to put effort into this, but I’ll do it for Heo-san’s sake!”

“Um, but I, uh, must have been wro-…”

“No, we were definitely the ones who did something wrong. Right, Hiba!? Especially you!!”

“Yes! I don’t really know what I’m being accused of here, but I’ve started to think I might as well just go along with it!”

“U-um, I don’t know what’s going on, but, um, uh…”

“Let’s put all eleven in again, Hiba! Fnaaaaahhh!!”

“Nwaaahh!!”

“I-I don’t think putting the books in more forcefully is going to help. Um, uh…”

Heo was almost in tears and she turned to Harakawa who was putting some books in order to the side.

“Harakawa, they’re bullying me-… Don’t ignore me, Harakawa!”

As she watched the exchange, a previous thought returned to Shinjou.

…''This is really is a unique kind of natural cycle.

She considered saying something to help but decided against it to make sure she was not caught in the crossfire.

However, this was odd.

Kinugasa Tenkyou’s books had filled the empty spaces perfectly.

It had almost seemed to say that those eleven mythology encyclopedias had originally been in this shelf.

Also, the spaces in the shelves had corresponded to the regions for the various mythologies, so they had been able to find the proper locations using an atlas.

And when they had put the books in…

“There was a sound.”

Kazami had been the one to notice a sound much like the hands of a clock moving somewhere in the bookcases.

They had relied on her hearing while putting in the eleven books and she had heard eleven sounds as they filled the bookcases.

However, the door did not open.

“Why not?” muttered Shinjou.

Meanwhile, Izumo opened a plastic bottle of oolong tea while sitting at the work desk.

“Why even ask? We were wrong. That’s why it won’t open. Then again, I guess you could ask why it won’t open if you had it right and it still didn’t open.”

Kazami frowned at that and turned around.

“Hey, Kaku. Everyone’s trying to think.”

“I’m thinking too. But my thoughts can’t get past a certain point.”

“A certain point?”

He brought the bottle to his mouth and swallowed once.

“According to Sayama, his mom looked after these bookcases, right?”

“Well, yes. She was the librarian, so she would have organized the shelves…”

Sure enough, most of the flood of information filling the shelves as books was from the late Showa era.

…''There would have been different books during Professor Kinugasa’s era.

As the books aged, Sayama’s mother must have searched out books of the same size to take their place.

“In other words, the current form of the bookcases is based on Sayama’s mom’s rules. However, Professor Kinugasa’s books would have to be put inside based on the pure Kinugasa rules.”

“…”

“I’m not sure how to put it, but I’m trying to say that the way we see the bookcases now isn’t how Professor Kinugasa made them. I don’t know if that’ll help, but it sounded like you were mostly overlooking that.”

Izumo was exactly right.

The spines of the books and their thicknesses were all almost modern, but they had not noticed.

One reason for that was the misconception that bookcases and books were the same in any era.

…''What did the bookcase look like in Professor Kinugasa’s time?

The space filled by the books would have been the same and the books to add would still have been the eleven encyclopedias, so…

“Would anything have been different?”

It was not clear if answering that would tell them anything, but it was worth pursuing and one thing was certain.

They had been so focused on finding the “trick” that they had forgotten to look at it from a different viewpoint.

That being…

“How did Professor Kinugasa open the bookcase door?”

Even as she spoke, Shinjou realized something.

Opening that door was not a matter of solving a trick.

…''We have to reproduce what Professor Kinugasa did to open it.

“That’s right,” she muttered while bringing a hand to her cheek and beginning to walk.

She walked forward, toward the bookcases.

“How would Professor Kinugasa have opened it?”

She felt the others’ eyes on her as she arrived at the bookcases.

“First, he would probably have placed the eleven books on this work desk.”

“Not in the library?” asked Sayama.

“Carrying eleven books in from the library couldn’t have been easy. He only had one arm, remember?”

She pulled out one of the books.

“For example,” she began. “Putting in all eleven each time would be a pain, so maybe he only removed one and set it on the desk.”

She pulled out a book with her right hand.

It was the eleventh volume which covered the Bible. It was so old that the cover was too worn down to read the title.

She felt the weight of its many pages in her right hand as she walked back to the desk.

…''Let’s see…

As everyone watched her, she nervously brushed aside the snacks and set down the book.

It was bound on the left and written horizontally. She had heard it was made that way to help Professor Kinugasa use it with only his right arm.

With the left-bound book, she could easily hold the pages with her right thumb and flip through them.

She did so and flipped to the final page. Before closing it, she noted the author’s name was written using the alphabet and the publisher was Izumo Publishing.

After making sure she was looking at the back cover, she stuck her fingers between the front cover and the desk.

She lifted it up with the spine in her hand to make sure the title would be visible and then she stood up.

“And now I put it back-…”

“W-wait a second!”

She heard Hiba’s voice and considered ignoring him as was customary, but…

“Um, what is it?”

“Did you just consider ignoring me?”

“Would you prefer I did?”

“No, no.”

He frantically shook his head and then looked behind him.

“Mikage-san.”

“?”

Mikage approached with a question mark on her face.

Meanwhile, Hiba turned back to Shinjou.

“Sorry, Shinjou-san, but can I borrow that book?”

“Eh? But I don’t have any porn.”

“Ha ha ha. I already got the latest ones of that from a loyal member of our alliance, so-…”

Everyone gave him legitimately worried looks, so he fell silent for two seconds with a smile frozen on his face.

He finally cleared his throat and gave a serious look.

“I meant the book you’re holding right there!”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? …Here, Mikage-san.”

“Nn.”

“Um, are you treating me like I’m made of air?”

“No, air isn’t perverted. And I can just give it to Mikage-san, right?”

He nodded, hung his head, and fell to his knees.

“Is this persecution? No, did I do something wrong? No, no, no, no.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but what do we do now that Mikage-san has the book?”

“Eh? Oh, right. Mikage-san, just copy what Shinjou-san did.”

“Nn. Copy it exactly?”

Mikage asked that as she sat in the chair, but Hiba shook his head as he stood.

“No, do it how you would. And only use your right hand.”

Shinjou then saw why Hiba had stopped her.

Mikage mentally tilted her head.

…''What is this about?

She did not really get it, but Hiba seemed to think she would solve something by doing this.

Hiba had not said why, but she decided she should do this as naturally as possible.

This was the same as when he said she should go outside or that she would have fun if she got in the water. The reasoning behind those statements was uncertain, but she would likely gain something if she did it anyway.

And so she nodded.

“Nn.”

She did what Shinjou had done, but in her own way.

First, she read it.

She held the right side of the left-bound book in her right hand so she could flip through the pages and she placed the spine of the book on the desk.

That placed the book vertically with only the cover lying to the left.

She held the pages with her right thumb, released them by moving that thumb, and let them spill to the left.

There was a slight waver to the sound of the flipping pages and their speed was random.

After reaching the end of the pages, she closed the back cover.

“Nn.”

She nodded and grabbed the book the way she always did at home.

She stood and immediately realized that everyone was looking at her and gasping.

“…?”

She did not understand. She had not done anything special. She did the same thing whenever she grabbed a book from a table or desk.

There was something different from when Shinjou had done it, but what did that matter?

With that in mind, she asked a question.

“Was that good?”

Kazami nodded at Mikage’s question.

“Yes.”

She breathed in and spoke as if checking with herself.

“I think that must be how Professor Kinugasa would have held the books.”

She looked at Mikage’s right hand.

The girl’s slender fingers held the book, but not by the spine.

“By the opposite side,” she slowly muttered.

The others nodded and she recalled the previous moment.

There was a clear difference between Shinjou and Mikage’s methods.

All they had done was pick up a closed book.

Shinjou had used the spine where the title was written.

If placed vertically on a shelf like that, the title would be visible.

After closing the book, she had needed to let go of the book.

Only then had she grabbed the spine and picked up.

But Mikage had been different.

She had not let go of the book after closing it.

She had kept her hand on the back cover with the front cover pointed down.

…''And she pulled it toward her.

It was obvious once she did it. She had relied on the friction of her palm to slide the book along the desk.

Once it reached the edge of the desk…

…''She picked it up with that same side.

Her hand never left the book, so it could be seen as the lazy way.

But it was the kind of technique one would develop after years of eliminating unnecessary effort.

Shinjou’s method had been careful and had ensured the title would be visible on the shelf, but one could say she was being too cautious.

Mikage had not had full use of her hands until recently, so she had prioritized function over form.

That was where her technique had come from.

…''It is possible Professor Kinugasa was a careful person, but…

One fact allowed them to reject that possibility: the cover of the book Mikage held.

“The covers of Professor Kinugasa’s books are all worn down, but that’s due to more than just their age.”

“I think it’s because he always slid them across the desk or table with the cover facing down,” said Heo.

Everyone but Mikage nodded in agreement.

The cover of the book in Mikage’s hand was worn down, but the title on the spine and the back cover were not. Only the front cover was noticeably worn.

…''In that case, the correct answer is to put the books in the shelves backwards.

Kazami imagined the bookcases as they had been originally.

Most of the books would have been put in with the spine to the back and only Professor Kinugasa would have known what they were.

Had he never fixed them no matter how much people complained? Or had it just naturally ended up like that?

She did not know, but she had seen the actions of that man in Mikage’s movements and it gave her a smile with a bit of bitterness mixed in.

She looked to Mikage who held up the book and tilted her head.

“Is this good? Ryuuji-kun’s mom says it isn’t good because it damages the book.”

“That was perfect, Mikage-san.”

Kazami heard a smile in Hiba’s voice.

“After all, that book wanted you to hold it like that. Now…”

He placed his hand over hers and pushed in the final book.

“This will surely open the door to the Study!”

Something reacted to their movement.

It was Baku.

The creature raised his front paws on Sayama’s head.

A moment later, they all saw the past.

Heo saw the color white in the night.

…''Eh?

Where was she?

She did not know. All she could see were the dark night sky and a white land below it.

The white was the snow falling from the sky.

The white ground swelled up in places and those places formed…

…''A slide and swings.

She realized this was a park.

It was in an elevated place and it had a proper gate. It looked like a clearing on top of a cliff.

A church-like building existed to the north of the park and its roof was pure white.

She noticed the church had recently been built with a brand new bell tower and concert hall added on.

A large cherry tree grew near the cliff on the opposite end and the snow was beginning to accumulate on its branches.

Heo moved her vision toward the open area near the cliff.

“…”

Once she arrived on the edge, her field of vision opened up.

A nighttime city spread out below and the night sky above was obstructed by the falling snow.

How far did this snow stretch into the distance?

The city was dark and yet colored a dark blue by the falling snow. The countless lights of human life filled that city.

…''This is…

She had heard about this place. An orphanage with a large cherry tree had existed on top of a hill, but it had collapsed during the tertiary damages of the Great Kansai Earthquake.

If that building was still here…

…''This is before the Great Kansai Earthquake?

If this was Sakai and the dark expanse beyond the city was the Seto Inland Sea, then Osaka and north were to the right. That was the city she had seen burning in a previous dream of the past.

She suddenly turned in that direction, but…

…''I can’t see it.

All she could see beyond the falling snow was a great darkness.

However…

“…?”

Something seemed odd about the darkness before her eyes.

…''What is it?

She knew something was not right, but she could not put her finger on what that was. It felt like she had not realized what baseline she was using to think of this as “right”.

However, she remembered finding something similarly “not right” once before.

…''That was in a previous dream of the past.

It was when she had seen Top-Gear’s Osaka burn below the dark sky.

''No,'' she corrected herself. ''It wasn’t the city that felt odd back then.

…''It was the sky.

When looking up into that space she could fly through, something had seemed wrong.

“I saw the stars.”

The sky had been nothing but darkness while Hiba’s father had fought, but once her own father’s mechanical dragon had arrived, the darkness had cleared and the stars had come into view.

Something had seemed wrong about her vision clearing and those normal specks of light appearing. She was feeling that same thing here.

…''But…

Osaka was merely hidden by the dark sky and the snow. It was normal not to see the stars here, so she still could not figure out what exactly felt wrong.

But she was still filled with doubt and she took a step back while tilting her head.

Suddenly, someone stepped forward to her right.

“!?”

Her mind shrank back.

It was a slender woman in a lab coat. Her black hair was tied back and she stood on the edge of the cliff with her breath visible in the cold air.

She stopped in front of the railing that snow had started accumulating on and her gaze and white breaths turned toward the sky.

She looked across the sky as if checking on the entirety of the heavens.

She turned around.

The bottom of her white lab coat fluttered above the white snow and her black hair danced toward the heavens.

Heo then saw the woman’s black eyes and slender face.

…''Shinjou!?

Heo knew that Shinjou Yukio had defected to Top-Gear.

She also knew that woman had caused the destruction of Top-Gear.

If that woman was here and the orphanage was safe…

…''This is Top-Gear’s Sakai before the battle!

Why was Baku showing them this?

Baku was said to show people the past when it was necessary for them.

Did he choose what to show or did the past have him show it?

Heo did not know, but she saw Shinjou Yukio look up into the sky, spread her arms, and face the gate.

“————”

Heo heard a song.

She recognized it. Her own mother had sung this song.

She recalled its title was Silent Night.

“…!”

But that was when her mind was thrust into darkness.

…''This scene from the past…

How was it necessary?

To Shinjou and Sayama it may have been a challenge meant to show them what they needed to pursue.

And to Heo…

…''What was that feeling that something was off?

She may have been imagining it, but…

…''I felt it, so I need to act on it.

As soon as she decided that, her entire being was dragged back to reality.

Once she woke from the past, Shinjou looked to the room in front of her.

It was a small room hidden behind the bookcases.

This was the Study.

The preparation room’s scarlet light showed a tall but otherwise small room.

It was only about six square meters, it had a wooden desk in the center, and the left and right walls were bookcases.

The ceiling was high and it had openings for two air conditioning ducts. And the back wall…

“A barrier?”

Just as Heo said, the back wall was different from the rest.

The floor and the other walls were made of wood, but that back wall was white.

The white surface was about four meters wide and two meters tall. Above that, a normal wooden wall began and continued to the tall ceiling.

The room was too poorly lit to see it well, but a vertical line ran through the center of the white surface, splitting it in two.

As they all stood motionless in the preparation room, Shinjou spoke quietly.

“So this is the Study.”

“Yes,” said Sayama from her right.

He looked her way, nodded, and moved forward.

“I think the other Georgius that Professor Kinugasa hid is located through that barrier. According to the Kinugasa Document, it should be the negative Georgius.”

After saying that, he came to a sudden stop.

…''What is it?

Shinjou stepped forward and found two things.

First, there was a wrist-wide hole on either side of the barrier.

They were the perfect size to stick an arm into and she could only see darkness inside.

And second, there was something on the desk.

It was…

“A binder, a photograph, and a letter?”

The faded binder contained some documents and something was written on the cover in obvious magic marker.

Sayama read it aloud.

“Babel Interior Investigation – 1983.”

But that was not all that was written.

“Shinjou Yukio and…Sayama Asagi!?”

Sayama held his chest with his right hand just as Kazami’s voice reached them from behind.

“What!? I thought only Professor Kinugasa ever entered Babel? Why were Sayama’s father and Shinjou’s mother inside?”

“It was from the blank period, so of course there were no records of it. And based on what this says, I think only my father and Shinjou-kun’s mother were able to get inside.”

''How?'' wondered Shinjou. ''During the National Defense Department and old UCAT days, only Professor Kinugasa could get inside Babel, so how did our parents get inside and write this report?

Most likely, no one knew the answer.

She then looked to the photograph and letter on the desk.

The letter was sealed and…

…''My mom’s name is listed as the sender.

The photograph sitting next to Shinjou Yukio’s letter was large.

“A group photo in the mountains, just like with the National Defense Department and old UCAT.”

It showed a number of young men and women.

“My parents are there,” muttered Heo in a daze.

Shinjou did not need to say anything. Her mother was clearly there too.

This photo was from a time in the blank period before Shinjou Yukio had betrayed Low-Gear.

…''They probably all went together to investigate Babel.

So if only her mother and Sayama’s father had been able to get in…

“Now we really do need to search for you mother’s past, Shinjou-kun. We need to find out what she did.”

“Yes.”

''What are we going to discover?'' she asked, knowing no one could answer that.

That answer would only come later.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume12 Chapter 7

2015-02-05T19:53:53Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 7: Surprise Guest */

==Chapter 7: Surprise Guest==
[[Image:OnC_v12_0187.png|thumb]]
''You can jump in with a single step

''Up ahead is darkness or a hole

''But there is no brightness if you escape

Shinjou watched Shino in the slightly chilly air of a large room.

They had already introduced themselves and Shinjou had said she was leaving that night to complete the Leviathan Road with 8th-Gear and to pursue Shinjou Yukio’s past to learn about the destruction of Top-Gear.

On the other hand, Shino had not said much.

She had said she was from Top-Gear, she had given the surname Tamiya, and she had informed Shinjou that the Tamiya family had taken her in when she was injured on the night of the attack. Shinjou had a single thought based on that.

“Are you the…real version of a Tamiya here? Since the sex is reversed, are you Kouji?”

Shino quickly shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so. My parents might have been, but I was an only child. …I’ve heard that there were a lot of people in Top-Gear that did not have a counterpart here.”

“I see,” said Shinjou while breathing a silent sigh of relief.

…''I don’t like thinking about people as real or fake.

She gave a small nod to herself and Shino raised her head to look at her.

“Um, what happened to the Army? I got separated when we were retreating.”

“The Army… Well, Hajji was captured as its representative.”

“…”

Shino fell silent and her expression stiffened, but Shinjou did not soften her words. She simply spoke the truth.

“There has been no announcement of the Army being remade, so it’s thought to have been destroyed.”

“Then my sister and the others are…?”

“Your sister?”

Shino’s shoulders shook a bit and she brought a hand to her mouth.

“I mean Mikoku. She, Hajji, and I lived like a family.”

“I see. Well, she wasn’t captured.”

Shinjou hesitated, but decided to tell her.

“The person named Tatsumi, the mechanical dragon named Alex, and about…fifty other people weren’t captured either.”

Shino’s eyes opened wide, but after a moment, her expression softened.

She gave a look of relief but then closed her eyes.

Shinjou understood. Shino had realized those others were not going to stop resisting.

After muttering something – a name – under her breath, Shino raised her chin and opened her eyes to look at Shinjou.

“Then what is it you want to ask me? I have to give you some information in exchange for what you just gave me.”

“Yes. I would be grateful if you did.”

Shinjou nodded and thought of a few topics.

…''Does she know about my parents?

She of course wanted to know about her mother, but she also wondered what her Top-Gear father was like. And what had happened to them?

She also thought about asking what her life in Top-Gear had been like, but…

…''That’s what we’re about to go investigate.

So she asked something else.

“Is what Hajji said during the Army’s attack true?”

The response she got was not the one she expected.

“You really don’t remember your life in Osaka?”

That question gave Shinjou her answer.

“So it is true.”

“Yes.”

Shino averted her gaze a bit downwards, but there was no darkness in her expression. She looked somehow nostalgic as she made a gesture like holding something in her hand.

“A concept creation facility was made in Osaka. It was placed near where Babel is in Low-Gear to act as its pair. After that, Japanese UCAT and the people connected to it moved to Osaka.”

“I…see.”

She somehow managed to accept this information that she had known but could not remember.

But then Shino asked a sudden question.

“Are you going to report that I’m here?”

Shinjou suddenly realized the significance of Shino being here.

…''Oh.

It had been so sudden that she had overlooked it, but it was an extremely obvious thing.

“Before I answer...can you tell me why you’re here? You had to have known you would run into us.”

Her leg was apparently injured, but she could always use her crutch to escape. Shinjou felt it would have been better for her to meet up with the remnants of the Army before she had been found.

“If it was to heal your leg, wouldn’t it have been faster to go to UCAT or meet up with the others from the Army? Why did you stay here?”

Shino brought a hand to her mouth, but she finally shook her head and took in a breath.

“For some reason…I just don’t feel like going anywhere. I do think I should go somewhere, though.”

And…

“I don’t really know if I should be here in the first place. …They’re letting me stay, but I feel like this isn’t where I should be or like I don’t belong anywhere. …I just feel like I’m intruding.”

Hearing that, Shinjou’s previous doubt grew in her heart.

…''What is this?

“Um? We happened to learn you’re here, but you can walk, even if not well. So why don’t you want to meet up with the remnants of the Army? And…”

Shinjou asked about the contradiction Shino held.

“You’re hiding from the remnants of the Army here and yet you’re not sure if you belong here. Why do you think that? And in that case…where ''do'' you belong?”

Shino looked to the girl who had asked her that question.

As she did, she belatedly thought about it.

…''What ''is'' my answer?

The Tamiya family was looking after her. Kouji had taken her in because he thought she “had her reasons”.

There were several others who had been taken in for similar reasons.

She thought it was a nice house. It had a nice atmosphere and it had nice people.

She heard a stabbing spear and a commotion in the distance, but she was grateful that everyone was always so lively.

In Top-Gear, she had once lived in a large house much like this one.

She could not walk properly, but she felt perfectly comfortable under the Tamiya family’s care.

…''So why do I feel bad for staying here?

To collect her thoughts, she asked a question.

“Do I want to return to the Army? Or do I not?”

“That’s not really something I can answer for you.”

Shinjou brought a finger to her mouth and hung her head a little.

“But,” she muttered as if checking on and gathering her own thoughts.

First, she raised a single finger toward Shino.

“You’re here alone, right?”

Shino nodded and Shinjou raised a second finger.

“You were happy to learn that the people of the Army were safe and that some of them had not been found.”

She raised a third finger.

“But you don’t want to go meet up with either group.”

A fourth finger.

“And you feel guilty for staying here.”

She lowered her hand, lightly slapped her knee, and asked a question as if to herself.

“What does it mean?”

“What…do you mean by that?”

Shinjou nodded, looked up, and looked to Shino with the ends of her eyebrows lowered.

After a shout in the distance, she frowned.

“This is a hard house to have a serious discussion in. Was the one in Top-Gear the same?”

“N-no. That’s unique to this one.”

“I see.”

Shinjou nodded and looked Shino in the eye again. This time, she tilted her head a bit.

“Um? I don’t entirely understand, but it seems to me that…well…you want to be with the Army, but you don’t want the Army to continue.”

And…

“It’s almost like you reluctantly graduated from the Army during that attack.”

Shino had never graduated from anything before, but it helped her understand the state of her heart.

…''I…

She recalled a moment in the past.

It was the moment when she had parted ways with the Army and had been alone.

A month and a half ago, she had run through the mountains after the Army had lost.

At the time, she had tried to stay by Mikoku’s side, but when it came to a fight…

…''I was kept from fighting.

After escaping, Mikoku and the others would likely continue fighting in some form.

So if she did end up meeting Mikoku again, she would only be rejected once more.

After all, Mikoku would continue rejecting her as long as she was near the fighting.

…''Then why?

She had a question.

…''If she was only going to reject me in the end, why did she stay with me for so long?

She did not know. There was no way she could know. It all came down to Mikoku’s heart.

But if she did not want to be separated from Mikoku, she had to remain with the Army.

Yet if Mikoku would find some reason to reject her…

“I should try to keep my distance.”

…''That’s why I can’t leave even though I’m not sure I should be here.

She was hiding her identity as a Top-Gear human and having the enemy protect her.

That brought on the guilt of deceiving Kouji, Ryouko, and the others, but…

“…”

She had a single reason for choosing that option.

…''It’s so difficult when I’m near her.

She would be thrust away without being told why.

She would receive no answer even if she asked why.

…''So I decided to stay away on my own.

“But I’m not determined enough for that, so I start hesitating again.”

As soon as she muttered those words, a sudden sound of impact reached her ears from behind.

“What?”

Shino reflexively stood up and looked behind her.

She saw something strange growing from the plaster wall there.

It was the tip of a spear.

The sharp and shining blade was accompanied by a voice coming from the wall.

“Tapwaaaah!”

She heard a scream and a series of stabbing sounds as the blade quickly moved in and out of the wall.

“Owwww, ow, ow, ow, owwwwpaaaah!! 7-hit combo!!”

“Eeeek! Onji was taken out in midair! Retreat! Retreat!”

After more shouts and fleeing footsteps in the wall, Ryouko’s voice reached the room.

“Okay, three more minutes until the time limit. …Wah! Don’t run this way!!”

“Heh heh heh. Are you going to run? But with three whole minutes to go, I can easily reach a high score!”

After a single footstep out in the hallway, Shinjou spoke from behind Shino.

“Sayama-kun! Um…”

Before she could say any more, a voice answered. And it had clearly heard what Shino had said.

“Keeping your distance because you are not sure where you belong takes quite a bit of determination. And yet even the world’s air is blushing and panting as if it floats around you in the hopes that you will breath it in.”

“Sayama-kun, that air surrounds us too, you know?”

“Calm down, Shinjou-kun. What surrounds the two of us is a much denser gas.”

“Oxyg-insanity?”

“Heh heh heh. It is not often you make puns, Shinjou-kun. Tanaka-kun, bring out all of the cushions. Tanaka-kuuun.”

“Abrbah!”

“Ahhh, Tanaka!! He got a critical hit on Tanaka!! Now he can’t carry the cushions!!”

Ignoring the excited voices, Shinjou scratched at her head and spoke to Sayama through the wall.

“Um, Sayama-kun? I don’t think Shino-san wants to go to UCAT either.”

“I see.”

Shino felt her pulse race at those two words.

It was clear that he was about to give his answer.

So she tried to say something. It did not matter what as long as it bought her some time.

But before she could, Sayama’s voice reached her through the wall.

“That is fine.”

She swallowed her words and fell silent, but he continued regardless.

“She is no longer a part of the Army.”

Shinjou stood and looked back and forth between the wall and Shino.

She was aware she was frowning.

“She isn’t part of the Army?”

“Then can you tell me why she has not used her thought coercion concept?”

Shinjou finally recalled Shino could make people do what she said.

…''That power would probably help handle Sayama-kun.

She was certain her very first command for him would be “calm down”.

But why had Shino not used that power?

“You don’t mean…”

Shino was hanging her head in resignation and Shinjou looked to the two chains hanging from the girl’s neck.

One of them held a red cloisonné pendant.

The other held a blue stone pendant.

But the blue one had changed.

“It’s broken?”

Shino gave a small nod and held up the small blue stone to show the white crack through it.

“During our retreat, I was hit by a powerful cutting concept. I deflected the attack by ordering it to be ‘rejected’, but the concepts seemed to be a bad match. Now my power is sealed and I can’t use it. It let me enter concept spaces before, but I’m not even sure I can do that now that it’s broken.”

Shinjou waited a moment after Shino finished.

She took the time to think about what this meant.

“In other words…you have no ability to fight, you won’t meet up with the remnants of the Army, and you won’t move from here? And without a Low-Gear counterpart, you have no hated enemy?”

She was powerless, she could not move, she had no foe, and she did not wish to fight.

That did indeed mean she was not part of the Army. She was no different from an injured person of this world.

From a physical perspective, they were no different from Low-Gear humans.

They were only different in that they were part of the Army and were residents of Top-Gear.

…''Then which are you?

Shinjou just about asked that, but she swallowed the words.

She had once fallen into a similar state of mind.

She had wondered which side she should be with and which side she should be on.

…''She’s the same.

With that understanding, Shinjou sat back down.

She looked straight at Shino who tilted her head and lowered the ends of her eyebrows.

Shinjou chose her words carefully while playing with the hair falling onto her cheek.

“Then how about this? Once you decide which side to be on, we will use that to decide who you are.”

“B-but you two don’t have the authority to-…”

Sayama’s voice answered her from beyond the wall.

“No, we do not. But what proof do we have that you are truly that girl from the Army?”

Shino looked surprised and straightened her back.

“You do not have a ghost dog and it is impossible to genetically determine you are a ‘real human’ of Top-Gear when you have no Low-Gear counterpart. You could be someone else entirely who just so happens to be the spitting image of that Army girl. The Army’s remnants may have led you here to trick us.”

“But that isn’t-…!”

“Twarah!!”

“Eeek! He got Tetsu! He even got Tetsu!!”

Before Shino could say anything more, Sayama’s footsteps moved away with sounds of stabbing.

Shinjou listened while looking back to Shino.

“Um,” she began while placing a hand on her chest and breathing in. “We may not know if you are from the Army or not, but I would like to ask you one thing.”

“What is it? …I don’t really want to tell you anything that would harm the others, though.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed Shinjou.

Shino still cared about the Army and Top-Gear.

At the same time, she cared about the peace this world had gained from not knowing about the Concept War.

…''How will this turn out?

Unlike Shinjou, Shino still remembered Top-Gear, so what would she end up doing?

With that in mind, Shinjou formed her words.

“Today, we’re leaving for Kansai. We have a lot of work to do there and I think we’re going to stop by Sakai on the way back. So if possible, can you tell me just one thing? I think my mom must have lived in Top-Gear’s Osaka, but where exactly did she live?”

“Well…”

Shino’s voice was scratchy, but she answered.

“At first, it was an orphanage in Sakai.”

Shinjou engraved the girl’s next words into her heart.

“After that, your mother lived in the concept creation facility built in Top-Gear.”

“In the concept creation facility?”

Shino looked her in the eye.

Her black eyes seemed to peer deep into her own.

“Yes. The giant facility was built to save the peoples of all Gears. It was called Noah.”

A river flowed through the night.

It had a white cement embankment, but the private road above had no lights.

This was the Aki River that flowed east to west through south Akigawa.

The only light came from the amusement park on the other side of the river.

“It is strange that an amusement park in Akigawa is known as Hachioji Summerland.”

A girl muttered to herself while facing that light halfway up the embankment on the private road side.

The girl lying on the embankment wore a black suit.

It was Mikoku.

A large white dog sat next to her.

The two of them looked to the lights of the amusement park and other external lights across the river.

The east end of the amusement park contained a one hundred meter white indoor pool building. The west end contained a roller coaster and an outdoor pool.

During this season, the outdoor pool was used for a nighttime skating rink.

“They probably cannot see us from over there,” muttered Mikoku and the dog barked quietly next to her.

She glanced over at the dog accusingly.

“Shiro, wouldn’t you rather be with Shino?”

Shiro did not answer and simply stared at the light.

He did not even move, so Mikoku brought a hand to his throat.

…''Come to think of it, I have never done this before.

She could be bolder with no one else around. ''I really am a coward,'' she thought.

“O-okay. It is time for a tickle attack.”

The dog brought her outstretched hand deep into its mouth and gently bit her.

“Ahhh!”

He released her hand as soon as she cried out, but he immediately went back to ignoring her.

Seeing that, she sighed, crossed her arms behind her head, and thought about one thing.

…''Shiro is not searching for Shino because Shino is trying to avoid me.

And she had yet to find Shino.

The members of the Army had safe houses and emergency storage areas around Kantou, but Shino’s belongings had not been moved.

Mikoku had tried bringing Shiro around, but the dog had not reacted to anything.

''Most likely,'' she qualified to herself. ''Shiro has picked up on what Shino is thinking.

''He must want to search for her too, but she is trying to keep her distance right now.

She did not know why, but Shiro showed no sign of searching for Shino and as far as she was concerned…

“That is exactly what I want.”

This meant Shino would no longer be involved with anything dangerous. If Shino was avoiding the Army, it meant she agreed with that.

“Isn’t that right, Shiro? …Ahhh!”

Shiro gently bit her and let go again and Mikoku could see through him much more than before.

During their retreat three weeks before, the man known as “the rapist” had attacked and destroyed Mikoku’s body.

The mountain had collapsed, she had been washed into a river, and she had woken up three days later in a rocky area.

The locations prepared for regrouping had already been abandoned by that point.

The house they had lived in with Hajji had been under surveillance, as was the factory.

This had left Mikoku separated from the rest of the Army and without Shino.

Staying in Akigawa brought a risk of being found by UCAT, but she was still there because it seemed the best way to search out the rest of the Army.

But she had yet to find them or even any trace of them. The only thing she had found was Shiro who had been next to her when she had woken up in that rocky area. However, the dog had been growing thinner ever since.

Shino’s philosopher’s stone created a synchronization of minds more than it did control minds. It could even gather up traces of thought, but due to Shino’s personality, it would create embodiments of what could be called dog ghosts.

Shiro was the strongest of those and he would continue to exist as long as Shino’s philosopher’s stone remained.

But now, he was beginning to vanish.

…''Was her philosopher’s stone destroyed or abandoned?

''It’s hard to say,'' she groaned to herself while sitting up.

…''That was ten years ago…

During the battle that destroyed Top-Gear, Shino had been given that philosopher’s stone by her philosopher’s stone developer parents.

It had been inside a facility known as Noah. The negative concepts had been wreaking havoc on the world and the inside of Noah had been no different. Shino had been given the stone as a protective charm. She had been given nothing more, not even words, before she had been sent outside Noah and toward the gate opened to Low-Gear.

Mikoku also remembered being sent away by her parents and the automaton that managed Noah.

When she had stepped outside, the world had already been destroyed and Noah had been surrounded by Low-Gear’s UCAT. The Top-Gear residents of Top-Gear’s UCAT had left the children inside Noah with Hajji who had temporarily withdrawn. After that, most of the adults had gone back out to fight.

According to them, they had to because it was a battle between Top-Gear and Low-Gear.

The children had then evacuated to Low-Gear.

Mikoku thought she knew why Hajji was so hostile to Low-Gear.

…''Is it because he was unable to fight to the end back then?

She had a similar feeling inside herself.

A month and a half ago, her own inexperience had prevented her from fulfilling her job to the end.

“What is this regret?” she muttered.

Shiro turned toward her and she once more noted how she could see through him.

…''And if Shino’s philosopher’s stone really is losing its power…

That would be a first for the girl.

That stone had been her final line of defense when setting foot in this strange world that seemed so very similar to the world she knew.

She had never been in Low-Gear without the stone.

…''But if she no longer has it…

Mikoku held her breath as she continued on that train of thought, but…

“…”

She got up.

Shiro quickly turned toward her again and she tried to pat his head.

“Ahhh! Calm down, Shiro. …At any rate, Shino is a smart girl. I do not know where she is living, but she will no longer need us once she gets used to it.”

The way she hung her head and spoke made it look like she was trying to convince herself of that.

“That means I am the only one that is alone.”

''I do not like the sound of that now that I have no one else,'' she thought.

The only piece of hope was that Shino was apparently with good people. Shiro would have done something if she was in danger.

So…

…''This is my problem and only my problem.

In the near future, they were sure to oppose the world in some way. Tatsumi had Alex and the others had their own people to worry about, but…

…''I am alone.

She had pushed away the person she cared about most.

Now that she had made an enemy of this world, she would never have anyone to care for again.

“All I can be is alone.”

Suddenly, her lowered gaze caught sight of a light.

It was a straight line of light visible between her eyes and the philosopher’s stone in her throat.

The light was reflected off of the metal blade sticking through the back of her neck and out the front.

“Eh?”

Mikoku’s voice did not form proper words.

Her eyes showed her that a thick-bladed knife was sticking through her neck from behind while muffled breathing and bubbling blood escaped her neck.

“…!”

So she clenched her teeth and swallowed the blood. Whatever this was, letting out a cry of pain would only inform the attacker of her situation, so she breathed in through her nose.

“…”

''Calm down,'' she told herself while reaching behind her with her right hand and grabbing the knife handle.

She held her head in place with her left hand and pulled out the knife.

…''Kh.

She felt something cold leaving her neck where she normally breathed and swallowed.

She resisted the urge to vomit and removed the blade.

Other than what spilled out from removing the blade, no blood left her.

She had pulled it out straight enough for the healing to begin immediately.

That was when she realized how skilled the thrower had been.

She sensed no one on the embankment behind her.

That meant they had thrown the knife in a parabolic arc from the other side of the embankment.

Not many people could accomplish that in a blind throw. Especially with enough force to stab in so deeply.

“It can’t be.”

A name came to mind and she just about spoke it aloud, but she stopped when she noticed something else.

The knife she held had something written on it with magic marker.

One side of the thick, brown leather handle had a message.

“Don’t let your guard down. Enemies. Tomorrow in Sakai, announce our intentions as leader.”

The letter folded on the opposite side was held on with a rubber band.

As soon as she read the writing, Mikoku was convinced of who had thrown the knife.

…''Tatsumi!?

It was a rough method of telling her to not let her guard down and that the enemy was coming. Also…

…''As leader!? What does that mean!?

No, she knew the answer to that.

She was being told to take Hajji’s place.

She thought it was ridiculous, but she also knew what Tatsumi was trying to say. Now that Hajji was a prisoner, the Army had no leader. That meant the Army would vanish and they would become the forces of Top-Gear.

They would need a leader, but Alex was restricted by his mechanical dragon body, Tatsumi was not the leadership type, and Shino was missing.

That process-of-elimination answer angered Mikoku. And…

…''Tomorrow in Sakai, announce our intentions?

Information on Shinjou’s mother was in Sakai, so would she go there? But…

“I am supposed to decide everyone’s fate!? What is the meaning of this!?”

Just as she began to tremble in fear because of her own inexperience, she heard a sudden sound from the top of the embankment behind her. It was the sound of a small rock being kicked and Tatsumi would never make a sound like that as she approached.

She did not even need to think what this meant as she got up from the embankment.

She moved forward, toward the river.

“Shiro!”

As she gave that bloody shout, she decided she was thinking too much.

She has thinking too much about Shino, about the regret brought on by her inexperience a month and a half before, and about her own loneliness.

It was all weighing on her mind so heavily that she had allowed Tatsumi’s throw to reach her.

She was sure Tatsumi would tell her she would normally have noticed the knife.

But even if she could guess how someone else would warn her, she could not find a decent answer.

She only knew two things.

First, she had let her guard down due to her inexperience.

And second…

…''Sayama is on the move!

The Army and Hajji had shaken them so much, the Gear reservations had to be reacting, and the foreign UCATs would never stay silent.

And yet…

“…”

Mikoku dove into the winter river to escape.

As she did so, she realized she may have nowhere left to run.

Two splashes could be heard from the top of the embankment.

Four pairs of hard shoes could be heard shortly thereafter.

Four well-built people in suits stood on the unlit asphalt at the top of the embankment.

Three were men and one was a woman. One had blond hair, two had black hair, and one had brown hair.

Their eyes were covered by the visor-like objects they wore.

The black-haired man who seemed to be their leader spoke into a cellphone.

He spoke in English.

“They escaped. The philosopher’s stone reading is moving away through the river. We will continue to the other…no, we cannot split our personnel. …Testament. Then we will continue with our normal guard duties.”

The black-haired man ended the call.

The splashing sounds had already vanished from the black river surface.

A few seconds later, he brought his right hand to his visor.

“Target lost.”

He spoke quietly and deactivated a few switches on the side of the visor.

“Not being able to act publicly is difficult. There are a lot of people we must covertly protect, so we can’t pursue when we do find a target. …This is the most stressful situation. It’s a shame. I was born in Texas, so I love gun battles.”

“Calm down,” said the brown-haired woman next to him. “I’m sure Colonel Odor wants to take action more than anyone else, but he’s stuck negotiating with our home country below Yokota. And you know how much he hates deskwork.”

“But if he went to the meeting in the major’s place, he would probably physically crush the representatives of the other UCATs. I can almost hear him saying ‘They’re pissing me off! They’re pissing me off, Roger!’ The entire meeting room would be flattened.”

“That’s for sure,” said the two men behind her with bitter smiles.

But the woman only shrugged.

“But that’s what he normally does. Why ''isn’t'' he doing that? If he used the full authority and dignity of the United States, most of the countries in that meeting would have no choice but to go along with it.”

The black-haired man removed his visor, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.

He then turned around and started toward the black car stopped on the edge of the embankment.

After the first step, he spoke.

“Then can you answer this? Who was it that defeated Black Sun?”

“———”

He heard a gasp behind him and kicked a small piece of loose asphalt as he walked.

“I was there at the Chofu airport. I saw it destroy those vehicles and my comrades. What we had destroyed turned out not to be Black Sun and we allowed the real one into our airspace. But,” he said. “Some people tried to understand Black Sun and received the Concept Core as a sign of apology.”

He let out a bitter laugh.

“What we and the colonel are doing is making sure those people do not have their power sealed away. The other Gears are trying to pick a fight with them right now, but I at least know that those people are the only ones who can fight them. I’m sure the colonel and the major know as well. And we know that letting them fight is the fastest answer.”

“But the other UCATs don’t know that and are trying to interfere, aren’t they?”

“Testament,” replied the blond man in the back.

He tapped the shoulder of the man next to him and also began walking toward the car.

“Members of a few different UCATs have shown up at or near Team Leviathan residences about thirty times in the past two weeks. We’re counting perverts, arsonists, and UCAT Director Ooshiro separately, but it seems we’re still doing quite a bit to maintain the peace of this country.”

“It looks like we can spread freedom and peace on the household level as well. We will continue to police every UCAT by keeping an eye on the other ones and we will report any hostile actions from the other Gears. This is an important job…and we sometimes catch people like that in our net.”

“That was Toda Mikoku, the girl with an immortality philosopher’s stone, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered the man walking in front. “But it isn’t immortality. It’s high-speed regeneration and it has a flaw. The regeneration is not instantaneous and it relies on the stone, so the regeneration stops if the stone is destroyed. In other words, if you blow her to bits with an explosive and then destroy the stone before she can fully regenerate, she will die. There’s nothing she can do about it,” he added. “Also, the Army spoke about the truth of Top-Gear, but they forgot two things. First, we are now living in the present. And second, they failed to steal even one of the Concept Cores. Everything they mentioned is nothing but the past and they have nothing to bring to the negotiating table. So…”

He suddenly trailed off.

His footsteps stopped, too.

He had stopped seven meters from the car on the end of the embankment.

The embankment lowered to the left and connected to the road running alongside the river.

He looked to the streetlights on that road and silently looked back.

He saw someone standing on the asphalt.

This was not any of his three companions.

A single new person stood there.

It was a girl with long hair who wore a combat coat.

There had been no sign of her previously.

She was five meters away and he had not noticed until she was that close.

It had likely been the same for his companions. Three people were collapsed and unmoving along the path she had taken thus far.

After noting that they seemed to have simply collapsed as they walked, he began to move.

He pulled a submachine gun from his coat.

He turned the short suppressor toward her and muffled gunshots shook the air.

“Nagata Tatsumi!!”

A cold smile charged toward him in response.

“Yes. That is the name I am going by now.”

The man saw Tatsumi slip below his arm.

She had moved under the arm he was using to hold the gun forward.

Her flowing black hair wrapped in the wind and the sword she drew from her back produced the color silver.

Her movements looked relaxed, but they were lightning fast.

“Sorry, but I need to you to stay still for a bit.”

After drawing the sword, her left elbow sprang up.

The elbow knocked up his right arm which held the gun.

He saw his arm bend a little and then fully bend as if releasing its strength.

A moment later, Tatsumi’s blade raced forward and split the submachine gun in two.

However, the man could still move.

He pulled back his left hand and tried to draw the combat knife on his left hip.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Tatsumi tilted her head as she asked and she held a knife in her right hand.

She gently pushed on the back of the knife and drove the entire blade into his chest just below the right collarbone.

“———”

As soon as he gave a cry of pain, he saw something.

Tatsumi pulled back the silver line and it seemed to multiply several times over.

The illusion was caused by a series of jabs too quick for his eyes to fully capture.

They all hit.

The sound was as light as paper being struck, but the strikes all penetrated to the other side of his limbs or torso.

His bones broke, his tendons were pierced, and he began to collapse back onto the asphalt.

“Kh…”

“You can still speak?”

She reached her hand out toward his chest as he fell.

Just as he wondered what she was going to do, she grabbed the handle of the knife stabbed there.

“I’ll remove that for you.”

She used his falling motion to pull out the knife.

A gouging sensation filled the right half of his body from behind.

“…!!”

He swallowed the cry of pain and instead looked up to the moon and listened to Tatsumi’s voice.

“Don’t make fun of Mikoku too much, okay? If she really was useless, I wouldn’t bother teaching her anything. With Shino gone and nowhere to run, this is the perfect chance to train herself. And…”

He heard a bitter laugh.

“Who were you in charge of protecting? If you remember that, you should understand that we haven’t given up just yet. Yes, since Mikoku hasn’t pulled herself together yet, we need to set the stage for her.”

He fell onto his back.

The intense pain in the right of his chest sent his mind into darkness, but he clearly heard Tatsumi’s voice just before it did.

“We will set the stage so Top-Gear can correct the Leviathan Road. …I hope you’re looking forward to it.”

A certain large space was surrounded by books.

That room on the first floor of Taka-Akita Academy’s Second Year General Education School Building was known as the Kinugasa Library.

It was stepped with the center at the lowest point, countless bookcases filled it like a forest, and the scene outside the nearly covered windows was dark.

The wall clock said it was nine at night, so the fluorescent lights on the ceiling were the only illumination.

The artificial lights produced shadows from the lines of bookcases and the entire library was somewhat covered in shadow.

The only area free of shadow was the highest point of the stepped floor where there were no bookcases.

That meant the counter by the entrance and the area in front of the preparation room in the back.

Two people stood in front of the unlit preparation room and one stood within it.

One of those outside was a girl with long blonde hair who was leaning against the wall.

The other was a girl with short blonde hair who was peering inside the dark room.

The one inside was the short-haired girl that the one blonde girl was peering in at.

That blonde girl spoke to the girl who wore a track suit and searched along the room’s wall.

“U-um, Kazami? Are you okay?”

“Eh? I’m fine, Heo. They just store stuff in here, so I won’t get in trouble for being in here. Besides, the Kinugasa Library isn’t being used for the year end festival yet.”

“No, Kazami. …I meant about the battle.”

Hearing that, the girl with long blonde hair moved from the wall. She spoke to Kazami who was searching for the light switch in the dark room.

“You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

With a bitter smile, Kazami found the switch and pressed it.

A quiet flashing sound came from the ceiling and a brownish light turned on.

“Now, then,” said Kazami below that light. “This is a lot of books. The small room is packed full of them.”

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“I’m not sure. But you heard what Sayama and Shinjou called ahead about, right? There should be a ‘Study’ inside the Kinugasa Library.”

Kazami knew Sayama had gone to the Tamiya house and she knew why.

…''He’s searching for his mother’s past.

She understood the past still gave him pain, but she now knew he was stepping forward without fearing that pain.

…''In that case…

“I need to help him out.”

Mikage tilted her head at that, but Kazami simply smiled and changed the subject.

“Let’s get this cleaned up while the guys are out buying snacks and drinks. …I think the big pile of books in the center is actually because of a work table below them.”

Hearing that, Heo’s shoulders trembled below her flight jacket and school uniform.

“Is this the Study?”

“Hm? No. It’s the preparation room.”

“Then…”

Heo looked doubtful and Mikage expressionlessly tilted her head, so Kazami nodded.

“I think this is the entrance to the Study.”

“B-but there’s nothing here. Even in the back, there’s only bookcases.”

''Oh, that’s right,'' thought Kazami. ''Heo and Mikage don’t know the library that well. If they did, there’s one thing they would have noticed.

So she looked to the wall clock.

It was just before 9:00 PM and there was no sign of Siegfried at the counter.

“Did you know that Siegfried the librarian plays the piano in the second floor music room at a set time every day and whenever he has some spare time?”

Even as she spoke, the music reached them.

It was Silent Night.

The piano sounded almost serene.

The ends of Heo’s eyebrows lowered as she listened to the loud yet calm music.

“I can hear it, but what about it? Mikage, you can hear it too, right?”

“Nn.”

Heo looked uneasy and Mikage tilted her head, but Kazami was satisfied.

“That’s right.” She nodded. “You can hear it. …Now, come here.”

Kazami grabbed the two girls’ shoulders and left the room.

After taking a few steps, they corrected their posture to walk alongside her.

“U-um, Kazami?”

She took a few more steps without answering and moved down one level of the stepped floor.

Kazami stepped down with Heo after watching Mikage time her step down a bit ahead of the other two.

After a few more steps, it became clear what Kazami was getting at.

Heo and Mikage did not take their next step with Kazami.

They came to a stop, so Kazami did the same.

She looked to either side. She saw Mikage expressionlessly lower her head on the right and Heo open her eyes wide on the left. They were both speechless, so she spoke up in triumphant laugh.

“Heh heh. What’s the matter, you two? Why did you stop?”

“Nn.”

Mikage nodded and Heo hesitated before slowly speaking.

“The music…went away.”

“Right,” said Kazami as she let go of the girls’ shoulders.

She took a step forward, turned around to face their surprised and confused faces, and breathed in.

“I just now found the answer to one of this school’s mysteries.”

She looked up to the ceiling. Beyond the white ceiling panels and fluorescent lights was the music room.

“The music room above here is fully soundproofed. You can’t hear anything from inside even in the hallway right outside it. Above that is the art room. …So why do the sounds of those two floors reach the preparation room separately?”

“Separately?”

“Yes.” She nodded and looked the other two in the eye. “When Brunhild was keeping her bird in the art room, we heard it chirping from the preparation room. However, the sounds from the music room can’t be heard in the art room. Siegfried suggested it’s due to the sounds resonating with the walls, but…”

She looked toward the preparation room as she continued.

“What if there’s a hidden room back there? What if it’s not resonating with the walls? What if the hidden room’s air conditioning travels through the art room and music room’s walls separately, so the sounds arrive separately as well?”

“…”

Heo and Mikage looked surprised, but Kazami only felt more satisfaction.

“Now,” she said with a clap of her hands.

The sound reverberated through the library and she lifted her eyebrows in a smile.

“Let’s clean this up. At least enough to reach the work table and bookcases in the back. …The wall beyond those bookcases seems suspicious, doesn’t it?”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume12_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 35

2015-01-06T00:02:54Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 35: Word of Expectation */

==Chapter 35: Word of Expectation==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0459.png|thumb]]
''Listen, idiot

White wings and bullets intersected in a white corridor.

The bearer of the wings, Kazami, was no longer running.

Driven on by and ducking below the stream of bullets, she quickly glided through the air and performed rotating acrobatics.

She advanced swiftly and spun around as if flying.

She took instant leaps using the acceleration of her wings.

She turned by rotating around the weight of her spear.

Those two methods allowed her to practically fly through the narrow corridor.

She moved quickly, but she moved in perfect curves.

Even when she changed direction, rotated around Jord, attacked, or reached a wall, she did not slow.

She moved left, right, front, back, up, and down. She moved nimbly back and forth the corridor like a constantly swinging pendulum.

She maintained her speed and none of her movements were wasted. But…

“My attacks aren’t reaching her!?”

She fired while wrapped in wind, but none of the shots affected Jord.

Jord’s defenses went beyond simply ''seeming'' like nothing was happening.

…''There really is nothing happening to her!?

Her body did not waver in the slightest and she did not brace for impact.

She remained perfectly casual.

Kazami attacked the thinner parts of her clothing and even her exposed face or head, but none of it worked.

Thinking this was impossible, she reached into the pouch at her waist and pulled out the blue sphere that had been Ikkou.

—'''Attack power is infinite.

Trusting in the voice she heard, Kazami attacked Jord from behind again. But…

“That isn’t gonna work.”

Jord moved a thick arm behind her and the machinegun it held spewed bullets.

“…!”

Pursued by the sound of the bullets hitting the wall, Kazami flew backwards to put some distance between them.

She pulled up her legs and raised her speed to distance herself as much as possible from the approaching bullets.

“…”

She managed to escape the movements of Jord’s arm and gun.

She looked up and saw Jord still had her back turned.

Viewing that as a sign of confidence, Kazami leaped down the center of the corridor and rotated around using G-Sp2.

She made a U-turn.

This brought her back on a path toward Jord and she asked G-Sp2 a question.

“What do you think happened there?”

“I don’t know.”

''I guess you wouldn’t,'' she thought. ''What is this defense of hers?

…''It’s different from Kaku’s.

Izumo’s could be described as “sturdiness”, but Jord’s was more like an outright “negation”.

It was simply too powerful.

…''Is that because she’s a 10th god?

She had heard about a Gear called Top-Gear just a moment ago, but ignoring that one, Jord belonged to the highest of the eleven Gears. It would make sense for her to have powerful conceptual defenses.

But all of the concepts and concept texts Kazami was familiar with had a single effect.

This gave them a great functional advantage, but they always had some kind of weakness.

''In that case,'' she thought as the setup for her denial while raising her wings for a midair dash.

…''Am I done for if I can’t figure out her concept?

Repeated attacks, attacks from behind, and even infinite attack power were no use.

She realized this all came down to knowing her opponent.

“————!”

And she flew.

By the time she let out a short breath, she had already passed by Jord’s back on the right.

The woman rotated her right arm down to bring it back up behind her.

The bullets tore through the floor and then toward Kazami.

“!”

But her rising arm was stopped by her shoulder blade, so she could not bring it all the way up.

Kazami kicked off the air and took a safe route over Jord.

That was when Jord made her next move.

She raised her left arm over her shoulder to intercept Kazami.

But instead of firing the rifle at Kazami, the bullets tore into the air to her upper right.

Kazami’s path over Jord’s back would take her through the path of the bullets. Meanwhile, Jord’s right arm shot up.

“…”

And more bullets tore into the air to her upper left.

Gunfire and bullets crossed and Kazami’s path was sealed off by an X of bullets.

But she continued flying regardless.

She twisted her body so she was facing up. She thrust her navel toward the heavens to slip above the crossing bullets with a Fosbury Flop.

“…!”

The bullets grazed her wings and light scattered from them.

“…!!”

But she cleared them.

She instantly twisted further to take an upside-down position and immediately launched an attack.

Even as she moved away, three strikes shot out of G-Sp2.

By making the final blast especially strong, she launched herself away from Jord.

“!!”

After feeling and hearing all three hit, she looked over at Jord, hoping to find some clue to solving the mystery.

She learned three things.

“Kh!”

After passing by, Kazami landed five meters from Jord.

She spun to face Jord and landed in a crouching start.

She lifted her hips higher than her shoulders and raised her wings while recalling that one instant.

She had confirmed three things.

First, Jord had turned toward her and smiled as she passed by.

Second, there was a fresh scratch on Jord’s cheek.

And third, there was a small wrinkle in the corner of Jord’s eyes.

…''That means…

First, Jord’s smile had been a challenge to figure out the secret behind her defenses.

Second, Jord had been injured for some reason.

And third, Jord worked to look younger in addition to her natural long lifespan.

The second fact was especially meaningful.

…''She doesn’t have perfect defenses.

Something had given Jord that slight injury, so Kazami could damage her if she used the same method.

But what had caused that injury?

And s she thought about that method and completed her crouching start, she also realized she could not let her guard down with Jord.

The third fact she had noticed was proof of that.

“You still try to look young at your age?”

Kazami gathered strength in her shoulder blades which controlled the wings.

“You think you’re tricking everyone else, don’t you!?”

She flew as she shouted.

The flapping of her wings extended her body, her legs moved her body forward, and speed reached her soon thereafter.

She advanced.

She seemed to move in fast-forward as she arrived above Jord with her spear raised overhead.

“…!?”

But she could not swing the spear down toward the two rifles raised from below.

And as Jord raised her arms and bent her beck, she quickly crossed her arms in an X-shape.

On top of that, she rotated on the spot.

Her heels sounded on the ground as she turned to the right and fully covered the area directly above herself.

There was no way for Kazami to attack.

“Shi-…”

She swallowed the rest of her curse and cut through the ceiling with her raised spear tip. She then moved away to put some distance between them.

She flew straight for the floor and landed.

She forcibly flipped her body around and faced Jord again.

She was not about to leave her back to the woman or show any other opening.

She kept a low stance. Her body was almost parallel with the floor and her chest nearly touched her shadow.

Her bangs swayed with the momentum of her turn, but she had settled into her stance before they swayed back.

It was an abnormally low crouching start.

She moved her right leg far back and pulled her left leg up next to her chest.

She spread her arms to the sides with the spear tip held backwards in her right hand.

Her wings were spread upwards.

She could launch herself at any moment and she only needed a single breath to gather her strength.

And so she inhaled.

She took in a single breath and stopped.

A moment later…

“…!!”

She shot forward and up.

There was not much she could do in so short a time.

She rotated forward while tightly holding the backwards-facing spear.

She used all of her strength to perform a forward flip and carried the spear like a shoulder throw.

The spear tore into the ceiling and the sound of destruction exploded out.

But the attack did not hit Jord. As Kazami swung the spear downwards, it proved too short and swished through the empty air above the woman’s head.

So Jord laughed.

“You’re never going to hit if you run on pure momentum.”

“This worked just fine!”

Kazami was not looking at Jord; she was looking at the ceiling.

She had torn a straight line through that ceiling and she had a single reason for doing so.

“The collapse of the ceiling will hit you, won’t it!?”

Before, Kazami had seen a scrape on Jord’s cheek.

It had likely come from a flying fragment of the surrounding walls or ceiling.

Jord could not be damaged by attacks made with weapons.

…''So won’t she be damaged by an attack from something other than a weapon!?

While flying over Jord’s head, she had used her raised spear tip to make a shallow cut through the ceiling.

From there, only a single powerful strike was needed.

With that…

“Break loose and cascade down, ceiling!!”

She smashed the ceiling and instantly flew past Jord.

First, the ceiling panels broke apart. Next, it was the plumbing and wiring.

But above that was the great pressure of the concrete surrounding the underground floor.

An artificial stone wall two to three meters thick filled the area above the ceiling.

G-Sp2’s cutting power had slice through that.

“I did my job.”

That message appeared on its console just as a rapid wind tore through the ceiling.

“!!”

The ceiling exploded.

The sound of splitting stone continued on and on as the building materials came crashing down. Dust surrounded them while sparks and pebbles rained down, but the true threat came afterwards.

“Fall, chunks of rock!!”

Just as Kazami shouted from the air, a great piece of concrete crashed down into the corridor.

It was far from being small and far from being alone. More and more gray chunks several meters across fell to the floor and easily stabbed into or broke that floor.

But Kazami did not care.

She spread her wings, forcibly decelerated, and landed on her right tiptoe.

As soon as her foot reached the ground, she heard an especially large piece of rock fall behind her.

It was a block of the concrete that surrounded the corridor and that concrete was about three meters thick. She did not know the size of the piece that had broken off and fallen, but the sound suggested it weighed more than a ton.

Even if Jord had divine protection like Izumo’s, she would not escape something like that unharmed.

“Okay.”

Kazami turned back toward the collapse.

Dust rose below the hole covering several meters of the ceiling.

She saw smoke spreading out with a sound much like sand, but she kept herself ducked low.

She saw a form appear within that smoke.

“It can’t be.”

She took a defensive stance, but quickly realized it was only a piece of concrete two meters tall.

At the very least, Jord was not visible from here.

Kazami breathed a sigh of relief.

She lowered G-Sp2 in her right hand.

“Ah.”

And she finally brought her left hand to her forehead. While she was at it, she also frowned.

“I guess that was Kaku’s grandma. Maybe I went a little overboard.”

''What should I do about this?'' she wondered while looking up at the giant pieces of stone with a sigh.

That was when she heard a voice.

“Too bad.”

It was Jord’s voice.

Before Kazami could stiffen, Jord stepped casually out from behind the especially large piece of concrete. Not only that…

“You’re completely unharmed!? Did it not hit you!?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course it hit me. Do you really think I can avoid every last one of these with so many of them falling at once? A woman needs to be solid. …At least solid enough to repel something like this.”

Kazami looked to the giant stones filling the corridor and realized Jord was telling the truth. Some of them had directly hit her.

But Jord was completely unharmed. Her clothes, face, and hair were untouched.

Not only was she unhurt, she did not have a single stain on her.

Kazami gasped and Jord’s expression changed when she saw that surprise.

She smiled so Kazami could see.

“You thought I couldn’t be hurt by weapons, did you? It’s really too bad. You were so close.”

Jord moved both her hands, but she was not holding a weapon in either one. Instead…

“Oh, c’mon. Where are you even looking? The floor’s what matters.”

Kazami looked down and saw two grenades rolling down at her feet.

''Not good,'' she thought just as she realized what Jord’s concept was.

…''Her concept is…

A moment later, a large explosion shook the corridor.

A twelve square meter room had light purple carpet on the floor and two sofas facing each other across a table. A large TV and a bookcase filled with books were by the wall.

The room could be seen as a living room or a parlor.

Three people sat in the room: a married couple and a man.

The husband picked up a cup from the table and held it out toward the man sitting across from him.

“Izumo-san, please drink some. My wife’s tea really is delicious.”

“Hm? Oh, sorry. I know I’m stopping by at a ridiculous hour and, well, I thought I would just say hi real quick. But…how should I put this? Sorry for the trouble, Kazami-san.”

Izumo Retsu took the white cup and brought it to his mouth.

Just as he took a sip, Kazami’s father gave a straight-faced comment.

“It’s actually super sugary.”

Retsu began to choke, but he may have been too stubborn to just spit it out because he looked away and held a handkerchief to his mouth.

After about three seconds, he forced it down.

“Khahhh! I won!”

“Well done. I should have expected that from you, Izumo-san.”

Kazami’s father applauded and sounded truly impressed, but Retsu sounded out of breath when he replied.

“Well, sorry you had to see that. …But why would you give me that?”

“You know how you give saltwater to an unwanted guest? Well, you’re the opposite, so I decided to take the opposite approach.”

“Sorry about that. There is no stopping my husband once he sets his mind to something like this.”

“Y-yes, I can tell from the TV shows he makes. Like…what was it? That five-minute show that airs every morning where you show up at politicians’ houses unannounced. It was ‘What Kind of Screams do People Make When You Jab a Finger in Their Ass?’, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, Ass Scream? Lately, the higher ups have been pressuring us about editing it a little, but the viewers love it because they get to hear the real voices of the politicians. That’s why I was thinking of visiting the one’s pressuring us starting tomorrow. That way, we can hear ''their'' true voices.”

Kazami’s father lifted his right hand and his wife pulled some cigarettes from below the table.

He took one and turned to Retsu.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Then I will.”

He pulled a completely different cigarette from below the table and lit it. This one was as thick as his arm.

“Ahhh. …You don’t seem surprised, Izumo-san. This disturbs most people.”

“Well… To be honest, I’ve gradually grown to enjoy all this.”

“Yay!”

The married couple exchanged high fives and then turned back to Retsu.

“Sorry. To be honest, Chisato and Kaku-kun were here last night.”

“Oh? Both of them were? That I didn’t know.”

“You’re lying about that, aren’t you?”

Retsu was left speechless when Kazami’s father leaned forward and pointed at him.

But the other man only leaned further forward, placed his open hand next to his mouth, and whispered to Retsu.

“I just wanted to say that.”

He straightened back up and smiled. Retsu smiled bitterly and drank some of the sugary tea.

“Is this how you control people in your projects?”

“I’m nothing special. …I only got into it because I like to stand out and I like to gossip. Do you know what my debut job was?”

“Wasn’t it managing your wife who was your classmate?”

“No, no.”

He grabbed a remote control from the table.

It belonged to the video player and he played a recording on the TV.

“When I was in college, a crime documentary I made and sent in was actually used. It was about the murders of the couple who ran a local set lunch store.”

A staticky video of a winter street appeared on the screen. A reporter wearing glasses walked next to the fence of a large house. His expression was terribly serious, but…

“Ha ha. Why do I have an afro?”

“Kazami-san, I thought you didn’t record your work?”

“The me in this tape can die for all I care. I followed the case purely out of curiosity, my viewpoint got distorted, and I never got anywhere near the truth. This is a shame I need to leave a record of. And…”

He stared at the screen.

“The couple who ran that store had a strong connection to IAI. And not just a connection. For some reason, they were treated like employees. They even had company IDs. But their daughter didn’t know and neither did anyone else. If anyone did…and this is just my instinct talking…”

The TV displayed a house across from a ramen shop.

“It would have been the old man named Sayama who lived in this house. He also had a connection to IAI for some reason.”

“What if I knew the answer to all that? I am IAI itself, after all.”

Kazami’s father turned toward Retsu.

He looked directly at the other man without saying a word. He stared at the slight smile on Retsu’s face.

Afterwards, Kazami’s father suddenly smiled as well and shrugged.

“That’s too boring. And not fair on my part. Our connection comes from my Chisato’s explosion of pheromones as such an intensely wonderful girl, but I would be using her feelings if I used that connection to get an answer out of you.”

“Oh, then my apologies.”

“No need to apologize. This just shows how great my daughter is.”

“I’m jealous of how well your family gets along. I really am. Mine is so cement-like.”

Kazami’s father laughed at that.

“C’mon, Kaku-kun’s a good boy! After all, the only thing on his mind is letting my wife and me see a grandchild as soon as possible.”

“Ha ha ha. That idiot really is a positive-minded sexual criminal, isn’t he?”

“But what’s wrong with being honest about yourself? …You know my wife used to sing, right? It was apparently brought up a lot in school when Chisato was a kid, so she never sings in front of us. …The things parents most want to see are what the kids tend to keep between themselves.”

He scratched his head and gave a bitter smile.

“Well, for how strong-willed our daughter is, she tends to withdraw into herself a lot.”

“That’s part of being a good girl. Only if they know their own worth, though.”

“I’m not so sure she does. …Two years ago, she apparently hurt some other girl’s leg while competing for a regular spot in the club. It was the naginata club. And when I asked her why, she said she had felt she didn’t belong in that regular spot, so she swung in a random direction to create an opening and lose. But her opponent charged right in at that random direction. What do you think of that?”

Retsu crossed his arms at the question.

After a while, he gave a troubled smile with lowered eyebrows.

“She must have thought she was the only one in the wrong there. …But what did you tell her?”

“I told her only to attack when she really would hit. …And she’s done a good job of following that. I think she instinctually knows she’ll only hurt herself if she does anything she isn’t fully committed to.”

Retsu laughed and crossed his arms again.

“What a wonderfully energetic girl. My son has a pretty weak body and it seems my wife had a lot of trouble because of it.”

“Yes, but he seems to have gotten a strong mind out of it. He’s managed to pull Chisato along with him and allowed her to enjoy her life.”

Kazami’s father continued from there.

“Earlier, she must have solved some trouble she was having at work…no, in her life. She sent an email saying she would be here tomorrow. …Will you stop by too, Retsu-san?”

“No, I should be far too busy at work tomorrow.”

“Is that so?” Kazami’s father smiled and looked to Retsu. “But Chisato really is enjoying her life with Kaku-kun. She still worries about things, but she has someone to discuss it with. This is what you call true entertainment! Isn’t that right?”

He showed off his teeth in a smile and raised his cup for a toast.

“She’s probably enjoying herself now too. She must be on a stage she feels she can perform on.”

Dust ran through the corridor for the second time.

It was made by Jord who had been covered in the first wave of dust from the ceiling.

The explosion from her grenades had destroyed the floor and smashed the walls.

The building materials were terribly damaged. It looked like too much damage even for grenades.

“Well, she did up their attack power to infinite.”

Jord’s hair blew in a wind mixed with waves of smoke. She sighed and looked up.

“Is this all the bearer of 10th-Gear’s Concept Core can do? …How boring.”

She spat out a “keh” of disappointment toward the floor and took a step forward.

She had no active interest in what the Army was doing, but she felt she should put in some more work since she had come to help.

Hajji should have just about reached the Concept Cores by this point.

She had blown away G-Sp2’s bearer, so she needed to retrieve 10th’s Concept Core from within.

The Concept Core of 10th-Gear was the source of the world tree’s power and of the gods’ power. The 10th-Gear reservation was controlled by an inferior copy, but Jord was certain it would be a richer place with the real thing.

Hajji would probably tell her to hand it over, but she could always confront him too.

“That’s right. 9th-Gear’s great general versus a member of 10th. What kind of battle would that be? I doubt I would escape completely unharmed.”

At that point, she heard a voice through the spreading smoke.

“You are ''really'' full of yourself, aren’t you?”

The voice was accompanied by a visual form.

It was a girl with raised eyebrows, a white spear in hand, and white wings on her back.

Jord frowned and came to a stop as the girl spoke.

“You aren’t like Kaku. He only pretends to think so highly of himself…but you’re different.”

The smoke cleared and scattered to fully reveal her form.

She was five meters away and the white spear had transformed. The stabilizing wing for flying was raised in the back and shimmering heat came from the back end.

But no one rode the spear that had taken its flight form.

Kazami was completely unharmed as she held up the spear, so Jord frowned again.

“Did you use the regeneration of 10th-Gear’s Concept Core?”

“Sorry, but G-Sp2 isn’t that kind to me anymore.”

The girl smiled bitterly with sweat on her brow and she expelled a breath that held some small bit of strength.

“Did you forget? The attack power in here is infinite. Just as your grenades exploded, I used G-Sp2’s short range super acceleration to break the sound barrier.”

“You hit the infinite explosive blast with an infinite shockwave?”

“Yes. They use that method during actual rescues, don’t they?”

Kazami lowered G-Sp2 and shrugged.

“G-Sp2, first form.”

The weapon began its transformation.

Jord frowned as it powered down, but Kazami ignored her and removed the shield from below the spear tip.

The action was awfully calm for a battle and G-Sp2 must have found it odd too.

“Is it over?”

But Jord saw Kazami smile at the weapon’s question.

“No, we’re just about to win.”

''Impossible,'' thought Jord, but G-Sp2 reacted differently.

A “♪” mark appeared on its console. It seemed to unconditionally trust Kazami that they would win.

The girl then began to move.

She mounted the long narrow white shield on her left arm and casually walked over to Jord.

Jord raised her arms to fight back and pulled handguns from her sleeves.

All attack power was made infinite in this space, so there was no point in using larger guns.

Jord took aim and shouted out.

“Do you really think you stand a chance!?”

But her question did not reach its target.

Kazami instantly arrived right in front of her.

“…”

Kazami almost looked bored as she tapped her right shoulder a few times with the spear shaft resting there.

“Are you mocking me?” asked Jord. “Do you think that spear can break through my defenses after you shut down its power?”

Kazami did not answer.

Instead, she suddenly looked to the right.

She ignored Jord and looked at the empty wall there.

She was in the middle of a battle, and yet she left herself entirely defenseless.

But just as Jord gasped at the action, Kazami swung G-Sp2 with all her strength. The weapon moved from the girl’s right shoulder and into Jord’s left cheek.

“———!!”

An instant later, Jord realized she had flown to the right and slammed into the wall.

The impact shook the air.

Feeling a solid hit for once, Kazami looked down at her right hand.

She could tell G-Sp2 was also shaking a bit from hitting their opponent.

“It stings,” said the weapon.

“It does,” agreed Kazami as Jord stood from her kneeling position by the wall.

“Why you…!”

Jord spat a broken tooth to the floor and held her left cheek as she stood.

Her entire body shook with rage.

She already stood powerfully in front of Kazami with her large chest thrust outward.

The handgun had vanished from her right hand and a white shotgun had left her sleeve in its place.

“It’s time you were blown to pieces!!”

Before shouting, raising her weapon, or even speaking, Kazami took action but without gathering her strength.

She spoke to G-Sp2 in her right hand.

“Do you think our attack will hit?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

With a quick snap of the wrist, she swung the shield in her left hand to strike the center of Jord’s gut from below.

The woman doubled over and crashed into the ceiling.

The building materials crumbled as they stopped her. They wrapped around her and refused to let go.

As she hung down embedded in the ceiling, the shotgun fell from her hand and her lips twisted in anguish.

“You…”

“Yeah, how should I put this? It looks like I’m the one that gets to see you cry.”

Kazami tilted her head at what she was doing and at the result. She also looked up at Jord.

“Your concept isn’t a defensive power. Instead of thinking about what put that scratch on your cheek, I should have been thinking about why it was put there.”

She rested G-Sp2 on her right shoulder and shrugged.

“You’re ''Betrayed Expectations'' Jord. You gave the answer yourself. In other words, your concept betrays other people’s expectations. Anytime someone thinks they’ll hit or thinks they’ll do damage, it’s negated.”

She tapped the tip of her right foot against the floor along with her next two words.

“And. So. If I wanted to hit you, I just had to believe it probably wouldn’t hit. The scattering fragments scratched you because they were an attack without a will behind it.”

Jord began to slip out of the ceiling.

She was going to fall, but just before she did, she bared her teeth and asked a question.

“But how can you attack without thinking you’ll hit? A technique like that requires serious mental focus, so why would some random girl know how to-…”

“That’s simple. I did the same thing two years ago. I attacked while thinking it wouldn’t hit and that I would lose…but I did hit. I’ve gone back over that moment countless times over the past two years.”

She smiled a little.

“But now I think I know why my attack unintentionally hit the other girl. She must have been trying to lose as well. That’s why she came straight toward my attack.”

''I really am weak,'' she realized again.

At the time, she had been trying to escape the pressure of being a regular and she had been so focused on herself that she had assumed the other girl’s injury was entirely her fault.

She had not tried to be with someone else.

…''Thank you.

She thought about that girl who was now in another class and apparently the captain of that club.

''If it hadn’t been for that incident, I never would have met Kaku.

…''I don’t stand a chance against her now.

''Thank you.

“I’m glad I’m so weak.”

She smiled and spoke just as Jord fell from the ceiling.

Seeing that, she closed her eyes.

''Now I can’t even see Jord.

She spread G-Sp2 and the shield to either side and began to spin around. She spread her wings and spun and spun like she was dancing. She spun until she was dizzy.

''It’d be a miracle to hit her now.

“Now, then.”

With those words, she held a single expectation in her heart. She thought of the unlikely and she thought of her opponent as she smiled and spoke to Betrayed Expectations Jord.

“Die.”

A moment later, her super swing of G-Sp2 hit something.

It was an unexpected lucky hit.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_34|Chapter 34]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_36|Chapter 36]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 33

2015-01-04T01:25:19Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 33: Released Gathering */

==Chapter 33: Released Gathering==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0379.png|thumb]]
''Break through the wall

''Brush off the obstacles

''Do not allow the gouging power to face you

Loud footsteps and the blowing wind filled a white corridor.

The writing on the wall said BF2. The person producing the rushing footsteps wore black and dragged the color red behind him.

His weapons were a steel spear in his right hand and the destructive power of motionlessness in the gaze of his left eye.

Everyone who got in the way of his swift pace was either knocked to the ground or broken and blown away.

His left arm did not move thanks to the large split in his left shoulder.

But there was no blood flowing from the wound. Before any blood could flow, it was blown into the air by his actions.

Someone following behind him called out his name.

“General Hajji!”

Hajji ran.

He knew they were following and he knew this was all according to plan.

Most of them would return to the surface and only he and a few others would reach the sixth basement.

They knew the layout thanks to the information Shino had gained that summer.

They would take the corridor to the sixth basement on the way there, but they would use the fifth basement on the way back. They would break through the shaft on the eastern end of both floors, use the Concept Cores to bring the fifth basement’s lift up to the surface, and have Alex take them away.

The Concept Cores from 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 9th were kept below UCAT. If they stole those, the Leviathan Road could not be completed and controversy would break out over the unfairness of some Gears having their Concept Cores stolen and some not.

And to do that…

…''We have to reach the back of the sixth basement.

That would mean their victory. After all, Hajji’s vision could stop and destroy all things.

…''If I take the Concept Core pallets hostage, no one can touch me.

''But,'' he thought while looking up. There was something he had to do before continuing down.

“I must reveal UCAT’s crimes.”

That was the true reason for this fight. He had to inform every UCAT and every reservation of what Japanese UCAT had hidden ten years ago.

There was a place for him to do that.

He saw a large pair of explosion-resistant doors in front of him. They had the words “Japanese UCAT New Headquarters” written on them.

No soldiers guarded them and there was no interception system. The doors only brought their thickness and sturdiness to the table.

Hajji gathered strength in his left eye and prepared to send a powerful gaze toward the door, but…

“!”

He suddenly moved to the right.

The blood scattering from his left shoulder revealed something that had not been there before.

This new form suddenly appeared to his left beyond the spray of blood.

“Oh, damn. How am I supposed to tell Natsu-san I got blood on my lab coat?”

The man wore glasses and he sounded troubled. Hajji turned toward him and smiled.

“2nd-Gear representative Kashima Akio? Are you the line of defense here? You are, aren’t you? Hm?”

Kashima was mentally sweating as he confronted Hajji with his back to the explosion-resistant door.

…''If only Atsuta was here.

Atsuta had gone to the surface with a prototype Cowling Sword.

Tsukuyomi had been the one to place Kashima here. She had guessed the enemy would not come to the new headquarters because they were after the Concept Cores down below.

She had not wanted to put anyone with a family on the front lines.

“That sure backfired. …I never thought the final boss himself would show up.”

“Are you happy? You are, aren’t you? Hm?”

Kashima did not nod. The enemy was injured and his weapon would be powerful if it was a concept weapon.

He was worried about the gaze weapon in his left eye, but Kashima had a technique to make his way behind the man.

…''I can use the Art of Walking.

Hajji had seen through the Art of Walking just now due to the sharpness of his instincts.

Kashima had tried to make him careless by making the area look deserted, but he had realized it was odd for the place to be deserted.

This time, there would be no tricks. Neither one would be careless and they would both be sharply focused, but that was why the Art of Walking would work here.

They were five meters apart. Both of them could cover that distance in an instant.

And it was easy for Kashima to read Hajji when he was bleeding and breathing heavily.

He knew the Art of Walking would work.

Even if the man shifted or adjusted himself, Kashima could instantly re-activate the Art of Walking.

So with no signal, he began the technique that would settle this.

“————”

He used it as he began to walk. The key to the Art of Walking was Hajji’s right eye. He used that as the opening to shift away from Hajji’s senses and he circled toward Hajji’s unusable left shoulder.

He moved quickly as he circled around the man.

If he reached out his hand and simply touched the man with his palm, Hajji would be blown away because he was not a god.

Kashima saw Hajji facing straight forward and away from him.

Kashima knew he could defeat the man, so he stepped forward and raised his right hand to attack.

Suddenly, Hajji moved his own right hand as if to hold Kashima in check.

“!?”

He assumed this was an attack with the spear, but it was not. Hajji pulled something from his sleeve and dropped it to the floor.

The small black object fell clumsily down and solidly bounced.

…''A stopwatch?

Just as Kashima wrinkled his brow beyond his glasses, Hajji opened his mouth while looking in the wrong direction.

“Kashima, I do not know where you are, but you can see what I just threw, can’t you?”

He could, but…

“That is my sympathy. Yes. And Kashima, let me ask you one thing. …How is your family doing?”

''Why is he asking that?'' wondered Kashima with a frown.

Hajji continued with a deep smile.

“Kashima Natsu and Kashima Harumi. Your wife did not have work today and it’s probably about time your daughter is being put to bed. Yes. A wonderful thing. A truly wonderful thing. Yes. And with that said…did you call home before this battle?”

He did not answer. Answering would disturb his movements and possibly break the Art of Walking himself.

But Hajji continued.

“I sent them a small package. Yes. It is labelled as a prize. …Your wife will likely wait to open it until you return home. And yet if she did open it, she would find out what is inside. Yes.”

And…

“You know what that stopwatch means, don’t you? …Three more seconds now.”

Hearing the number of seconds started up Kashima’s emotions.

He clenched his teeth as he tried to choose between victory and his family.

“Kashima. …You are a wonderful military god. Yes. After all, you hesitated.”

Hajji looked right at him. His hesitation had likely created a seam in his Art of Walking.

“That hesitation means you might have chosen to abandon your family. Wonderful. Truly wonderful. Yes. …I am sure your family will hate you as they are blown to pieces.”

“You…!!”

Kashima swung his right arm, but Hajji’s face had already moved right up to him.

“Kashima, let me tell you something interesting. Yes, I’m sure you will find it very interesting indeed.”

Kashima realized the spear tip was digging into his left side.

“Now, here is that interesting thing: everything I said there was a lie. Of course it was. I would never do anything so cruel. So…So rest easy. Rest easy and be defeated.”

A moment later, intense pain slammed into his stomach like an impact.

“————!!”

He was knocked back and pinned to the wall behind him. At the same time, he heard Hajji’s voice spoken through a bitter smile with teeth bared.

“I’m quite jealous. After all, your family is alive and well.”

Kazami flew high in the sky.

Below her, she saw a few giants, a crowd of dolls, and persistent people.

Her target was one of those giants, large doll #1.

It spoke and seemed to have different motivations from the Army.

Deciding it would be her enemy after her late arrival, Kazami looked to the moon and performed a gentle vertical half-rotation.

She knew the others were sure to defeat the Army. No matter what doubts they might have, they would accomplish that.

“Even if they tremble, fear, hesitate, or show any other weakness.”

None of that would get in the way of the power they held.

She flipped upside down in midair and stared at the large doll one hundred meters below.

“Are you ready!?”

With that question, she flapped her wings downward.

In an instant, the power of the wings of light seemed to launch her more than they made her fly.

She continued on.

She broke through the wind and fired G-Sp2.

But large doll #1 deflected it. It knocked the light away using the corner of the crowbar it held. The metal surface of the corner was torn away, but it did not break.

…''How did it react to that!? Does it have some kind of reflex assistance system!?

The enemy roared in response.

“We made our weapons based on your data! Your attacks aren’t going to work that easily on us!”

She continued to descend and the large doll swung a fist up as a counterattack.

She was on a collision course. If she dodged too far out, it could correct its aim. If she dodged too close in, she would be unable to eliminate her momentum and crash into the doll.

A hit was the only option now, but Kazami found a solution.

“G-Sp2! Let’s win this!!”

She accelerated. She flapped her wings and quickly closed in on the fist.

“G-Sp2!! Third form!!”

G-Sp2 transformed during her ultra-high speed descent.

“I’ll blow it away,” displayed the weapon.

A moment later, she poured on even more acceleration.

She targeted the metal fist swinging up toward her.

Hitting it would lead to a single result.

“You’re going to hit!?” said the man’s voice. “You won’t escape that unharmed!!”

“That’s not my intention!!”

She locked the accelerator on full and shrunk down her body.

She held the spear tip out front and charged on in a straight line.

A back wearing a work uniform and a leather jacket trembled in the waiting room of Okutama Station.

The old man leaned back in a wooden bench and looked up toward the ceiling, but he was actually looking at the inside of his sunglasses.

“You idiot.”

The inside of his sunglasses showed him wings of light flying down with the moon behind them.

But the sunglasses also showed several red and green lines indicating the enemy’s predicted attacks.

It calculated out the enemy’s target, path, and destructive force.

The winged girl would destroy the large doll’s right arm, but the impact would crush her.

…''I’m getting the far better end of this deal.

The old manager thought this was the most worthless kind of death in war.

She was destroying herself without even defeating her opponent.

…''And this won’t help my mood either. Is this the kind of fight you want, UCAT?

''But one thing’s certain,'' he thought. ''Her death won’t remain.

If the Army won, this battle would be seen as an evil thing and those who died would be denied by history.

“Just like my family.”

''So I guess this is fine,'' he thought while moving his fingers to accelerate the large doll’s rising fist.

''This will make her the same as my family. She won’t be able to save anyone, but she’ll be denied and forgotten.

“I shouldn’t have thrown out the alcohol,” he spat out while preparing to close his eyes at the instant of impact.

But then static ran through the sunglasses.

“!?”

That meant something unpredicted had occurred and the predictive displays had gone haywire.

The enemy had done something.

…''But what!?

He then saw the wings of light throw her body out from the falling spear.

“————!?”

The spear-user was planning to send only the spear into the fist.

''You idiot,'' he thought. ''If you don’t throw away your life, the attack won’t be heavy enough.

The predictive readings returned to the sunglasses. Without the weight of her riding the spear, the attack would lose its stability and weight. The calculations said the piercing blow would stop halfway through the fist and not even destroy the arm.

But the old manager saw the wings of light flap in the sky.

…''Are you running!?

No.

She used all of her previous momentum to fly even further down.

She flew to the surface below the large doll before the spear hit.

In her fall, she twisted around to face the heavens, spread a hand, and shouted.

“G-Sp2! Come, my power!”

Kazami cried out.

She flapped her wings, transformed her fall into a power dive, and shot past the rising metal fist.

As she fell and accelerated, she twisted around and raised her right hand toward the heavens.

She spread the hand like she was trying to seize the moon, gathered her strength, and opened her mouth toward heaven.

“Come!!”

G-Sp2 reacted to her word.

It suddenly trembled in its accelerated fall and the light on the back end grew to raise its acceleration.

This weapon contained a dragon and it moved straight toward Kazami’s open hand.

It would pierce through everything in the way. In this case, that was large doll #1.

The metal doll was over ten meters tall, but it was penetrated from top to bottom in an instant.

It was a single strike.

“————!!”

Countless metallic sounds occurred so quickly that they blended together.

G-Sp2 broke through the raised metal fist and out the bottom of the stomach.

Kazami had just landed below the open hole.

She raised a hand as she stood and G-Sp2 flew into it while surrounded by shimmering heat.

“You called?” it asked.

Kazami smiled and nodded. She spun the weapon in her fingers and stood it on the ground.

The sound of the back tapping on the asphalt was accompanied by the exploding shockwave produced inside the giant body overhead.

A great roar filled large doll #1 and metal could be heard tearing apart.

Next, the giant metal doll split into two halves.

Its anguished cry was the creaking of its motors before it lost power and began to tilt to either side.

After the tilt grew too far, it began to utterly collapse.

Below, Kazami looked up and ignored the downpour of scattering parts.

The metal rain let up and the moon was revealed in the clear sky.

A voice came from the collapsing metal giant.

“Wait. What were you going to do if that didn’t work?”

“What does it matter when it did work? This is what it means to do my best.”

“But my family protected me!”

''Oh,'' thought Kazami. ''This person must be a lot like me.

So she answered while looking up at the sky.

“They cared about you. …Do you really need a reason for or proof of that?”

“…”

“If so, then go look in a mirror. No matter how much the current age denies it and no matter who denies it, you’ll find some evidence reflected there so long as you don’t get rid of yourself.”

She lifted G-Sp2 high.

The metal legs falling to either side were blown away by the strike and scattered in the wind.

That was all, so she sighed.

“Okay.”

''What to do next?'' she wondered.

But a sudden shadow appeared overhead.

…''Eh?

She jumped left on reflex.

An instant later, a giant black metal object crashed in the spot she had left. It had been sent there from the east.

“Susamikado!?”

Kazami trembled at her own voice. She only knew one thing that could take down UCAT’s strongest god of war.

“Typhon!?”

She saw a white form approaching from low in the eastern sky.

It was fast.

“Wow,” she said when she realized the sound did not precede its arrival. “This isn’t good. It’s supersonic!”

She tried to call out and warn everyone of the impending shockwave, but it was too late.

The white giant was moving faster than sound and it was already almost within arm’s reach of them.

The large-scale shockwave easily tore up the surface of the ground, so if that happened to the people behind Kazami…

“————!!”

She reflexively thrust G-Sp2 into the air.

She used all her strength in the hope of splitting the shockwave as much as she could.

“Oh!!”

She slammed it forward, but her wish was not granted.

The white god of war suddenly changed course. It moved to the southern forest on Kazami’s right.

Immediately afterwards, it rotated around and flew up into the southern sky.

It ascended.

“Eh?”

Why had it not taken advantage of that perfect opportunity?

She quickly found the reason.

Something was racing along the runway from the east.

It was a motorcycle and a god of war.

The motorcycle’s driver had swung a sword. This had created a blast of light that struck the white god of war from behind and knocked it to the south.

Meanwhile, Kazami saw something unbelievable coming her way.

A boy stood on the back seat of the motorcycle and he held a giant god of war overhead.

The god of war’s armor was painted to resemble a maid uniform.

The god of war lay horizontally with its arms spread to the sides as if flying. Kazami frowned and called the name of the boy supporting the god of war’s stomach from below.

“Sayama!? What is that idiot doing!?”

Her gaze then moved to the boy driving the motorcycle.

When she saw him raising a large white sword that had somewhat changed form, her expression crumbled a bit.

“There he is showing up at the perfect time. He really is a boy.”

Sayama felt the wind.

Ahead of the strip of asphalt were a group of black dolls, two large dolls fighting Sibyl’s white god of war, Susamikado collapsed next to them, and Kazami.

Beyond them were a white army struggling to regain its footing and a black army working to defeat them.

Sayama felt Izumo turn the motorcycle toward Kazami.

Baku emulated him as he looked up at Violet who he held with both arms.

“Violet-kun, are you about ready? It is time.”

“Yes, sir. Motorcycles sure are fast. …And are you sure I’m not too heavy?”

“With your control of inertia and gravity, you are perfectly light.”

“R-really? Oh, but was it indecent to ask that?”

“Don’t worry, god of war girl. Judging by my attempted wife, being a little indecent is just right.”

“Ha ha ha. So does ‘indecent’ mean ‘uncivilized’ in the Izumo dialect? You learn something useless every day.”

Sayama raised Violet in a throwing stance.

“Now, Violet-kun, it really is time. But here is one piece of advice. When flying like this, you clench your fists and hold them out in front of you.”

“Y-yes, sir!!”

The god of war did as instructed and Sayama threw her forward.

A powerful wind surrounded her as she flew.

The black dolls turned toward the noise and frantically prepared their shields, but it was too late.

She slammed head-first into the dolls and began sliding on her stomach once she landed on the asphalt. She had already cut off her inertia, but her speed remained and she knocked everything out of the way as a giant mass of metal.

But…

“Ah, n-no! I can’t stop!!”

The white army and Kazami had initially looked up, thinking reinforcements had arrived, but once they realized the reinforcements had no way of stopping, they reacted the same as the black army.

“Waaaah!!”

They ran about one hundred meters back at full speed.

Violet tore up the asphalt but finally came to a stop after sliding those hundred meters with them.

“Ow, ow, ow,” she said as she got up and brushed off her armor. “S-sorry about that. All I ever do is mess up.”

Everyone glared at her and a path had been created behind her. The central line of black dolls was gone and the black army had frantically moved back, so a wide path had opened up.

The motorcycle drove down it with Sayama standing on the back seat with his arms crossed. It circled in front of Violet and came to a stop.

Sayama glanced over at Kazami who was still glaring and then he kicked Izumo’s back in front of him.

Without turning back, Izumo lightly waved his right hand up and down to say he understood.

“Well, there’s a lot to say.”

[[Image:OnC_v11_0399.jpg|thumb]]

Sitting on the motorcycle, Izumo looked to Kazami who stood to his left.

She hesitated and did not immediately return his look.

“…”

Finally, she met his gaze.

Her eyebrows lowered and twisted, she bit her lip, and she clearly did not know what to say.

“Wh-what’s that look for? …Is something funny, Kaku?”

“Well,” he said while crossing his arms and giving a deep nod. “I was just thinking I could expect some fresh kissing and a lot of other things from you every day.”

Kazami grew pale and Sayama tilted his head from behind Izumo.

“What do you mean, Izumo?”

“Ha ha ha. That’s simple. Chisato’s going to be working to make sure I don’t get tired of her.”

“W-wait a second, Kaku. When did you wake up?”

“Around when you started with ‘it seems I…’ ”

“I see.”

Kazami sighed, approached Sayama, and gestured for him to leave.

He hopped down from the motorcycle and Izumo scooted forward so Kazami could sit there.

And then…

“If you’d woken up, then get up!!”

A kick not even Sayama could see sent Izumo flying from the motorcycle.

He slammed into the asphalt more than he rolled along it and he frantically got back up.

“Y-you idiot! I was seriously injured not long ago!!”

“Not anymore, you’re not. Your arm was remade good as new and you’re alive and well.”

After those words, the motorcycle crashed into him. She climbed up on top of the motorcycle that had fallen on top of him, hopped up and down, and spoke to the cries of agony coming from underneath.

“I was… I was so desperately worried. I was even crying. So ''why'' in the world would you think it’s okay to joke about that!? I’m…I’m ready to…”

She started to cry, connected the clutch, and spilled tears with the accelerator on full throttle.

“Wahhhhhhh!”

“Are you crying or wearing me down with the tire!?”

“Ha ha ha. This is indeed the kind of flirting you will never grow tired of,” said Sayama. “And to think it is going to escalate further each and every day.”

Suddenly, they heard a certain sound in every direction.

A wave of metallic sounds reached them as people raised their guns and blades.

This audible intent to kill caused the white group to face their surroundings.

The three sections of the white army saw the color black surrounding them.

In that black, a girl with long hair stepped forward from the west. Her eyes met Sayama’s when he turned around.

“Well? What are you going to do? This is still a hopeless situation for you.”

Susamikado was finally beginning to get up, but Typhon was waiting in the sky and two large dolls remained unharmed on the surface.

The large dolls rotated the crowbars they held in their hands and held them up like scythes.

When those were swung down, it would remove at least a few people from their ranks.

But without watching them all tense up, Mikoku gave a shout.

“This ends here!!”

Those words were followed by a metallic sound.

However, it did not come from the crowbars. Before those metal scythes could reach them, a long pillar of light shot from the ground and into the giant dolls’ backs.

Mikoku and the black army gasped as Izumo pushed the motorcycle out of the way and stood up.

He held V-Sw over his shoulder as it contained the light and he smiled toward Kazami who had moved to the side.

“Fine, it’s my turn now. And Chisato, you go take that speech-loving idiot into the building.”

“M-me!?”

She looked surprised, so he reached his left hand out to her.

He spread his fingers, dropped the hand on her head, and rubbed it as if messing with her hair.

“Get going.”

She drew back her head from his hand but finally responded.

“You don’t leave me much choice.”

She peeled off his hand and turned toward the wall of black with G-Sp2 in hand.

“Sayama, let’s go. We’re pursuing Hajji. And it’s your job to stop him.”

“Oh? Why must the handsome negotiator trouble himself with that filthy physical labor?”

“Shinjou’s on the bottom level.”

“We must get there immediately! I cannot contain myself a moment longer!!”

Kazami sighed, turned her back on him, and faced the black army.

“Sayama, there was a lot I wanted to say to you.”

She squeezed her spear and raised her wings.

“But I really don’t even care anymore.”

She left those words in the air as she shot forward and smashed the wall of black.

Mikoku ran.

She had many comrades, she had the black dolls, and the wall blocking the enemy’s way was thick.

She was currently running through that wall.

She was moving beyond it and toward the white building’s entrance.

The girl named Kazami had just attacked to create a path for her and Sayama to reach the building.

Her comrades were of course trying to stop them. She could hear their footsteps, see them preparing their weapons, and see the wall growing denser.

But some people could neutralize a wall like that.

Hajji could, Jord could, and Tatsumi could.

“As can Concept Core wielders like her!!”

She ran onward while wondering if she fell under that category as well.

She just had to pass a few more people to reach the other side. If she ran diagonally to the entrance, she could pursue them as they approached the building.

She was certain this would work.

The enemy had to push through a greater number of people than she did.

If she caught up with them and started a fight, she would win. No matter what kind of attack they used on her, her regeneration ability would allow her to win. Once they attacked her and thought they had won, she could get in a fatal attack of her own.

…''And that will remove Hajji’s enemies!!

Her strategy would work. The Army would correct the world and the last remnants of the Concept War would vanish.

…''And I will part ways with Shino.

She shook off that sudden dark thought and gathered strength in her legs to run even faster.

But that was when she heard something to the right.

It was a strange sound.

She heard it along with flesh being struck, bones breaking, cries of pain, cries of surprise, the blowing wind, and loud footsteps.

It was the sound of a broken barrier.

“Did they already make it through!?”

Instead of thinking that was too fast, she was simply filled with disbelief.

But she saw the movement that proved it had happened.

Something flew through the air beyond the crowd to her right.

They were men wearing black armored uniforms. Some had been blasted into the sky by an uppercut or smash and others had dodged, but it was clear they had allowed something to get through down below.

And then more people sprayed outward.

On the edge of the human wall and in the position closest to the white building, a dozen or more people in black armored uniforms were blown away.

They flew into the air with their limbs sprawled out as two people ran through on the ground.

One was a girl with white wings raised and the other was a boy in a dark blue suit.

For some reason, Mikoku was seeing them from behind.

…''Strange. Why am I seeing their backs!? I should be ahead of them!

That meant they had breached the human wall faster than she had.

How had they been faster than her when she had an absolute advantage?

The answer was clear.

…''They truly were not thinking about anything more than breaking through.

“Kh!”

Mikoku ran while reminding herself Hajji had left this battlefield to her.

If the enemy made it through and pursued Hajji, it would be her responsibility.

They were around a dozen meters apart and she worked to fill that gap.

“…!!”

She could not speak, so she inhaled, filled her lungs, and raced across the asphalt.

But suddenly…

“Mikoku!!”

She heard a voice from overhead and wind reached her.

She looked up to see Typhon. The six white wings were moving to crush the smaller wings and the boy on the surface.

…''Is she going to stop them!?

Just as Mikoku hoped it was true, more wings flew in from behind.

These were four black wings and they crashed into Typhon.

“Mikage-san and I are your opponents!!”

The black god of war used all of its thrust to collide with the white one and send them both into the white building’s second floor. The building materials exploded and the white and black gods of war disappeared beyond the building.

That left Mikoku and her two enemies.

“They’re pulling away!?”

''Why?'' she wondered with clenched teeth.

But she remembered that those two had not turned around when Typhon had arrived overhead.

It was like they had known Susamikado would intervene.

''Why?'' she asked again. ''Why can’t I catch up to them?

“Ohhh!”

Her feet raced along to throw her body forward.

“!?”

But those feet suddenly slammed into the ground and came to a rapid stop.

She trembled, tensed her shoulders, and forced open her clenched teeth to shout.

“Who is getting in my way!?”

A white sword was stabbed into the asphalt ahead of her. It was buried down to the hilt.

Someone had thrown it to stop her pursuit.

The orientation of the hilt allowed her to predict the direction from which it had been thrown.

She turned toward the south side of the white building.

She remembered there being a path leading around back there and that some of their men had gone that way to take the lift leading down.

But those men were nowhere to be seen. Instead, she heard a voice.

The voice was singing a strange song.

It was a rap beginning with an “oh”.

“Oh, really? Really? Re-re-re-re-really? China’s capital ain’t Hong Kong, it’s – oh, yeah! – Be-Be-Be-Be-Beijing!”

She heard someone hitting nearby metal objects like a drunk.

“Be-Be-Be-Be-Beng-ji-ji-jing-jing-jing – ohhhhh, yeah! Menchegeda!!”

With that south, someone twisting and dancing jumped out from behind the building.

The young man wore a white combat coat and held a microphone wrapped in ribbons.

He nimbly performed two cartwheels and a moonsault and he raised his hands as he landed.

His song and actions brought everyone to a stop.

All focus was on him and he opened his mouth at the center of it all.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you all so very – apyaaahh!!”

He threw three splendid kisses with both hands, took a satisfied breath, and gave everyone a smile.

“Now, time to get chopping.”

“Who the hell are you!?”

The entire black army yelled at him and the entire white army held their heads in their hands.

In front of those two opposite actions, the young man brushed up his short hair.

“What, do you idiots not know the artist who brought all of America to tears? Okay, morons. I’ll say it in plain Japanese, so listen up. I’ll start with something simple. I may have already shaken America, but you know what’s going to happen when I make my debut?”

He raised his right hand and pushed on the empty air with each word.

“All! Of! America! Will! Bow! Down! To! Me! And naked at that!! What do you have to say about that!? In other words, my name is…”

However, he was not the one to finish his sentence.

That was done by Shino who held her blue philosopher’s stone southwest of the runway.

Her eyes opened wide when she saw him and she gave him a simple name.

“The rapist!!”

With that shout, the battle resumed.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_32|Chapter 32]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_34|Chapter 34]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 30

2014-12-27T00:34:35Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 30: Meeting Distance */

==Chapter 30: Meeting Distance==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0285.png|thumb]]
''Everyone says

''I can finally see you again

The battle began with black approaching white.

The runway acted as the stage. It was an asphalt corridor with two meter walls on either side.

A black army ran down that fifty meter wide path in a dense formation.

In all, there were around one hundred and twenty people in black armored uniforms.

Different colors of dogs ran along with them.

Their boots clattered across the ground, the barking of the dogs filled the night wind, and they all travelled west.

Their goal was the white building one thousand two hundred meters ahead.

“Hurry,” someone muttered even though they were already running full speed. “If we don’t hurry, the end won’t come.”

Someone else cried out in response.

“We have to end this!”

They all trembled and cheered. They sank down and accelerated further.

“We have to end this world and make a new one!!”

Strength filled their cheers and they tore through the wind.

They ran.

They never stopped running.

By running, they worked toward what they desired.

On the other hand, the white army was slow to react. The automatic dolls had been hijacked and left motionless.

Some attacks were coming from the white force, but it was still scattered.

This contrasted with the concentration and speed of the attacks from the black force.

Light shot to the left and right from the black army.

That light reached the people leaving the forest or station by the runway and it reached the anti-air defense field generators.

“…!”

Explosions filled all of those areas.

There was no fire, but countless sounds and pillars of smoke shook the ground and air.

As countless forms were blasted into the air, a five-man team split off from the black army to the left and right.

In the lead, Hajji turned toward them, raised his eyebrows and sounded like he was giving a casual greeting.

“Are you going so soon?”

The man in charge of the first unit on the right turned toward him.

“We’ll be going on ahead.”

The one in charge of the first unit on the left did the same.

“So will we.”

They scattered to the left or right.

“It’s time to fill them with regret!”

They cleared the side walls in a single bound and were met by explosive blasts and gunfire.

The black unit jumping to the right was intercepted by a group of automatons attacking from the side.

Mid-jump, they protected their bodies and heads with their right arms and began firing on the automatons with their left arms.

Their battle began on the grass lit by the flames of a distant burning prefab building.

The automatons seemed to spin around as they ran and jumped. They aimed their machineguns via perfect synchronization between their arms and eyes. They used a smart system that automatically aimed in the direction they were looking.

Their firing was so accurate that they did not waste a single bullet.

The black unit attacked from midair and the automatons attacked from the ground. And they fired.

Between the gunfire and flying sparks, the black unit clacked the heels of their boots together as they began to fall.

With a sound, rolling balls appeared on the bottom of their feet. All those balls did was spin, but…

“…!”

They only had to use the thrusters sticking out from their back armor to achieve great mobility.

As the five prepared to land, shimmering heat rose behind them.

“You can only use the thruster for thirty seconds!” shouted their commander. “Use it intermittently and carefully!!”

“You’re the worst one at using it, commander!”

“That’s why I get such good results!!”

They landed and bullets washed over them, but they let their armor deflect them.

“Our armor is thick! It’s heavy and overheats quickly, but everything ends here anyway. More importantly…”

The momentum of landing pushed the commander’s legs forward and he almost fell onto his butt, but instead…

“Outta the way, dolls!!”

The shimmering heat behind him burst open and his body quickly rose up.

They shot across the grass in an instant. Wind wrapped around them as they shot forward in a gouging arc toward the people returning from the northern forest. Those people were a mix of automatons and other UCAT personnel.

“We’re only interested in fighting the people of Low-Gear!”

The five black armored men tried to slip past the automatons, but the maids ran after them, turned around, and aimed their machineguns.

“We are already a part of Low-Gear.”

“I see. I apologize then. That’s a shame to hear, though.”

A maid jumped over the men’s head and continued forward.

This maid was the hijacked 101st.

She jumped high into the air, looked down on the stopped automatons, opened her mouth with the moon behind her, held a machinegun in her right hand, and held a combat knife in her left.

“————!!”

She howled.

The heavily armored men with prosthetics charged onward as if catch up with the canine howl.

The black army was now one thousand one hundred meters from the white building.

The running black army saw a white building up ahead.

As they ran against the wind, a small figure remained in the center.

It was Shino.

Shiro ran at her side, she controlled the dogs with the philosopher’s stone at her chest, and she looked forward past the others.

…''Mikoku.

Where was she? She was probably near the front, but Shino could only see the color black from where she was. The most she could make out was Hajji due to his height.

…''Where is she?

They had been in different trucks and she had only caught a glimpse of the girl’s back when they had formed up.

They had not spoken much at all for the past few days.

The last time they had spoken was three days before. Shino had brought up today, Mikoku had told her to stop talking about that, and they had gotten into an argument.

But once the battle was over, they could return to their normal lives. And that normal life would be even better than before because she would no longer need to feel guilty about the surrounding world.

…''But…

She was filled with a vague anxiety.

…''Does Mikoku think the same thing?

She had wanted to ask her even if only to have something to talk about together.

But there was something she wanted to say even more. It was a bad feeling that formed the foundation of her anxiety.

“When this fight is over…”

She muttered her fear in her heart.

…''When this fight is over, will she stay with me?

At the moment, Mikoku was definitely out toward the front. She had her back to Shino and Shino could not catch up. Shino raised her speed as if trying to reach the girl she knew was up ahead.

At that moment, she caught a glimpse ahead from behind those in front of her.

The information dogs running ahead on the runway suddenly shook.

“There are land mines!!” she shouted.

But that was not all.

The view up ahead changed slightly.

As everyone tried to stop, something previously unseen was revealed in front of the white building.

The objects appeared as if a shroud had been removed from the scene.

“Cannons!? Were they hidden with optical camouflage!?”

There were two metal cannons measuring four meters long. They had a caliber of 88mm. Not even a god of war would escape a direct hit unharmed.

They were positioned in order to block the asphalt corridor.

But Shino knew those around her would not slow down.

…''Let’s go.

As soon as that thought filled her heart, she heard a voice.

“I’m not afraid.”

Everyone cried out, sped up, and rushed forward.

They continued forward and the enemy responded to the sound of their pounding feet.

Two shells tore into the air.

The black army was one thousand meters from the white building.

The white army heard the sound of shellfire as they gathered in front of the white building.

It was a great roar.

The shockwave rushed out, struck the air, and shook the building’s windows.

The two horizontal shots reached their ears as a single deafening sound.

The cannons fired explosive shells.

Then again, the metal shells were fired at greater than the speed of sound, so a human body would be smashed to dust before they even exploded. They would only detonate once they struck a prosthetic body part with thick armor.

“!!”

Eight hundred meters ahead, two white explosions rose into the air.

The sound carried into the sky, but as they watched the smoke flutter and scatter in the wind, someone spoke aloud.

“Wait.”

They had all noticed something odd and they expressed it in words.

[[Image:OnC_v11_0295.jpg|thumb]]

“Why did they explode at eight hundred meters? Shouldn’t that have happened further back? They haven’t entered the kilometer long minefield yet.”

“Well…” said someone else trying to find an answer.

However, the answer revealed itself from beyond the smoke. It seemed to throw the smoke off of itself.

First, there was a large woman wearing a black armored uniform like a coat.

Next, there was a girl wearing a tattered black armored uniform.

The large woman threw aside her black armor as she walked and she spoke to the girl next to her.

“Of course it’s gonna explode if you stop it with your sword. Stop it with your body instead of wasting a perfectly good weapon.”

“Does it bother you that much to fight alongside someone so young, Jord?”

The girl skillfully removed her shoes as she walked.

“Let us make a game out of this.”

“Fine, Mikoku. I’m nice, so I’ll play along. And the rules are right in front of us. Do you understand?”

“I do. …It is a simple game: who can reach the other side of the minefield first? It’s an eight hundred meter dash. Or is it an obstacle course because of the shells? …But I am young, so I will do it barefoot.”

Jord began running even as Mikoku spoke.

“Th-that is cheating! That is a false start!”

Without looking back, Jord poked at her head with her right index finger.

Mikoku began to run as well, but she did turn back.

She saw the troubled look on Hajji’s face and shouted to the others.

“We will make a path to the entrance, so run, everyone. And let us all charge right in!”

Additional shellfire sounded as if answering her and multiple explosions came from Jord up ahead.

The black army was seven hundred meters from the white building.

The advance of the black army could not be stopped.

The woman and girl smashed the shells and the ones who jumped to the left or right stubbornly drew the gunfire.

There was no reason for the black army to slow as they ran down the center.

They simply had to continue on.

When they finally arrived within six hundred meters, a noise seemed to envelope the runway.

This was the rumbling of new boots running their way.

They all saw units of UCAT guards returning from the surrounding areas.

The footsteps came from the eastern end of the runway, the southern forest, and the northern forest. Approximately one hundred people arrived from each of those directions.

Those from the north and south came to crush the two small black units fighting there.

The ones from the east pursued the black army from behind.

Mikoku and Jord continued smashing the shells and literally racing across the minefield, but the two small black units drawing fire to the north and south were in serious trouble.

The white force arriving from the north first attacked the hijacked automaton named 101st.

“If possible, don’t hit her head!!”

The other automatons could not attack, but the men fulfilled their request.

Those in white armored uniforms ground their teeth and used their gunfire to smash the bones of the growling automaton.

Their bullets pierced her maid outfit and split her limbs and torso.

“————!”

She fell to the grass, but by that time, the hundred-strong force of white gunmen was already turning to the men in black armored uniforms.

The horizontal downpour of bullets acted as multiple weights to push back and destroy those heavily-armored prosthetic-enhanced bodies.

“What…”

The group in white shouted out as they ran forward.

“What are you hoping to accomplish!?”

The group in black shook from the impact and smiled despite not even having time to attack.

But behind them, the black army was only five hundred meters from the white building.

The small group in black spoke as they heard those footsteps and gunfire.

“Did you hear that!? They asked what we hope to accomplish. You all know what to do about that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

The five-man unit was surrounded by gunfire and filled with pain, but they opened their mouths.

“Ha ha!”

They laughed. Even as they curled up to ensure their bodies did not fall apart, they let their loud laughter carry across the ground as if it were an attack.

Immediately afterwards, gunfire sounded.

One of the men in the black unit had his arm armor blown off.

He lost his balance and was blown backwards by a bullet to the side of the chest.

He rolled along the ground and ended up sprawled out there, but…

“Ha ha… They don’t get it. They really don’t get it!!”

“What don’t we get!? Or… Do you really think you can win here!?”

“We can win.”

He sat up but took a bullet to the gut and collapsed forward.

He lay face down and trembled, but that was because he was laughing so hard.

“Ha ha. You’re going to lose. That’s a foregone conclusion. You’re going to regret defeating us. …And that regret will be your loss and make you disappear. So go ahead and feel regret, lose, and disappear.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. How could regret make us lose and disappear?”

“Do you know why the blank period was created?”

No one could answer that question.

The main black force was now within four hundred meters of the white building. Shellfire and gunfire shook the air to stop them and the fallen man in black armor stood up.

“You don’t know why it was created, do you?”

Despite his question, no one allowed him to continue.

Gunfire rang out in his direction, his armor was blasted away, and it all reached him as solid impacts.

But…

“Ah, such wonderful pain. Such wonderful shaking. …It’s all proof that you fear the past.”

Bullets hit him and sparks flew, but he did not go down. He cut the sense of pain in his prosthetics, removed their power limiters, and affixed a smile on his bloody face.

“Let’s end this together, allies of justice. That’s probably the happiest outcome for this world.”

One man in white swapped out his submachine gun’s magazine and asked the other man a question.

“What’s the point of hiding your reason for this!? Why hide it!?”

“Weren’t you listening? We need to fill you with regret. Telling you comes much, much later. Once most of us have been defeated, Hajji will tell you.”

“Why…then? Are you here to die? If the past you’re talking about is that serious, why not tell us now so we’ll surrender!?”

“That wouldn’t bring enough regret. …You need to defeat more and more and more of us. Then, when you think you’ve won, we’ll tell you just how wrong you’ve been. Now, gather your strength and defeat me. Prepare for your future worry! Otherwise, my defeat will be meaningless!!”

His cry was punctuated by gunfire from behind the white force.

Only after several people collapsed did they turn around.

Their eyes opened wide when they saw who stood there.

“An automaton?”

One of the automatons following them had her machinegun aimed at them.

One of the men in white frowned toward her.

“W-wait. There weren’t any dogs over here.”

“Woof.”

After a single gunshot, that man collapsed.

A cool breeze blew in and the gunfire stopped.

All that remained was he sound of white armored uniforms striking the ground and the smell of smoke rising from the muzzle of the automaton’s machinegun.

The black army had arrived within three hundred meters of the white building, but no one here could move.

Unable to breath, they saw a sudden tremor run through the automaton.

Her eyes refocused and she gave a look of surprise.

“Eh? Um, what was I just doing?”

No one should have been able to answer her, but one person did.

It was a man in black armored uniform with thin smoke and shimmering heat rising from different parts of his body.

He spat bloody saliva to the ground and smiled.

“You know mad dogs are contagious, right? Well, it turns out they can infect others via shared memory.”

“You can’t mean…”

“Oh, but I do. I’m sure you automatons won’t want to hear it, but those information dogs have gotten used to your shared memories and are running around working for their master. …Look.”

With those words, some light appeared.

The red light rose from the third floor of the disguised Japanese UCAT building.

An explosion rose into the air.

The exterior of the disguised Japanese UCAT building’s third floor was blown away by the color scarlet. It was the color of flames.

The third floor was being used to store the combat materiel to fight back against an attack.

That area midway up the building’s white wall was blasted into the sky with the sound of an explosion and the color of fire.

It was burning.

The black army was two hundred meters from the white building. As they continued to approach, the fourth and fifth floors of the building went dark and all of the windows spewed smoke into the sky like upside-down waterfalls.

Next came the destruction.

First was the noise. The noise of shaking wind, of crumbling building materials, of something still exploding, and of human cries of pain and fear.

With the support of the third floor gone, the fourth and fifth floors crumbled downward.

The building collapsed.

The fourth and fifth floors remained intact, but they tilted and crushed the north end of the lower floors and finally collapsed northward under their own weight.

Everyone heard the glass and other materials dumped to the ground.

The ground shook, dust made of building materials rose into the night sky, and smoke rose from the top of the disguised Japanese UCAT building that was now only two stories tall.

A man in a black armored uniform watched it from the north end of the runway and broke the surrounding silence with his laughter.

“Ha ha. You will lose through your regret, but you’ll also lose for real. Disappear from this world, UCAT.”

The men in white moved quickly in response.

The black army was now one hundred meters from the white building.

However, the reinforcements from the east were catching up, so the men in white here let out a shout while pulling their triggers.

“Then we’ll make sure nothing remains! Not even the regret you speak of!!”

“You should probably talk to them about that.”

Without bothering to avoid the bullets, the man in black armor pointed a trembling hand to the east.

The white reinforcements were running down the runway from the east. They were the guards who had returned from the surrounding areas.

However, other figures were approaching from even further back.

They were all feminine, they were all the exact same height, and they all had the exact same face.

“Automatons in black maid outfits?”

“No, they aren’t automatons. They’re just dolls. …There are three hundred of them. This is the army to announce the end.”

As if responding to those words, the group in black maid uniforms began to run.

Their approaching footsteps were light, but they sped up and reached a sprint.

At the same time, they prepared the weapons they wore on their backs.

Some had metal shields, some metal spears, and some metal bows and arrows.

The black maids split into three groups of about one hundred each.

Two groups approached the white forces on the left and right sides of the runway and one pursued the white force chasing after the Army on the runway.

They were already firing arrows which seemed to scream as they tore through the wind.

At the same time, the rear third of the Army’s main force split off.

They turned around to pin the approaching white force between them and the dolls coming up from behind.

They let out war cries as they clashed.

The three groups of white reinforcements all had an enemy to face, so they could not pursue the Army’s main force.

The Army simply had to rush in at the white building now.

Due to the minefield on the runway, the white army had no choice but to set up a barricade at the runway exit and intercept them there.

One side ran and the other side waited to receive them.

As soon as the battle settled into that arrangement, the man in black armor narrowed his eyes and laughed again.

“Ha ha. My role ends here.”

He collapsed onto the ground behind him.

Strength left his eyes as they looked up into the night sky. Smoke rose from explosions and began to hide the moon.

“I guess you can find light anywhere.”

But his eyes did see light.

It was an aircraft dropping down from the heights of the heavens.

A blue and white mechanical dragon was performing a power dive toward them.

An instant later, the blue and white dragon broke through an explosion of water vapor on its straight path for the ground.

It was after the black maids to the east.

It dropped through the night and sounded like it was tearing a hole in the wind.

At the same time, the Army’s main force completed its race down the runway.

The distance between the two sides had reached zero.

The arrangement of the battle changed from the black charge to the white interception.

Thunder Fellow made a midair transformation to his close-quarters combat form and opened his mouth as he dropped down.

As the light of his main cannon built in the back of his mouth, he first looked to the west.

A familiar building was in an unfamiliar state there.

When he saw the white building with smoke rising from it, a voice came from his external speakers.

“H-Harakawa, the disguised building was-…”

“Don’t panic, Heo. Panicking won’t turn it back to normal.”

In the cockpit, Harakawa aimed the main cannon west. He wanted to fire on the Army’s main force while they were still relatively high up, but…

“I can’t! UCAT’s interception team is too close.”

“We can still aim for the black dolls down below!”

“Right.”

He nodded and spun them around so they fell headfirst.

They were approximately one thousand meters above the ground.

From the falling cockpit, he saw a river of brand new asphalt cutting east to west through the dark grass.

That was the runway.

It was so large that it did not seem to approach even as they fell so quickly.

But Harakawa calculated their speed from the fall time and altitude and then opened his mouth.

“Heo, once I fire, twist your entire body and land. Jump west from there, accelerate in midair, and fly above the disguised building at supersonic speeds. Got that?”

“Eh? Why should we fly above the building? Shouldn’t we help the others?”

“How can we join that mess of a fight in something so big? We need to blow away the burning part of the building with a shockwave and then secure UCAT’s back entrance The lifts on the sides of the runway aren’t running to prevent anyone from getting in that way, but I’m pretty sure there’s a lift for sending out gods of war and the like in the back too. From what I’ve heard, the god of war belonging to that Sibyl woman was sent out through there during the battle with American UCAT.”

“…”

“What is it, Heo Thunderson? Do you have anything to add?”

“No, um… I was just thinking that you’re pretty reliable.”

“That has no bearing on our plan. Plus, you’re imagining it.”

He realized the main cannon was pointed straight down and they were already less than three hundred meters from the ground.

An explosion of recoil would reach them when firing the main cannon, but he had learned the close-quarters combat form could withstand it back when they destroyed Black Sun’s additional twin fuselage wings.

“I’m going to fire! Heo, focus the armor forward!”

“Oka-…!? Harakawa!”

Harakawa did not question her shouted response or the fact that the armor did not move.

Heo always had a reason when she failed to carry out her job and called his name.

He instantly realized he needed to fire the main cannon in a hurry.

“Rotate the armor to the rear!!”

He raised their downward acceleration and fired the main cannon.

“Go!!”

He had made the right decision, but he was too slow.

Thunder Fellow’s armor pointed toward his waist and the back of his legs to defend against an attack from behind. A moment later, something from the northern sky hit his waist.

It was a weak blast, but the red light had flown straight in from the side.

It was a solid hit.

“!?”

To protect Heo who had no idea what had happened, Thunder Fellow closed his rear accelerators on his own.

The internal heat instantly turned the accelerator shutters bluish white, but they blocked the red light and prevented it from reaching the internal components.

The blast still blew away a few panels of armor and blasted Thunder Fellow into the southern sky.

The main cannon was thrown off target, but there was no stopping it now.

It fired.

The white light hit the eastern end of the runway instead of the black dolls.

It then swept along the ground and its scorching heat diagonally chopped down countless trees in the southern forest.

The great force of the white light as it swept along the ground and forest was enough to tear the grass and trees from the ground.

And a moment later…

“!!”

The earth and forest struck by the main cannon blasted into the sky like a series of geysers.

Dirt, crust, and trees flew over two hundred meters into the night sky.

As that destruction instantly rose up like a wall, Thunder Fellow rapidly fell.

He entered a leftward tailspin and fell toward the southern forest.

“Kh!”

In the cockpit, Harakawa’s vision followed Thunder Fellow’s motions.

“Get up!”

He forcibly lifted the nose toward the sky, but it would not fully pull up.

The spin ended, but the downward momentum remained and Thunder Fellow slipped quickly toward the ground while tilted on his side.

“But we can pull this off somehow!!”

While the ground approached from the left, Harakawa opened the closed left side accelerators and used their full acceleration.

He tried to kick the aircraft forward as it prepared to crash into the ground, but the close-quarters combat form had weak acceleration.

Harakawa tried to point the nose up and to the right, but the momentum down and to the left was still stronger. The resultant trajectory was an arc that would tear into the forest to the left.

At this rate, they would crash into the trees and come to a stop.

…''Just like this morning!

Suddenly, he heard what sounded like Heo taking a breath.

“Don’t worry!”

A moment later, Thunder Fellow’s body floated.

His body went through a series of jumping motions as his legs kicked off the ground.

His back left leg forcibly kicked to the right along the ground speeding by below. His rear rose and his nose sank down.

He used that motion to bring both front legs to the ground and then kick upwards.

He began to run.

Once he started accelerating and racing forward, he could no longer fall.

The mechanical dragon cut past the people fighting south of the runway and drifted just above the forest.

Branches and leaves struck the left-side armor and scattered, but that was all.

He ran straight forward just a few dozen centimeters above the trees.

“We can do this!!”

Heo’s joyous voice was immediately followed by a sound from the ground behind them.

Several large blasts were striking the ground one after another.

“Is this what hit us before!?” asked Harakawa.

This was their enemy.

Something was pursing them from the sky behind and firing horizontally on them.

Just as Harakawa wondered who it was, it charged in from behind.

It was a mechanical dragon.

It was painted red and blue with points of white added and its sharp face was turned their way.

“Ha ha ha! Mechanical Dragon Alex, the Ally of Justice, has arrived!!”

The mechanical dragon named Alex opened his mouth.

Red light had already gathered in that maw of metal.

His voice rang out during his high-speed flight just above the forest.

“Special Attack! Censure Beam – Alex Breeeeeaaaaath!!”

Thunder Fellow determined the time lag just before the red main cannon was fired and used his leg strength to fly up into the air.

After a beat, the color red shot by below.

It tore through the forest and destroyed the spare disguised building in the distance.

Just as the roar passed by below his stomach, Thunder Fellow let the wind wash over him and faced upwards.

“!”

He changed to his normal cruising form.

He made full use of his rear thrusters and began a vertical ascent with torque-filled acceleration.

Power built up for just an instant, but the literal moment of acceleration arrived immediately afterwards.

Thunder Fellow flew toward the heavens.

The forest visible below instantly grew to an ocean of trees and Harakawa clicked his tongue within the intense Gs of acceleration.

“Dammit. What was with that enemy!? But we should have lost him. That stupid mechanical dragon looked like a non-transforming type, so he can’t accelerate right after firing his-…”

Reality betrayed Harakawa’s words. The blue and red dragon rose from below, calmly lined up to their right, and then reduced his acceleration. He was saying that his acceleration was even greater than theirs.

“Impossible!”

But Harakawa saw the answer to his confusion.

Alex’s back, chest, and waist were covered in additional accelerators and additional tanks filled with rocket propellant.

“Whether it’s firing your main cannon or whatever else, do you leave it all to brute force!?”

“Justice must have strength!”

Alex immediately continued with anger in his voice.

“But you have exactly the kind of skill I would expect of the evil organization’s generals. After all, you dodged my Alex Beam!”

“U-um, wasn’t it Alex Breath? Also…”

“What is it, girl?”

“Of course we’re going to dodge your attack when you shout its name in advance.”

“Don’t be silly!!!”

Alex sternly rejected that idea. He clenched his front right leg into a fist that trembled with great strength.

“You clearly know nothing of the world, girl. Did the evil organization strap you to a chair, put a headset on you, and brainwash you!? Listen, girl. I will give a logical explanation. It is true that your opponent can avoid your attack when you shout its name, but why must an ally of justice make a surprise attack by not announcing his special move? Even a war begins with a declaration of war!”

He raised his front right leg.

“That is why an ally of justice must train hard! He must develop an attack that cannot be avoided even when you shout its name and strike a pose! He must develop an attack that is sure to hit, no matter the situation!! That is what makes a true special attack! But you just avoided mine. Not only does that mean that you are an excellent foe, but it also means- …Hey, wait! Where are you going!? Our discussion of justice is not over yet!”

Thunder Fellow turned his back on justice, spun around, and descended.

Their opponent wanted to fight from relatively close range, so there was no point in switching to his high-speed cruising form that focused on top speed. They would need to use normal cruising form or close-quarters combat form, but Alex had greater acceleration with his additional accelerators.

But they had an overwhelming advantage when it came to durability and tight turns and Alex’s own weight would affect his movement up or down. They also had an advantage when it came to stopping in midair because they were lighter.

If the enemy was pursuing them, they could build up speed, come to a rapid stop, and let him shoot out in front of them.

That was their plan.

But as Thunder Fellow began to drop, he heard a voice from overhead.

“Oh, I get it! You’ve realized you don’t stand a chance, so you are trying to run. …Then take this!!”

Strange intro music played in the sky above. It was filled with static as if it had been taken from an old cassette tape.

“New Special Attack! Explosive Destruction – Alex Ciiiiiircus!!”

Harakawa saw Alex transform overhead.

No, this was not a transformation. Most of the armor panels on the top of his body opened and missiles appeared underneath.

If they were fired, the attacks would pour down like a waterfall. Even if they avoided them all, the damage to the surface would be devastating.

“You idiot! Your own people are down there too!”

“You don’t understand, boy. Missiles avoid the just!!”

He prepared to fire, but an attack stopped him right before he did.

A white line had flown in from the southern sky.

“!?”

After the strike to his stomach armor, Alex covered the missiles with his armor and immediately ascended.

“Ambushing is a cowardly act!”

He directed his voice to the south and Harakawa looked in that same direction.

He saw a black form with wings. On its shoulder was a girl holding a giant cannon.

“Hiba and…Shinjou!!”

Susamikado entered the dogfight.

Or rather, it forced its way into it.

In the windy sky, Alex rose above Susamikado and opened his upper armor again.

“Begone, ambushers! …Special Attack! Countless Explosions – Alex Missiles!!”

A flower blossomed in the sky before Susamikado could react.

The radiating flower was made from the propellant smoke expelled by hundreds of guided missiles.

All of the missiles immediately curved toward Susamikado, twisted around, and shot forward like salmon swimming upstream.

Susamikado accelerated. It curved upwards to prevent Alex from escaping and chose a path that brought the missiles after itself.

The light missiles burning their propellant were faster than the giant flying with its metal wings.

A few of them collided with each other and exploded, but most of them drew hundreds of lines through the air, trailed smoke behind themselves, and pursued the black wings.

“Kh!!”

Susamikado repeatedly flapped its wings and twisted its body.

Its speed and position looked like it was falling into the heavens as it rotated to face the approaching missiles.

A moment later, the pursuing missiles were hit by something and exploded.

This was due to Shinjou on Susamikado’s shoulder.

Ex-St rested on her shoulder and her fingers were placed on the weapon’s side trigger.

“This isn’t easy when it isn’t Tiger Star!!”

Susamikado avoided the missiles at uniform speed while Shinjou brushed her fingers across the trigger to scatter intercepting shots.

The white shots flew overhead, to the left and right, and down below. They struck the approaching missiles and destroyed the warheads flying forward as if to strike them.

She shot them down.

Their bodies and their trails of propellant smoke twisted and they blossomed with flames as if to decorate the sky.

At the front of it all, Susamikado flapped its wings to accelerate and kicked its feet to control the wind. When a missile flew into a hard-to-target spot, Shinjou would twist her own body and sometimes even rotate all the way around.

They had destroyed over half of the pursuing barrage, but countless others broke through the fiery explosions.

But Shinjou continued to fire. Her sweat flew into the sky, her clothes whipped in the wind, and she moved about.

Similarly, Susamikado created explosions of air behind itself to accelerate.

It was under strong enough Gs that not even Mikage’s gravitational control could negate it all, but she made sure to provide perfect gravitational protection for Shinjou.

In the weight of those Gs, Susamikado swung its body around to avoid the missiles and forcibly swung its left hand toward those approaching warheads.

Amid the surging noise of the wind, Shinjou ran out to the end of that extended hand.

As if stepping out onto a stage, she spun around and ran atop the hand while firing into the entirety of the heavens.

“…!”

She opened her mouth, closed one eye, and used her kinetic vision to locate and fire on each and every warhead.

A chain of fiery explosions filled her entire vision as a wall of flames.

Most of the guided missiles were damaged and burst.

Next, Ex-St’s barrel let out a sound like it was exhaling and white smoke burst from it.

The barrel had overheated and burnt out.

But the enemy had not been eliminated. Several white lines of smoke broke through the flames and flew their way.

Their numbers had dropped below triple digits, but this was the final pursuit. Like snake heads rising to strike, they spiraled and trembled in their approach.

Shinjou instantly took in a breath. She held Ex-St in her left hand and turned around. She also swung her body to the left and held her right palm forward.

“Bomber!!”

Susamikado matched her movement by swinging its right hand.

“Keravnos!!”

A deafening noise came from its right arm.

A concept space expanded around the arm’s exterior and Keravnos’s parts appeared in their disassembled state.

First, the rear attachment arm, bottom frame, and five shock absorbers appeared. Next came the acceleration thruster, attachment arm, and upper counter heads to hold in the guiderail.

Five spears of light appeared and the eighteen metal bolts jabbed into the other parts to bring it all into shape.

The harmony of metal fitting together rang through the sky.

“————!!”

A swing of the arm struck the empty air. A three hundred meter wide blast of lightning instantly shot from the tip of Keravnos. The missiles struck the lightning and were smashed to pieces.

Countless fiery explosions filled the light.

It looked like a wall of light.

Seeing and hearing all that, Shinjou gave a relieved smile and waved a hand toward Susmikado’s face.

“I’ll leave the rest to you.”

She took a light step and jumped down from Susamikado’s shoulder.

Hiba said nothing and neither did Mikage. They understood. Thunder Fellow was below and they all knew he would catch Shinjou.

So Susamikado immediately faced the mechanical dragon several hundred meters overhead.

“Nnn! Not once, but twice!? This time, I will not go easy on you!!”

“Sorry, but isn’t that the villain’s line?”

“Hm? Ryuuji-kun, what do you mean?”

“You saw that rerun last night, didn’t you? Y’know, that robot anime Getterman about the three villains who use a combining robot powered by Dyna Rays to destroy the underground people. Last night’s highlight was ‘Eye, nose, and mouth!’.”

“Hm. Boy, you seem to know a bit about justice!”

“No, not that much. …More importantly, you should probably look to the east.”

Alex did as Hiba suggested.

Susamikado also checked in that direction where it saw around a dozen flickering lines of air.

“So American UCAT’s mechanical dragons have arrived. After that, their transport planes and trucks should bring soldiers to-…”

Hiba never finished speaking.

Fire blossomed in the night sky.

A dozen flames appeared at the front end of the flickering lines of air.

“The mechanical dragons…”

They had all been shot down at once.

Why was obvious at a glance.

At some point, a white form had appeared in the sky where those twelve dragons had been.

The giant god of war had six white wings.

“Typhon,” muttered Mikage.

But that was not all. Below Typhon, a group of three large figures was visible on the Okutama mountain road leading to UCAT.

Instead of gods of war, they looked like black armor placed on a giant doll framework.

“Dolls?”

A slight tremor entered Hiba’s voice and a female voice reached him from Typhon’s shoulder.

“That’s right. They’re remote-controlled dolls. I’m not controlling anything other than Typhon, though.”

“Miki…”

“C’mon, Ryuuji-kun. Didn’t I tell you I’m going by the name Tatsumi here?”

Tatsumi smiled and raised her right hand toward him at shoulder height. Typhon responded by flapping its wings and drawing the twin swords sticking out from its shoulders.

Tatsumi smiled and Hiba asked a question through the wind and to that smile.

“What is the meaning of this!? Why are you going by the family name of Nagata!?”

“That may be your mother’s maiden name, but it is also my real name. And…you will soon see why I insist on using it. Hajji and the others will make their way into UCAT before long.”

“The field operations division led by Abram is at UCAT. Do you really think they can get inside?”

“Just watch. Hajji is about to make a bit of a speech. That should get them inside. And after that, he will give a second speech. …That speech will tell the whole truth.”

With those words, Typhon accelerated. It quickly approached and the three dolls walked along the surface.

“Not long now until you know the truth and reasons behind all those mysteries. Why are we here? Why are we enemies? What are you? What happened in the past? And…on which side does righteousness fall?”

Just as Typhon raised the swords in its hands, she spoke with a smile.

“Don’t die before you get to hear it.”

The sound of the collision was the ring of metal.

Below the night sky, a brawl of gunfire and clashing swords had begun in front of a white building that had lost its top.

A group dressed in white armored uniforms fought a group dressed in black armored uniforms.

They were defending or targeting a single thing.

That thing was the white building’s entrance. The lobby beyond contained a staircase and elevators to the underground area.

The evacuation of noncombatants was complete, the elevators had been stopped, and the stairs were shuttered off, but the black army pushed onward as if to say they could manage despite that.

Many had fallen, but they pushed on all the harder for each and every one that did.

The white army leaving the building to meet them was almost entirely made up of those who had been on the first two floors.

The main entrance to the underground area was closed and the large lifts on either side of the runway were still sealed off by their explosion-resistant hatches. They enemy had appeared so close by that they could have gotten in through the hatches as they opened.

But there was one place that underground reinforcements could reach them from: behind the building.

An underground elevator for carrying materials was located between the building and the vegetable garden.

The elevator lift was approximately five meters square. It was large enough to carry a standing god of war.

After completing their preparations, a unit led by Sibyl and her god of war had risen from the deepest underground area.

The gunfire and shouts beyond the building told Sibyl the battle was still underway in front of the building. She smiled and turned toward the men in armored uniforms who had come with her.

“You defend this place while I head out front. A god of war should help intimidate the enemy near the entrance. …And Abram-sama should be out front.”

As soon as she said that, a roar passed by overhead.

She initially thought it was the wind, but two aircraft had already flown by into the western sky.

…''Thunder Fellow is in a dogfight with the mechanical dragon known as Alex!

Thoughts raced through her head, her eyebrows raised, and she filled with relief.

She was relieved that Team Leviathan was fighting and that the rest of them would be gathered here before long.

And her prediction was soon proven at least partially correct.

Two people approached from the direction in which the building had collapsed. One was Shinjou holding Ex-St and a wicker basket while she supported the other person.

“Arnavaz-sama!?”

Arnavaz was dragging her right leg.

Shinjou then noticed Sibyl.

“Sibyl-san! Arnavaz-sama is hurt! She was in Abram’s room on the fifth floor.”

“I’m glad she isn’t more hurt. That must be because the collapsed portion mostly maintained its shape.”

Sibyl gave a look of relief as she and the others welcomed in Arnavaz and Shinjou.

“Are you hurt too, Shinjou-sama?”

“No, I’m fine. Thunder Fellow carried me here, but I’m more worried about them. They’re being chased by a strange mechanical dragon. …Also, there’s this.”

Shinjou lifted the wicker basket along with Ex-St.

The basket contained Baku and…

“It seems this photograph is from the early days of UCAT. Heo gave it and Baku to me because she said they weren’t safe with her, but what do I do with them?”

As she spoke, a low sound like fluttering cloth would occasionally reach them from the sky above.

Arnavaz trembled at that sound of explosions.

“The sky is roaring.”

“Testament. Do not worry, Arnavaz-sama. Abram-sama is fighting. …Shinjou-sama, you head underground with Arnavaz-sama. Ooshiro Itaru-sama has ordered that we fortify the sixth basement.”

“The sixth basement?”

“Testament. That is the Concept Core storage space and…I do not know the details, but it is said to hold a sealed concept space facility. It is most likely from the blank period.”

Shinjou opened her eyes wide but soon raised her eyebrows and corrected her expression.

She then asked a question.

“U-um, what about Sayama-kun? Is he still not back?”

“Unfortunately, he has yet to arrive. Nor have Chisato-sama or Izumo-sama.”

Shinjou’s eyebrows twisted at that.

Arnavaz must have noticed the change to her mood because she turned to her.

“He will certainly be here.”

“B-but…”

“Yes,” said Arnavaz. “He is your Fereydun, isn’t he? Then he will be here to take your hand.”

She held Shinjou’s hand between her wrinkled hands.

She did not say much and she only supported her hand, but after a while, Shinjou’s expression changed with the distant gunshots in the background.

She took a breath, slightly raised her eyebrows, and nodded.

“You’re right,” she said more to herself than anyone. “He’ll be here and he’ll try to show off when he arrives. That’s just the kind of idiot he is. …Ah!”

Her surprise came from something in her hand.

Baku suddenly poked his head over the edge of the basket, jumped down to the ground, and ran off.

He ran toward the front of the building that had become a battlefield.

“I-it’s dangerous over there!!”

She reached out a hand but could not reach him. Baku did not even look back as he vanished around the corner of the building.

“Ahh.” Shinjou took a few steps and her shoulders shook. “Wh-what do I do?”

“Testament. You can only hope for his safety, but I have determined his dangerous journey is only one-way. He has likely caught Sayama-sama’s scent from somewhere nearby.”

Shinjou turned around with a look of surprise and Sibyl smiled.

“Please head underground, prepare the equipment you need, and defend from there. We will fight here to ensure Sayama-sama can reach you.”

Still smiling, she raised her hands and had the silver god of war do the same.

“Head out!!”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_29|Chapter 29]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_31|Chapter 31]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 29

2014-12-26T03:50:58Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 29: The First Step */

==Chapter 29: The First Step==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0259.png|thumb]]
''That walk is swift

''That walk is strong

''That walk never ends

Hajji opened his eyes in the darkness.

The surrounding darkness confused him. He did not know where he was.

He only knew he was sitting on something that shook and he was surrounded by shadow.

…''Where am I?

He then remembered he was inside a moving vehicle.

He was on the way to UCAT for the attack that night.

He checked his watch and found less than an hour had passed since they had gathered in front of the Takao factory.

He shrugged his drowsy shoulders in annoyance and he heard a woman speak in front of him.

“You sure are calm. You seemed to be having a pretty good dream.”

He saw a large woman in a white combat coat. It was Jord.

She smiled bitterly, but he gave no response and looked around to check on the situation.

The back of the transport truck had been transformed into a hangar and men and women were standing silently along the left and right wall. They were accompanied by another three trucks that would also be filled with pre-battle tension.

In the night, he heard the wind blowing across the truck and the tires racing along the road.

In front of him, Jord opened her mouth to break the silence.

“It certainly is strange to be fighting alongside you. …10th and 9th never got along and, if it hadn’t been for all of you, my friend and daughter wouldn’t have died so soon.”

“I see. I’m sure you’re just angry, but I suppose I’ll ask. Yes. What was your friend’s name?”

“Aley.”

Hajji covered his mouth with a hand and lowered his eyebrows.

“That would indeed be my fault. Yes. A real shame.”

“Well, it was technically due to 9th-Gear’s politicians. 9th-Gear’s king took a holy spear containing half of 9th’s concepts to Low-Gear and died there. That didn’t leave enough power to activate Zahhak.”

“When I returned, I tried to stop Zahhak’s activation for that very reason, but the palace had a connection to an underground organization in 10th-Gear and they stole Thor’s Hammer to use the 10th concepts it contained to help activate Zahhak. Yes, that was quite the commotion.”

''That must have been a tough time for the politicians too,'' he thought.

…''And after Thor’s Hammer was brought back and Shahrnavaz gave up…

“She combined with Zahhak as its brain to protect me from the false accusations of abandoning the king.”

“What? Did you say something?”

“No, nothing. Nothing at all, Jord. That has nothing to do with anyone but me. Yes. …But a group with no one controlling it is always a problem no matter what time period you’re talking about. Isn’t that right? In the early days, a lot of people in the Army tried to randomly take revenge on UCAT.”

“So you purged your own followers, leaving you with the group you have now?”

“That’s right,” said Hajji.

The truck shook as it turned left and tilted up a slope. It was a long slope leading up a mountain.

“I see. So we’ve started to cross the mountain leading into Okutama. Not long until he battle now. …With the people here and the doll unit coming later, we should be able to reach the center of Japanese UCAT.”

“But how do you plan to eliminate the concepts?”

“I have a way. Yes. And I know where they can be destroyed.”

“Where they can be destroyed?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I’ve only ever heard of it, but the person who explained it actually saw it there. They said we could ‘do whatever we wanted’ with the concepts if we go there. …And I’m sure UCAT would end up there if they did complete the Leviathan Road.”

“Where is that?”

“Why do you want to know? But either way, I will end up talking about that tonight. You can look forward to it if you like. …More importantly, all of you need to think about what to do afterwards. The concepts of the other worlds will no longer belong to UCAT. Your concepts that support your reservations will be the only ones left.”

As he spoke, the floor shook vertically.

Everyone in the back of the truck lowered down and held their weapons close.

Meanwhile, Hajji continued.

“Once the concepts are taken from UCAT and destroyed and once UCAT itself is defeated, the different Gear reservations will have to adjust from being protected and ruled by UCAT. This will reset the world. I suppose 4th and 8th will fall under 10th’s protection.”

“Are you trying to create a new world?”

“No, we will return Low-Gear to its original form. Once the Gears are no longer held hostage through the Concept Cores and reservations, they can hold proper negotiations with Low-Gear. Yes, that would be for the best. Everything will return to a blank slate and continue from there. We only need to crush UCAT and disappear ourselves.”

The truck sped up and everyone prepared their weapons.

Once the speed lowered and the truck came to a stop, the attack would begin.

As the truck descended to its destination, Hajji held his own weapon and formed a slight smile.

“We are not creating a new world. We are creating what can be called the true world.”

Kazami gathered her things in a moonlit room.

She put her half coat on over X-Wi and held G-Sp2 with a bag wrapped around the tip.

“It’s dark,” said the spear’s console.

“Bear with it. I’ll remove it once we get outside.”

She extended a hand toward the corner of the room where two fist-sized spheres floated.

One was blue and the other black.

They swayed as her hand reached them. They almost seemed to be hesitating.

But soon the blue sphere seemed pulled in toward her and the black one followed.

They flew to either side of her and into her half coat’s pockets.

She started to close the pockets, but smiled bitterly and stopped.

“Why do inorganic things seem to like me so much?”

She looked across the room.

The baby was no longer on the chair. She had returned it to its original place before the concept space vanished.

V-Sw leaned against the wall. The armor-covered sword’s shape had changed somewhat.

Its console flashed randomly and Izumo slept in the bed next to it.

Izumo’s left arm stuck out from the bed. The solid cast on the elbow had broken and a fairly pale left arm grew from there. It was a newly made arm.

“Was that the healing power of 10th-Gear’s world tree and the power of destruction and regeneration of 6th-Gear?”

Some things felt a little off inside her own body. Some areas seemed to be moving a little better as if they had been modified.

She looked over at V-Sw and G-Sp2.

“You forgave me just once for not understanding you and losing because of it, didn’t you? But the next time I lose will be for real, so that won’t happen again. Isn’t that right?”

“We are strict.”

She smiled a little at that blunt response and looked at Izumo who seemed to be sleeping.

“Thank you. I would have died if you hadn’t protected me. And I need to thank the others too. I need to thank them for being with me.”

She slowly lowered her head and placed her lips on his.

After some damp time passed, she moved away.

“I’m going on ahead. And remember. From now on, my heart will not go with you. Even when we’re walking side by side, remember that I will be hoping to go with you. And…”

And…

“I think I’ll try to have more confidence in myself. No matter what anyone says and no matter how much I worry over what my actions lead to, I’ll always try to do my very best.”

She smiled.

“So I’ll always be fresh.”

She looked at V-Sw and the words written on the white sword’s console.

“See you later.”

“Right.”

She nodded, stepped out the door, and entered the hallway.

She hesitated for a moment but began to run.

The head nurse looked her way from in front of the nurse station.

“Oh, are you really okay? It seems everyone is rushing over here.”

“I’m fine, so please tell them to head back. I’ll go meet them myself.”

She held up G-Sp2 with the bag over it.

The head nurse’s eyes stopped on the weapon and finally seemed to realize it had been repaired. She looked surprised and smiled.

“Do your best.”

“I will.”

Just before she started down the stairs, Kazami spotted someone in front of the nursery window.

…''It’s that child’s mother.

The woman looked at her just like before.

“Are you heading out? And with some big tool?”

“Yes, well… It’s for a bit of a part time job.”

“Is that so?”

The woman tilted her head but gave a genuine smile.

“The head nurse told me something odd just now. She said you saved my child.”

“I’d say it was the opposite actually.”

“Eh?”

“Oh, and sorry. …I took his first kiss. But I had a reason for it, so don’t get the wrong idea.”

Kazami bowed and the woman looked down at her in utter confusion.

But when she looked back up, the woman tilted her head.

“First kiss? Um, I’m not quite sure what you mean…but my child is a girl.”

“Eh?”

Kazami dropped her head forward and looked the woman in the eye.

“…”

She swallowed her voice and let out a deep laugh.

She doubled over, came to a personal understanding, and suddenly looked up.

She nodded toward the mother of the child who had helped her out.

“Thank you very much.”

As soon as she raised her head again, she ran down the stairs.

She skipped one step, then two, and desired to continue on and on.

…''How strange.

Why did she feel so lighthearted and elated?

Her heart felt like wind. It would sometimes blow violently along, crash into a wall, and smash to pieces, but it would also rise into the air as it freely went where it pleased.

This had to be a time for that positive side of the wind.

“Yes.”

As she descended the staircase, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter. It was the letter of advice Brunhild had left.

It was a little late for that, but she opened it anyway and found a single line of writing.

“I’m sure an idiot like you will win regardless, so I’m not going to write anything.”

“Well, of course.”

She quickly jumped down the circling staircase.

She ran outside and into the moonlit night wind.

A band of light shined below the night sky.

The light illuminated a long strip of asphalt in a valley between mountains.

It was a runway.

The asphalt covering the three kilometer runway was brand new.

In exchange for the new asphalt, thick walls two meters tall continued along either side of the runway. They were barricades made using the piles of the old broken asphalt.

The top of the barricades had been made roughly flat and a few figures walked along them.

They were automatons wearing UCAT combat maid outfits and philosopher’s stones that allowed them to remain active in the outside world.

They carried machineguns at their waists and they constantly monitored their surroundings with their sight and concept senses.

There were so few of them on patrol because their individual senses could cover a wide area, but they would be replaced by other maid automatons quite frequently. This also helped provide a change of pace since they would otherwise be inside all the time.

They were deployed to more areas than just the runway. Some were in the southern and northern forests and some were in the front of the 1st-Gear reservation to the west.

They patrolled in groups of two, but they did not communicate with their voices.

They handled everything through their shared memory.

“This is 56th Iris on patrol with #57. Nothing to report at the southwestern edge of the southern forest.”

“Testament. Please return. #93 and 94th Camellia are next, so they will take your place.”

“Yes, sir. …What are you working on there?”

“Currently, we are opening up most of the camouflaged building’s third floor and piling up the equipment and explosives in case of an attack. The cafeteria will act as a base and this will be the storage area. To prevent an external attack, the defense shutters have a concept saying ‘—You cannot enter here’ applied.”

“Yes, sir. This is using a lot of special equipment, so I have determined it must be tough. I hear Lady Miyako took command of Izumo UCAT’s mass-production of reflection concept philosopher’s stones to oppose the thought compulsion concept that girl used when she visited UCAT.”

“Testament. Those arrived by air a while ago and have been carried to the third floor. I have determined they will be helpful.”

The automatons used their shared memory to transfer what they saw as data.

Large concept barrier emitters were set up at the four corners of the runway.

The devices had six barrel-shaped metal objects arranged in a circle, they each created an area of gravitational control around themselves, and they prevented large machines from flying. Their effective range was approximately five kilometers. As soon as an unregistered philosopher’s stone reading was scanned approaching through the air, the reading would be taken inside the concept space and sent straight down.

The automatons covered the ground and the barrier emitters covered the sky.

Just in case, a prefab station was set up by the runway. Light still came from the prefab building located next to kneeling gods of war hidden by covers. If anything happened, the god of war pilots could immediately board them.

Negotiations were underway to have other countries’ UCATs help with security, but American UCAT’s Yokota branch had decided on its own to rush over in an emergency. If anything happened, their mechanical dragons would arrive within ten minutes.

In truth, Japan had wanted American UCAT to remain in Japanese UCAT permanently, but the other nations’ UCATs had put a stop to it so that the United States would not gain such an advantage. Unfortunately, that had led to the other nations’ UCATs hesitating to help with security now.

They were currently planning to have a meeting on the subject come November.

The automatons were aware of all this and they had their own thoughts on it.

“Yes, sir. This world has yet to unify itself,” said one.

“Testament. That means world peace is reliant on our work here.”

Happy to be given work like that, they continued to move.

Their vision could see through the darkness and see heat.

However, one could easily hide from that using concept camouflage.

Their greatest advantage was their ability to detect faint philosopher’s stone readings while only being the size of a human.

The Army’s weapons would be altered with concepts.

During day or night and even when hidden by cover, their eyes could pick up on readings that normal sensors would miss. The effective range of their senses was approximately two kilometers.

Just in case, they formed groups of two. On top of that, the automaton guard groups were given patrol routes that overlapped.

The humans would use sensors and their own eyes from the runway and building and the automatons would make long range patrols.

If they sensed a philosopher’s stone reading, they could send word over their shared memory and immediately have others sent in.

And they worked diligently.

They continued to share a number of words and reports.

“Yes, sir. But is it really efficient for half of us to use ‘yes, sir’ and the other half to use ‘testament’?”

“Then what should we say instead, #93?”

“Why not take the start of one and the end of the other for ‘yestament’ or ‘tes, sir’?”

“I have determined that does not change very much.”

“Yes, sir. 101st Lotus here. Then how about the start of both or the end of both for ‘yestes’ or ‘sirtament’?”

“That is an excellent decision, 101st. How about we see what #8 thinks? …#8?”

They all listened to #8’s unedited thoughts.

“Listen, Ooshiro-sama. How many times do I need to tell you? You are not going to trick me by pretending to pass out again.”

After a while, the automaton that had asked for #8’s opinion spoke again.

“Everyone, I have determined #8 is enjoying her job.”

“Yes, sir. 101st Lotus here. I will add ‘waiting for #8’s response’ to my remaining tasks. …Oh.”

“What is it, 101st? Did something happen?”

“Yes, sir. I spotted a puppy and a black dog. They are wearing collars, so there is nothing strange about-…”

But her voice vanished. The supervisor automaton waited several seconds which was a very long time for an automaton.

“101st Lotus, #100? What is the matter? …I can still detect your presence.”

She received a response via their shared memory, but it was not in words.

The response was as follows.

“Woof.”

The automatons mentally tilted their heads at the voice they heard and they all mimicked it.

“…Woof?”

After a while, the one who had given that response, 101st, spoke.

“Oh… S-sorry about that.”

“Of course…but are you okay? If there is a problem with your memory functions, you can go in for maintenance.”

“I’m fine. I think it was just a moment of confusion and we were on our way there anyway. Send in our replacement.”

“Your replacements are #75 and #77. They just left, so you should be able to see them from there.”

Sudden noise reached them from 101st’s location.

It was gunfire.

Immediately afterwards, static ran through their shared memory.

The supervisor shouted out in response to the static.

“#75 and #77’s functions are dropping! They have been shot!! This is an enemy attack! Determine the enemy’s location!”

After receiving that shared thought, all of the automatons outside headed southwest.

But when they got there…

“101st Lotus here. …Nothing to report.”

“This is #98 in charge of the southern area. I have arrived as well, but there is nothing to report. …Eh? …Kh!”

That voice was accompanied by more gunfire.

After another pause, the supervisor spoke without knowing what to do.

“#98 and #99’s functions are dropping…”

The automatons below the night sky saw something in the southwestern forest. Their thermal vision saw 101st and #100 aiming their machineguns toward the southern area #98 and #99 had been in charge of.

“Why?” one of them muttered.

At the same time, brief silence filled their shared memory.

They all performed high-speed scans on each other and confirmed their settings.

All of the automatons had been given a certain setting as a family.

“We cannot destroy other automatons of our type and only 1st through 3rd can remove that setting from themselves.”

But the footage arriving from the vision of those on the runway showed 101st and #100 firing their machineguns to the southeast. More gunfire reached their ears.

“This is 108th Sasanqua. We are under attack from 101-…”

The voice cut off there.

This left a single fact.

The automatons with the numbers 101 and 100 were being controlled by some kind of power.

However, none of them could act. They wanted to stop the two of them, but their settings prevented them from destroying their fellow automatons.

But then how could those two destroy them so easily?

They could not find an answer. To change that, they all spoke to the supervisor.

“Send out UCAT!!”

But before they received a response, another voice reached them.

It was 101st’s voice.

“Woof.”

Their minds froze up when they heard that mimicked dog bark again.

And then they heard it a third time, but that was followed by another voice.

“Ahem. Can you hear me, automatons? Well? Hm?”

“…”

The automatons’ minds ground to a halt.

They did not recognize this voice at all.

“…”

The automatons could not move.

There were three reasons for this.

First, how had someone else cut into their shared thoughts?

Second, they had no idea how they were supposed to react to this unexpected turn of events.

And third, they could not determine what was going to happen.

What were they supposed to do?

All of them decided they had to tell someone other than themselves about this.

But they could not.

Their thoughts and their shared memory were being locked down by someone else. Their shared memory used machines as an intermediary, but unlike Low-Gear’s artificial intelligences, theirs were true artificial thoughts.

It should have been impossible for anyone else to intervene.

That was why their automatic thoughts determined this was some kind of misunderstanding.

However, they also wondered if this could possibly be a misunderstanding.

This was affecting every single one of them, so that left two possibilities.

First, the same misunderstanding had occurred in all of them simultaneously.

Or second, someone had interfered with their shared memory with a method that exceeded their own abilities.

In order to reject the latter possibility, the 3rd automatons decided that no one could exceed their abilities.

And it was also possible to assume a common misunderstanding could occur in all of them at once because they were built on common standards.

Ergo, this supposed fact was actually a misunderstanding on their part.

All of their artificial brains instructed them to ignore the misunderstanding and continue with their work.

But one thought inside them said their conclusion was wrong and the thought process began anew.

Their thoughts looped thousands, millions, and even billions of times. The doubt in their minds was opposing the fundamental decision-making part of themselves.

But their thoughts never reached a definite conclusion and the infinitely looping thoughts left the automatons motionless.

But just before they all froze up, a certain automaton added in a new thought.

“We are excellent.”

The 3rd automatons knew what it meant to be excellent.

They had been taught that during the Leviathan Road battle three months prior.

An excellent individual could admit their own defeat, would continue trying to win despite that, and would try to stay at the same level as both winner and loser.

And a doll that could admit to her own mistakes and inexperience was treated kindly by her master.

A certain memory returned to the automatons. It was the memory of one of their own losing and being carried by a human.

That confirmed for them that they could lose and admitting that fact led to a single conclusion.

“3rd’s automatons are excellent. It is unthinkable for all of us to reach the same erroneous conclusion!”

One of them shouted those words. It was weak and not quite a cry, but the one speaking out against her own control had been given an obedient personality.

“So this is the truth! Our minds are being invaded by someone!!”

With those words, all of the automatons came to their senses.

They broke free of their infinitely looping thoughts and awoke.

“…!”

Someone was interfering with their shared thoughts.

And this was not a misunderstanding of a single unit. It was a phenomenon occurring in every single one of them.

Something supposedly impossible was happening.

This was a contradiction, but it was also a fact.

And that fact reached them in the form of words.

“Well done. Yes. An excellent recovery. I would expect nothing less of a product of the Gear of dolls!”

The dolls hearing those words as fact shouted back as one mind.

“Who are you!?”

The individual units had yet to fully recover from the contradictory thoughts, but their artificial minds put up their guard and they stopped moving while speaking to the intruder.

“We demand you free the compromised units!”

“I can’t do that. No, I definitely can’t do that.”

The voice answered without delay and continued before they could say anything more.

“Unfortunately, we have taken control of two automatons. Yes, I’m truly sorry. I really am, but that’s why I would like it if you did not resist. Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“Is saying I’m Hajji of the Army enough? We’re on our way there as quickly as we can. So could you form a wall and wait for us? Well? Hm?”

The tone of voice was awfully calm for what it was saying.

And 56th Iris sent out a quiet thought from the southwestern area.

“Emergency report.”

She continued.

“We are under attack!! There are 121 of them and a great number of small animals. I have determined the animals are dogs! But…they are thermally and conceptually identical to real dogs and yet I cannot hear a single pulse from the entire group! These dogs are made from high-density information, so I have determined control of 101st and #100’s artificial brains was taken by them!”

56th’s next words were muffled by gunshots.

“Hurry! Even as we hesitate, the enemy is-…”

Her thoughts cut out and something else could be heard instead.

An alarm blared from Japanese UCAT and a large group of footsteps filled the southern forest.

“…!”

Countless enemies ran into view from that forest.

They were a kilometer and a half from UCAT’s disguised building.

The enemy was too close.

All of the automatons had that same thought as they began to move.

The time they had spent frozen had been devastating. The fact that automatons from 3rd had been “hijacked” had slowed everything down.

Japanese UCAT’s night guards had sensed danger in the automatons’ silence and they had come charging out, but even that had been too slow.

The enemy had already left the forest and reached the runway.

“…”

It would take too long for the god of war pilots to leave the station and start up the gods of war.

They had all expected an attack by mechanical dragons or gods of war. They had thought an attack too quick to react to would destroy the UCAT building or grounds and then the Army would come pouring in.

But the Army had begun on foot.

More and more people in black armored uniforms appeared from the forest.

They cut across the lawn next to the runway that contained the station and barricade and they ran toward the runway.

They climbed over the barricade and looked west to see a straight shot to the white building.

They only had to make a run for it.

They had a great number of dogs running at their feet and they were led by an elderly Arab man with a black turban around his head.

101st and #100 accompanied him on either side.

The blowing wind was the sound of late autumn and the elderly man spun his weapon in his hands.

It was a Cowling Spear with a sword-like blade attached.

He held it under one arm, crouched low, and stared straight at the white building.

“Now, let’s get this started.”

The automatons did not move, but he did.

He moved forward and took the first step of a run.

“This will bring the end, so…don’t hold back.”

As soon as he spoke, the battle with the advancing black forces began.

A light traveled west toward Okutama starting from a road near a hospital in the mountains.

The light took the form of wings and flew straight up into the night sky.

Two people on the ground looked up at the wings of light.

They stood in front of a vending machine below a streetlight in front of the hospital.

One was a gray-haired woman in a black suit and the other was a well-build elderly man in a white suit.

The woman took a sip from a can labeled “Black Coffee – Extra Bitter”.

“What do you think of tonight’s events, President Izumo?”

“Well, I do want to know what my stupid son is doing sleeping. Don’t you agree, Diana-kun?”

The man, Izumo Retsu, drank from a coffee can printed with a giant abstract image of a professional wrestler.

“But…how should I put it? The Izumo family has always been really lucky with women. Two goddesses in a row and now an angel who can tame a dragon, even if she seemed hopeless for a bit there. Did you see that, Diana-kun? You did, didn’t you? She took care of her opponent so quickly it even shocked me a little. Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

“Are you not going to greet her?”

“Eh? No, it’s best to just hide and watch these things. …And I knew she was going to win anyway.”

“Why would you think that? She almost died.”

“Well…”

He looked up into the whiteness of the moon, but suddenly stopped.

“No, I can’t. If I said anything here, it would sound so cool I’d make myself blush. Ha ha. Give me a break here, Diana-kun.”

“I see you haven’t changed.”

“That’s not really true. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m a lot different from a decade ago. After all…”

He nodded and crossed his arms while still holding the can of coffee.

“I really don’t like to admit it, but…I’ve aged ten years in the past decade.”

“…”

“You don’t get mad like you used to, Diana-kun. That makes this a lot less fun. How about it?”

“I’ve simply learned how to hide it inside. …How to hide everything inside.”

Diana shrugged and turned toward the hospital.

“Are you going to go see the Izumo boy?”

“That idiot will live on even if I don’t. And he can come to me. I need to make sure I don’t die before then, so I have a lot of work to do.”

“Everyone from the Izumo family is a real pain to deal with.”

“There are other problems, too.”

“Eh?”

Diana tilted her head, so Retsu elaborated with a bitter smile.

“You see, the 10th-Gear reservation contacted me personally. Annoyingly enough, a god named Jord who’s also my mother-in-law seems to have left the reservation.”

“You mean…?”

“She said she’s joining the Army. See, I told you there are other problems. The Army is coming.”

Diana gasped and Retsu narrowed his eyes and looked up at the moon.

“I think I’ll go see just how far my mother and wife’s protection can reach. Just how powerful are the feelings of those two who so loved this world’s moon?”

He held the can up toward the moon.

“And if they end up losing…well, destruction can be amusing too.”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_28|Chapter 28]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_30|Chapter 30]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 25

2014-12-13T01:41:42Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 25: Beyond Understanding */

==Chapter 25: Beyond Understanding==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0125.png|thumb]]
''If you are there

''Your hand will reach

This was a space that lacked understanding.

One’s eyes could see, their ears could hear, and their senses of taste, smell, and touch worked, but they could not understand any of it.

Everything existed, but the information on its existence did not get through.

Heo stood in that world.

…''Um…

The faint repelling force on the bottom of her feet was the internal sensation her feet being pressed on by her own weight.

That alone was certain.

She shrank down because it felt like only the bottom of her feet existed. It felt as if lifting a leg would divide her existence in half.

“What do I do?”

She could speak, but she would receive no answer.

Her eyes could see around her, but they gave her no information.

Nervous, she shouted a name.

“Thunder Fellow!!”

She wanted that cry to get through.

“…”

But there was no response.

Even after several seconds, she was not swallowed up by the machine.

If she was, she would feel it in the repelling force she could feel, but it never happened.

Calling for the blue and white mechanical dragon was no use.

…''Does that mean he really is someone else?

That thought sent a chill down her spine.

She and Harakawa could not fight on their own. And from what Sibyl had told her in the hospital, Mitsuaki had a scroll concept weapon. It had been sealed below Izumo UCAT, its origins were a mystery, and it could bring out a world.

…''According to the report, the automaton named Gyes was hit by a small sun bullet.

That was when Heo felt something on the right side of her skin.

It was heat.

She felt heat in her skin just like after a trip to the beach, and that meant…

“That small sun is flying in from the right.”

She knew she had to avoid it. She had to escape to the left, right, front, or back.

“…!!”

But not knowing anything about the world around her left her frozen in place.

Was there an obstacle in her way? How was she supposed to fight after escaping? She knew nothing and her anxiety locked up her legs, but that was exactly why she cried out.

“Harakawaaaa!!”

A moment later, she felt a force down below.

Just like with the sensation on the bottom of her feet, she could tell something was holding onto her right ankle.

…''Eh!?

Before she could ask what this was, some kind of force struck her.

A white building stood below the night sky. It was a wide hospital.

However, there was something odd about this hospital.

It was empty and there was a large hole filled with shimmering heat in the second floor of the southern building.

The walls had melted and the scorched hole had been torn open from the ground level. The hole continued through the second and third floor ceilings and into the emptiness above the roof.

Everything behind the hole was melted, torn away, or simply gone. The edges of the hole still glowed with a scarlet light and the shimmering heat rose thickly into the sky.

A single person looked up into the hole and shimmering air.

He was an elderly man in a white coat standing in the front parking lot. He held a thick scroll below his arm and his hands remained in his white coat’s pockets.

“I suppose my concept space is a little too much of a handicap. Only my brothers and I can continue as normal inside it.”

Mitsuaki turned around as he spoke.

“Perhaps I should go help Brother Ikkou. No, I should remove this concept space first.”

A moment later, he froze in place.

He had heard a sound from the hole in the hospital’s second floor that the small sun fired from the scroll had produced.

Something was moving.

…''It can’t be.

“How did she avoid it? It should have been a direct hit.”

He turned around, looked up, and saw two figures standing up on the edge of the hole in the second floor.

He muttered the names of the two who were filthy, injured by a few fragments, yet alive.

“Heo-sama and Harakawa-sama!!”

Harakawa judged the extent of his injuries from the pain he felt.

The pain was not too bad, but he could not let his guard down since any pain on the surface would be cancelled. Still…

…''I don’t feel my pulse anywhere in my body.

Confident that he had not had an artery cut, he got up.

He felt pressure in his arms.

It was the pressure of the weight produced by holding Heo.

“That was close.”

When speaking with Brunhild at school, they had discussed a few plans for the four old men’s concepts.

Mitsuaki’s concept prevented you from understanding anything beyond yourself, but any pressure inside your body was treated as “yourself”.

The first countermeasure was to get down.

When on the ground, it was harder for bullets or other attacks to hit.

…''Plus you can’t fall over and you can feel your entire body as it presses against the ground.

From there, they could crawl forward while feeling around by hand. The heat had warned him of the small sun, but he had been lucky enough to reach Heo’s ankle the very next moment.

It was also pure luck that he had been able to quickly stand and tackle her to the ground.

He touched the girl in his arms to confirm his relief.

The feeling would also be reaching her as pressure.

…''I hope this is enough to calm her.

He spoke silently to himself while touching her with his finger. After confirming it was a large part with his palm, he pressed his finger down.

He used the pressure of his fingertip to write on her body.

In this world of no mutual understanding, he wrote words into her body to get his thoughts across to her.

“C-a-n-y-o-u-h-e-a-r-t-h-i-s?”

He continued writing.

“H-e-o-T-h-u-n-d-e-r-s-o-n.”

Heo’s pulse was racing.

She did not know what exactly had happened, but she knew Harakawa had saved her.

[[Image:OnC_v11_0133.jpg|thumb]]

She had been unable to avoid the enemy’s attack, but he had somehow reached her, embraced her as if to cover for her, and knocked her to the floor.

She could feel his presence from the sensation of him holding her in his arms. It was a welcome sensation.

But when he had approached her feet and stood up to push her down…

“U-um…”

She brought her hands to her cheeks and shouted at the boy who could not hear her.

“Harakawa! Wh-why are you sticking your head up my skirt!?”

When he had stood up at her feet, his head had gone right up her skirt. On top of that, he had wrapped his arms around her hips and pushed her to the ground.

“No. Wh-what are you doing…a-at a time like this?”

His hand was currently groping around at the skin between the waist of her skirt and her underwear.

The way his finger searched around almost seemed to be writing something.

His finger moved complexly below her navel and even poked at her navel as if dotting an “i”.

She squirmed on the floor and his finger wrote a straight line down.

“Ah, n-no! Not in front of your mother! We’re in the hospital, Harakawa! My chest is one thing, but it’s too soon to go there!”

His finger continued down her skin as he pulled down her underwear.

“Nooo! Not here!! And not like this!!”

Partially due to her struggling, his finger quickly pulled her underwear all the way down to her knees.

…''Did you hear that, Heo Thunderson?

Harakawa’s questioning thoughts were cut off by a sudden knee to the jaw.

“Gwah! Wh-why are you struggling, Heo!?”

But speaking would not reach her.

He felt around in the air and his left hand found something. He pulled on it to bring her close and realized it was her shoulder.

But he felt the hand on her shoulder quickly rising and falling.

He also felt a bit of heat.

He wondered why and his thoughts reached a certain emotion.

…''Did that last attack scare you? Did you knee me because you’re panicking?

Realizing that, he decided he had been in too much of a rush to get his thoughts across.

He hesitated for a moment, but wrapped his arms around her again, felt around for her hand, and found it.

“Sorry. I was in too much of a hurry. We definitely have an enemy here, but know this.”

He squeezed her hand.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Heo felt Harakawa take her hand, pull her close, and wrap his arms around her.

…''Ah.

It surprised her a bit, but she breathed a sigh of relief at the strength in his arms.

This was his usual self and she felt his usual strength, so she figured out what had happened during his previous offense.

…''He must have been scared and he panicked.

''In that case, I can forgive him,'' she decided. ''That’s the mature thing to do.

She felt heat fill her cheeks as she sat up on the floor.

That was when she realized something: her panties were gone.

…''?

They must have come off when she had kicked Harakawa away.

…''W-well, it’s not like anyone else can see me right now and I can find them right after this ends.

She placed a finger on what she thought was Harakawa’s chest. She moved in close and realized how she could get her words through to him. She had seen this in a romance movie a long time ago. The characters in the movie had been lying naked in bed, but…

…''She wrote his name with her finger.

“Harakawa.”

In the movie, the guy had replied in kind.

Soon, her wish was granted. He used his finger to write a message on her tightly held right hand.

“Are you okay?”

“Y.”

“Thunder Fellow?”

“N.”

He stopped writing after that answer.

She assumed he was trying to figure out why she could not call in Thunder Fellow, but she was wrong.

She quickly realized the real reason why he was not responding.

She felt heat.

This heat was larger than last time, but it came from slightly below just like before.

“Heo.”

He called her name via writing.

“I can’t call in Thunder Fellow,” she quickly wrote on his skin.

She then gave an abbreviated explanation.

“He’s someone else.”

However, he immediately replied.

“N.”

“Why!?”

She reflexively trembled and shouted out even though it would never reach him.

“I tried and it didn’t work! He really is someone else!”

“Call him.”

As if responding, Harakawa continued to write and the movements felt irritated.

“He isn’t someone else.”

After all…

“He’s you and…”

And…

“Us.”

As soon as she realized what that final word meant, the second heat arrived.

She took action. In order to endure her worry and strengthen her thoughts, she wrapped her arms around Harakawa, clung to him, and closed her eyes.

…''Yes. That’s right.

She trusted in the words he had spoken to her.

…''Thunder Fellow isn’t someone else. He’s the power that was given to me.

She opened her eyes and faced that unseen world and all the unseen things it contained.

…''He’s the power that connects us.

So she cried out the name of that power, the name of the great power they always possessed.

“The family of thunder unhesitatingly speaks its desire for the power of the evening star!”

She understood why he had not responded when she had called his name before.

She had been calling for someone outside of herself.

But now her dignified voice was directed within herself.

“Come forth, Thunder Fellow!!”

A moment later, it appeared.

The thirty meter blue and white mechanical dragon broke through the empty hospital’s southern building as it was summoned behind Heo and Harakawa.

First, the wall behind them dented in and filled with cracks as if a giant fist had punched it.

“…”

A wave of destruction ran through the wall as if pushing in on the center of the cracks.

The destruction and appearance happened simultaneously.

With a sound of breaking and a shaking of impact, the hospital broke under the weight of the mechanical dragon.

It was destroyed.

The dragon was now piercing straight through the center of the three-story building.

The first floor had been crushed and the third floor had collapsed with its support gone.

As the piles of debris were further smashed, Thunder Fellow observed his surroundings.

He could understand nothing, but the vibrations of rubble pouring on his armor allowed him to predict the situation.

Low-Gear’s laws of physics were simple. The movement of all objects had a cause and an effect, so if one could perfectly read the movement of all objects, they could predict where everything was, what it would do, and where it was going.

Similar to using sound for sonar, Thunder Fellow calculated the strength and direction of the rubble hitting him down to the last pebble and used that to view the world.

This was much like making predictions based on all the sounds one could hear.

However, Thunder Fellow pulled it off.

He made the calculations in an instant and predicted the locations of the two things that mattered most: Heo and Harakawa.

They were approximately one meter in front of him and two meters down.

He raised his canopy, swept aside the falling rubble with his atmospheric defense and gravity barrier, and spoke.

“It has been a day since I last saw you, Heo and Harakawa. …What happened?”

The two climbed into the cockpit.

“Do you need my help?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, we do!”

He heard their voices through their synchronized senses.

He closed the canopy and used the vents to expel the dust that had gotten inside.

He lifted his body and raised his head from the rubble of the crumbling hospital.

“Thunder Fellow, please turn to the right! The enemy is to the west!”

“Why are you so sure?”

“The previous heat attack came from that direction. More importantly, Yui said we had a visitor just before we entered the concept space. …And she could only see outside the window.”

“Understood.”

All of Thunder Fellow’s senses and all of his predictions also told him that was the enemy’s location.

“I am predicting our surroundings using my tactile devices and I will send those predictions to all of your senses in real time. That is the only power I can give you. After all, my body and weapons have already been given to you. So fight. 5th-Gear’s power does not wish to be stopped. Use your acceleration, speed, and flight to teach a lesson to the dragon standing on the earth. Teach him that simply standing on two feet is no different from standing still.”

Thunder Fellow determined this was no longer a problem.

“This is my first battle with another Gear, so please win.”

Harakawa’s senses returned to him.

He saw light and darkness.

He was wearing his uniform and he sat in Thunder Fellow’s cockpit as the hospital crumbled around them.

However, a few things were not right.

First, he knew he was injured, but he could not see those injuries on his skin. Second, the world outside the canopy was limited.

…''The horizon is too close. No, the world doesn’t even reach the horizon.

He realized what was happening.

“Thunder Fellow, are you showing us a predicted world you calculated out?”

Beyond the falling rubble, he saw a few cars in the parking lot, but he could not see through their windows. Also, the vending machines along the road had no sample cans beyond the plastic covering them.

Thunder Fellow had predictively constructed this world with the bare minimum of information and he was transferring it to their senses.

It felt off, but he had no time to worry about it.

“If I can see this much, it feels real enough!”

The hospital collapsed slowly in his vision thanks to Thunder Fellow’s synchronization.

They would be trapped under it soon, so…

“We need to escape!”

He grabbed the two roll bars and tried to stand up.

But he was stopped by a voice.

“Harakawa!”

After combining with Thunder Fellow, Heo cried out with panic in her voice.

“The ocean!!”

He just about told her that was impossible, but Thunder Fellow and the hospital were struck by a wave several times the building’s height.

“!?”

The wall of water instantly swallowed up the dragon and hospital.

The rubble mixed around in the water, accumulated, and tried to snag Thunder Fellow on the bottom.

The water pressure and current tossed them around and the outside of the cockpit filled with a dim green with almost no visibility.

…''Damn! Which way is up!?

He could see a light in one direction in the water, so he forced Thunder Fellow through the swirling water. He shook the dragon’s body and rotated once to blow away the surrounding sand.

“Go!!”

He pointed the nose toward the light, grabbed the roll bars, and leaned his entire body forward.

After a slight time lag, the dragon began to move forward.

A deep rumble and vibration seemed to rise from the bottom of his gut.

He kept the course straight.

Thunder Fellow shot forward and thus up. He parted the water so quickly that a path of vacuum appeared behind his giant form, but the surrounding water pressed in on that path and produced an underwater explosion.

A radiating shockwave ran behind him and shook the sea.

His own shockwave caught up to him and washed across his armor, so he accelerated.

The speed came in an instant.

The blue and white mechanical dragon shot from the sea and into the sky.

The black sky he saw was dotted with light. It was an endless night sky of twinkling stars.

However…

“Where are we?”

After flying into the night, Harakawa saw a black sea below and that expanse of water seemed to continue endlessly.

“Harakawa, I cannot calculate the extent of the sea.”

“Impossible. We’re in a concept space, aren’t we? It should have a limit.”

He looked around again, but he could only see the night sky and ocean.

“Where’d the hospital go? This is like a mythical flood or something.”

“I-I was thinking the same thing. And Harakawa, about the sky…”

Drawn by Heo’s weakening comment, Harakawa looked up in the night sky.

He saw the color black.

The vast sky was dark. Countless stars covered that black celestial dome, the moon was so close he felt like he could reach out and touch it, the valleys on Mars’s surface were clearly visible, and Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was facing their way.

“What is going on? Why are the heavens so close?”

Not only did they appear to be in arm’s reach, but the planets looked small enough to hold in his arms.

“What is going on?” he asked again just as the ocean below vanished.

Next, he heard Mitsuaki’s voice.

“This is the power of my concept weapon. This scroll tells the story of a certain world. You passed the sun earlier, remember?”

He could not tell where the voice was coming from, but he understood what the man meant.

This attack had begun from the moment they had avoided the initial projectile of heat.

“That sun was the beginning. From there, the enemy is brought inside the concept weapon.”

“We’re inside the scroll?”

“Correct, Heo-sama. You are inside a false world drawn inside a hanging scroll. That is preventing my concept from reaching you, though.”

Hearing that, Harakawa spoke quietly.

“So this is like those unreasonable miniature garden worlds from old stories?”

“U-um, Harakawa? I’m glad you can observe this so calmly, but how do we get out?”

He faced forward and saw something coming.

However, it was not anything concrete.

“Darkness?”

“That is correct, Harakawa-sama. I am close to fully opening the scroll. And the story depicted on this scroll begins with the ‘good morning’ of creation and ends with the ‘good night’ of destruction. You have the privilege of seeing it all. But before it is fully opened…”

A bitter laugh rang in their ears.

“You were supposed to escape. But…oh, dear. It seems it is already fully open. Too bad. …Now please be destroyed along with that world.”

The darkness approached head-on.

It was noticeable because the stars were vanishing and the density of the black was growing.

The dark curtain up ahead was swallowing and eliminating the stars.

Mercury had looked so large, but it was devoured and then the comets circling the heavens were swallowed up by the black.

Space was silent and so Thunder Fellow made a suggestion.

“Harakawa, Heo. Would this have more intensity with sound? I can simulate the sounds based on my predictions.”

“No, thanks,” answered Harakawa.

“Oh, I kind of want to hea-… Sorry, I won’t say it again.”

“That’s the spirit, Heo Thunderson. But we don’t have time. We need to think about what to do.”

As he spoke, Venus was devoured, so he clicked his tongue.

“Is running away our only option?”

“That would be difficult, Harakawa.”

He frowned at Thunder Fellow’s comment.

“What do you mean? If we’re just running, all we have to do is fly. Isn’t that your specialty?”

“Harakawa, Heo. Listen carefully. …There must be an exit to this concept space.”

“An exit? Doesn’t that mean we can escape?”

“No. Based on the readings I have been receiving, this world is only thirty centimeters wide and a meter long.”

That made the world only as large as an unrolled scroll.

“Are you saying the inside was expanded with concepts, but the exit is still only thirty centimeters?” asked Heo.

“Yes,” answered Thunder Fellow. “A thirty centimeter exit exists somewhere in this space. Finding that would mean our victory, but…”

He briefly hesitated.

“I was not made to function in space. I can fly using gravitational acceleration, but turning will not be easy and, without the necessary oxygen, you will have almost no air to breathe when flying in a vacuum. I am currently running in a short-term underwater mode, but it truly is only a short-term solution.”

He spoke to Harakawa.

“If it comes to it, I will ensure the purpose of my existence by cutting the cockpit’s oxygen supply and preserving Heo in a state of suspended animation. I will shut off all functions save her combination with me.”

Harakawa replied to the proposal with a bitter smile and a shrug.

“I see. That’s a good decision. I have no complai-…”

“I do!!”

Heo’s shout filled the cockpit. It was enough for Harakawa to freeze in place.

“Thunder Fellow! Please remove my combination!”

The dragon did not reply no matter how many times Heo called out to him.

Meanwhile, the darkness approached the sun and all of the light dimmed.

As darkness fell, Heo’s angry and exhausted shouts continued.

“You can’t.”

Harakawa heard her tearful voice in that darkening world.

“Don’t leave me behind and go somewhere else because of me.”

After all…

“We’re all together. I am, you are, and the others are.”

Those words brought sudden movement to Harakawa’s heart.

…''Teammates, hm?

“Hey, Heo.”

He called for her, but it must have been too sudden because she did not reply.

“Can you hear me, Heo Thunderson?”

“Eh? Oh, y-yes! What is it?”

He nodded at her question and spoke slowly as if checking on what was inside his own heart.

“You already know the answer.”

“Eh?”

“My mom asked you why you would go to the battlefield. I think I know what you asked yourself about that: why am I here? It sounds like a line from a youth dream journal, doesn’t it?”

“W-what’s wrong with that? And, um, what about it?”

''You still don’t get?'' he thought while grabbing the roll bars.

He had once asked himself a certain question.

…''If we’re still fighting 7th-Gear after disbanding, why are we so focused on the name “Team Leviathan”? I know why now.

“Because we don’t want to be alone.”

“Eh?”

“Do I have to say it again?”

But it was a simple and definite thing.

“Heo. Heo Thunderson. You already know the answer to this question, so I’m only going to give it to you once.”

“What question is that?”

“Why are you where you are? Why did your parents and my parents fight? The answer is simple and it isn’t because of strength or duty.”

He smiled bitterly as he spoke.

“It was because you and they didn’t want to lose what was important, no matter what. Isn’t that right?”

“…!”

“You can put it in your own words later and I’m not saying it again, so don’t forget it, Heo Thunderson. Now, I’ll tell you one other thing.”

“Wh-what is that?”

“Escape from here isn’t impossible, so don’t cry, Heo. And you know how to escape. If you realize that and tell Thunder Fellow, we can make it through this.”

“But…!”

He squeezed the roll bars in his hands and faced forward.

The approaching darkness had fully swallowed the sun. They were surrounded by darkness, but he did not care.

“It’s gotten dark, but that’s perfect. We won’t have to see any fakes.”

Strength gathered in his body and he thought about the best time to take off.

“You already have the answer, just like your former self. …Long ago, in the very beginning, you had sensed the answer. You knew where to find the exit in this strange, confusing world.”

Mitsuaki stood alone in the nighttime parking lot.

The wind blew. It was the west wind of late autumn. It descended from the Akigawa Valley far to the west, it had gathered the scents of Hinohara and Itsukaichi, and yet it retained the aroma of the forest and rivers.

The man enveloped by that wind was illuminated by a single color.

It was the scarlet of fire.

The thick scroll in his hands was burning from the tail end.

“It is powerful, but it takes time to activate. And the destruction on the inside causes the automatic sympathetic destruction of the actual object.”

Over half of the scroll had burned by this point.

''It is over,'' he thought.

He generally played the support role out of the four brothers. He was powerful enough, but he was not as skilled with a weapon as Ikkou, he did not focus on strengthening is his body as much as Nijun, and he had not been given a tool like Yonkichi.

However, he did not hold it against Chao.

…''Everything is in balance.

His fixed concept was enough to leave his opponent almost entirely unable to act.

If he had any real offensive power, there would be no need for his brothers.

He had only switched from support to attack now because he had acquired such a powerful concept weapon during their attack on Izumo UCAT.

“I wanted to know what would happen if I fought with my own power, but…”

He had successfully eliminated what could be called 5th-Gear’s strongest mechanical dragon.

The burning flames were proof of his victory.

He had expanded his fixed concept to rob his opponent of their freedom and then he had spread out the scroll’s internal space to envelop them.

The initial small sun had fallen out when he was spreading out that internal space.

With how long it took to activate, it was hard to use as a weapon, but he had succeeded using his concept.

…''I did it.

“But,” he began with a tilt of the head. “It was not very beautiful.”

Linking technique to strength for a victory was the true essence of a support role.

However, the battle was over.

Only a quarter of the scroll remained and the fire was shrinking.

“I defeated a 5th-Gear mechanical dragon.”

He felt he had won, but at the same time…

…''I won too easily.

The reason for his lament was simple. Since he had won so easily…

…''I might be even stronger.

How far did his skill go?

Wouldn’t he only be able to say he had fun with no regrets once he reached his absolute peak?

“…”

He looked at his left hand which did not hold the scroll. The palm was white and cracks were forming in it. The hand still felt soft, but it was being destroyed in a way in which such physics did not apply.

“Is it over?”

He looked up at the moon in the night sky.

That was when a voice reached him from the hospital.

It came from the single window on the second story that contained light.

“Mitsuaki-san, was my child not good enough?”

“He was not, Yui-sama. Unfortunately.”

“I see,” replied Yui with an exaggerated shrug. “I thought that might be the case. …Or maybe not.”

Mitsuaki frowned at that.

A moment later, he felt heat in his right hand.

“…!?”

He saw a mass of fire at the end of his hand.

The scroll had yet to be completely destroyed, but it was spewing scarlet flames.

With the sound of something fluttering in the air, the heat of the burning paper burned his hand.

“What!?”

His right hand exploded.

Harakawa saw the night sky appear in an explosion of light.

In only an instant, the world rapidly grew and expanded before his eyes.

Below the sky of the real world, he saw the hospital’s parking lot.

“Thunder Fellow, activate your optical camouflage! The concept’s been deactivated!”

He saw smoke. It looked black in the darkness and it was wrapped in what looked like a mist of bluish-white light.

“I can guess that the enemy’s concept weapon was destroyed,” announced Thunder Fellow.

“Th-then we…” began Heo.

“Escaped,” finished Harakawa.

Harakawa had Thunder Fellow crouch down because Mitsuaki would be inside the smoke spreading out in front of them.

Another attack could come at any time.

On top of that, his mother and others were inside the hospital behind them.

He gripped the roll bars while planning to use Thunder Fellow as a shield if there was an attack.

However, he heard Mitsuaki’s voice from beyond the smoke.

“This is… This is a surprise. How did you escape that universe?”

“That was easy.”

Harakawa continued squeezing the roll bars as he spoke.

“You fired that small sun like a bullet at the very beginning, right? It had to have been fired from the scroll, so the exit from the scroll would be along its path. We just had to work out its trajectory from the angle Heo had felt the heat in and then compare it to the shape of the universe that Thunder Fellow had calculated out. We didn’t even have to fly to the ends of the universe. The exit was right next to us.”

“You certainly took your time in leaving for it being right next to you.”

“Yeah,” he answered with a frown. “Once we knew how close it was, a certain idiot felt calm enough to say the stars in the distance were pretty and Thunder Fellow stayed still so she could watch them for a while longer.”

“S-sorry. …Oh, but I did manage to wish three times on a shooting star.”

“What did you wish for?”

“I can’t say, I can’t say, I can’t say.”

He ignored her and faced forward. The smoke was clearing and the attack would come once it did.

The moment came suddenly.

“There!”

If he desired to attack, Thunder Fellow would respond.

However, he saw something unexpected.

Mitsuaki was damaged.

“Ha ha ha. What is the matter, Harakawa-sama?”

The man laughed, but he had lost not only his right shoulder but most of the right side of his body.

The wind blew across his body which had broken from the right collarbone to the right hip.

The surface of the break was white and hard and the smile turned their way was stiff.

“It would seem fighting truly is not my thing. I thought I was familiar with the weaknesses of my equipment, but I had not fully grasped how they would affect an actual battle.”

“You probably would’ve won if it hadn’t been us.”

“I am delighted to hear it. However, it also proves that I cannot defeat you.”

His smile grew.

“But this is not over yet. I am not enjoying myself yet. After all…”

He sank down. He lowered his hips, which caused the base of his right leg to shatter.

“…!”

Just as Heo gasped, he prepared to leap on his one leg.

“It seems Yonkichi promised to tell you about the past, so I will tell you one thing. …The ones once known as the Five Great Peaks were Diana, Hiba Ryuuichi, Sayama Asagi…”

He paused.

“...James Thunderson, and Alberto Northwind.”

“What!? Why is my dad on the list!?”

“That was a temporary command structure quickly put together with Asagi-sama as the leader and the other four below him. If you wish to know more…search elsewhere. Now, I will go fight how I fight best! I will help my brothers!!”

The remaining smoke was blown away and Mitsuaki jumped up into the sky and vanished.

A great roar travelled westward and vanished into the night sky.

“H-Harakawa! He must be headed to where Kazami is!!”

“I know that, but we’re injured too. And about what he just said…”

Harakawa opened the canopy and looked up into the hospital window and his mother’s eyes.

However, Yui waved her hand.

“I can’t tell you that. If you want to search for the answer, you’ll need to travel down the Leviathan Road.”

“I see. So it gets back to the Leviathan Road, does it?”

He sighed and belatedly realized that his body was covered in the heat of injuries.

Heo must have realized it too because the back seat split to the left and right and Heo appeared from below.

She held her skirt down while climbing over the front seat and running toward him.

“U-um, Harakawa…”

However, her expression froze when she looked up at him.

“Ah,” she said while staring motionlessly at him.

Just as he wondered what this was about, he heard his mother’s voice from the hospital’s second floor window to the left.

“Dan, I was meaning to say something, but…check your head.”

''I don’t think I’m injured there,'' he thought while lowering his head a bit to use the inside of the canopy like a mirror.

He saw his face but found he was wearing something white on his head.

It was not his usual bandanna. It covered his head and it had two large holes in it.

“Is this…?”

“Wh-why are you wearing my panties on your head!?”

“How should I know!?”

He grabbed them off and heard his mother on the second floor.

“Dan, I won’t get mad, so just tell me. What did you do to Heo-san?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

He saw Heo cover her cheeks with her hands and seriously shake her head.

“D-don’t lie like that! You stuck your head up my skirt and pushed me to the ground. I told you to stop, but it wouldn’t get through to you. …And after you attacked my belly button and stomach, you pulled down my underwear! Just because you were lonely in that world of no understanding is no excuse!”

“I was not lonely!!” He shouted as his mother glared at him. “What’s with this world of false accusations and no mutual understanding!? Is this some new concept!?”

A nighttime city was filled with streetlights and the lights of people working.

A single figure flew above that bright city.

The black winged figure travelled east at an altitude of about three thousand meters.

The ten meter metal giant was wrapped in wind as it flew.

A girl stood on its right shoulder near the back. She grabbed at its back armor with both hands and her orange jacket fluttered in the wind.

“Wow, this is fast. We’ve already passed the peninsula I saw to the right, so are we above Nagoya now?”

“I think so. Are you cold, Shinjou-san?”

It was Mikage who answered Hiba’s question and she sounded like she was tilting her head as she did so.

“She should be fine since Susamikado’s gravitational control is covering her to a certain extent.”

But Hiba replied with a scolding tone of voice.

“Mikage-san, only she can tell whether she’s cold or not.”

“Right. Sorry, Shinjou and Ryuuji-kun. I don’t give people rides very often.”

“It’s fine,” said Shinjou with a bitter smile at their exchange.

At the speed they were moving, she would normally be blown off by the wind. That was not happening, so Mikage had to be holding her in place.

“But does that mean you’ve given people rides before?”

“Yes. Sometimes I take Ryuuji-kun’s mother to go shopping. Especially on mornings with a really good sale.”

“And no one notices?”

“Not as long as I land in the woods too quickly to be seen and immediately remove the combination. But my control wasn’t good enough once and the eggs broke and some kind of internal connection in his mother’s back slipped out of place, so I don’t do it much anymore.”

“Y-yeah, it’s best if people don’t always take the easy route.”

“Right,” replied Mikage.

Shinjou sighed and looked down at the night scenery moving by at tremendous speed.

However…

“?”

One light was different.

It was moving slower than the rest.

A long line from east to west was travelling east just like them.

“That’s a bullet train. Is it the one I was supposed to take?”

“Probab-…”

Hiba trailed off and he asked something else a moment later.

“What should we do?”

It took Shinjou several seconds to realize what he meant.

However, she quickly grasped it all and spoke.

“He’s here.”

A man stood on the roof of the train travelling down below.

The one-armed elderly man wore a brown leather flight jacket and a white work outfit.

It was Yonkichi.

He raised his one hand in greeting as his clothes flapped in the wind.

“What should we do about this guy who’s acting like someone in an ’80s tokusatsu movie?”

“Hm? Isn’t this kind of thing popular now?”

“Ha ha ha. Shinjou-san, it’s no longer the Showa era.”

“Eh?”

She frowned, but then heard Mikage speak.

“Let’s go, Ryuuji-kun, Shinjou.”

“Are you sure, Mikage-san?”

Mikage nodded as the four wings slowly expanded behind her.

“We lost once,” she said. “So it’s time we won once.”

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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_26|Chapter 26]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 24

2014-12-09T20:28:15Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 24: Resumed Reunion */

==Chapter 24: Resumed Reunion==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0099.png|thumb]]
''Why?

''You ask

A sloped road ran between a cement-covered slope and a row of dark houses.

The road was lit by scattered streetlights and someone ran down that road.

It was Shinjou with her long black hair swaying behind her and her backpack bouncing up and down on her back.

The sound of her shoes on the ground was light and some hesitation would occasionally show itself in her pace.

She stumbled a little and smiled bitterly.

“Am I too worried?”

Not long had passed since she had collapsed and passed out in the orphanage cafeteria.

She had woken in the infirmary, changed clothes, and received a variety of things from the director. Afterwards, she had been overcome by weariness.

She had known she could not, but she had given in to the exhaustion, slept, and found it was 9:30 when she woke.

The bullet train had already left, but the bleeding had stopped and she knew she could move.

She had asked the director to check the train schedule and had learned the next train to Tokyo was a 10:22 sleeper train from Shin-Osaka Station.

She had called and learned that train was full, but another one with an opening was leaving Osaka Station at midnight.

After asking for a reservation on that train, she had left the orphanage.

She had said goodbye to the director, called to thank the woman at the church who had helped her, and even remembered to call Sibyl and Hiba at UCAT to tell them she would not be back until the following morning.

When leaving the orphanage, she had made a promise that she intended to keep.

“I’ll come back to visit sometime.”

She wanted to visit again soon.

That was partially to see the documents she had not managed to see today, but…

…''What will Sayama-kun say when he finds out?

Sayama’s father had also been an orphan who was taken in by his grandfather.

She guessed Sayama’s grandfather had owned orphanages like this one across Japan.

…''For the children who lost their parents in the war, in the Concept War, or during post-war retribution.

As she walked, she looked down at the white plastic bag in her left hand.

It contained the sweets the director had given her. They were meant to serve the guests at the orphanage’s cultural festival in November, but the woman had said it would be wrong not to give her anything.

“Sakai’s famous ‘Xavier Watches Over Us’.”

The box had a picture of sweets shaped in a realistic depiction of a saint.

She felt like it was looking at her, so she looked away and noticed the IAI logo on the corner of the box.

…''What is that company doing?

But then she took a breath.

“Heh heh.”

A laugh escaped her lips.

…''What will Sayama-kun say?”

When she told him she had found her mother and that her girl side was working now…

“Will he rejoice and praise me?”

But then doubt filled her expression and her shoulders drooped.

“I’m sure something bad will happen. He’ll probably want to make a poster or body pillow to commemorate the occasion.”

''It’s possible he’s already made that kind of thing,'' she thought. ''He’s probably outdone anything a normal person could imagine.

“But,” she said while bringing her right hand to her cheek. “If my actual body is working, he won’t have to rely on weird, perverted replicas.”

Her imagination continued from there, but her face grew red and she sped up.

To distract herself from her own imagining of the future, she recalled a certain fact.

Sayama had given her an envelope.

“He said he wanted me to read the letter once I found my past, didn’t he?”

She reached into her bag and quickly managed to pull out the envelope.

Still walking, she returned the bag to her back and opened the envelope while listening to the rustling of the plastic bag in her left hand.

She pulled out the first of two white pieces of stationery.

She unfolded it and read the beginning of the text.

“Dear Shinjou-kun. Ahh, you are as stimulating as the ripples covering the sea at night.”

She thought for a moment and skipped past the first page without reading it.

But after another moment, she sighed.

“I guess that’s being a little insincere.”

His intentions were good and she enjoyed this taste of his idiosyncrasies after so long.

More importantly, she was in a good mood after what had happened today.

''So how about I read it?'' she decided while looking back down at the text.

“Your smile is like a morning cup of coffee. It is a little surprising, it is not sweet, and yet it is so charming and – perhaps due to the caffeine – makes my heart race. In fact, I am having difficulty restraining myself. Ahh, I want to fill you with cream. Are you excited? There is no stopping it now-…”

''That’s it. I’m stopping.

''No, I’ll read it, but I won’t expect anything from it this time. It’s probably going to be something crazy.

…''And when did he write this anyway? We’re always together.

She nodded, picked up the second page, and lowered her gaze to it.

“Now, let us bring an end to the complicated part. No, perhaps a little more.”

About three lines of nonsense punctuated with exclamation marks followed, but she skipped past it.

That left only about fifteen lines.

…''Why didn’t he just write this part first?

As she wondered that, she read the text.

“First, I will tell you something that has been bothering me, Shinjou-kun. There is a possible connection between my family and the Army.”

…''Eh?

Before that question even formed in her mind, she had started reading on.

“My mother’s family apparently ran a store that sold set lunches. It was located in what is now an empty lot behind the Tamiya house.”

But…

“Soon after entering Taka-Akita Academy, her parents were murdered. The criminal was supposedly never caught, but both of my parents said the issue had been ‘settled’. Could we perhaps speculate that my mother’s parents were also involved with UCAT and the organization that preceded the Army targeted them? And could the same be said about Shinjou Yukio’s parents?”

She had never heard this about his mother and she had a guess as to why he had chosen to inform her with this letter.

…''If he told me directly, it would worry me.

''I’ll assume that’s why,'' she decided.

Meanwhile, his opinion on her mother was the same thing she had felt while looking at the documents in the orphanage.

She continued reading the letter.

“My father apparently lived in an orphanage with a connection to my grandfather. That old man must have wanted to raise more underlings for himself because he owned a few orphanages and hid that fact from me. It would seem the rights to them were left with the old man back at UCAT and he is also hiding it from me, but I had an inkling of the truth after years of living as that ape’s grandson. According to my grandfather, he adopted my father because, ‘he was full of himself, stupid, and selfish, so I knew I had to set him straight.’ To me, it always sounded like he was describing himself.

“But what about Shinjou Kaname’s granddaughter? Who arranged to have her sent to an orphanage and who controlled that orphanage? My grandfather would not leave his friend’s grandchild just anywhere. …Although I am sure you have already found that answer.”

After reading that far, Shinjou realized most of this information matched what she had discovered.

However, she had a question about it that also applied to the information about her own mother.

…''Is this information really all that important?

She knew it was important to Sayama since the past brought him so much pain and she knew she needed to share that pain with him.

But as pure information, how important were the contents of this letter?

“…?”

She tilted her head and continued reading.

“There may be a connection between our parents. And if so, that leaves a certain mystery. First, let us assume my mother’s parents were killed by the Army’s predecessor. We do know my parents were part of UCAT and Toda Mikoku of the Army told us yours were as well. In that case…”

She read the next line.

“My mother’s maiden name was Toda.”

“!?”

She wrinkled her brow in a frown and her thoughts matched the next line Sayama had written.

“What does that mean?”

That was exactly her question.

“Shinjou-kun, my mother fought against the Army, so why does a girl in the Army have her family name and why does she know you? It could be a coincidence and there are still some unknowns, but I will write my current answer in invisible ink.”

She noticed a circle around a blank area on the bottom left of the letter.

An arrow pointing to the circle said “Place your lips here and say ‘Come forth, oh answer’.”

''Why go to so much trouble?'' she thought. ''He’s included another weird concept, hasn’t he?''

But she did want to know his answer, so she silently placed her lips on the letter.

“Come forth, oh answer.”

She looked back at the paper, but…

“Nothing’s appearing?”

When she tilted her head and stared at the paper, she noticed small writing along the left edge.

“Ha ha ha. I tricked you, Shinjou-kun. That circle only contained a kiss of my own. I still cannot find an answer, so I gave you an indirect kiss of apology. Good night, Shinjou-kun, and sweet dreams.”

“Good night and goodbye!!”

She threw the letter down to the ground, but quickly picked it back up.

After an annoyed sigh, she realized she had stopped walking.

“Ah.”

She frantically began moving her legs again.

She put the letter back in her bag, muttered “Honestly, Sayama-kun”, and thought about the mystery he had given her.

…''What does it mean that his mother and Mikoku-san have the same family name?

But something interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, Shinjou-san. Wait.”

For some reason, she heard Hiba’s voice from the right.

However, she had just spoken to him over the phone, so he could not possibly be here.

She had to be imagining things.

…''But why I am hearing Mikage-san’s stalker instead of Sayama-kun?

Her thoughts were interrupted again.

“Wait, wait. It’s me, it’s me.”

Like a true stalker, even an illusion of his voice refused to go away.

She waved a hand to the right and hurried down the slope.

“U-um, Shinjou-san!?”

A visual illusion of Hiba appeared in front of her, so she threw a backhand blow with her right fist.

The illusionary strike hit, she heard an illusionary sound, she felt an illusionary impact, and the illusion gave an illusionary scream and illusionarily rolled around on the ground.

''What a persistent illusion. But this should bring it to its illusionary end,'' she thought as she began to walk again.

That was when she heard Mikage’s voice from the left.

“Shinjou.”

“Eh? Mikage-san? Why are you here?”

She turned to the left and saw the girl wearing her armored uniform.

Mikage gently brushed aside her hair in the moonlight.

“To come get you since you said you can’t ride the bulletin train.”

“Bulletin? Oh, you mean the bullet train. But, um, what do you mean you came to get me?”

“We used Susamikado, but the address was hard to find and it slowed us down.”

Even if it had “slowed them down”, not even twenty minutes had passed since the phone call.

However, Shinjou recalled something from about a month before. During the battle with 5th-Gear’s Black Sun, Gyes’s god of war had taken them from Izumo to Okutama in less than an hour.

Gyes’s god of war did not have a specialized propulsion device for aerial movement, so…

“Susamikado would be able to travel even faster…”

“Right. Sorry. We happened to spot you while we were wandering around overhead.”

Mikage held out a hand.

“Let’s go.”

“Eh? Are you sure? And why come get me all of a sudden? I can get back on my own.”

“I had a dream of Ryuuji-kun’s father and the others fighting. But all of the people he was fighting with are gone now…”

She remained expressionless as she spoke.

“I started wondering if we would lose each other someday.”

“…”

Shinjou was speechless, but Mikage continued with her hand still held out.

“So I thought it would be better if we weren’t teammates. If we might lose each other, it would be easier if we never had each other in the first place.”

Mikage smiled.

“But you’re working hard, aren’t you? And so are Sayama, Heo, and the others. …I want to work at it too. That way I can become a better and better person even after my evolution ends. So…so let’s gather together. If I can still get even better after my evolution ends, then Susamikado can get even better too.”

She took a breath.

“So I won’t let Kazami be like that. I won’t let anyone ruin all of her work…and I won’t let us lose each other.”

Shinjou reflexively took Mikage’s hand when she heard that.

Strength gathered in her eyebrows and she returned Mikage’s still gaze.

“You’re right.”

She knew there were people she could never meet, but she still squeezed the fingers holding Mikage’s hand.

''This must be my answer to Team Leviathan disbanding,'' she thought while also thinking of her mother.

“You really are right. We haven’t lost each other yet, so it isn’t too late. So…so let’s go gather together to make each other stronger.”

If they could do that…

“We can get stronger and stronger!”

“Right,” said Mikage with a squeeze back.

Shinjou realized she wanted to speak with Kazami.

She knew Sayama had not really meant it when he had told Kazami they were disbanding.

He had not been telling her to leave Team Leviathan.

…''Please realize that.

The rest of them had a part of their past supporting their involvement in the Leviathan Road and Kazami had to have something similar. What was it that made her want to fight?

Shinjou knew Kazami had worked so hard on those deadly battlefields despite being a normal person and she knew Kazami always scolded them and tried to lead them so they would not give up.

When Shinjou and Sayama had first met, it had been Kazami who had saved them from the werewolf.

Kazami had worried over the death her shot had led to, but she had never let it show.

…''I know that she belongs on Team Leviathan.

So…

…''Find your reason for being with me.

Shinjou nodded, but then realized something.

“Huh? Where’s Ryuuji-kun?”

“Sleeping over there.”

She looked in the indicated spot and found the collapsed illusion. It had yet to get up.

“Reality can be harsh.”

Mikage tilted her head as if she did not understand.

A girl moved quickly through a white hallway.

A small creature sat on her short blonde hair and she wore an orange flight jacket over a dark blue school uniform.

The chest of the jacket swayed as she walked and it contained the name Heo Thunderson.

Her footsteps were light as she passed the nurse station on her way to a hospital room.

The young nurse inside lowered her head, took a bite of a chocolate snack called a Strawbcookie, and spoke.

“Do your best with him.”

She held up her right arm in a triumphant pose.

Heo had been raised in the United States, so she was not quite sure what the gesture meant in relation to doing her best with Harakawa. She gave up on understanding and simply took it as support.

“Y-yes. I’ll do what I can.”

“If anything comes of it, we’ll take care of you here.”

''Wait, I think I do know what she means,'' realized Heo as she hurried back to the hospital room.

She knew she could not run, but she could not let the drinks Harakawa had asked for get cold.

…''I need to hurry without rushing.

It seemed Harakawa’s mother, Yui, was stable now.

Ooki had told Heo the woman had collapsed, but Harakawa had not contacted her.

She had wanted to contact him, but she had not worked up the courage.

She had been afraid he would tell her not to come with him.

After some hesitation, she had made her way here, but it had taken about two hours by train and foot.

It had been past eight by the time she had arrived and Harakawa had been in the hospital room.

He had briefly explained Yui’s condition and said this happened all the time.

He had said nothing more and Yui had continued sleeping.

Heo and Harakawa had remained in silence until past nine when Harakawa had handed over his wallet.

Now, Heo was walking down the hallway with drinks.

Having something to do had calmed her heart a little. At the very least, it was far better than sitting in silence while thinking about the fact that she had come uninvited.

She reached the room with the cans clanking together in her arms.

She heard someone speak from inside and focused on it, assuming it was Harakawa.

“Heo-san. Hurry on in while he’s using the bathroom.”

It was Yui’s voice and it was surprisingly steady.

''Didn’t she collapse?'' thought Heo while walking through the door.

She prepared to say “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”, but…

“…”

She swallowed the words when she saw the color red.

The color Heo saw was small.

It was nothing more than a red stain on the handkerchief Yui held over her mouth.

However, it stood out in the white hospital room filled with white light.

Heo quickly ran over and prepared to say something, but Yui stopped her with a hand.

“Don’t worry. I only coughed up what was left in my throat.”

“B-but!”

The woman forced down Heo’s panic with a smile and a nod. She then held out a hand.

“More importantly, could I have something to drink? My mouth still tastes like salt and iron, so I don’t want to talk much.”

Heo tensed her shoulders and hesitated, but she opened a can and held it out.

“I bought Maximum Coffee’s tea flavor like Harakawa asked…”

Yui first tossed the bloody handkerchief in the trashcan to the side of the bed.

Next, she drank the contents of the can with some blood still on her lips.

It almost looked like she was simply pouring the can into her mouth and she consumed about half of it.

“Kwaah! Now, that was good. …Oh, sorry. Did I scare you?”

When she smiled, she was back to her normal self.

Relieved, Heo tensed her shoulders and shook her head.

She then sat on the bedside stool Yui gestured to.

She set the two remaining cans on the side table and realized something.

“Wait. Is this why he asked me to buy three drinks?”

“You really are slow, Heo-san. Heh heh. That boy knew I had woken up. He probably wanted to force the troublesome part onto someone else.”

She sighed and leaned back against her pillow.

“You want to hear about my condition, don’t you? To make up for how rude he was, I’ll tell you some extra things he doesn’t know about. For example…”

Yui slowly brushed aside the hair on her shoulders.

“My illness was caused by the secondary damages of the Great Kansai Earthquake. …Officially, at least.”

“…!”

“Surprised? I’m glad. Dan always looks so displeased when I mention my illness, so I never tell him much about it. But I think it’s about time I told you some things.”

She reached for the window and cracked it open.

The cold night wind slowly entered the room.

She exhaled into that fresh air and faced Heo.

Her narrow eyes were smiling.

“Are you going to make an old woman drink alone?”

“Oh, um, no.”

The can Heo grabbed was an IAI carbonated nectar called Nectar Pepper.

She liked its odd flavor, but everyone at school had said she had strange tastes when she said she liked it. She did not know what kind of jokes the people at UCAT would make, so she had yet to come out about that there.

While she enjoyed the odd flavor, Yui looked at the can.

“You are a unique girl, Heo.”

“…Sorry for making you choose your words so carefully.”

“It’s fine. Letting your unique side out like that is much better than that boy who is always trying to crush that side of himself. How about you become my child?”

Heo shrank down and shook her head and Yui smiled bitterly.

“Yes…you’re right. Deciding that for myself would be wrong to Maria.”

“…!?”

Heo quickly turned around when she heard her mother’s name and she saw Yui’s spread palm.

It avoided Baku and brushed through her hair.

The woman rubbed her head and spoke from beyond the ticklishness.

“My illness isn’t much. …It’s just that my organs will fail. Do you understand what I mean?”

Heo thought about the question while the woman rubbed her head.

“You mean your organs switch between failing and working?”

“Yes, but the timing is unstable. So if I’m too active, it could lead to damage that would affect them even when they aren’t failing. That’s why I’m in the hospital.”

She kept her hand moving as she spoke.

“I won’t get any worse, but I won’t get better either.”

“It…can’t be cured?”

“No, it can’t.” Yui sounded cheerful. “And even if it could be, then you and that boy would stop worrying for me.”

“But,” started Heo before looking at Yui’s face and stopping.

She had seen the small smile on the woman’s face. It was her usual smile.

“Let’s just leave it at that. …Also, there’s one other person with this same illness. Do you know who that is? He has white hair and…I guess he’d be middle-aged now. The needle was pointed more in the negative direction for him, so his condition only gets worse and worse.”

She did know who that was.

She knew him as the man who rarely made an appearance despite being Team Leviathan’s supervisor.

If he had the same illness as Yui and his case was even worse…

“Wh-why?”

She grabbed Yui’s hand and looked straight at the woman’s smiling face.

“What kind of battle happened on the night of the Great Kansai Earthquake? What kind of battle left you and him like this and killed my father?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Well…”

She had nothing to hesitate about and the words came out before she could even think about what to say.

“Because I’m where I am now because of that battle.”

Heo spoke aloud what she had been wondering about lately.

“Team Leviathan disbanded and I was told to learn about the past if I wanted to know why. But when I investigated the past, I found I didn’t know much of anything. So many pieces are missing. …But I know one thing for sure: everything that happened led to me being here.”

She took in a breath.

She left this to her thoughts and her moving mouth and she relied on the nod Yui gave her.

“I am happy that I can be with the others, but I don’t know why I’m here. …My mom protected me from Black Sun, my great-grandfather fought, and Black Sun made a mistake for his people, but what did my parents do?”

“Heo-san?”

Her head had started to drop, so she raised it.

She saw Yui slowly look outside the window.

“I’m not very good at talking with people anymore, am I? …That’s because my friend said she didn’t like someone who talked too much.”

Heo followed Yui’s gaze and saw something white sitting on the windowsill.

It had flown inside and landed.

“That’s one of the cranes my teacher makes with origami.”

“I’m glad to see Diana is doing well. And here I was hoping to earn some points with my son’s future wife.”

“Eh?”

Heo blushed and Yui turned back toward her and took a sip from her drink can.

“Is Dan important to you?”

“Y-yes.”

The woman rubbed her head.

“Do you want to be with him?”

“Y-yes.”

She rubbed her head again.

“What will you do if the two of you have a child?”

Heo could not just say “yes” to this one, so she thought about it.

…''What does she mean?

Was it a simple question? Yui had just mentioned “earning points”, so Heo felt she should give the best answer she could and she wanted a reliable answer that would put the sick woman at ease.

…''Um, uh, uh…

“F-first I would get insurance and then I would pay into an annuity! And I would buy a house and I would save up money in the bank!”

“Calm down, Heo.”

“Okay.”

Heo felt dejected and Yui gave a troubled smile.

“This may be hard to imagine, but what if there was a battle that could destroy the world? And what if you had an important family at the time?”

“I would want to protect that family.”

“Now, what if you were one of the people who could fight in that battle?”

“…”

“I think the answer you want lies there, so try thinking about it.”

Heo could not reply.

After all, she was simply imagining.

She had no family, so she could not answer a question based on that assumption.

However, Yui rubbed her head again and Heo trembled.

“Wh-why? I didn’t answer you.”

“This is ''because'' you didn’t answer. Reflexively saying you would fight sounds cool and makes it look like you understand what that means…but it takes this all too lightly.”

She heard Yui’s voice from beyond her hand.

“We all hesitated back then, but we went in the end. If you easily gave an answer, it would mean all our worry was for nothing. So it’s okay if you aren’t sure yet, Heo.”

“O-okay.”

After another rub of her head, she was asked another question.

“But are you not getting along with Dan? The two of you were being so quiet.”

“Oh, that… I came here today without telling him.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“No.”

She gave a nervous shake of her head and she saw Yui smile and nod.

“Then you’re fine. He didn’t leave the room, right? That means he knew you would come even if he didn’t call for you. He thinks that’s normal and doesn’t see a problem with it. And regardless, you are still by his side. …Are you going to eat dinner after this?”

“Y-yes. And after dinner, I…um…think I’ll have him massage my chest.”

The hand on her head stopped and the woman paused before speaking.

“You mean have him grope your breasts?”

“Y-yes. Well, no, not quite. He’ll also be rubbing stuff on them. Um, uh, he said you taught him a way of making them grow. He said he would use honey and sugar to stimulate them and then some herbs.”

She received an immediate reply.

“I did ''not'' say that!”

The door behind her burst open and Harakawa stormed in. His eyebrows were raised and his finger was pointed at her.

“Heo Thunderson! What kind of hallucination did you have a front-row seat for this time!?”

“Ehh!? B-but we arranged it and everything. In the bath!”

“Wait, Heo Thunderson. …You’re making some kind of massive misunderstanding here.”

“Y-you can’t talk your way out of this one!! I almost lost a lot of blood from what you said!”

His betrayal had left her on the verge of tears, but she realized Yui’s hands were supporting her shoulders from behind.

“Dan, try to be a little quieter. …And, Dan. Can I say one thing?”

“I’m innocent here. As long as you understand that, you can say whatever you want.”

“Fine, Dan. …Go get some insurance. And make sure to pay into an annuity and a savings account.”

“Please believe what your son is telling you!”

“What’s wrong with this? And if you don’t mind, then why not help out some? You would like that, wouldn’t you, Heo?”

Heo was unsure what to say.

She looked at Harakawa, but his frown was telling her to say no. She had no choice but to sigh and answer.

“That would be too much trouble for him.”

She tensed her shoulders as she spoke. For some reason, this made his face grow paler and paler.

Behind her, she heard Yui’s smiling voice.

“No one can win against you, Heo-san. I can see why Thunder Fellow would stick with you.”

“You know about that?”

“Yes, but you all will learn even more from here on. That creature on your head…Baku, was it? He wasn’t there in our time. But with him, you should be able to learn about us and about yourselves. So…”

Yui gave Heo’s back a gentle push.

“Go. You have a visitor.”

Neither of them asked who it was and they heard a voice that resembled their own.

—'''There is no mutual understanding.

Heo reflexively stood just as she lost all sensation from the outside world.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_23|Chapter 23]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_25|Chapter 25]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 21

2014-12-08T17:00:40Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 21: In the Past */

==Chapter 21: In the Past==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0037.png|thumb]]
''On the hill where the past flutters through the air

''The flower petals last a mere thirty years

Shinjou was in a black and white space.

The white was the color of the walls and ceiling while the black was the color of the chairs and tables.

Several tables were lined up in a ten square meter room.

It was a cafeteria.

The wooden clock on the wall said it was half past seven, but only the heat of an early dinner remained in the room.

The food had been eaten at six and the faint scent of spices hung in the air.

Several tapestries were lined up to either side of the clock.

The pictures embroidered on them had been made by the children. They started with story of creation and continued up to the beginning of the current age.

Each tapestry had a single image, but the children must have hung them up as they liked because the order was completely wrong.

“That’s adorable.”

One image showed a man and woman living in a garden, but the very next one showed the Virgin Mary holding her child, and that was followed by a snake, a flood, and a tower. The very last picture was a shepherd looking up into the starry sky.

It almost looked like a test to see if you could put them in order, but Shinjou remembered this was not a church and so it was not the place to teach the children those things.

''Whoever was in charge must just let the kids do what they want,'' she guessed.

She doubted the woman who ran the place had created that policy, so it had likely been the decision of someone from an older time.

…''There must have been someone here as terribly arbitrary as Sayama-kun and the others.

She then looked to the pile of documents on the table in front of her.

The pile included albums, sketchbooks, and notebooks.

Each of them had the same name on them.

“Shinjou Yukio.”

She had found these without much difficulty.

After the director had calmed her from her tears, she had told the woman why she had been searching for the orphanage.

The woman had invited her in and said the following.

“I was left in charge of this orphanage a while after it was moved here. I hear a lot of registers and other documents were lost when the old building collapsed, but the things left by the graduates were in the previous director’s storehouse, which survived. How about we look through there?”

She had ended up going through all the albums and such piled up in the back of the storehouse.

After finishing their dinner, the orphans had said they would help, but Shinjou had politely turned them down.

…''I want to do this on my own.

The name she was looking for had appeared suddenly.

She now had Shinjou Yukio’s albums as well as her notebooks, reports, printouts, and report cards from school. The given dates ended at 1976.

The records for that final year said she was fifteen in 1976 and the records in Izumo UCAT had said Shinjou Yukio was born in 1960, so it added up.

This was actually her.

After learning that, she had taken those documents to the cafeteria.

She had not forgotten to call UCAT while the director made her a light dinner of toast and such.

Hiba had answered and she had told him the time of her train home and the orphanage’s address. He said Harakawa’s mother had collapsed and she was worried, but there was nothing she could do.

…''I just hope nothing bad happens.

With that thought, she took a quiet breath and reached for the pile of documents.

First, she picked up an album.

All of a sudden, Shinjou saw several photographs depicting moments from the past.

The photographs pasted in the album showed a certain girl.

She had a strong-willed look to her and she could be seen playing in the yard of the old orphanage, studying in one of its rooms, and dressed in a bird-like costume for some kind of festival.

As the date advanced, her hair grew longer and she wore a red ribbon in her hair by the time she was wearing a middle school uniform.

…''Does she look like me?

She was not sure and she could not find anything in the photos to connect the girl to her.

However, she saw the girl helping the younger children change or otherwise taking charge more often as time went on.

She also saw the girl smile. Sometimes it was a powerful smile and other times it was a weak one.

In one photograph, she was showing off a flute she had probably gotten in middle school. In another one, Shinjou saw the flute’s brown bag sticking out of her rectangular leather bag.

But Shinjou noticed something.

…''It’s gone?

At what Shinjou guessed was her shift up to the third year, the flute’s bag vanished from the leather bag.

She also noticed a white scrape along the surface of the leather bag.

She did not know what had happened, but the girl’s smile looked troubled as she knitted.

That was the final school year in the album.

The date to the side of the photo was November 1975. In December, the girl wore a white stole as she sang something in a large room lit only by candles.

It was likely a scene from Christmas.

''She was younger than I am now,'' thought Shinjou. But at the same time…

…''This is from thirty years ago.

[[Image:OnC_v11_0043.jpg|thumb]]

She reached toward the photograph, but no matter how gently she touched it, she could not reach the girl in the past.

The girl would not answer if she asked if she was her mother.

As she approached the end of the album, she found some photographs of the girl’s middle school graduation.

Shinjou noticed a bandage on the girl’s cheek in the photograph on the way back to the church after the graduation. The paper tube holding her diploma was bent as well.

…''But her smile is back.

The cliff by the old orphanage’s yard had a nice view of Sakai and it was filled with cherry blossoms.

Below the falling cherry blossoms, the girl smiled with the bandage on her cheek and the bent paper tube in her hand.

“Good.”

For some reason, Shinjou felt she had a bit of an understanding of the girl.

…''She must have been a good person.

She had hidden thoughts, she tried to solve everything herself, and she would smile.

The word “alone” appeared in Shinjou’s mind, but she doubted that was entirely wrong.

“…”

She flipped to the final page which contained a single large photograph.

Cherry blossom petals danced through the air in front of the old orphanage’s entrance.

Below a blue sky, Shinjou Yukio stood in front of the open gate. She wore a light blue windbreaker and white jeans and she held a large white travel bag in one hand. And…

“She’s smiling…but it’s the weak smile.”

She was likely leaving the orphanage.

Shinjou realized the girl had a national railway envelope for a train ticket in her breast pocket.

After quickly flipping through the album and checking the other albums, she confirmed something.

…''There isn’t a single picture of her crying. It’s always that proud smile or that weak one.

That was enough to imagine what kind of person she had been.

In that unreachable past, she had worked alone when she was at school, when she was in the orphanage, when she was dealing with her classmates, and when she was helping the younger children.

Shinjou had a sudden thought about that younger girl in the photographs who shared her family name.

…''What if she was my mother?

She thought about it, considered it from a number of angles, and shook her head.

…''The odds of that aren’t very good.

Needless to say, the girl was female. If she had married, her family name would have changed. As the push for equal rights between the sexes had grown, the law had changed to say a woman could use either name after marriage, but that had only happened in the mid-nineties. Even in the present day, very few people did so and she would have likely married in her twenties which would have been during the eighties.

The odds of her being Shinjou’s mother were low.

That thought filled her stomach with pain. The stomachache she always felt at the end of the month was rearing its ugly head due to stress.

So for the moment, she spoke aloud what she needed to investigate here.

“Where did she go after leaving here?”

If the orphanage kept records of their plans, she would know where the girl had gone. Following that trail would likely lead her to the answer and that might let her give up for the time being.

Curious, she searched through the documents and found a printout related to her future plans.

The straw paper had turned brown and it was only a schedule for a meeting about planning for the future, but Shinjou continued searching through the pile that schedule had come from.

“Here it is.”

She found a form filled in with the girl’s tentative plans for the future.

It had a space for the school she wanted to attend and the necessary score for acceptance.

Neat handwriting wrote out a school with Osaka in its name.

“I see. So did she go to a local school?”

If she had survived the Great Kansai Earthquake, she might be able to meet her.

With that faint hope in her heart, Shinjou looked through the document.

The area to explain her choice was filled in with small but clear handwriting.

“I want to go into theology in the future. I would like to use the knowledge I have in that field to help our cultural exchange with other countries. But I have no money for school, so I hope to attend a prefectural school that offers the courses I want.”

''Is that what someone raised in a church would say?'' wondered Shinjou even as it made sense to her.

She flipped the document over in case anything was written on the back, but the back was blank.

The form was apparently only for the student’s tentative plans.

“Too bad,” she muttered while preparing to flip the fairly thick paper back over.

But just before she did, she noticed something odd about the form.

“It looks like something else was written here.”

The writing on the front had left indentations in the back, but the indentations at the very top were a complete mess.

She could tell some other school had been written below the one with Osaka in the name.

The girl had written some other school and then erased it.

…''Why?

Shinjou recalled the girl’s weak smile and guessed she had made that smile while erasing the first school.

Shinjou found herself wanting to know what it had been.

After all, she knew that weak smile.

As if telling the girl to cheer up, she began to move.

“Um…”

She pulled a black binder from her bag and pulled out a piece of tracing paper. She had brought it to hold old documents without damaging them.

She placed the tracing paper on the back of the document and lightly traced over it with the side of some mechanical pencil lead.

The thin tracing paper matched the indentations of the document and allowed her to bring out the handwriting.

She finished in less than a minute.

It included the second school name as well, so it was hard to read.

Even so, she managed to decipher that handwriting from the past.

The name that had been erased was one Shinjou knew very well.

“Private…Taka-Akita Academy!?”

Shinjou reflexively stood at the words she herself had spoken.

The chair scraped across the wooden floor and the director entered through the cafeteria entrance.

Shinjou ran over to the woman, while annoyed that the slippers she wore slowing her down.

“U-um! Are there any more documents on her!?”

Before, she had wanted to pursue her, but that thought was beginning to change.

…''I have to pursue her!!

As if pulled forward by that thought, she smiled and asked the middle-aged woman in white a question.

“I still don’t know if she was my mother! But I need to know why she tried to go where I am now.”

She thought back to who she had been when she had been alone and who she was now.

“I need to know why she tried to go to the place where I learned to smile.”

A moment later, Shinjou saw the wooden plate hanging by the cafeteria’s entrance.

It gave the orphanage’s name and it was likely a piece recovered from the old building.

…''The Soukou House.

As soon as she spoke those words in her heart, something seemed to connect inside her.

She thought back on what she had just said.

…''Shinjou Yukio tried to go to Taka-Akita Academy.

Her heart shouted in denial of those words.

…''No!!

She took two logical steps to reach a conclusion that was nearly a gamble.

“She…”

Her reasoning linked together and built her confidence as she spoke.

“She must have gone to where I am now!”

The ends of the director’s eyebrows lowered when she heard that.

She seemed to be hesitating and she tilted her head.

“Shinjou-san?” she began. “What makes you so sure of that?”

Shinjou moved back to the table and grabbed the album and the future plans document.

She walked back to the woman, flipped through the pages, and reached the final page and the photograph of the girl leaving.

She held the open album in her left hand and pointed at one point on the photograph with her right hand.

“Look in her breast pocket. See the train ticket? She wouldn’t need a ticket if she was moving somewhere within the Osaka Prefecture or somewhere else nearby. That means she wasn’t going to the school from her tentative plans on this form. I think she had to have gone to the school on the future plans form she actually submitted to her teacher. …And I think that was a school in Tokyo.”

“But where would she have gotten the money for that school?”

The woman brought a troubled hand to her cheek.

“We’re talking about a school in Tokyo…and probably a private one too.”

Shinjou responded with a deep nod.

“Director, you know who built this orphanage, don’t you?”

“Yes, the previous director told me.”

“I will now tell you that name.”

She took a calm, deep breath before answering.

“Soukou.”

The director’s shoulders shook, but Shinjou was not bothered by her surprise. That surprise was only natural.

Shinjou looked to the wooden plate hanging by the cafeteria entrance.

“Yes, it was a Mr. Soukou. ...Soukou is written with the characters ‘grass’ and ‘aroma’ and the character for the aroma rising from a plant can be read ‘Kaoru’. …This orphanage was funded by Sayama Kaoru, wasn’t it?”

Once she made it that far, the words kept coming.

“The previous director probably wanted to thank him by directly naming it after him, but I’m sure Sayama-kun’s grandfather was embarrassed and refused. That’s why the previous director used the name Soukou. And Sayama-kun’s grandfather…”

She smiled.

“He was a villain. He would do unbelievable things on the surface, but he would show his true feelings where no one could see. …So if he saw someone hesitating over her future and giving up on what she wanted to do out of consideration for those around her, he would have helped her even if she wasn’t his friend’s granddaughter.”

The director’s reaction was to sigh. It was a sigh of relief.

She brought her right hand to her cheek.

“I see.”

She slowly looked up and down Shinjou.

“Do you know the man the previous director called Daddy-Long-Legs?”

“Not him himself, but I know a relative of his very well.”

“I see,” said the woman again.

She held up what was in her hand and held it out at Shinjou’s eye level.

“These are the letters the orphanage’s graduates sent. We have always made sure to carefully store them since the previous director’s time, but I completely forgot we had them in the office. Some of those sent to the previous director survived and…I found them. These are what Shinjou Yukio sent over a decade ago.”

The woman held out an old notebook and two letters.

“I believe you should read these.”

The woman smiled and nodded.

“Here. This is the entrance to what you seek.”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume11_Chapter_22|Chapter 22]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume11 Chapter 20

2014-12-08T16:39:48Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 20: Lesson in the Dark */

==Chapter 20: Lesson in the Dark==
[[Image:OnC_v11_0011.png|thumb]]
''After you are taught

''And after you learn

''What have you gained?

A small room was filled with blue light.

The room was bell shaped and had a diameter of about five meters.

The walls and floor were made of stone cut much like bricks and it had no windows.

The room was underground.

It had a single entrance and led nowhere else.

It appeared empty except for the desk in the center.

A bookcase sat on the desk, but it held no books.

There was a pen holder that doubled as a paperweight, but it held no pens. And yet a clear inkbottle sat next to it.

A boy stood in front of the desk and the items on it.

He wore a suit with the name Sayama stitched inside it.

He looked around the room and behind him.

“There is nothing else here.”

He had solved the riddle in the Kinugasa residence’s storehouse and he had reached this room by taking the staircase that had appeared.

The stairs into the darkness had continued down for about twenty meters before arriving at this room.

He had not noticed any tricks in the staircase passageway.

…''So is the Kinugasa Document in this underground space?

He looked around again, but there was still nothing.

“This is supposed to be a study, so what is this?”

As he muttered to himself, he pulled a document from his pocket.

It was the Georgius Development Plan. His father had written it, but the project had been abandoned before completion. He read one line printed on the cover.

“Written based on the Kinugasa Document acquired at the Kinugasa residence.”

The supposed Kinugasa Document should have been here.

Had his parents taken it back with them and had it since been thrown out or sealed away?

“I can reject that boring possibility. If my parents had taken back what they found here, would that have included every last pen and every last book in the bookcase? And if they did, would they leave the paperweight behind? No, they would not.”

He vigorously swung his arm up and pointed in an arbitrary direction.

The cloth of the suit gave a nice snapping sound as he posed and spoke.

“There is something hidden here. Yes, the shy truth is hiding in this very room.”

He laughed and brought a hand to his forehead.

He breathed a sigh of self-praise before continuing.

“I am in an excellent mood today, I sound magnificent even as I speak to myself, and just one problem faces me here: where have the contents of the study gone?”

He stretched his empty right hand toward the inkbottle on the desk.

He picked it up, checked the ink from the side, and found about half of the black ink was gone.

“This is the answer.”

He flicked the bottle’s lid with his thumb and it opened with the sensation of scraping across dry dirt.

The sticky smell of ink reached his nose.

He gently shook the bottle to ensure the ink rippled.

“The entrance to the truth is not here. In other words, the truth is hidden. Hidden by this fake ‘empty study’.”

So…

“How about I look at it in reverse? ''What if I try to hide the fake with what is real ''? Using the real ink I have here!”

He swung his right hand.

The contents of the inkbottle splattered around him.

He heard the scattering droplets and the speed of the ink caused it to burst into a mist.

The black danced through the blue-lit room.

“…”

And the world melted away.

As the spraying liquid filled the room, the room itself was peeled away, starting from the top.

The empty walls were stripped away from top to bottom and they revealed…

“The truth.”

A moment later, he saw bookcases and a floor overflowing with an ocean of books.

Even the floor he stood on was a layer of books.

He then saw a document sitting on the desk in front of him.

A pen sat on it and the title had been quickly written out.

“Georgius Development Plan!! By Kinugasa Tenkyou!”

As soon as his reading of the title filled the room, something welled up from the bottom of the bell-shaped room.

“…?”

A sense of expansion rose from the below the floor, almost like heat.

''Something is coming,'' he thought as that something floated up into the air.

It was writing.

Black writing rose from anywhere and everywhere: between the pages of the surrounding books, from their covers, from the papers scattered around the room, or from below those papers.

There was hiragana, katakana, kanji, the alphabet, numbers, symbols, the lines of ruled paper, periods, and commas. They all floated around the room as if they had been granted freedom.

It was all writing.

Sayama could no longer see across the room.

Soon, that writing began to move.

First, it moved right.

It formed a gentle wave, but a breath later, the surface of the writing was swaying back to the left.

Soon, it moved right again.

“…!”

The right-moving and left-moving writing split and…

“It’s rotating!?”

As if to answer Sayama’s doubt, the tens of thousands of characters began rotating around the room either to the left or right.

The writing quickly rotated in opposite directions above the sea of books. They intertwined, split apart, spun, split some more, and raced along.

He looked up at it all and the writing showed no sign of stopping.

Like an astronomical model, the writing formed several rings that rotated inside the room, intersected, and continued spinning.

One ring slowly flashed yellow, one ring remained black as it intersected with another and sent sparks flying, and one ring glowed silver while ticking like a clock’s seconds hand.

In the center, sudden curiosity led Sayama to raise his hands toward the astronomical model of writing.

He touched a spot where left and right rings intersected.

He wondered if he was being careless, but he was touching information.

His physical fingers passed right through the rings of writing.

“…!?”

An image flashed in the back of his mind.

The information expressed by the writing had been given form and replayed in his brain.

A scene played for the information in the right ring and the information in the left ring.

“…four-way barrier is apparently the only option. 10th’s dragon will apparently pursue the refugees. I’ve heard something similar will eventually happen with 2nd-Gear, but first, 10th’s divine dragon will arrive as if making a demonstration. Kaoru-kun has nearly completed the technique for constructing a four-way barrier, so he is a step ahead of the 2nd-Gear engineers developing the celestial seal. However, one thing is lacking. For the barrier to function properly, someone must make a decree in the center. I am sure he will volunteer for that, but that will mean someone else must fill his normal position and I do not think I will last long if I…”

“…only natural. There is a mystery about Low-Gear that only some residents of 9th and 10th have noticed. It seems they occasionally invade Low-Gear, but when they return, they often find that invasion was for nothing. Why is that? That will surely be discovered after my death. So before sealing the divine dragon, I will ask a certain question while I can still push myself: Why did I name this world Low-Gear? And I have a message for the later generation: If you wish to know the identity of Babel, you must seek the truth of this world…”

“…!?”

Sayama quickly jerked back his hands.

The information had been directly carved into his mind and not even his racing pulse could help him process it.

…''What was that? What was I just told?

For one…

“There is a mystery about Low-Gear?”

And…

“The identity of Babel?”

What did that mean?

The first record had likely been about the seal for 10th-Gear’s divine dragon.

His grandfather had created the seal used to obtain 10th-Gear’s Concept Core and Professor Kinugasa had predicted his own death in the process.

But the next record was the problem.

Sayama had his own guesses as to what Babel was.

But…

…''I must seek the truth of this world?

What had Kinugasa Tenkyou known?

And when his parents had presumably seen that record…

…''Did they learn something? Or did they know something?

He shook his question-filled head.

This was not the time.

He had come here to check the Kinugasa Document on Georgius. His mother had left Georgius with him and his father had tried to create it yet abandoned it, so he had to know what it was.

For that reason, he firmly faced forward. That was when he noticed something.

A single ring floated in the center of his vision.

The thirty centimeter ring of writing floated above the Kinugasa Document.

Bluish-white dots raced across its surface and slowly rotated.

“So this is the embodiment of the knowledge inside the Kinugasa Document.”

He no longer hesitated to reach out.

As if watched over by the massive amount of information circling around him, he touched the information he was searching for.

“…”

As soon as he grabbed it, it fully expanded in the back of his mind.

He saw the embodiment of the knowledge related to Georgius.

Sayama knew.

He did not see it and he did not hear it. He simply knew it as knowledge.

The only other way to describe it was as a memory. The knowledge entered his brain via his memories.

…''What is this?

It arrived.

He could tell that something greater than his five senses had reached him.

Why was the letter “a” pronounced “a”? Why did people read a string of letters as a sound and a meaning? What filled his memory now was “pure” information that preceded those questions.

Georgius was poured into his mind and memories like that.

He became aware of the information in his mind as he translated it into words.

The images he saw were instants of the past displayed on the screen of his memories.

He first saw a yard beneath a clear sky.

The gravel-covered yard had crops growing in the back and beyond that was a field full of rapeseed, a forest, and a mountain range continuing downwards.

This was the yard of Professor Kinugasa’s house.

The gaze viewing it was inside the house. It sat next to a tea table in the living room.

Only a right arm was visible and that arm was resting on the documents sitting on the tea table.

His thoughts reached Sayama’s memories and Sayama’s language comprehension translated them into words.

“Here I will record the results of my examination of the concept weapon made to restrict any and all concepts.”

That weapon’s name was…

“It is commonly known as Georgius. It takes the form of two gauntlets, but I currently only possess the right one. I acquired it in a certain place, but I lost the left one in the process. The one who will later create and use an identical concept weapon will surely learn at one point that I possessed this one. And I must state this here: Georgius must not be made.”

The scene changed to the inside a dimly-lit wooden building. The room contained rows of washing stations by the window as if in an art room or a workshop. Thick wooden work desks lined the room and Sayama’s gaze sat at a desk piled with documents.

Someone walked around the pile of documents and into view.

It was a young man in a lab coat. When Sayama saw the slender man with long hair, a name filled his mind.

“Shinjou-kun?”

Except he did not look all that much like her. He was taller and bonier.

But the smile he made as he gave a greeting did remind Sayama of hers.

…''Is this part of my Shinjou-kun withdrawal symptoms?

He tilted his head and the gaze’s owner handed a document to the young man.

The young man took it and suddenly looked to the side.

Someone had entered the room.

The young man looked a bit surprised to see the person, but then he smiled and opened his mouth.

His mouth moved to call someone’s name and the movements were much like those Sayama often saw. There was no sound here, so he could only read the vowel sounds.

…''Ah – ah – ah – un.

''I see. So this is the National Defense Department,'' he realized as someone’s thoughts reached his mind.

“Georgius is a machine built to capture its user’s willpower so it can either amplify or destroy that world’s positive and negative concepts. In other words, it is an amplifier for and weapon against all concepts.”

There was a pause as if for a breath.

“As Georgius must not have its power disturbed by any concept, its foundational component must be a power that is not bound by concepts. That is, it must be given an operational mechanism that works under all concepts and can ignore or overcome those concepts.”

Sayama mentally frowned at what the thought said.

…''Ignore or overcome all concepts?

Did something like that really exist?

“If it does, it cannot be light or heat,” he muttered. “It could not be anything bound by the laws of physics. Something that exists even in absolute nothingness.”

A story suddenly came to him.

That story said the world had once been in a state of chaotic darkness where everything was formless.

“Let there be light…and there was light.”

He thought it was wrong to use those words to say light was the strongest thing of all.

What was it that had ignored the chaos and created the light?

“A will.”

As if in response, the scene before him changed.

He was now on a mountain ridge with an excellent view and his vision was walking with around ten other people.

One was the young man who resembled Shinjou and he was falling behind.

A young man in a military coat split off from those moving on ahead and walked back to that first young man.

The owner of the gaze smiled as he watched them.

A voice reached Sayama’s mind.

“A will. We can say that the appearance of every concept involves what we can call that concept’s will. And it is possible to seal a will inside a machine. 3rd-Gear’s gods of war and 5th-Gear’s mechanical dragons are proof enough of that. However…”

The scene changed again. This time to a destroyed city.

The gaze stood between buildings that crumbled and sent smoke into the clear sky. The water being used to put out a fire flowed into the street and the owner of the gaze looked west with a few of his comrades.

A blue truck arrived while weaving between the people weakly placing scrap wood out in the road.

“But that means Georgius’s final necessary component is a person. A person must be broken down and their will must be transferred inside, along with their flesh and blood, to give Georgius its own existence. That will create a weapon with a mind of its own. However, the will that enters Georgius must be perfectly synchronized with the weapon. To prevent even an instantaneous error or time lag, their entire body and sense of judgment must be made into Georgius. …However, this will erase their personality and transform their will into nothing but a component.”

And…

“That is why the creation of Georgius must not continue.”

The scene changed to the underground study Sayama stood inside.

However, this gaze still was not his own.

…''Is this still the past?

As if to confirm that, the gaze spoke from in front of the desk at the center of the piles of books and bookcases.

“Nevertheless, I possess the negative Georgius. Due to a promise I made, I cannot reveal where it came from and the positive Georgius that goes with it has been lost. But in the distant future, it should reappear. I hope that both of them will be held by their proper owners. …For that reason, I will later seal the negative Georgius in a place I know very well. To ensure no one foolishly seeks to create a similar item, I will leave only this document here.”

The voice paused as if to breathe.

“I pray that there is no conflict over the use of Georgius.”

Sayama was suddenly knocked away by the words of the gaze, by those words his own mind was creating.

He fell into darkness. He fell into the shadows that led back to reality and the present day.

But he had seen the answer. He knew what Georgius was.

On top of that, he had gained two new mysteries.

First, there were indeed two pieces to Georgius and one of those was hidden somewhere.

Second, his parents had come here for Georgius, but…

“Georgius is made from a human being. What fight made that necessary?”

That would be the battle during the Great Kansai Earthquake.

…''Was that so great a battle that they wanted to destroy concepts!?

Before he could answer his own question, the scene before his eyes changed.

Realizing it would be the underground study, strength filled his gaze. He knew he had returned to the normal world.

“…!?”

But he was wrong.

He saw the blue sky and the mountains in front of him.

…''Where is this?

He looked into the clear sky.

He saw a white fence and the top of a forest beyond that.

This was a narrow viewing platform built on an elevated cliff in the Okutama mountains.

He sat on a wooden bench and his vision was quite low to the ground.

…''What is this?

He knew the answer and he spoke that knowledge aloud.

“Is this my mother’s attempted double suicide!?”

Sayama realized there was a lunch to his left. A large red box contained sausage, pasta salad, croquettes, apple slices, and other colors of food. A large blue box contained rice balls.

He felt the usual pain in his chest.

Without him telling it to, his vision looked down at the lunch.

This was his past self. This gaze belonged to a version of himself much different from now.

The gaze turned around to look at a parked wine-red sedan.

Beyond the car was a two-lane road. The wall-like slope covered by a cement embankment showed the road had been carved out of the mountainside.

The gaze turned back and looked to someone sitting beyond the lunch.

It was a short-haired woman wearing a blue shirt and a long white flared skirt.

She looked back at him with a smile and a tilt of the head. She tilted her head instead of looking down on him.

“What is it, Mikoto? What’s the matter?”

Sayama’s mind and body froze with fear at the voice he heard.

…''Kh.

The pain felt like having his lungs squeezed, but…

…''This is…

“Nothing!”

His past self in the dream happily spoke the same word he forced from the depths of his throat: nothing.

“Let’s eat already,” said his other self.

“Go ahead,” said his mother. “Yes. I actually put real effort into this one.”

His hand quickly reached for a rice ball.

Do these have hamburger meat in them?

Yes.

Aren’t you going to eat any, mom?

You’re eating too fast, Mikoto. I can’t keep up.

C’mon, eat. …You can eat dad’s portion too.

…''Show some tact, child.

But despite his thought, he saw his mother smile.

He had not thought anything of the smile at the time, but he now knew what it meant.

He gave a long mental sigh and wiped away his unseen sweat.

…''Why am I seeing my past? Does my subconscious have a humiliation fetish?

He could make a guess. When the information on Georgius had left, the information inside his own mind must have been partially dragged out.

But if he allowed that information to be fully drawn out…

…''This past may be externally stored in writing and vanish inside me.

That would erase one of the memories that plagued his chest.

…''How about it?

If he erased the memory, he would have an easier time in the future. Most likely, his mother would no longer give him chest pains and he would not worry Shinjou as much.

This was probably his one and only chance at this.

…''This may be a sort of reward.

This may have been thanks for making it this far and attempting to learn what was written here.

As he thought through it logically, he saw a certain moment begin.

This was the final moment.

“…”

The owner of the gaze, that young Sayama, held a thermos lid his mother had given him.

It contained orange juice chilled with ice and the young Sayama rejoiced that it contained three whole pieces of ice.

“Mom, I can see the bottom through the i-…”

As soon as he turned around, he saw darkness.

That darkness made his mind gasp along with his past self.

He caught a brief glimpse of the blue sky and then something blue covered him. It was his mother’s clothes and body.

Something that kept him from breathing was pressed down on him by something heavy.

That weight prevented him from moving or breathing.

He tried to say so, but it was so sudden that his lips only trembled and refused to move properly.

“M-…”

He heard his young self’s voice.

“Mom!!”

His body used up all of its air for that shout.

A moment later, his vision grew bright and the blue cloth of his mother’s clothing lifted slightly.

“…!”

He saw his mother’s face.

With the blue sky in the background, the ends of her eyebrows were lowered as if it say nothing could change this but not to worry about it.

…''Why are you smiling!?

“Don’t worry.”

He heard his mother’s faintly shrill voice.

“Next time you call for me, it will surely be in a new world.”

Her hands rose toward his face.

“…!!”

She leaned toward him, he took a breath, and he passed out.

At the same time, his present self fell into darkness. He fell into pure black where nothing could be seen.

But even as his vision grew dark, the pain in his chest did not vanish.

The pain felt like his heart was being squeezed and he could not fight it no matter how much strength he gathered.

A weight emptied his mind until he could not even think about the pain.

And as the pain filled his entire body, he thought.

…''When I later woke in the hospital, I learned that my mother had killed herself with a blade.

He had heard a fair bit of speculation. Some wondered if his mother had thought he had suffocated when he had passed out. Others wondered if she had known he was not dead but had been unable to go through with killing him as well.

All he knew for sure was that he had shed no tears for the mother inside that coffin.

His only thought had been “Why?”

About a decade had passed since then.

During those ten years, the pain had grown and he had tried to forget.

And now a chance had come. If he did nothing now, he could part ways with this memory and its pain. The memory itself would be drawn out of him.

It would become a written record and it would be stripped from his brain in the process.

He had recalled that final memory of his mother countless times, but it would instead spin round and round in that astronomical model.

…''And I will have an easier life.

That was fine. It would be good for the Leviathan Road, good for his own future, and good for Shinjou.

But even as he thought that, he heard a voice.

“A terrible idea.”

The voice rejected his thoughts.

“Don’t you think, Shinjou-kun?”

When the voice called the name of the one most important to him, he realized it was his own voice.

…''Why?

The answer was simple. Even as his memory was drawn from him, he was waking up.

His subconscious – that undeniably honest part of himself – was speaking to him.

“Doesn’t it sound like a terrible idea? After all, Shinjou-kun is searching for the past and she would never think to erase the result, regardless of what that result is. And Kazami will never forget that Izumo was injured. The same goes for everyone else. They will never erase the loss of their loved ones. …So will I alone erase it?”

He spoke back to his own question.

…''Yes, but I am me and they are them. What is wrong with it?

“Is that so?” he asked himself. “Will I be able to bear it if I have lost my own past? When Shinjou-kun is embracing her past even as she so beautifully grieves, will I not be there with her? Do you know what that is called?”

…''Why not call it a privilege? A privilege earned by reaching this place?

He heard a bitter laugh.

“Coming here was my selfish decision. No one will give me a privilege for that. That is called…”

…''Cowardice.

His mind answered his subconscious.

After a pause, his subconscious spoke.

“Do you understand? No, I know you understand. After all…”

Both Sayamas spoke at once.

“I know myself better than anyone else in the world. And the one who knows me second best is Shinjou-kun.”

After another pause, both conscious and subconscious suddenly shouted out.

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled…carrots!! Damn, you kept up wonderfully, other me! That’s me for you!”

Confident that his mind had gathered as one, he thought.

“Yes,” he began. “I had forgotten, but I am a human who stands above god. So no matter what handicap or past I may hold, I can continue upwards, unlike the common people below me. …Ergo, I need no helping hand. Having Shinjou-kun help me through the pain is my greatest happiness.”

“Then hurry,” said his subconscious. “Your past is being dragged out.”

Sure enough, his surroundings were filling with light.

He was waking.

If he did nothing, he would fully wake and he would likely find that final memory of his mother rotating in a circle.

He had to stop it.

…''But how?

The answer reached his body.

Someone placed their hand on the back of his left hand which he could not clench into a fist.

He did not know whose hand it was. Did it come from his memories, was it his own hand, or was it an illusion?

Regardless, he spread his unseen hand in the darkness. He held it before his eyes, spread the fingers, and thrust it into the blackness as if clawing at it.

“I heard that a will can overcome all else.”

He was alone.

“I will likely always be alone.”

Even if someone stood by his side…

“We will never fully overlap. After all, only I can do that.”

But he mouthed the name of the person he cared most for.

“Nevertheless, I want to be with you. …Surely that will lead me to my answer. That will tell me why I had Team Leviathan disband.”

His mind nodded and gathered strength in his left hand.

“I no longer have any reason to deny the past or to reject my pain. So cry out in pain, my body. Enduring that is what allows me to rise above all others. And as I do, I will go ahead. I will set an example for all those dragging around the pain of the past and will tell them this: If I am worth following, then go ahead. Yes, that is my role!”

He cried out.

“The surname Sayama indicates a villain! …And that villain has a single desire. If all is chaos and I stand above god, then it is not light that I desire. I desire…”

Strength filled his right hand.

He still doubted he could throw a punch, but he managed to fully clench the fingers in the darkness.

All five fingers constricted into a fully-formed fist.

He felt the memory clenched inside that fist and he raised his voice.

“Let there be strength!!”

His mind struck the darkness before his eyes and he had a thought.

…''What is Shinjou-kun doing right now?

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Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 18

2014-12-02T20:52:00Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 18: Something Important to Me */

==Chapter 18: Something Important to Me==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0471.png|thumb]]
''Try looking straight at it

''You will no longer be able to see it

Water could be heard in the darkness.

The flowing water was falling. It fell from high up in the air and crashed into the rocky area down below.

It was a waterfall.

The moonlight was obstructed by the rocks, so it did not reach the waterfall. The moonlight did illuminate the stony basin and a sign in the nearby rest area gave the waterfall’s name: Hossawa Falls.

This was deep in Hinohara, west of Akigawa and one mountain south of Okutama.

Geographically, it was part of the Akigawa Mountains directly south of Okutama and the waterfall in those mountains continued dumping water despite the darkness.

A single color moved within that darkness and the background noise of the falling water.

That color was white.

That color which opposed the darkness stood up within the rest area next to the waterfall.

It was a girl in a white coat that had the name Chao sewn on the inside.

“Honestly, why are you running so far away, Yonkichi? That’s just pathetic.”

“I have no excuse, ges.”

The second voice came from below the falling water.

Someone was inside the waterfall’s basin.

Only Yonkichi’s upper body was exposed.

That upper body was missing its left arm and the darkness left only a wavering shadow visible as the water poured on top of him.

“I am washing away the pain, ges. The breath of nature in this clear stream will heal the dragon’s wound, ges.”

“You really are the same as 7th’s people. You raise your natural healing by ‘washing the wound’ and ‘not showing the wound’. It’s like possessing your own disinfectant or healing charms. …They used hot springs and open-air baths for their exhaustion just like us, though.”

“In that case, Low-Gear is not much different, ges. Our version is simply stronger, ges.”

Yonkichi collapsed within the basin and Chao heard him kicking his feet in the water.

“I had dyed my hair to stand out from my brothers, but it looks like that will end soon too, ges.”

“Don’t push yourself, you idiot. If you had messed up just a little, you would’ve lost your entire body, right? Soak in the pure water and get healed. …Anyway, how were those kids?”

It was not the man in the waterfall basin who responded.

A male voice came from behind her.

“I will go tonight.”

''Is that Mitsuaki?'' she thought as she turned around.

She frowned at the old man in a white coat standing within arm’s reach of her.

“You shouldn’t stand behind a lady.”

“Are you sure you have not let your guard down, Lady Chao?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

She raised her right hand to show off the green scroll in her slender fingers.

Mitsuaki frantically checked his pockets and realized what he was looking for was not there.

As if showing off, she spun the stolen scroll in her hand.

When she raised her right arm, the quickly rotating green tube wrapped around her arm like a living creature.

As she waved her arm, the scroll moved from her right shoulder, spun around her neck, and rotated all the way to the end of her left arm.

The sound of rustling cloth and the sound of her catching the scroll in her left hand filled the darkness.

“The environmental manipulation concept weapon ‘Cosmos Comic – #1’. It was originally meant to stabilize the environments of the reservations, but it was so powerful that it was made into a weapon and then sealed. …Do you remember who made it?”

“Sayama Asagi.”

“Yes. He made Ikkou’s Azure Dragon Sword too, I believe. …Are you going back to Team Leviathan with that?”

“Yes. We have yet to settle things with them. However, we are giving some thought as to who we choose to fight. Kazami-sama and the others are almost entirely out of the fight.”

After a pause, Mitsuaki continued.

“Even so, we will not hold back. We will make sure they all join the fight.”

Chao threw the scroll back to him with a snap of her fingers.

He opened the left side of his white coat and the spinning scroll fell right into the inner pocket.

Chao then frowned at what he had said.

“I don’t approve of bullying the weak. Kazami’s probably been crying this entire time.”

“Lady Chao, do you remember Kazami-sama’s first battle?”

“Her first battle?”

“Yes.” Mitsuaki smiled. “A single normal person ended up inside the concept space and the main forces of 6th and 10th were headed her way. It was Izumo-sama…and us who rushed out to save her.”

“Oh, right. That did happen.”

“She could have run away. As a normal person, 6th and 10th would not have viewed her as an enemy. …But Sibyl-sama was also on the truck transporting G-Sp and X-Wi. Amid the fierce fighting, Kazami-sama hid Sibyl-sama in a safe place and then rejoined Izumo-sama on the battlefield. There, she helped him restrain the prototype Vritra that 6th had activated in an attempt to self-destruct,” explained Mitsuaki. “And yet when we originally rushed to the scene, we had thought there was no saving her.”

“So why did she lose so easily this time when she’s trained so much since then?”

“That is the real question. All I can say is that there is a difference between who she used to be and who she is now.”

He turned his back and faced the darkness.

“This is far from entertaining. The girl we once underestimated and who made us rethink our opinion of her is now perfectly in line with our original underestimation of her. …How very boring.”

He began to walk and a voice reached him from the waterfall basin.

“Brother Mitsuaki.”

“What is it, Yonkichi?”

“Will I ever see you again, ges?”

“You know that as well as I do. …And one other thing.”

On the fifth step, just as he was about to vanish into the dark forest, he stopped.

Wondering what this was about, Chao watched him as he spoke without turning around.

“As #37 on his list of things to do before disappearing, Brother Ikkou pissed from the top of this waterfall while humming.”

“I-I can’t believe him, ges!!”

Chao could only laugh bitterly as she heard the man kicking in the water.

Mitsuaki vanished into the darkness and she looked up into the sky.

However…

“All I can see is the ceiling.”

She was in the rest area, so she only saw the inside of the cement roof.

After a self-deprecating laugh, she limply sat in the seat made from a cut log.

“Lady Chao?”

“Don’t worry about it, Yonkichi. I played with Mitsuaki’s scroll, remember? That was enough to wear me out a little.”

She raised her right hand and used her body to hide it from the waterfall basin behind her.

Her fingers were trembling ever so slightly.

…''Pathetic. My lifespan is just about at its limit, too.

“Hey, Yonkichi,” she called out. “We’re all acting without restraint now, aren’t we? …Or were we too restrained until now?”

“What are you trying to say, ges?”

Her self-deprecating smile changed to a bitter one.

…''There’s no way I can tell you what I’m trying to say if you ask like that.

The bitter smile grew.

“Something you wouldn’t understand, Yonkichi. If only I had given your brain some of your Great Sage’s power.”

“…”

She thought about the past. She thought about when she had created them in 7th-Gear so very long ago.

It had been fun, but she had never thought about it ending like this.

She had thought she had known and understood it would, but…

…''Can I say I was young and stupid as an excuse?

“Yonkichi, you might be the most like me.”

“…”

“Your injury has mostly closed up, hasn’t it? So go to the place you will find most entertaining.”

“No, it hasn’t closed up yet.”

“What happened to the ‘ges’?”

“I-it hasn’t closed up yet, ges. I need to rest a little while longer, ges.”

“I see,” she said with a nod.

She gently rotated her body atop the log seat.

Her moving gaze looked outside the rest area.

All she saw was the dark night, but…

…''Everyone is watching this darkness right now. Even if they don’t realize it, they are enveloped by it.

“What are your doing and what will you do?”

…''Ikkou, Nijun, Mitsuaki, and Yonkichi.

Those thoughts in her heart did not form words, but she spoke something else aloud.

“Shinjou, Kazami, Hiba, Sayama, and the others.”

The sky had turned black, but the starlight was bright enough to cast shadows on the ground and create areas that were darker than others.

One of those darker areas was an eastern slope near Mount Kumotori, Tokyo’s tallest peak.

A large area of land had been created by digging down into the slope and the remains of the slope cast a large shadow on that land.

However, a single light existed inside that large shadow.

A small fluorescent light came from within the abandoned house at the bottom of the shadows.

It was an old Japanese-style house with an earthen-walled storehouse to the northeast.

The roof had a hole and the sun had faded the house’s wood until it was gray.

The sliding door for the southeastern entrance had fallen to the ground to rot, but the faded nameplate said “Kinugasa”.

Through the entrance were a dirt floor and a hand-pump for drinking water to the left.

The house had three rooms: the living room with a sunken fireplace, the parlor with a broken floor, and the bedroom. The rooms were divided by sliding screens that had yellowed with age and sliding doors that had lost their paper.

All of the rooms were faded, but color was beginning to fill the living room.

A white fluorescent light on the floor illuminated the flesh color and other colors printed on a piece of paper.

It was a poster.

A voice spoke in front of the poster.

“Heh heh heh. There is no need to restrain yourself any longer, Shinjou-kun.”

A boy spoke and hummed to himself as he hung up the large B2 poster on one of the living room’s sliding screens.

His suit coat lay over his shoulder and the name Sayama was stitched inside the collar.

He was in the process of hanging the fourth poster.

The poster he spread in his arms depicted a girl in a beige dress. She stood below the summer sun and she must have been spinning in the wind because her long black hair gently danced behind her.

Seeing the smile on the girl’s face, Sayama gave a deep nod.

[[Image:OnC_v10_0481.jpg|thumb]]

“That is Shinjou-kun for you. You could almost forget what a dreary room this is.”

He held the poster up horizontally and attempted to peek up Shinjou’s skirt.

“No, I suppose that would not work. But leave it to Shinjou-kun to make me try. …Is this what you call an enchantress?”

He thumbtacked this poster next to the school uniform, pajamas, and swimsuit ones he had already hung along the wall.

…''Magnificent.

However, he spotted something. His eyes stopped on the corner of the poster he had just hung up.

“Oh, no. The corner is bent by five millimeters! And after I went to so much trouble to make sure not to bend them. …Such a shame. I must give myself a fierce objection. I must ask for an apology. I am sorry! …Good. But what would Shinjou-kun think if I told her I had bent the corner of a poster made from a secret photograph of her?”

He sighed, brought a hand to his forehead, and envisioned her scolding him.

After exactly a minute, his vision came to an end.

“Being scolded is delightful as well. …Should I have her strike me too!?”

Hearing his voice ring throughout the house, he came back to his senses.

“Hm.”

He crossed his arms in front of the four posters and tilted his head as he questioned himself.

“I am not sure what to say. I seem a little out of control today. Have I always been like this or is it a symptom of my Shinjou-kun withdrawal? No… I drank that miraculous powdered Eround Tea earlier, so it could not be the latter. In that case…”

…''Is it those drugs from last night?

Ryouko had given them to him, but why had he taken them himself?

“It had to have been to protect Shinjou-kun from myself as I tried to give them to her.”

…''I see. So this excitement comes from those drugs.

''You cannot fight a drug, so I have no choice but to continue like this,'' he concluded.

He then recalled his job.

“Oh, no. I completely forgot. …I need to put up the life-size poster.”

He unrolled the poster to reveal a nude Shinjou with back turned and a large public bath in the background.

He looked at her face as she tried to decide which washing station to use.

“The instructions say your mother will not notice it if you hang it on the back of your door, but that is meaningless since this is for my own personal use.”

For the time being, he hung it on the sliding screen leading to the next room.

“Good,” he muttered before opening the sliding screen.

The next room had originally had a tatami mat floor, but that floor was gone.

It had fallen away, leaving a large hole.

“This room is no different from before.”

This was an abandoned house.

Sayama looked down at the collapsed and darkened tatami mats below the floor and he looked up.

He saw the dark sky through the hole in the ceiling.

He had checked under the floor when he had entered the house. He had hoped to find some trace of his parents, but he had found nothing.

He had concluded that the house was a completely normal building.

''But that is strange,'' he thought. If this was Kinugasa’s house…

…''Where did he do his research?

The documents Roger Sully had given him said what his father had called the Kinugasa Document had been found in Kinugasa’s residence.

As Sayama looked around the place, he suddenly turned to the yard.

Beyond the missing sliding door, he saw the white storehouse to the northeast.

“That thing is sturdily built.”

So if there was a study or lab here…

…''It would be in the storehouse.

He had yet to set foot inside there. He had been planning to do so after preparing for the night.

“I have to hurry.”

He nodded and returned to the room. He sat while looking at the line of Shinjous hanging on the sliding screens.

“That leaves one last thing to prepare.”

He unrolled a blue sleeping bag on the floor and placed something next to it.

“A Shinjou-kun body pillow cover. Not even the Buddha himself would have thought to place this on his sleeping bag.”

He quickly placed the pillow cover on the sleeping bag and spread it out.

This created an image of Shinjou in her pajamas that had actual volume to it.

“Splendid.”

He gave a few impressed laughs, but soon began to tremble.

He let out a gasp and brought a hand to his forehead.

“But now I cannot hug her while inside the sleeping bag! This is what you call a structural flaw! The best word to express this situation is ‘careless’!”

…''Oh, god.

He unrolled another poster sitting behind him and revealed an image of Shinjou looking angry.

He thought to himself as he viewed that expression.

…''Shinjou-kun truly would be this angry if she knew of my carelessness.

''I must be more reliable. Is there no way of solving this problem?

He thought and slapped his knee when finally found an answer.

“I only need to turn it inside out and put it inside.”

He politely thanked the angry poster and set it aside.

He removed the cover from the sleeping bag and turned it inside out, so Shinjou was on the inside of the bag-like cover.

Nodding, he placed the cover inside the sleeping bag.

He glanced toward the storehouse outside.

“Perhaps I should test it out before entering the storehouse.”

With a dignified nod, he removed his shoes and excitedly stuck his feet inside the sleeping bag.

He stuck his hands inside, drew his head inside, grabbed the zipper in his teeth, and pulled it closed.

The top opening of the cover had sunk down, so he pulled it up and closed it to form a cloth log.

He was now fully inside from head to toe.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but then…

“Oh, no. It is too dark to see Shinjou-kun! This is what you call a situational flaw! The best English word to express this situation is ‘goddamn’!”

He tried to get out, but he was so perfectly wrapped up that the cloth worm only squirmed and bent.

Also, the movement twisted the cover tightly around him.

“Nwah! Y-you’re squeezing me, Shinjou-kun!? And so roughly. Ahh! But this is also quite entertaining!”

In an abandoned house in the starry mountain night, a blue sleeping bag writhed in the brightness of a small fluorescent light. Grunts came from the sleeping bag and it fiercely arched upwards, but it simply would not come off.

“Calm down. Calm down, me! If you do not escape this enjoyable hell, you will become a pervert. And it will interfere with the investigation!”

The stuffed sleeping bag hopped up with its back muscles and forcefully stood. It then stretched its back, struck a pose with its chest proudly thrown forward, and briefly shrank down in preparation for a leap.

A moment later, the dark blue sleeping bag jumped straight up.

“Toh!”

And…

“The force of landing should make it easier to remo-…”

His feet landed on the angry Shinjou poster and slipped.

He fell.

The action created a perfect half arc backwards.

The log-like sleeping bag forcefully rotated and the back of the head crashed between two floorboards.

A dull sound came from the sleeping bag that had been physically unable to prepare for the landing.

But the voice that escaped it was not a grunt or a groan.

“Heh.”

As soon as that breath leaked from the sleeping bag, the floorboards beneath the head broke and the broken portion sank down like a seesaw.

The sleeping bag writhed as it slid down the tilted floorboards.

“Ahhh, Shinjou-kun! I am falling! I really am falling? Continue just like this!”

The shouting sleeping bag vanished into the darkness below the floor.

Nothing remained and silence fell.

As if that silence was its cue, hooting began in the nearby forest.

It came from an owl.

The hooting continued as something crawled out from below the edge of the abandoned house.

It was Sayama.

“I still have work to do, but I ended up playing quite intensely.”

He stood and brushed the dust from his hands, knees, and shoulders.

He reached to the living room floor, grabbed his shoes, his rucksack, and a few other items.

“Now that I have had a break, it is time to get down to business.”

He put the rucksack on his back, held the handheld fluorescent light in one hand, and expressionlessly turned around.

He now faced the storehouse.

It almost seemed to be waiting for him as it was illuminated by the pale moonlight.

Sayama left the house and observed the white moonlit storehouse.

It was about four meters tall and he estimated it was a little less than ten square meters inside.

Its white walls had crumbled in places to reveal the straw and earth inside.

“If Professor Kinugasa had a study, it must be in here.”

He began to walk and observed the large yard as he approached.

Gravel was laid out in front of the house to keep the undergrowth away, but there was nothing else save the camellia trees placed on the other side as a windbreak. Sayama guessed there had originally been a garden, but he did not bother confirming that now.

He approached the storehouse.

He also double-checked that the surrounding mountains were the same as in the photograph Moira 1st had given him.

“The storehouse’s entrance is…”

He found it.

The gravel path starting at the house’s back entrance led to a rectangular entrance on the south.

The entrance sat open and the metal door opened inwards.

Sayama saw a dimly-lit space inside.

…''If the door is open, does that mean the inside has been exposed to the elements?

The situation was definitely worse than when his parents had come.

He knew there was no point in rushing now, but he still quickened his pace toward the entrance.

A single footstep sounded as he unhesitatingly set foot inside.

“?”

There was nothing there.

“…?”

Nothing at all. He only saw…

…''The dirt floor and white walls of a storehouse?

He swallowed words of disbelief and looked around the inside.

However, he truly did not find anything except for damp air.

He illuminated each surface with the fluorescent light in his hand, but he found nothing but filth on the ceiling, walls, and dirt floor.

“…”

Whoever had made it must not have wanted water getting in because the floor was built high and thick grooves had been dug along each wall and leading to the entrance.

The farther from the entrance, the more dust was piled up on the floor.

But that was all.

Sayama frowned at the fact that there was nothing here.

However, his expression suddenly changed.

“I do not believe it.”

He frowned, narrowed his eyes, and looked around the room.

“…”

That was when he noticed something.

He had found something one would not notice at a glance and would seem like an optical illusion if one stared.

A large square shadow existed in the center of the storehouse, but it was much paler than a normal shadow.

“It is two square meters, but what is it?”

He reached the answer almost immediately.

…''Is something being concealed with a concept?

This was not optical camouflage using colors. This was conceptual camouflage.

What was here?

He looked around again and noticed some words.

There was a message inside the storehouse.

It was engraved on the inward-closing metal door.

Words had been carved into the metal surface.

“To he who comes here.”

Sayama carefully read the engraved words aloud.

“Know that the entrance to the truth is not here…!”

Sayama gulped and expressed his surprised thoughts.

“He even engraved the final ‘…!’! Kinugasa Tenkyou knew what he was doing…!”

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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 16

2014-11-30T20:28:21Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 16: Dry Desire */

==Chapter 16: Dry Desire==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0427.png|thumb]]
''To thirst for something

''Is nothing other than the joy of dryness

Beyond the thin clouds, the sun was beginning to set.

At the bottom of a cleared slope in the mountains were a long runway and a white building.

Behind the building was a green space.

The area past the freight elevator could be called a vegetable garden, a flower bed, or a farm.

The separated space continued up onto the slope and it contained flowers, trees, and other plants. The words colorful and multi-purpose perfectly described it.

Four individuals stood near the plants growing in a vegetable garden.

Two had human forms and two were plant creatures walking alongside the other two.

One of the human forms was a short girl with a small animal on her head. She wore a blue armored uniform and an orange jacket.

The other was tall and wore an armored uniform with a long skirt.

The short one was holding the tall one’s hand in one hand and a basket in the other.

The basket contained picked plants and herbs wrapped in rubber bands.

“Heo, are you using those for the massage as well?”

“No, these are for dinner tonight. Do you like fried chicken, Mikage?”

“Yes. I like the skinny ones.”

''Does she mean the legs?'' wondered Heo.

She then glanced down at the piece of paper inside the basket.

It had some notes written in English shorthand.

…''I’ve asked about UCAT’s blank period all around here.

After Diana had left for some kind of work, Heo had wandered around UCAT.

It was partially to familiarize herself with the facility and partially to take a walk with Mikage. On the way, she had spoken with people close to Team Leviathan or the people around those people.

…''For example, I got some information from Development Department Director Tsukuyomi.

*Her husband died in the secondary damages of the Great Kansai Earthquake.

*For some reason, Nagata Tatsumi has a Cowling Sword made by her husband.

Even after being told that, Heo had said nothing about the Cowling Sword she had seen in her dream.

…''Until Sayama makes a decision, it would be best not to take any careless actions.

That was her decision.

She had more notes based on the other people she had asked about UCAT’s blank period.

*I’m interested, but I don’t know anything about it since I joined after the blank period. → 28 people

*I assume some kind of unspeakable scandal happened. → 11 people.

*Maybe the Army knows something about it. → 3 people.

*I’m interested…in you, Heo-kun. → Turned him down.

*I assume some kind of unspeakable scandal happened…and I assume it was caused by UCAT Director Ooshiro. → I kind of agree.

*Oh, thanks for coming. Come on in and I’ll give you some candy. Yes, yes. Just step inside for a little bit. → Contacted the authorities.

A lot of the information was probably useless, but she could decide which that was if she focused.

To sum it all up…

“Everyone is interested in the blank period.”

“I wonder why,” said Mikage. “It has nothing to do with the people here now.”

Heo casually nodded, but a question came to her.

…''The past shouldn’t have anything to do with Team Leviathan either.

The team was limited to the present, so why did they need the past?

“That’s a good question. Why is everyone so interested in a past that shouldn’t have anything to do with them?”

She tilted her head, but no answer came to her.

They began to walk and the two plant creatures followed. They were helping to lower her fever from her exhaustion and injuries, but they were not expelling much air anymore

“Feeling good?” asked one.

She was almost fully healed.

…''And so is Mikage.

Mikage was still not steady on her feet and she would occasionally come to a stop as they walked.

Whenever that happened, Heo would turn around to find her looking at some flowers or a face-shaped stone someone had laid out as a decoration.

…''Is this what it would be like to have a little sister?

Heo thought that was a little rude as she walked with Mikage and the plant creatures.

This was not her first time to walk through this place, but it was her first time to use it for herself. Also, before Diana had left for some business in the city, she had said Heo could plant something here too.

What would she plant here?

Unable to find an answer, she asked Mikage.

“Mikage, what would you plant here if you could?”

“I would grow Ryuuji-kun. …He’s always saying he wishes he was taller or smarter. He’s especially insistent that we would be in equilibrium if he was taller.”

She looked to one corner of the slope.

“That would probably be a good spot.”

“P-please don’t get me involved in a crime. And I think burying a person is a bad idea for a number of reasons.”

Heo felt a tug on her hand and saw Mikage had stopped walking.

The girl looked to a narrow, deep hole to the right. Heo read the sign to the side of the hole.

“For Ooshiro only. (Keep your chin up)”

“Keep your chin up? So stay positive?”

“L-let’s not think too much about that. U-um, the next herb is…”

Heo looked forward and saw Diana’s flower bed.

“What did she plant?”

She looked down in interest and found a few plants with long leaves. The sign said “If you’re going to pull them up, use a dog”, but Heo did her best to ignore it.

…''That’s just a joke. She’s joking.

She stopped the plant creatures from trying to pull up the plants and she sighed.

Mikage patted her shoulder from the side.

“Heo, taking everything so seriously will only wear you out.”

“Yes. I don’t think I’m quite used to this place yet.

“Ryuuji-kun said letting it influence you feels good. He happily said he was soaking in it.”

“Oh, I see.”

Heo reached a strange understanding and straightened up to refresh her mood.

Suddenly, Mikage’s hands reached to her sides from behind.

She gave a ticklish shriek and strength filled Mikage’s hands.

“Heo, you’re bending your back.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

Mikage nodded but still seemed dissatisfied with Heo’s posture because she corrected a slight bend.

While bending Heo to the left and right and back again, Mikage asked a question.

“Did you know your grandfather’s father?”

“Eh? Oh. No, I didn’t know my grandfather’s fath-… I didn’t know him all that well.”

“I didn’t know my mother very well either. Ryuuji-kun saw her in Baku’s past, but I’ve only seen a photo. …Even so, I’m glad I saw the photo. She was smiling.”

She paused for a moment.

“But seeing her move would have been even better. Ryuuji-kun told me about what he saw, though. He says she was beautiful and noble…and that her panties were white.”

“D-do I lose if I question that? I do, don’t I?”

“Heo, you can’t rush this. You’ll eventually be able to win.”

''What does that mean?'' wondered Heo with a calming sigh.

Mikage removed her hands from Heo’s sides and placed them on her shoulders instead. She resumed moving her back and forth.

“Ryuuji-kun’s grandmother said his grandfather was friends with your grandfather’s father. She said they would always lend each other magazines of naked girls and she would hit them with a metal bar.”

“Is that so?’

“Yes, but you know what? Ryuuji-kun’s grandparents won’t say anything about his father. Did your grandfather’s father ever till you about your parents?”

Heo gasped at that question.

She had been asked exactly what she wanted to know.

And so she answered.

“No.”

She tried to say “but I want to look into it”, but Mikage spoke before she could.

“I want to look into it.”

Heo reflexively turned toward Mikage.

Mikage stopped speaking with her arms slightly raised. She looked at Heo with a frown.

“Do you want to as well?”

Heo realized she had tensed up and that she was giving a flustered expression. ''I can’t do that,'' she scolded herself. ''All she did was say what I wanted to say.

…''I’m acting like those words belong to me.

She was certain Mikage had to have been thinking the same thing for some time.

“Sorry, Heo. Did I steal your words?”

“No, it’s fine. Whoever says it first gets to say it.”

She frantically shook her hands back and forth. She tried to smile brightly, but Mikage gave an even better smile.

“But Baku controls the past and he chose you, not the person who said it first. Just like American UCAT began pursuing you first, but it was Harakawa who got you. And…sorry, Heo. I might know about your father.”

“Eh?”

“Yes. I’ve been sleeping somewhere in UCAT for a long time. From about sixty years ago to about ten years ago. I only woke up on the night of the Great Kansai Earthquake.”

“…”

“Ryuuji-kun’s father took me and left me with Ryuuji-kun. He told him to look after me but ‘if you’re a man, don’t do anything sexual to her until she grows up’.”

“Sounds like his father was a lot like him.”

“Yes. But I was asleep, so I don’t actually remember it. Also…”

“Also?”

“Miki is in the Army. Ryuuji-kun’s father apparently found her at the earthquake site before he died. She was with us when I woke up.”

It took Heo several seconds to realize who Miki was.

Once she did, she gulped.

“You mean Nagata Tatsumi, don’t you? I heard she is an important member of the Army. …So you used to know her?”

“Yes, but it makes me wonder. She might have had some connection to Ryuuji-kun’s parents. This might be a coincidence, but…”

Mikage looked Heo in the eye.

“Nagata is Ryuuji-kun’s mother’s maiden name.”

“Eh?”

“I think it’s just a coincidence,” said Mikage before falling silent.

However, there was likely more to what she had said.

What would it mean if there was a connection? To find out…

…''We need to look to the past.

They were learning more about their grandparents and Heo’s great-grandfather. Sayama’s investigation may have had him following his parents’ footsteps, but the house belonged to a leader of his grandfather’s generation.

On the other hand, they had almost no information on their parents’ generation.

…''What happened then?

She knew the Great Kansai Earthquake had happened, but the past she had seen that morning had shown a battle in an empty Osaka that was likely a concept space.

The adults who would know what had happened – including Diana – were refusing to speak.

…''Why?

Why were they so tightlipped about that battle?

She thought they would talk about it if they had not done anything wrong, but she did not want to think Diana and the others had done something wrong.

…''Which is it?

She wanted to know.

Knowing could put her parents, Diana, and the others in the wrong, but she still wanted to know.

“You want to know, don’t you?”

Heo spoke aloud as if asking herself.

“That way you can face what happened without avoiding the truth.”

She reached for Baku on her head, hoping he would show her the past.

However, he parted her hair and sank down as if hiding.

His little paws reached below her hair and tickled her scalp.

“Uhya hya!!”

Her shoulders stiffened and she frantically swallowed her shout.

That was when a small form stood from beyond the rice growing to her left.

It was an old woman in white. It seemed she had been looking after the flowers on the other side.

She turned toward the building in preparation to return and she gave a quick bow toward Heo and Mikage.

''What a beautiful person,'' thought Heo. She was aged, but her expression was perfectly clear and void of needless strength. That fact delayed Heo’s realization that the woman had dark middle eastern skin.

Heo frantically bowed back.

“H-hello.”

The woman’s expression froze when she heard that. A hint of tension and surprise could be seen on her face.

“Maria?”

That female name put that same expression on Heo’s face.

The plant creature at her feet expelled gas as if converting her emotion.

However, the old woman gave a bitter smile of sudden realization.

“Sorry. Your voice reminded me of someone I used to know.”

Heo was about to say she did not mind, but she found herself saying something else.

“You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

“Your mother?”

“Yes…I mean, testament. My mother’s name was Maria Thunderson, my father was James Thunderson, and I am their daughter, Heo Thunderson.”

The old woman responded by circling the rice plants and approaching. She repeated an “oh” sound of surprise and joy again and again and she finally reached a hand out toward Heo.

[[Image:OnC_v10_0441.jpg|thumb]]

“Their daughter is-…”

She tried to touch Heo.

But there was sudden motion behind Heo.

Mikage quickly moved in front of her.

She took a forceful step forward to move the old woman away.

Heo watched and listened as the other girl spoke clearly in front of her.

“No. And sorry. But Heo named herself and I will name myself. …I am Hiba Mikage. According to Ryuuji-kun, I am the best in his eyes.”

“U-um, Mikage? I don’t think you need to be so cautious about her.”

“I do. You do not know this place as well as I do and Harakawa would be unhappy if something happened to you. So I will protect you. …Like I wasn’t able to this morning.”

Strength filled Mikage’s back with those last words.

Seeing the girl acting to protect her, Heo realized she had been wrong earlier.

…''How could I think of her like a little sister?

Mikage had much more resolve. Heo placed her hands around the hand hanging by Mikage’s side. She then faced the old woman.

“Um, sorry, but you heard her.”

“Yes. And, Heo. I need to protect you because your chest has yet to evolve.”

“W-was that comment really necessary?”

The old woman laughed.

“Ho ho. Such good friends. But this is simply amazing. To think I would meet a Thunderson child and a member of the Hiba family. Not to mention hearing the name Harakawa after so long.”

Still smiling, she bowed.

“I am not a member of UCAT. I am simply borrowing a place to live here. Ho ho. I am Arnavaz Mesam. Field Operations Director Abram Mesam is my husband and my Fereydun.”

“Ah,” said Heo in slight surprise.

She knew of the field operations director. He would sometimes show up during training. He was a large man who had looked dangerous to Heo.

…''But he’s married to someone like this.

''What a rude thing to think,'' she scolded herself. To change her train of thought, she asked about one thing Arnavaz had said.

“Arnava- Lady Arnavaz? Um, what do you mean by Fereydun?”

“It means hero. Abram was a hero in our country. He travelled the path of medicine, saved people, and…yes, he is my Fereydun.”

Heo realized something while looking the old woman directly in the eye.

She realized why the woman had mistaken her for her mother.

The woman was blind.

And as soon as she noticed that, something moved atop her head.

It was Baku.

He raised his front legs as if greeting Arnavaz.

Mikage stood on parched land.

…''?

She had been in a vegetable garden and the sky had been cloudy, but she was now on a vast stretch of parched land and the sky was a clear blue as far as the eye could see.

She looked around and saw a few people wearing different colors of cloth.

Beyond them was a large structure with a square roof and dry color.

The wall around the structure had crumbled in places.

The trees inside the wall had few leaves and not much grew in the large yard visible through the entrance.

The building itself had partially crumbled.

There were quite a few cracks in the sun-covered southern wall.

There did not seem to be anyone inside.

The people standing in front of the withered and dying building were all women.

They wore blue, brown, or yellow cloth that covered everything but their faces.

They stood motionless below the sun which was almost directly overhead.

All they did was stare out into the dry field.

They seemed to be waiting for something to arrive.

''What are they waiting for?'' wondered Mikage as she looked behind her.

That was when she realized she only existed as her senses of sight and vision.

…''Oh.

Baku was showing her the past.

She looked down at her hands but found nothing. She only had a faint sense of their existence, much like when inside Susamikado.

Behind her, she found sand dunes.

It was an ocean of sand covered in dry hills.

After observing the scenery, she turned her vision back around.

“…?”

She realized she stood in a position lower than the dunes or the building.

She looked at her feet and found cracks running through the parched ground.

…''Was there water here?

She did not fully understand, but she grasped that the building was so dry because the water that should have been here was not.

Without water, one grew thirsty, so she wondered if the people were trying to move elsewhere.

…''It must be tough.

With that thought, she approached the women.

She tried to walk and her vision moved.

Interestingly enough, she moved faster than her legs normally carried her.

“If only I could always move like this.”

While moving at an ideal pace and speed, she looked to the people standing before the building.

She realized her previous prediction had been correct.

The people had gathered clothing and other luggage at their feet so they could move out.

However, one of them had no luggage at her feet.

The woman standing in the center wore white, hid her face with a hood, and simply clasped her hands in front of her waist.

An older woman in red spoke from her right.

Mikage could not understand the words, but their meaning reached her.

“Lady Arnavaz, you won’t be coming with us?”

''Arnavaz?'' wondered Mikage with a mental tilt of the head. ''This woman completely hidden by white cloth is Arnavaz?

“…”

She peered into the hood, but she could only see the woman’s nose and mouth.

''She has a beautiful face,'' she thought.

The woman in red closed her eyes a little while facing Arnavaz.

“I sent a message about today’s closing of the Sahan house, but there was no response. That man learned medicine at the city’s university as the prince of the Mesam family and he is called a hero for the people he has saved, but he has abandoned you for fifteen years since promising to marry you.”

The woman took a breath and faced the dry and empty building behind her.

“And I had hoped he would save the Sahan family.”

“This is fine, Shahina.”

Mikage heard Arnavaz’s voice and saw the white hood shake slightly.

“The people of the desert are the people of the sand. We live like the scorching heat of day and we die like the calm chill of night. This just means Sahan has reached the night. He is known as a hero, so telling him to marry the blind princess of a house nearing the night must sound like telling him to lose his light and go to sleep.”

She spoke quietly.

“The marriage proposal was made by my late father and he merely accepted. It would be wrong to expect anything of-…”

“Come with us, Lady Arnavaz.”

Arnavaz was cut off by Shahina, the woman in red.

“We cannot live as we have, but we should be able to rely on your connections as head of the family. That man, Abram, has apparently cast aside his position as heir to the Mesam family, so an engagement from fifteen years ago is no longer valid.”

“Are you asking me to use convenient words to throw out my honor as a bride?”

“Clinging to that honor will not bring him here! You even gave us all of your belongings as a severance payment, so…”

“A blind woman does not need colorful clothing. I have been so spoiled that I do not know how to cook, so I do not need the furniture either. And I cannot live alone, so I do not even need money.”

Arnavaz raised both hands.

The cloth fell back to reveal her white hands which held something.

Mikage circled in front of her to see what she held in each hand.

Her left hand held a faded letter on the verge of falling apart.

And the right held…

“Your family’s sword? Lady Arnavaz!?”

“When this letter from him arrived fifteen years ago, time stopped for me. My brothers died in war to the west, so I inherited this blade upon my father’s death two years ago. Now, it is the key to restarting my time.”

She looked up and Mikage saw her face.

…''Such a beautiful face.

''But a scary one,'' she thought.

In this dream, Arnavaz was still young, but her expression had a slight downward bend and a hint of shaking tension.

…''You need to take it easy.

However, the words would not reach the past even if she spoke them aloud.

Arnavaz spoke with her unseeing eyes turned toward the sky.

“A contract in the left hand and a blade in the right. God will surely inspire the daughter of Sahan with a song. Inspire her to advance through Sahan’s night and face the morning.”

She lowered her head and hid the short sword and letter inside her clothes.

“I was a weak child and everyone thought I would be the first to die, yet I have outlived them all. I can do nothing, so why did I outlive my brothers who went to school and found their own places in the world? If there is a reason, it would have to be for this blade.”

“Lady Arnavaz.”

“Now, go. You have left this house, but I will never leave Sahan. I am the final Sahan. But it is your duty to bring prosperity to other lands just like the water that left Sahan’s land.”

She took a breath.

“I am all that remains of the Sahan family. My darkness is now mine alone.”

As her words rang through the air, Shahina closed her eyes.

After a while, the other women closed their eyes as well.

They slowly bowed their heads toward Arnavaz.

Soon, they all produced a slight wind. It was the wind of turning their backs on and walking away from Arnavaz and the mansion.

The final wind, the red wind of Shahina, paused to turn back.

“Lady Arnavaz, I pray that god blesses you and you meet that man.”

Mikage could not tell if Arnavaz nodded or not.

Her vision quickly grew dark and she fell into darkness.

However, she had a thought.

…''She’s the same.

Mikage was a survivor of 3rd-Gear. Her parents were gone and she had survived by abandoning 3rd.

However, Mikage had never thought the things Arnavaz had.

…''Because the people around me are so nice.

Another thought occurred to her.

Despite this past, Arnavaz was living a different life now.

She had reason enough to turn that sword on Abram, yet she was living with him and smiling as she tended to the flowers.

…''Why?

Mikage then remembered what Sayama had said.

“Search for you own past.”

What did that mean? Did she have a past like that?

What if she did?

“…”

''I want to know about it,'' she thought. ''I might be able to change like Arnavaz.

Arnavaz had grown kind even as she carried this past with her.

So if Mikage learned of her past, would she grow kind too?

And if so…

“Would I actually be able to say something if I saw Kazami crying again?”

She carved in her heart the desire to search for the past.

And as she repeated that desire to deepen the carving, she woke from the past.

“…”

Heo opened her eyes and found the evening vegetable garden.

She saw Arnavaz in front of her, the shadows of the vegetables, the forest, and the evening sky.

A faint wind blew as Arnavaz narrowed her eyes in a smile.

“I just felt like I had a dream of a familiar voice.”

“Y-yes. That was from Baku and it was your past. I’m sorry, but we saw it too.”

Arnavaz shook her head.

“That is an important thing that really did happen. It is not something to hide.”

“You’re not like Ryuuji-kun. He says the important parts are best when slightly hidden.”

“M-Mikage, I think he was talking about something else.”

Mikage tilted her head and Heo began to panic because she did not know how to explain it.

However, she was interrupted by footsteps running from the white building behind her.

“Eh?”

She turned toward the person running over.

“Ooki-sensei?”

“Yes!” said Ooki just before tripping and falling over what grew from Diana’s flower bed.

The buried object came half from the ground and the leaves wrapped around her leg for some reason.

“Oww. What kind of plant is this? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ahhh, Ooki-sensei! You aren’t supposed to pull it out!!”

Ooki only tilted her head, so Heo removed the plant from her hand and reburied it. She thought she saw something like a human face, but she ignored it and patted down the dirt with the provided spade.

“So what is it, Ooki-sensei?”

“Oh, r-r-r-right! It’s an emergency, Heo-san! You need to listen.”

“What is it?”

Heo was worried and the answer she received made her gulp.

“Are you listening?”

After trying to calm her down, Ooki gave the answer.

“Harakawa-kun’s mother has collapsed!”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 13

2014-11-18T17:15:43Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 13: The World’s Expression */

==Chapter 13: The World’s Expression==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0327.png|thumb]]
''It is hidden

''And it is trampled on

''It then flatly vanishes without bending

The sunlight was shifting to afternoon.

The sky was clear and the air was still.

The westering sun was accompanied by the scent of the ocean as someone ran down an asphalt slope.

It was Shinjou.

Her long black hair danced while tied back in a ribbon, the bottom of her orange jacket swayed, and the bag on her back and her skirt hopped up with each running step.

“I need to hurry.”

She held copy paper with the Sakai municipal office’s stamp on it. It contained the information on volunteer centers and churches she had received at that municipal office.

She saw a mountain to the east and the city and port bordering the Seto Inland Sea to the west.

A faded sign for tourists was set up halfway up the slope. It indicated that Sakai’s port was located down below.

About two hours before, she had received quite a bit of information at the municipal office.

…''But a lot happened before that.

She had arrived in Osaka in the early morning.

She had left the night train at Osaka Station and looked up at a train station’s route map for the first time.

It had also been her first time to check with a station attendant despite standing right in front of the proper platform and her first time unfolding her map despite being on the right road.

…''I don’t know anything about the world and I’m really not used to travelling.

By the time she had finally managed to reach the Sakai municipal office, it had been just before nine in the morning. The office had yet to open, so she ate a light breakfast at a nearby café and then faced the morning congestion inside the office.

…''I went there to get a list of orphanages or churches.

According to the document in Izumo UCAT, Shinjou Yukio had been left with an orphanage church in Sakai.

She had asked for city documents from before the earthquake, but she had received a certain response.

“There is no complete documentation from before or after the earthquake.”

…''You’re kidding.

These were records for something as large-scale as a city and yet they did not exist.

This was mostly due to the old municipal office burning down, but that was not all: the landscape had changed during the earthquake, a lot of people had left the city, a lot had come to the city, and a lot of documentation had simply stopped being updated partway through.

The city’s newer documents were updated much more frequently because the government had decided to fully digitize everything in 2002, but the old paper documents were barely even treated as documents anymore.

Shinjou recalled the explanation given by the woman at the municipal office.

“Things like real estate and banks were linked with other information and completed in order to preserve the bare minimum of the old information needed to keep everything running. But…there’s some information that we can get by without, right? We wanted to put the people at ease and recover as quickly as possible, so we got the office back up and running even if it meant abandoning a fair bit of information. After all, the sooner the office was back to normal, the sooner we could bring back public order and the city administration.”

“…”

“The people who lost their houses in the large-scale landslides abandoned their destroyed land and moved. A lot of people did the same with the houses they lost in fires. There is documentation for the people who did report the loss, but the city bought up the land of those who lost everything or the land that is too dangerous to live on. There was so much confusion at the time that a lot is still unknown. Even now, people will find their old land was mistakenly registered as their neighbor’s.”

The woman had sighed and apologized.

…''That could normally never happen.

It had happened so easily because the situation had needed to advance even if everything was not perfect.

The problem was how to compensate when it did happen. That was the most effect way of using your time and effort and this city still had no time or effort to spare.

In another decade or two, they would likely have become a city that could immediately answer Shinjou’s question.

Shinjou did know one thing.

According to the research she had done before the trip, a quarter of the city’s population of eight hundred thousand had arrived after the earthquake.

Numerically, that was two hundred thousand people.

In ten years, a full quarter of the city had been remade, including the residents themselves.

“Those people came here to help with the trouble that still remains. The office was in such a rush back then that we couldn’t handle everything. …Just the other day, some people came from another prefecture after finally deciding to visit their relatives’ graves.”

As she spoke, the woman had made the list of churches.

There were about forty of them.

“There are probably street corner churches and ones using prefabricated buildings left over after the earthquake. The places that registered or moved when the phone lines were down often didn’t bother writing down their phone number. And during the phone number changes the year before last, the areas with phone lines cut by the faults were given entirely new numbers, but…”

“But the change might not have been recorded here?”

“That would normally never happen, but we’re still dealing with the disaster. So…”

The woman had handed over a few pieces of copy paper.

They contained a few phone numbers, addresses, and group names.

“These are the earthquake volunteer offices. I don’t know if they’re still running, though. We made sure they could work without having to register their activities with the city.”

Shinjou had taken that list and was now hurrying along.

She had a reason to hurry. After leaving the municipal office, she had eaten lunch at a café and called UCAT.

…''Ooki-sensei was the one to answer.

The woman had insisted nothing had happened and that everything was fine.

''That was a lie,'' she thought. ''Something happened.

…''She would normally unintentionally say something that made me worry.

However, Ooki had immediately said everything was fine and that nothing had happened.

Something must have happened to Heo, Harakawa, Hiba, or Mikage after the phone call the night before.

Pain suddenly filled her stomach.

This intermittent pain had begun in the morning and it was the same pain she had at the end of every month in place of a period. Perhaps due to her worried stress, it was especially bad today.

Even so, she ran. She needed to quickly finish this personal business and return. She intended to return on the bullet train the following morning.

…''I can complete today’s tasks as long as I have the time. I will eventually find Shinjou Yukio.

That fact eliminated the pain in her stomach.

She was pursuing someone who might not even be her relative, but she would limit that personal business to this one day. Heo and Ooki had both told her to do her best, so she would do what she could.

However, today was the only day for that.

She would use this one day for herself, but then she would return to her proper place and act alongside those who were with her.

And once that proper place was safe, she could act for herself once again.

A late-night bullet train could reach Tokyo this same day.

With that thought, she let out a breath.

“This one is the largest volunteer office. I’ll start there!”

The address was near the entrance to Sakai’s port. Apparently, the largest volunteer office had existed there from the earliest stages in order to process the relief goods. It was at the top of the list she had received at the municipal office.

If she went there, she would be able to gather the broadest range of information.

Her running feet took her down the slope to the port.

The sea air seemed to sting her skin and smelled somehow nostalgic. This was the scent of the Seto Inland Sea she had experienced during the summer.

The road reached a T-intersection. The road continuing right and left was wide and something came into view beyond the guardrail across that road.

“The sea.”

She saw the back of the port’s wharf beyond the slope’s T-intersection.

She was in an elevated area, so she was able to look down on the Seto Inland Sea.

The sea almost looked black and it reflected the pale late autumn sun like a fish’s scales. She saw the lines of ships parting those scales and realized the sight before her eyes was much larger than she had thought.

…''It’s so big.

She looked down and saw the wharf was brand new.

She recalled what Kazami had told her on the helicopter ride to the Seto Inland Sea during the summer.

“Back then…”

After the Great Kansai Earthquake, IAI had provided large-scale support for a recovery.

They had built an artificial island and all of the transportation routes – whether by land, sea, or air – had run from there.

The coastal port would have been remade at that time and then officially built even later.

The city had been made new, but that new city filled Shinjou with a certain emotion.

…''It scares me.

The old things were disappearing. One day, those things would suddenly vanish and something new would take their place.

A quarter of the city’s population was made up of people who had arrived after the earthquake. They would of course know about the earthquake, but…

…''They don’t know what actually happened beneath their feet or in the places they can see.

''I’m the same,'' she thought, but then a memory of the past came to her.

She remembered the firebombing of Tokyo.

While in Shinjuku during the Leviathan Road with 2nd-Gear, she had seen the moment in the past when the city of Tokyo had been burned away.

The city and so much else had been lost then and replaced later.

The Concept War was similar.

Many Gears had vanished and the survivors were being replaced here in Low-Gear.

Thanks to her classes, her textbooks, the newspapers, and the TV news, Shinjou knew this country had fought a war.

She had looked through quite a bit of historical information in the library since she had started attending school.

Even so, she did not know what was buried beneath her feet.

Even so, she did not know if the scenery around her was the same as it had once been.

Even so…

…''I don’t know my father or my mother.

She had already thought about this after the dream of the past Baku had given her the day before.

In the dream, Sayama’s parents had rushed though the burning city of Osaka.

…''But what were they fighting?

The remains of their battle might lie beneath her feet as she walked through this city that had been destroyed in an earthquake.

…''And are my parents down there, too?

“————!?”

She shuddered and woke from her thoughts.

She wanted to cling to someone, but that someone was not with her. And she only realized that because…

“I’m trying to cling to him.”

He was not here. Everything was back to the way it had been.

It was the same as when she had been alone in UCAT for so long.

“But it’s different now.”

She had somewhere to return to, so she could go outside. She had someone to cling to for support, so she could leave him for the time being. She had no parents, so she was searching for them. It was all perfectly natural. And so…

“Here I go.”

She faced the T-intersection and her gaze settled on the ocean beyond it. She trembled a bit from the unease trying to control her, but it was weak enough that she could still move.

“Here I go!”

The road to the right continued down the slope to the port’s entrance.

She began to run to the bottom of the slope while watching the Seto Inland Sea rise to her left. She ran to the port and her goal.

The firmness of her footsteps on the asphalt helped her control the tremble in her heart.

…''It’ll be okay.

It would take time, but she could continue pursuing Shinjou Yukio.

In the same way, she would eventually find her parents.

Suddenly, something rose up from the left side of the slope.

It was a green two-story prefabricated building. It had a large gray storehouse behind it.

“!”

The prefabricated roof was covered with stacks of plywood panels and on top of blue sheets and lumber.

The green corrugated iron wall had the words “Great Kansai Earthquake Sakai Port Relief Office” written in black spray paint.

“…!”

Shinjou sped up.

She was now racing down the hill more than she was running.

Eventually, her legs could not keep up and wide gaps appeared between footsteps.

She was almost leaping as she made her way down the slope.

She circled around the guardrail and into the open area at the port entrance.

Beyond the people running transport vehicles and forklifts, she saw the wharf that was now level with her.

She heard cranes moving, vehicles beeping as they backed up, many different voices, and countless engines.

The smell of salt water was strong.

However, she ignored it all.

She moved left as if reversing her downward momentum and she threw her body toward the prefab building.

The building was less than ten meters from the port entrance.

She imagined knocking on the door, giving a greeting, and entering to walk across the somewhat soft floor. She pictured a man or woman like the one at the municipal office.

“…Eh?”

Her imagination stopped there.

And that was not all that had stopped. Her legs, her momentum, and the strength in her gaze had all stopped as well.

She simply faced forward.

She looked to the prefab building in front of her.

“It’s…closed?”

Shinjou saw a closed door.

Beyond the glass on the upper half of the aluminum sash door was a curtain faded to white by the sun.

No light could be seen beyond the curtain.

“…”

Her feet suddenly moved and brought her closer.

She stepped up on the block used in place of a front step.

“Excuse me…”

She called out and knocked on the door.

The glass shook and the corrugated iron wall audibly bent a little.

She waited a few seconds, but there was no response.

Unable to endure the silence, she spoke.

“Um.”

She lightly knocked on the door.

“Excuse me.”

She knocked.

“I have a question!”

But there was no response. All she heard was the shaking of the door and the bending of the corrugated iron.

After those sounds of her own creation vanished, she listened to the surrounding noises once more.

She heard the moving cranes, the beeping of transport vehicles backing up, people’s voices, and running engines. Those sounds of the city permeated her from behind.

Her silhouette was reflected in the window with the somewhat dulled sunlight in the background. It was reflected in the darkness beyond the curtain.

“Um…”

With that weak call, she peered inside.

There was nothing there.

No, there was something. Blue sheets were laid out on the plastic floor, plywood panels were piled up, and a few folding chairs were stacked on top of those.

She also saw color on the ceiling.

…''Chains of colored paper?

They must have been celebrating something because several chains of colored paper were still hanging from the ceiling.

That was all. She could see nothing else.

“…”

She took a step back and found nothing there.

She completely forgot she had been standing on a block.

“Ah.”

She fell onto her butt.

Looking up at the door from the ground, she noticed something.

A piece of paper had been stuck on the inside of the door’s glass in front of the faded curtain.

Still sitting, she looked at the paper that had also faded. She read aloud the large writing printed off from a word processor.

“Exactly nine years have passed since the earthquake and we are entering the tenth year. We have long received support, but the time for widespread material relief efforts has ended. We believe it is now time for local support, efforts of the recovering city administration, and moral support.”

…''When we opened this office, we decided we could not continue running it for a full decade. Not because we could not keep it up but because we could not allow the earthquake to take a full decade of our lives from us. We were determined to take back our lives before a decade had passed.

“We lost so very much, but the people in temporary housing have all been moved to permanent homes and the city’s population was reported to have surpassed the pre-earthquake number last year. We are viewing that as a sign that we have truly retrieved our lives, so we have decided to close up before entering the tenth year. From now on, local areas will handle their own problems. We would like to thank all of you for the support you have provided us for so long. We are praying for the happiness of those lost in the earthquake, those lost in the recovery, and those who live on.”

The date it gave was the end of the previous year. After that, it gave contact information said to have been valid through March of this year, phone numbers of local volunteer offices, and the phone number for the municipal office.

And that was all.

…''What is this?

She knew.

The municipal office was still dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake, but the large-scale disaster relief stage had already ended.

After ten years, the land had been restored, houses had been built, the city had been made into a place for people to live once more, and the population numbers had returned.

The main issue in the current stage was administrative troubles.

“…”

Still sitting on the ground, she suppressed the emotions welling up in her heart.

While restraining her heart, doubts filled her mind as words.

…''Is the past being replaced by the present?

She did not know what had been below her feet or in the places she could see around her.

It had all been replaced with new things.

“And even if you try to remember the past and record it, the memories feel fresh yet you can’t go that far.”

She would eventually learn about the past, but that was a long time from now.

By then, she would have nothing left connecting her to that past.

Part of her thought that was fine, but she also shook her head.

“I’m standing in the divide between the past and a new era.”

As she muttered those words, something thin and hard fell onto the back of the right hand she had placed on the ground.

She looked down and found the envelope Sayama had given her.

He had given it to her while saying he was leaving her with a piece of his past and it seemed to have slipped from the opening of her backpack.

…''The envelope makes itself known as forcefully as its sender.

Feeling like she was being embraced by the one who had left it with her, she picked it up.

If she let this break her, she would never be able to read it.

''Right,'' she thought while gathering strength.

Suddenly, a man called out to her from the wharf.

“Hey! That place isn’t running anymore! You should head to the municipal office!”

“R-right!”

She stood up, turned around, and found a man raising his hand in a group of men walking between warehouses. The gesture seemed to be telling her to keep trying.

She bowed and turned around. She grabbed the backpack, put the envelope away, and pulled out another document. It was the list of volunteer offices and churches.

She looked down at it and took a deep breath.

“Calm down.”

She had run all the way here, but now that she thought about it, she had been in too much of a hurry.

She could only think the anxiety and hope of her first trip alone had mixed together and excited her.

She was nervous, but she could do what she needed to do.

Before she returned to Tokyo the following morning, she wanted to grasp a part of her past that would otherwise be forgotten. That way she could use that part to drag out the past when she eventually came here again.

…''I need to think.

She put the bag on her back and began to walk with the papers in hand.

“How can I most efficiently check all of them?”

The sky was a little bit cloudy.

A girl and a white dog walked through the faint shadows cast on a road.

They were Shino and Shiro.

While walking along the wide sidewalk, Shino checked the sign hanging below the street’s traffic light.

…''Akigawa.

This had been a long walk.

She lived in Hachioji to the south of Akigawa, but the cities were only directly connected by road and several mountains divided them. She had taken the train, so she had been forced to travel through Tachikawa or Haijima station.

This walk could be called a short trip.

She saw no problem in bringing Shiro with her. He cast no shadow, but it was an overcast day.

He was an information being, but he generally treated the walls and ground as solid to match Shino.

He would always “hide” somewhere on the trains out of concern for her.

Whenever she passed through the ticket gate, he would vanish and he would reappear by her side once she left the ticket gate.

He had learned to hide after she had tried to take him with her and gotten into an argument with the station attendant.

She did not know how it worked, but it was probably completely normal for him.

Currently, he was allowing himself to be seen as she walked alongside him.

She had passed by the municipal office earlier and she was now walking right into the wind blowing down from the north.

A long wall continued to her right.

“That’s Taka-Akita Academy, isn’t it?”

She always saw those buildings when she came to Akigawa. In fact, one could say the facility was Akigawa itself.

A group in white approached from up ahead.

…''?

She reflexively grew defensive, but she realized it was a group of girls in white track suits.

A female teacher drove a car behind them while shouting to set their tempo.

“C’mon, you have to help prepare for the festival and you still have normal classes until midday.”

“Ah, I wish we were in Ooki-sensei’s class. They have a self-study day today.”

The teacher gave a bitter smile as she responded to the student’s exasperated comment.

“C’mon, you delinquent students. Don’t you know Ooki-san goes to the trouble of teaching supplementary lessons? Of course, that’s to make up for how often she’s late.”

Laughter spilled out and the entire group picked up speed.

That was for a PE class, so they were likely running a long distance. Shino waited for the footsteps and voices to approach.

“————”

She and Shiro watched them pass by.

Most of the students had their heads drooping and were weakly leaning forward as they propelled their bodies in the same direction. Shino imagined they were sick of running.

A few of them softened their expressions as they looked at her and Shiro, but…

“C’mon, quit looking to the side. You’re gonna trip.”

''What’s wrong with that,'' thought Shino while watching them pass by.

But at the same time…

…''That may be true.

She did not know what a life like theirs was like.

She had never lived a life like theirs.

She could not live a life like theirs.

They lived in the same world, they were both human, they were from the same generation, they wore the same sort of clothes, they ate the same kinds of food, they breathed the same air, and they experienced the same time, but something was different on a fundamental level.

…''How long will this last?

“Shiro, let’s go.”

When would she be able to call herself a “normal” person?

She recalled what Hajji had said.

…''When we crush UCAT and wipe out the last remnants of the Concept War.

She began to walk into the blowing north wind with Shiro by her side.

She walked beside that wall she could never enter.

“Shiro, Hajji told me something. Army’s attack tonight will change tomorrow morning. The morning will change in some fundamental way that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. Nothing else will change, but the victors known as UCAT will vanish and the world will belong equally to everyone.”

She rubbed Shiro’s head while walking alongside him.

“People want to avenge the past or avenge what was lost, but with the target of that vengeance gone, they will have no excuses left and will have no reason left to fight. …It may take time, but we will all be able to live together in the same world, as identical humans, in the same generation, while wearing the same sort of clothes, while eating the same kinds of food, while breathing the same air, and while experiencing the same time.”

She looked down at the dog’s walking feet. They scraped on the asphalt, but he did not cast a shadow.

“Will I be able to live with you too, Shiro? Even if nothing else changes, if the rulers vanish, then eventually…”

They reached the wide main entrance, but she did not peek inside the school.

She turned her back, crossed the road, and continued on.

Shiro must have remembered the way because he walked on ahead.

It was true she had taken Shiro this way a few times before. She would sometimes come here without telling anyone else. Hajji seemed to have a hunch, but Mikoku only thought she was going to some distant place for fun.

…''Should I really be doing this?

They had all been given some free time because this was the day of the attack, but Mikoku was training on her own to make up for losing to Jord the night before.

On the other hand, Shino had come here. She was using her free time for herself.

…''But all I’ve been doing is thinking.

“Sorry, Shiro. We can go to the usual central park later.”

He turned back toward her and gave a small bark.

She felt like he was trying to cheer her up, so she smiled.

She walked between the houses lining the road and saw thin clouds in the sky.

The clouds were supposed to clear by nightfall, but she wondered if they really would.

She also had another thought.

…''What will happen once the attack is over?

Whether they won or lost, a lot would change.

…''But one thing will return to normal.

“Mikoku.”

The girl would no longer have to tell Shino not to fight.

In fact, Shino would be the one telling Mikoku they no longer needed to fight.

She could not wait for that to happen.

She wanted all the fighting to end and for Mikoku to not be so upset all the time.

“…”

She slowly came to a stop.

At the same time, she heard an electronic chime and a voice behind her.

“The festival committee will now announce the beginning of today’s school festival preparations and would like to give some warnings. Let’s see… First, when riding a bicycle, motorcycle, or car onto school grounds, make sure your license is displayed in a visible place. Second, ‘I couldn’t resist any longer’ is no excuse for making the preparations in the nude. And third, if anyone else tries to sell stimulants at increased prices in the cafeteria, the committee’s purge division will…”

Shino simply sighed without even turning toward the voice.

“Ahh.”

She began to walk away from the sounds behind her and the people creating them.

“It will all be over soon and then I can be with Mikoku and the others.”

She had waited for so long, but that wait would end tonight and she would have all her answers by morning.

She briefly closed her eyes and nodded.

…''If I…

“If I had been like Shinjou-san, I wouldn’t have had to wait for the new world,” she muttered. “If only I had been someone irreplaceable.”

She looked up and faced forward.

There, she saw what lay in front of Shiro as he sat and waited for her.

It was a large house surrounded by a long fence.

She walked toward the wooden gate and saw a nameplate that said “Tamiya”.

“I came here again…”

Her voice sounded both resigned and exasperated.

A moment later, a female voice reached her from beyond the gate.

“Like! I! Said!!”

The tone of protest made Shino gasp.

She wondered what was going on and the voice travelled through the gate once again.

“Honestly, Kouji. Why are you such a stubborn boy!?”

A young man and woman faced each other in the Tamiya family yard.

The woman wore a blue kimono and the man wore a gray suit.

The man spoke to the woman whose eyebrows were raised.

“Fine, fine. Just calm down, my sister. Besides, you shouldn’t be calling your brother a ‘boy’ when he’s past twenty.”

“Then I’ll level you up to a stubborn man. Or I could say you were ‘born stubborn’ to make it rhyme.”

“Ha ha ha. They may be spelled the same, but they don’t actually rhyme. …Anyway, you need to spend some time in the storehouse thinking about what you did. I can’t believe you would give the young master some of our special drugs.”

“But he and Setsu-chan are like family. What’s wrong with giving them some of our drugs?”

“Those are for business! They’re for the guests in the confinement room down below. Just because mom and dad are on a hot spring excavation tour in the hopes that Mount Aso will erupt doesn’t mean you can just take some.”

“But, but, but. Won’t this help advance their relationship? Do you really not get it, Kouji?”

The woman, Ryouko, sighed while striking a pose like it had started to rain.

“They’re going to be apart for a little bit, so they’re just using some drugs to excite themselves and get them through the rebound. There’s nothing wrong with this. And if it goes well, it means I was their Cu-Cu-Cu-Cupi-…”

“Cupid. You can’t even say that right?”

“I-I just stuttered a little. I don’t remember raising a man who would gripe about something so trivial! …And if you don’t like it, try saying some profound thing yourself!”

“I’d really like a peaceful everyday life.”

“That’s definitely not happening.”

“Why is that the only time you give a serious answer!? …And you’re the reason it isn’t happening!”

After Kouji shouted, his shoulders drooped.

“Anyway, sister, I would also like to say I wasn’t raised to be like that, but don’t forget that a large part of my personality was formed by cleaning up after your mistakes.”

“Wh-what? Are you saying it’s my fault you’re like this?’

“About 80% your fault, yes.”

“You mean you have 80% of a sister complex!? Oh, you poor thing! You’re definitely dangerous!”

“Calm down 100%, my sister. How in the world did you reach that conclusion?”

“Don’t try to deny it!” Ryouko pointed at Kouji and raised her voice. “There’s nothing wrong with having a sister complex. With a sister this attractive, it isn’t something to be embarrassed about. After all, even the single and unemployed son of Ishii-san who lives cattycorner of here has been spying on me with binoculars!”

A second-story window on the house diagonally behind Ryouko quickly closed, but they heard someone stomping up the stairs followed by screams and sounds of impacts in one room on the second story.

Ryouko sighed toward the ground.

“Well, with as many pheromones as I produce, I guess I can’t blame you for having a sister complex. You can have one if you want. After all, I’m the one that finds it disgusting, not you.”

“I’m going to ignore that misunderstanding and how you destroyed peace in the neighborhood, but you are amazingly individualistic, sister.”

“Yes, but Kouji? Did you really see your sister like that?”

“Yes. About four times a year, I would tell myself I didn’t want to turn out like you.”

“You made a quarterly habit out of it!? …You’re the worst, Kouji. Instead of just thinking things again and again, you need to make actual changes in your life.”

“Then can I go on a trip? Maybe one that lasts three years?”

“Fine, but make sure to clean my room first. And once you get back, you’ll have to clean the three years’ worth of messiness. And that isn’t mandatory; it’s an order.”

“Those are the same thing! And what kind of sister makes her younger brother clean her room!?”

“Now you’re ignoring our familial bonds? You really are the worst! I’m not putting up with this.”

She turned around, slid the gate’s latch to the side, and pulled it open.

She opened it with all her might and looked over her shoulder at Kouji.

“I’m going to work and you can’t stop me! I’m going to get rich and use all my money to show you who’s better! I’ll slap you with a pile of cash and make you cry.”

“I’m sorry, sister, but all of the money you earn goes right into the company vault.”

“A-are you embezzling it!? …Huh?”

Ryouko saw a girl and a dog through the gap of the opening gate.

Seeing the surprised look on the girl’s face, Ryouko’s own look of surprise changed to a smile.

“Oh, my.” She placed a hand on her cheek. “Are you preparing for the school festival? You are, aren’t you? Are you from the young master’s class?”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 12

2014-11-16T18:07:04Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 12: For a Conclusion */

==Chapter 12: For a Conclusion==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0299.png|thumb]]
''I was told to be hurt

''I was told to be destroyed

''What is the answer?

Hiba rode the destruction of the land.

He had assumed Yonkichi’s actions would lead to some kind of attack, so he had used all his strength to avoid it.

It could have been an impact, a slash, or a projectile.

Thanks to his two losses during the summer, he took an evasive stance before even seeing the enemy’s attack.

That decision proved wise.

The entire space within three meters around him was destroyed.

It was almost an explosion.

As the bursting air knocked him away, he spun around and took a landing pose.

…''What was that!?

He could tell it was some sort of spatial strike. In the instant the space was compressed and made to burst, that space was acclimated to the surrounding space. That caused anything in the bursting space to burst along with it.

He understood the idea behind it.

…''But how does he do it? What does he use?

He landed with those questions in mind, held a hand up to block the whirling wind and scattering fragments of the ground, and looked forward.

The second attack was coming.

“…!”

He forcefully leaped backwards again to leave the three meter range of destruction, but…

“This one’s bigger!?”

That instinctual decision led him to increase the force of his leap. He flew a full five meters back.

A moment later, the bursting space closed right in front of him. The range had been five meters instead of three.

…''Does this mean he still isn’t going all out!?

Everything split and burst before him.

The wind and torn ground caused him to frantically pull back.

He watched the air explode and corrected his fighting stance.

…''But what do I do?

He clenched his right fist, but he doubted it could do much against this destructive power. And their previous battle told him the old man had a slight edge when it came to a pure exchange of attacks.

His enemy had the advantage in power, skill, and speed.

“Calm down.”

''If I think about it, there has to be a way,'' he told himself.

And so he cleared his mind of all idle thoughts.

…''I will empty my mind!

A sudden image of Mikage in the nude appeared in his mind.

…''And I will stay positive!

He decided this image was a message from the god of beauty that he needed to stay positive. As long as he had no other idle thoughts, nothing else mattered.

But…

…''Mikage-san hasn’t been letting me in the bath with her recently.

It had started two weeks before. She had said she wanted to practice bathing alone and had not let him in. His mother must have supported Mikage’s independence because she had tried to stab him with a spear through the peephole he had tried to use.

That meant his only images of Mikage in the nude were images of the past.

…''But that’s fine too. Imagination!!

At that point, he suddenly realized he needed to focus on the battle, so he gently crossed his arms in front of his face to clear his mind.

“Stop throbbing, my heart. Stop throbbing, my heart!”

“Are you really taking this seriously, puru?”

“I don’t want to hear that from you, Mr. Puru!! Are you listening? Please listen, ma,am!”

With that shout, Hiba suddenly took action.

There were a few ways to overcome a difference in power, skill, and speed.

One of those was to take the initiative.

He would find an opportunity and take advantage of it. It was also called taking the enemy by surprise.

His opponent’s attacks affected a range, but that range started at three meters.

If he made his way within three meters of the enemy, that enemy could not use that power for fear of hitting himself.

Hiba took a low leap and jumped again without slowing down.

He was not running; he was making consecutive leaps. He approached Yonkichi without letting his initial speed drop.

Once he arrived within five meters of the man, Yonkichi reacted by raising his left arm and clenching his fist.

“…!”

He swung it down.

The three meter area around Hiba, a six meters sphere of space, burst.

It bent, compressed, and eventually exploded.

The sound rang clearly, but Hiba was alive.

He had not been torn apart or broken and he continued to fight.

He had approached his enemy.

He was in the air.

He was falling from approximately five meters over Yonkichi’s head.

“——————”

The principle behind this great leap was simple.

His enemy’s attack took a spherical form, so if he jumped up and spread himself out over the curve of the sphere, the force of the explosion would throw him upwards.

The enemy had set the center of the sphere close to the ground in order to hit him, so half of it had been buried.

He jumped over it.

The speed he had built up while approaching maintained his forward momentum even as he rode the blast radiating from the sphere.

This was what it meant to predict what would happen next.

And he continued fighting.

In the air, he twisted his body and made a dropping savate kick.

He did not simply drop his heel. Doing that would send his center of gravity into the ground if he landed. It was all over if the enemy evaded.

But with a savate kick, he could twist his body around and keep moving when he landed. The impact of landing could be transformed into a rotation. The attack was harder to read since it did not move in a straight line and people’s plummeting opinion of him would rise if he won here.

Hiba used this attack as a way of killing four birds with one stone.

However, he saw something in front of him.

Yonkichi had moved his left arm. However, the man did not raise his hand.

…''He pulled back his hips and formed a fist!?

If he created a spatial explosion here, he would be caught in the blast too.

Nevertheless, he moved.

A sound similar to an impact but with some flexibility added in came from behind Yonkichi.

The ground sank down behind him but not because something had gouged into it. Something had appeared there and crushed it.

Hiba knew a similar phenomenon occurred when Mikage summoned Susamikado, so he knew what was appearing.

“A god of war!?

Hiba saw bluish-white light behind Yonkichi that resembled an electrical discharge.

At the same time, the objects producing the spatial explosions appeared behind his arms.

They were giant arms.

The two red and yellow arms were at least three meters long and they resembled both armor and muscle. They rose alongside his arms while copying his movements.

“I will take this a little more seriously, puru. This is the reproductive offensive shell known as the Great Sage, puru. It is a collection of the greatest byproducts of 7th-Gear’s bodily modification techniques and this is my first time to use them outside of fights with my brothers, puru.”

Instead of simple spatial compression, he sent out a straight-line three-meter uppercut.

The attack was much like the movement of a pile driver.

“!”

Meanwhile, Hiba temporarily lost all understanding.

He had trouble with unexpected actions. He had lost before due to that weakness and it was happening again.

…''I can’t let that happen!!

He woke his mind as if clinging to a thought.

More on reflex than conscious thought, he used the crisis response abilities and physical abilities built up inside him.

He twisted his upper body, swung his arms, and raised the speed of his savate kick.

He swung his right leg as if pouring it down on the fist that shot toward him like it had teleported.

…''My heel.

It hit the middle finger of the giant fist. His heel struck the base of the finger and he placed the sole of his foot on it.

“…!”

He absorbed the force, bent his ankle, bent his knee, lowered his hips, crouched down, spread his arms for balance, and even lowered his head.

He took all those actions in an instant to absorb the coming impact with his entire body.

He stored the force of the rising Great Sage fist’s movement in his body.

That fist reached the end of its movement and stopped.

With nowhere else to go, the force inside Hiba’s body threatened to explode, but a moment before, he jumped diagonally backwards into the sky.

He stopped the force building inside him by leaping accurately in the direction of the giant fist’s path.

He more flew than jumped.

He had a high initial speed and Gs pressed down on him to send him down into the darkness.

…''But it’s better than taking all this as damage!

After jumping around a dozen meters, his speed suddenly vanished. His blood flow quickly rose to his head and his mind cleared.

He had reached a face-up position in midair, so the sky lay before his eyes. That sky was shifting from early morning to morning and it contained some faint clouds.

“…”

He bent backwards so his head pointed down, so he saw the upside-down mountains and then what lay below.

About five meters down were the open-air dojo and the house.

“Mikage-san.”

“Right.”

The tall girl that replied awkwardly ran into the open-air dojo in a yukata.

Hiba rotated his body to land in front of her, spread his arms as he stood, and spoke with her.

“Susamikado!!”

It came.

The wind spiraled behind them and a black giant almost ten meters tall appeared behind Mikage.

It was Susamikado.

The black god of war’s frame, power source, sensory devices, etc. linked together and armor appeared over them all.

The bolts to hold its black body together audibly fit in place, Mikage was lifted by gravitational control, and she was taken inside Susamikado.

“Too slow, puru.”

Hiba realized Yonkichi’s voice came from behind.

…''!?

The appearance of and combination with Susamikado happened in a mere instant. He should have been able to board 3rd-Gear’s greatest weapon without leaving an opening, but Hiba realized something in that split-second.

…''Our enemy is 7th-Gear!

3rd-Gear could not fight without the power of a god of war, but this higher Gear had managed that.

Yonkichi interfered using pure speed.

Hiba turned around and saw the man riding the Great Sage’s extended hand.

The Great Sage’s shoulders were linked with a backpack-like curved component and shimmering heat rose from behind it.

Yonkichi extended his right hand forward from atop the giant palm.

His hand held Mikage and his grasp prevented her from entering Susamikado.

Her eyes opened wide and she turned toward the man.

“Now, then.”

Still riding the Great Sage’s right palm, Yonkichi casually raised his left hand.

That was when something strange happened.

The Great Sage’s left hand grew. It inflated like a balloon and yet appeared to remain just as solid. The giant arm grew to about ten meters long.

“Ever-changing and absurdly powerful. That is the ultimate form of 7th-Gear,” he said. “Oh, I forgot to say ‘puru’.”

The Great Sage’s even greater left arm punched Susamikado.

With the sound of breaking glass, the god of war doubled over and floated up in the air. Mikage had yet to combine with it, but she was swung up into the air due to being under its gravitational control.

Red warning lights appeared across Susamikado’s body to inform them of errors. It then vanished so it would not be influenced by anyone but its master.

That left Mikage alone in the air.

She had not actually been struck by the blow, but she had been thrown by its momentum and she flew toward a closed rain shutter on the house.

“Mikage-san!”

Hiba hurried, but he would not make it in time.

Even so, something helped him: an attack from Yonkichi.

The old man jumped down from the Great Sage’s hand and slammed his right fist into Hiba’s side.

Hiba’s breath was forced out from his mouth and nose and he heard a sound from his side.

The counterattack sent him flying through the air toward Mikage.

In exchange, three of his ribs were broken.

The pain had not yet reached him, but it would once he took in a breath and his blood circulated. But first…

“Kah.”

Something that was not quite a breath burst from his mouth.

He then stopped breathing. Once he caught up to Mikage in the air and held her in his arms, he found she had passed out.

He embraced her.

…''The house.

They slammed into it, but the impact was surprisingly soft.

“!?”

He was stopped by something that felt more absorbing than flexible and his back slid down to what felt like the ground.

An instant later, the sky above grew dark.

He was seeing the ceiling. He saw the old ceiling panels of the house.

He had slid after landing and only stopped once he hit a cabinet inside.

“Ow.”

The pain arrived. Simply inhaling felt like fingers digging into his left side.

He frowned as the pain filled the core of his being like the inside of his muscles were being directly twisted. Only then did he realize that someone had opened the rain shutter and laid out a futon for them to land on.

“Harakawa-san!?”

Harakawa walked past Hiba who lay motionless with Mikage in his arms.

He was leaving the house with something like a large log over his shoulder.

He clicked his tongue toward Hiba.

“Sorry, Hiba, but it took some time getting Heo ready.”

“S-sorry.”

Heo was wrapped in the Swiss roll of a blanket over Harakawa’s shoulder and she lowered the head sticking out the back. As the contents of the Swiss roll, she turned toward Harakawa who was moving outside.

“Wh-what are we going to do, Harakawa?”

“It’s a pain, but we need to drive that guy away. Can’t you see what’s happening here?”

“B-but if we attack with Thunder Fellow, that puru guy will be…”

“He isn’t holding back either, Heo Thunderson.”

“B-but!”

“He knows the past of our parents that you want so much. Is that not enough motivation? If not, then what do you really want?”

Harakawa felt the Swiss roll’s contents shake and hold its breath.

“Listen, Heo Thunderson. This is our duty.”

“I’m sorry.” The Swiss roll’s head turned weakly toward him. “B-but how are we going to fight?”

“That’s the question,” he said as he stepped outside.

Hiba was collapsed, a portion of the house was destroyed, and Ryuutetsu was out at the field with his wife.

…''This is like something from a shounen manga.

Yonkichi was approximately eight meters away. The Great Sage was back to its original size, but its backpack had not vanished. It had moved quickly enough to interfere with Susamikado’s appearance, so Harakawa doubted they had time to board Thunder Fellow.

But…

“Heo, does Thunder Fellow understand our situation?”

“Eh? Yes, it seems he can see the outside world a little.”

The Swiss roll tried to turn toward him, but it threw them off balance. ''This isn’t as easy as the delivery job at Yokota that I’ve been keeping alongside my UCAT work,'' thought Harakawa as he left the side of the building.

“U-um, Harakawa. You’ve been grabbing my butt through the blanket for a while now.”

“Enough false accusations. I can’t tell where I’m touching through the blanket and I haven’t been infected by Team Leviathan enough to want to do that right now.”

“What is the deal with Team Leviathan anyway?” sighed Heo.

Harakawa suddenly thought about that question from a different perspective.

…''What is it really?

Sayama had temporarily disbanded it, but did it make any difference when they were still fighting like this?

And if not, why had Kazami protested so much when Sayama had made them disband?

“…?”

However, he could not quite grasp what exactly he was asking.

After all…

…''Why are they so concerned with what is nothing more than a name?

He felt as if that was where he would find the reason Sayama had them disband.

“The past, hm?”

…''What about the past gives such meaning to the name Team Leviathan?

However, he decided this was not the time to think about it.

He stopped thinking, stood in the yard, and faced Yonkichi who was in the center of the open-air dojo to the west.

“Listen. Unlike Susamikado, Thunder Fellow is intelligent. If you try to interfere while we’re boarding him, he can decide on his own to crush you. So…”

“So you’re telling me to leave, puru?”

“No. I’m telling you to get lost.”

Harakawa spoke to the contents of the Swiss roll supported by his shoulder.

“Heo, I warned him, so summon Thunder Fellow.”

“Eh? B-but how am I supposed to do that? He has trouble appearing when he doesn’t sense me in danger.”

Harakawa wordlessly stripped away the Swiss roll.

Having lost its support, the blanket fell across his right shoulder like a cloak and the contents exposed her flesh-colored body with her stomach resting on his shoulder.

“Ee,” she shrieked. “N-noooooo!! Thunder Fellowwwww!!!”

Yonkichi did not interfere with Thunder Fellow’s appearance.

Harakawa had already explained why. The mechanical dragon had a personality so interfering would be the same as placing himself in front of his enemy.

Wind wrapped around Thunder Fellow as he appeared in the parking area made from a dirt clearing in front of the house.

He was only eight meters away and he filled their vision like a mountain or a wall.

It only took an instant for the blue and white dragon to open the cockpit and let the two humans inside.

“…!!”

After a moment, he let loose a mechanical roar.

He was over thirty meters long, how much he weighed was anyone’s guess, he had appeared already in his close-quarters combat form, and shimmering heat rose from the accelerators on the back of his body.

If he charged forward, there would be no escaping his speed and size and there would be no defending against or enduring his weight and solidness.

However, Yonkichi stood still without running.

He saw Thunder Fellow hold his head and reluctantly speak.

“H-Harakawa! That was just mean!! I don’t want anyone but you to see me like that!”

“Relax, Heo Thunderson. The microbes in the bath are always watching.”

“How could you say that?”

The voices stopped.

Yonkichi saw Harakawa moving inside the cockpit. He grabbed the roll bars sticking out on either side and leaned his entire body forward.

…''Not bad.

''That Harakawa boy was one of the last to join Team Leviathan, but he knows how to commit to a fight,'' thought Yonkichi.

…''But can he keep that balance with Miss Heo with him?

He did not have time to add the “puru” to his thoughts.

He then saw something happen in what could only be called an “instant”.

Thunder Fellow’s limbs pulled up and the mechanical dragon fired a wave of shimmering heat behind him.

“!”

He charged forward.

In only eight meters, steam exploded in front of his nose.

Wind expanded in a ring and the house’s roof tiles floated up a little before being blown away.

However, Yonkichi calmly watched the high-speed charge and realized what Harakawa was after.

His senses were synchronized with Thunder Fellow’s so he could make minor adjustments to his course even at this speed.

And Thunder Fellow was flying just a bit left of Yonkichi’s center line.

If the man did not evade, he would be killed instantly. Even if he did, he would be badly injured. And if he used some special method to completely avoid it, it could lead to an escape.

Yonkichi knew what Harakawa had to be thinking.

…''He expects me to use a special method of dodging.

Even if he expanded the Great Sage to more than ten meters, he could not hope to match the mechanical dragon named Thunder Fellow. To prove that, Harakawa had opted for a direct charge instead of a cannon blast.

…''An excellent decision.

''But,'' thought Yonkichi.

As his reflexes saw through the speed, he paused briefly and then spoke.

“Fixed concept…activate.”

A moment later, words filled the air.

—'''The world is reversed for an instant.

The result showed itself immediately afterwards.

Thunder Fellow’s thirty meter form struck something and was blown away.

With a rumbling sound, armor fragments flew and Thunder Fellow pitched forward.

“…!?”

Harakawa and Heo gave confused voices as they crashed into the forest beyond the open-air dojo.

Their momentum broke through and knocked over the trees, armor fragments scattered from the parts that were bent, and the mass of destruction that was Thunder Fellow smashed the forest.

The forest covered a rising mountain slope, so the toppling mass of metal tore into the dirt for about five seconds before stopping.

After that, the mountain crumbled away for about one hundred twenty meters.

Yonkichi saw birds fly from the forest.

“Now, then,” he muttered. “Does this make you angry, puru?”

He turned to his right.

Someone stood behind him there.

“Brunhild-sama.”

The girl wearing a school uniform stood less than a meter away with a small bird on her head.

Brunhild did not understand.

Thunder Fellow had suddenly been knocked away during his charge, so she could assume something had attacked him. What she did not understand was why Yonkichi was no longer in the open-air dojo.

“Why are you here?”

She frowned toward the white flight jacket which she had found right in front of her after leaving the house.

She was in front of the house where Harakawa had opened the rain shutter to the room the girls had been staying in.

“Isn’t this near where Thunder Fellow was?”

What had happened? As she tried to find the answer, the black cat walked up and spoke to her.

“The world was reversed, Brunhild. So…”

“You’re a sharp one. …Yes, I reversed Thunder Fellow’s position with my own.”

The old man smiled at them over his shoulder.

[[Image:OnC_v10_0321.jpg|thumb]]

“I reversed them at the moment of impact, so Thunder Fellow collided with himself.”

“Then I just have to do this.”

Brunhild threw a piece of paper too quickly to see the movement of her hand.

She threw it toward her own neck and it had a certain image written on it.

“If I add the final dot for the word ‘sever’, it will slice off your head instead. Isn’t that right?”

“Care to try?”

“Are you provoking me?”

“I am stopping you. That is why I asked that. …Care to try?”

Brunhild’s frown grew. She pulled a pen from her pocket and brought the tip to the paper on her neck.

Just as she began to pull it across the paper, the bird flew from her head and a voice reached her.

“Don’t, Brunhild!!”

The black cat jumped up from the ground to keep her hand from moving.

…''Eh?

Her finger moved the pen and activated the paper.

A moment later, the paper’s severing power activated.

However, it affected her and not Yonkichi.

“!?”

…''Why!? I thought a reversing concept was in effect!?

The unexpected outcome left her unable to move, but the severing power was obstructed by something else.

That something was the black cat.

She had instinctually twisted away from him as he jumped toward her, so she had avoided the severing power. Instead, the black cat’s back jerked in midair.

Before she could say anything, the cat fell into her arms.

She held him there, but he was completely limp.

He was so soft she was not sure where to hold him, a pink line ran across his back, and something red appeared on his fur there.

“Wait…”

The question “Why?” entered her mind.

Wasn’t this a reversed world? And why had this happened to the cat?

The cat lifted his head a little in her arms.

“Good…bye.”

“From that, I take it you’re fine.”

She did not hesitate to jab a finger into his stomach and he bent backwards.

“Ow ow ow ow! Now my stomach ''and'' my back hurt!! And Brunhild! Aren’t you going to thank me!?”

“You lost your chance when you worried me with that cheesy act.”

“Oh? So you were worried?”

“Just go to sleep.”

She stuck a hemostatic paper and sleep-inducing paper on him and faced Yonkichi again.

“I get it now. The world is reversed for an instant. In other words, you get to choose when that instant is. If you don’t create an instant of reversal, the attack continues as is, but if you do, the attacker attacks himself.”

“So how about it? Will you fight me, 1st-Gear Inspector?”

“Was fighting those four not enough?”

Brunhild looked over toward them. Inside the house, Hiba was unconscious yet still protectively holding Mikage. In the forest, Harakawa was lying face down inside Thunder Fellow’s cockpit.

Yonkichi glanced toward them as well.

“Do you really think that was enough?”

“Then look at your left arm.”

Yonkichi did so and they both saw that something was missing.

“…My arm.”

It had vanished all the way up to the base.

His eyes opened wide when he noticed, but Brunhild only casually held the cat.

The bird flew back to her head as she spoke.

“You didn’t notice that Hiba and Mikage got a small attack in on you when you knocked them away? The damage was so small you probably didn’t even feel it, but it caused you to miss the timing of your ‘instant’ just a little bit. …Quite a heavy price to pay for underestimating them.”

“Ha…”

Yonkichi took in a breath and looked at his left shoulder. Flesh and bone could be seen there, but it was not bleeding.

His structure as a living weapon had likely sealed off the blood vessels automatically.

Brunhild then heard his voice.

“Ha ha!!”

His breaths repeated the syllable “ha” again and again.

While laughing, he brought his right hand to his forehead, bent back, and held his stomach with the Great Sage’s hands.

“Now this is entertaining! It’s not much, but it is certainly entertaining! It is enjoyable! This is so wonderfully enjoyable, brothers!!”

Brunhild heard his laughter and words travel into the sky.

“When four of them work together, the people supporting Low-Gear can entertain one of us at least a little bit!”

With that, he twisted his body.

“I never expected to lose my left arm! I am both surprised and astonished! I am a little confused at the moment, but you know what? This is oddly entertaining. …Thirty points!”

“Then I assume taking off your head would be worth one hundred points.”

Yonkichi did not agree with Brunhild, but he did smile and reply.

“Your prize then would be the Concept Core and the past we hold.”

“Is that so? But why do you want to die so badly?”

“Die? That may be the case, but we have no time.”

“No time?”

“Yes,” he replied while glancing toward Hiba and Mikage’s collapsed forms and Thunder Fellow in the distance. “We four brothers age as we lose interest. And if we die before accepting this world as entertaining enough to leave the Concept Core to, that Concept Core will be destroyed.”

“Then the best option would be for you all to enjoy yourselves and die.”

“Yes,” agreed Yonkichi with a look into the sky. “I had thought there was no chance of that, but it seems some hope remains. I fought with no explanation this time, so I assume the next encounter can be more serious. However, I do not want to be seen as going easy on you, so I will leave you with this.”

His smile deepened and he swung up his remaining right arm along with the Great Sage.

“Goodbye.”

As soon as he clenched his fist, destruction burst overhead.

It covered a radius of one hundred meters. The center burst in the forest beyond the open-air dojo and it almost looked like the earth’s crust was breaking.

Simply put, the ground collapsed.

“————!?”

The Hiba dojo, house, open-air dojo, and forest were all broken to pieces, thrown about, and crumbled.

In an instant, everything gathered into piles.

Only the morning wind remained.

Only that wind which told of the change from early morning to morning.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 11

2014-11-13T16:36:05Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 11: Flow of Human Will */

==Chapter 11: Flow of Human Will==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0283.png|thumb]]
''Where does regret come from?

''From within?

''From without?

A room was lined with small tables and chairs.

Windows covered the room’s southern wall and the almost gray light of morning was partially blocked by the giant logo-covered stickers on those windows. The stickers contained a simplified drawing of a mountain bandit leader.

“The Japanese fast food chain Most Valiant Burger. IAI sure runs some strange places. I’m also not sure I approve of calling a rice sandwich a ‘riceger’.”

Those complaints came from a woman in a white coat sitting alone by the window.

The tray on the two-person table held two rice balls wrapped in paper (a new product), a cup of consommé, and lightly pickled asparagus and lettuce.

The woman looked a little like an Asian girl and she rested her head on her hand and stared out the window despite the food in front of her.

She could see the city in early morning. The roundabout in front of the train station contained nothing but a single car and some parked buses. Very few people were in evidence and no motion could be seen.

“I wonder if they’re having an exciting time of it.”

Just as she released the contents of her lungs, she heard a female voice.

“May I sit with you, Doctor Chao?”

Chao looked up at the woman who sat down across from her.

“Diana? How did you know I was here?”

Diana wore a black suit and a large black scarf and she nodded while setting down her tray.

She brushed back her long hair and settled down in the chair.

“You underwent a similar process to me, so I released some paper birds and asked them if they spotted anyone like me around Okutama.”

Diana rested her right elbow on the table and showed off the raised palm.

She held a five centimeter crane created from folded black paper.

She closed her hand and the crane vanished before she opened it again.

“I see.” Chao crossed her arms. “The philosopher’s stone reading is weak, so I thought I’d be fine as long as an automaton didn’t find me, but I forgot about you. …So what are you going to do, descendent of Zonburg? Report me to UCAT?”

“Oh, dear. Is that what you think of me? I am nowhere near that boring a woman.”

Diana hummed as she lifted up a wrapped rice ball. She held the overflowing contents in with the bottom of the wrapper and bit in.

“The tuna scrape riceger special is so good. I’ve recently taken a liking to using wasabi as a topping.”

“The seaweed and Chinese pickles are enough for me.”

“It has plenty of fiber, doesn’t it? But it’s a shame the coffee here is cofftea.”

Diana wiped her lips with a paper napkin and drank some corn soup from her cup.

After a sip, she spoke.

“I hear those four old men are on the move.”

“Are you going to stop them?”

“No, I will leave that to anyone with too much time on their hands and their appropriate opponents. I have other plans.”

“Plans?”

“Yes. After I finish my work at UCAT tonight, I am meeting an acquaintance in the city. I also need to find some books for Heo there. I need to give her some books on Japanese culture, bizarre Japanese festivals, and anti-pervert self-defense.”

“I see.” Chao nodded and grabbed her riceger while looking out the window. “But you know what’s happening and why, don’t you?”

“Testament,” replied Diana. Still smiling, she turned toward Chao. “Those four old men were created as the temporary bodies for 7th-Gear’s Concept Core and they will return to their Concept Core form once they accept an inheritor. And if they do not…”

“They will vanish along with the Concept Core when their lifespan runs out. When I created them in 7th-Gear, the 7th-Gear sages planning to become the Concept Core instructed me to make them that way. They were not gods. They had simply reached the ultimate form of mankind, so they would only be bored with a world they could not accept. That is why I made them age as they lost interest in this world.”

A bitter laugh filled the restaurant.

“Those four have lost interest right on time. This world may have changed quite a bit after the war, but it still failed to interest them. I think it was during your generation that their aging slowed,” explained Chao. “But their aging accelerated during the last ten years. And around when we received 5th-Gear’s Concept Core, they came to tell me something.”

“That they’re so bored they want to go try some things out for themselves?”

Diana’s gaze dropped, she took a bite of her riceger, and she brought a hand to her mouth.

“Ah, that bite had a lot of wasabi.”

“How about you decide whether you’re having a serious conversation or eating?” asked Chao as she took a bite of her own rice. “Besides, I’ve been feeling a little emotional lately. Hanging around me will only put you in a bad mood. …I know it’s not like me, but I’ve been thinking. Why did I even create those four?”

She watched a bus leave the roundabout outside the window and she listened to its engine and the other background noises.

“At the time, I was invited to 7th-Gear, shown the ultimate in bodily modification techniques, and even heard they could create artificial humans using the Concept Core as a basis. I was simply delighted and the 7th-Gear people were happy to see my delight. But,” she said. “Did I make them only so they could die?”

“…”

“Diana, do you ever plan to have kids?”

Diana shrugged at the sudden question.

“I like fried chicken, so I think the stork hates me.”

“I like grilled chicken, so I think I’m the same. But I do wonder. What are parents thinking when they have kids? Do any parents have kids just so they can die?”

She gave a quiet laugh and ate her rice while still looking out the window.

She took a large bite to create a pause and then swallowed.

“I knew what was going to happen to them when I made them. And I was happy to do it. But back then, I never imagined how I would feel about it now.”

“What would you have done if you had known that then?”

“Well…”

Chao stopped moving, closed her eyes, and gave a self-deprecating look.

“You’re cruel, Diana. Wishing for something I couldn’t have done only brings frustration.”

Chao turned around to face Diana and crossed her legs.

“Those four are strong. Will Heo and the others be okay? Kazami and Izumo didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“If Heo and the others die, that’s just the way it is. But even then, it doesn’t mean those four were born to die. …They were born to do something, but they simply chose to die on the way there. That is how I view it.”

“And where did that idea come from?”

“Ten years ago, a group of people chose to die together just as they had eaten, lived, and spoken together. I chose not to and they disappeared from my life. But even though they passed away, they are still crying and laughing, talking and falling silent, and walking and stopping. I try to think that I have no reason for sorrow since this merely means I can no longer meet them.”

Diana held the cup of corn soup in both hands and quietly looked out the window.

“If we can create a continuation to the act of dying, I believe my friends will return. But those four old men are trying to create an ending. And that ending will act as the final destination of 7th-Gear’s Concept War.”

“Yes. They are trying to fight and enjoy themselves as the people of 7th-Gear. This is likely their first and last chance to build up their experience, reveal their identities, and enjoy themselves with the greatest power possible. They most likely want to have fun and win…but even if they win, it is over for them,” said Chao. “They are probably thinking that they were born to die. And if the purpose of their existence lies in their deaths, why were they not allowed to die immediately after their births? …They probably resent me for knowing that when I created them.”

“That is something only they can know. …But that is exactly why I hope they can enjoy themselves until the end arrives. I hope Heo, the Sayama boy, and the others can satisfy them.”

Diana took a sip from the cup and smiled.

She directly faced Chao with that smile.

“But it is my students who will be victorious. Not those four old men.”

She took a breath.

“The Sayama boy once said he would never admit defeat no matter how many times he lost and that he would win in the end. …Crazy, isn’t it?”

She smiled bitterly, but Chao did not nod.

But she did speak and reach for another wrapped riceger.

“I see you don’t cry anymore, Diana. When you first came to Japan, you would always get mad for others and cry.”

“Testament,” quietly agreed Diana.

She opened a new wrapper and brought the rice to her mouth.

“…”

She tried to eat the entire riceger at once and Chao glared at her.

“Your snake-like eating hasn’t changed, though.”

“D-don’t compare me to a snake. I am the Mother Cat.”

“Oh?” Chao pulled a cigarette from her pocket. “I’m finally feeling a little better. Mind if I smoke?’

“No, go ahead.”

Diana pulled lipstick from her pocket, wrote two words on a napkin, and placed it in front of her.

“ ‘Get lost’? What’s this? Are you picking a fight with me?”

“It is for the smoke, Doctor Chao. …Anyway, talking about those four really is reminding me of the past. For example, there were others who desired victory to bring something to an end ten years ago and before.”

“That there were. …And there are people who want that now too.” Chao lit the cigarette in her mouth. “The Army. We know very well what they’re thinking, don’t we? They’re a collection of the remnants and crimes of the Concept War. They wish to destroy the victorious survivor that is UCAT but also to eliminate themselves. That way they can create a peaceful world with no victor.”

“Only a group small enough to vanish could come up with an idea like that. They’re willing to use any dirty method of winning. All that matters is eliminating their enemy and themselves,” said Diana. “So they will simply do evil without even being a villain. The more evil they are, the more the later world will know of the evil committed during the Concept War, so that later world will avoid conflict once they vanish. …They think the people of that later world will be able to appreciate peace.”

“Be careful, Diana. My four may be attacking now, but the Army is definitely coming. And meanwhile, Team Leviathan has disbanded and both Kazami and Izumo are out of the fight.”

“I know that.” Diana nodded and raised her eyebrows a little. “But those four are the more pressing problem for now. …I will keep it a secret, so can you tell me what they’re going to do?”

Chao exhaled some smoke and it reversed direction toward her and the wall once it arrived above the napkin in front of Diana.

“Ah, that pisses me off. I’m not telling you now.”

“O-oh, come on. I just want to know a little. Oh, I know. How about some dessert? The youke, a fusion of youkan and cake, is something like kintsuba.”

“How are you supposed to pronounce that?”

“Youke.”

“…Well, whatever. Ikkou is maintaining his weapons and Nijun is pursuing Sayama. Mitsuaki works more behind the scenes, so he should be with Ikkou. And Yonkichi… He’s pursuing Heo and the others.”

Diana’s expression stiffened at that last fact.

“Yonkichi is?”

“That’s right. Surely you know that he’s the strongest of the four brothers when looking at a one-on-one battle. …Now, how will this turn out?”

Chao blew smoke upwards and it gathered like a cloud up near the ceiling.

“Those children are always playing the fools, but they’ve finally realized what they need to do and will give this their all. They helped you all ten years ago, but their strength and determination are entirely different now. They will be asking the question that was always kept hidden inside them.”

Chao looked to Diana with the smile of those four’s parent.

“They will win. They are the ones asking, so their strength as they ask will be greater than all else. Can’t you hear them asking, Diana? The question should resound on and on forever. They lost the world they were born in and they were born to accept this world and die.”

She took a breath.

“So they will ask why they are alive. And they are completely serious. …That nonsense doesn’t suit them at all, does it?”

Yonkichi fought in the outdoor dojo next to the Hiba family house.

He wore a filthy white work outfit below a white flight jacket.

That was his usual outfit.

The sky was changing from white to blue and the Okutama air was becoming the clear air of morning.

That was the usual state of the world. Low-Gear was no different from normal.

It was a weekday, so the people would be waking up, eating breakfast, and living their lives by going to school, going to work, or completing housework.

''But,'' thought Yonkichi.

…''I am different from normal.

Normally, he was not dodging fists in the morning.

Normally, he was not dodging kicks in the morning.

Normally, he was not breaking free of throws in the morning.

Normally…

…''I am not fighting Hiba’s grandson in the morning.

This was not normal. He was certain he was currently doing things differently from others. He was the only one in the world who…no, he and his opponent, Hiba, were the only ones feeling this.

It was a wonderful thing.

…''We were born to test this Gear and to die. Fulfilling that is the will of 7th-Gear, which you can call our father, and it is for the sake of Chao Sei, the mother who responded to that will.

But his brothers had said something else.

…''We do not know if that is correct.

Their lifespans were reaching their end. They were losing interest in this world that lacked change, so they wanted to hurry up and die. If they died, they could fulfill the meaning of their birth.

''But,'' thought Yonkichi as he deflected Hiba’s fist with an arm and slammed his elbow into the boy.

…''My heart wishes for entertainment before then.

He remembered what his brothers had said.

…''We can think about that while performing the test.

And if they did not completely lose interest before the end came, they could say Low-Gear had more value than simply bringing their end.

They would draw out all of their ability, use it without hesitation, watch their surprised opponent, smile whether they had won or lost, and reach their own highest point.

…''Then we will accept Low-Gear.

''But,'' he thought again.

Hiba ducked to avoid a kick and tried to sweep away Yonkichi’s supporting leg with a horizontal kick, so Yonkichi jumped straight up to evade.

“But…”

Down below, the rotation of the horizontal kick prevented Hiba from moving.

Yonkichi dropped his heel down on the boy.

He was confident it would hit.

His reason was simple: Hiba’s actions were far too easy to predict.

The boy was used to god of war combat, so his actions appeared compact but actually used wide motions.

He quickly rotated those large motions to prevent his opponent from seeing through them.

He was like a miniature typhoon.

If you knew where his center was, he was nothing more than swinging arms and legs. Hitting his weak points was easy.

And Yonkichi did exactly that.

His dropping heel travelled straight toward the top of the head.

Hiba’s balance was fixed due to the rotation of the horizontal kick, so an attack from directly above would slam him into the ground and prevent the damage from slipping away.

This attack would knock him unconscious. The pain in his head would keep him from even drinking anything properly for the rest of the day.

His heel hit.

“!”

With the sound of bone being struck, Hiba was knocked into the ground while rotating.

Yonkichi used the recoil to flip backwards and land on the hard ground.

“But this is boring, as it does not allow me to reach my highest point.”

He saw Hiba doubled over on the ground and not moving, so he corrected his posture and turned his back on the boy.

He faced the house.

Someone stood in front of the broken entrance to one room.

It was a short old man wearing a dark samue.

Yonkichi bowed toward him.

“Will you be opposing me as well, Ryuutetsu-sama. To refresh my mind, I will add a new speech quirk, puru.”

“I’d rather not fight someone who speaks like that.”

“It is best to ignore it, puru. But more importantly…”

Yonkichi let his arms dangle next to him and turned his body toward the other man.

“Will you be fighting me or not, puru?”

“No, that’s no longer my role. I’m about to go check on the field with Toshi.”

Ryuutetsu pointed to his left.

Yonkichi turned to look and found where he had previously knocked Hiba Ryuuji to the ground.

He also saw the boy slowly standing and shaking his head.

…''But that was a solid blow.

Hiba brushed a hand through his hair and finished standing. He made a gentle hop to plant his feet on the ground and began stepping forward and back. He started slow but quickly gained speed.

His eyes were trained directly on Yonkichi.

“During the summer, I was taught something by an upperclassman even more perverted than me and another upperclassman who I can never hope to match when it comes to acts of perversion. I was taught that I don’t prepare my defenses and that I think I’ve won too soon.”

He spat onto the ground next to him and the spit was colored red.

“When you jumped up, I remembered when I lost to them. …I lost twice, but I won’t lose a third time. I’m taking this seriously.”

“I see, I see.”

Yonkichi nodded toward Ryuutetsu and faced Hiba again.

Instead of letting his arms dangle, he held them forward at slightly above shoulder height.

His elbows swayed, he pulled on the sleeves, and he lightly spread his arms with the wrists and hands sticking out.

“Then I too shall take this a little seriously, puru.”

“A little seriously?”

He clenched his fists while nodding to Hiba’s question.

A moment later, the air exploded, a large portion of the hard dojo ground burst, and Hiba was blown away.

The battle had begun anew.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 9

2014-11-13T14:42:05Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 9: A Back that Watches Over */

==Chapter 9: A Back that Watches Over==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0233.png|thumb]]
''A path forward and those travelling it are seen from behind

''A path here and the one who travelled it cannot see themselves

''Even a flower withers away without ever seeing itself

A factory was located in the mountains.

Despite the stains and shadows of age that showed up in the high contrast, the building looked innocent in the moonlight.

Two men stood on the dirt clearing in front of it.

One of them was a tall, skinny man exhaling white breaths. He had cloth wrapped around his head like a turban and his white breaths travelled a fair distance from his mouth.

“Hm, the mountains really are cold. Very cold indeed. And your breath is awfully white, manager.”

“That’s cigarette smoke, Hajji,” replied the old manager. “Anyway, are we really okay here?”

Hajji brought a hand to his mouth.

“Hm,” he said with a nod. “We should be. We should reach Japanese UCAT’s sixth basement after consuming eighty percent of our resources. And once we get there, the Concept Cores are ours for the taking. Yes, ours for the taking. Am I wrong? Hm?”

“Not what I meant. I was talking about our claim to righteousness.” The old manager blew smoke into the sky. “I’m helping you for a personal grudge. Plus, I like messing with machines. But I’ve never heard all that much about you, Hajji.”

The wind blew and the old manager’s smoke swirled into the sky and vanished. He raised the collar of his work outfit.

“Take this world’s war for example. In this country at least, the politicians settled everything. I got a family and my daughter has even graduated college. No one cares that I lost my family in that war or that I still can’t forget.”

“Our war isn’t over. Isn’t that the common point between us? Hm?”

“Then let’s stop talking about my example. …How has your war not ended?”

The old manager breathed smoke into the night sky.

The smoke thinned as it spread out and scattered.

“I have two questions, Hajji. You don’t have to answer and I’ll probably learn the answers at tomorrow’s confrontation anyway. The first is about your war. And the second…”

He asked his question.

“The second is about Mikoku, Shino, Tatsumi, and Alex’s war.”

“Why? Why would you want to ask about that? Hm?”

Hajji’s voice contained a hint of a smile and the old manager gave a brief answer while looking up into the sky.

“War is important to me.”

He let out a white sigh instead of smoke this time and the breath vanished into the sky.

“Sixty years. I’ve waited sixty years. Sixty years ago, someone died to save me. It might’ve been my mother, or my father, or my sister, or all of them. As I desperately worked to survive from then on, I would always wonder if my mother, my father, or my sister would’ve had an easier time surviving than a little kid like me. And I wondered why the one who had so much trouble just staying alive was the one to survive.”

“…”

“I’ve made a new family and had kids, but that doubt still hasn’t cleared. I haven’t died to save my kids and I don’t have the guts to die anyway. And even if I try to ask about it, this world is trying to put that war behind it. Sixty years. It’s been sixty years and now no one has seen the people who were with me back then and they all say we can never allow war to happen again.”

He continued to speak.

“The people who were with me died in war, but war was when I was with them. If we can never allow war to happen again, what does that mean for the precious time I spent with my family? What I’ve done for my kids is what I had done for me back then. I learned all of that through war. …So I want to start another war and see that war with my own eyes now that I’ve moved past where my mother, father, and sister were back then. That’s the only way to free myself from that war.”

All of his words vanished into the air.

Nothing remained in the night sky, but Hajji’s own words scattered to join it.

“My thoughts are best left unsaid, manager.”

“Thank you for listening so quietly, Hajji. If I told the younger ones this, it would turn into a lecture. But you’re different, aren’t you? Is your war and Mikoku and Shino’s war the same as mine?”

“Mine isn’t,” answered Hajji quietly. “No, mine isn’t.”

The old manager looked down from the sky and to the side.

He saw Hajji holding out a hand.

The old manager pulled out a cigarette and lit it with the on in his mouth.

“These are strong.”

Hajji inhaled without nodding, bit down on the smoke with his teeth, and let it seep out of his mouth.

“I’m thankful. Yes, so very thankful.”

“For what?”

“Everything, manager. Isn’t that right? Hm?”

With that question, Hajji suddenly looked into the sky.

He stuck a hand in his pocket and spoke through the smoke leaving his mouth.

“Let me tell you a story from a long, long time ago, manager.”

Smoke whiter than his breath formed in the sky.

“Long ago, there was a wonderful world. It was a land of desert lit by the two extremes of fire and shadow, but it was filled with heat phenomena concepts and it interacted with the other worlds quite a bit. That world supplied the other worlds with power and the calculations needed to use that power. But once the Concept War began, it was the first to be targeted. The other worlds both feared and desired its technology and knowledge,” explained Hajji. “So that world’s politicians tried to destroy the other worlds. But the king and general had a thought. What if, instead of destroying the other worlds, they gathered all the concepts in their own world, invited in the residents of those other worlds, and created the ultimate world? To accomplish that, they created a giant mechanical dragon with the ability to construct a world. But…”

“But?”

Hajji briefly stopped at the old manager’s question.

After a moment, he placed a hand over his mouth with the cigarette between his fingers and turned around.

He smiled with the ends of his eyebrows lowered.

“I’m talking too much, aren’t I? What do you think? Hm?”

“This is fine every so often. It all ends tomorrow. Both our strange relationship and this world, that is.”

“I see,” said Hajji with a resigned sigh.

He took a step in front of the old manager’s gaze and hid his expression from the man.

“The king promised to marry the general’s sister and went out to battle in celebration. It was a joint battle with 3rd. But that’s where the betrayal began. The politicians betrayed the king and he died unable to return from the lowest world. The general had returned ahead of time, but he was captured by the politicians and his sister, the king’s promised queen…”

“What happened to the queen? I’ll listen, so tell me, Hajji.”

“Sure. The politicians used her as the final component in the modified mechanical dragon. She was used as the core of the world-destroying mechanical dragon.”

He took a breath.

“The general resolved himself then and began attacking the other worlds, but people from the lowest Gear appeared to stop him. One of those enemies attacked the general, but they both only lost an eye and the general’s sister was destroyed…along with the world.”

He laughed and a white breath not made of smoke entered the air.

The wind had settled down at some point, so the white breath simply spread out into the night sky like it had been thrown.

Below it, the old manager spoke.

“Who is that enemy of yours?”

“The old UCAT member charged with 9th-Gear: current UCAT Field Operations Director Abram Mesam. He is the man who killed my sister Shahrnavaz while she was the great mechanical dragon Zahhak. And yet I hear he later married and has lived a happy life. That is my war, manager.”

He took a step in front of the manager and shrugged his shoulders.

After a pause, Hajji’s shoulders lowered.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? I talk so much about concepts and the fate of the world, but it all comes back to a grudge over losing a precious friend and relative. Don’t you think? Hm?”

“If that’s ridiculous, then mine’s even cheaper. But…”

“But?”

“I take it you aren’t planning to say anything about Mikoku, Shino, Tatsumi, and Alex’s war. How far are you going to carry their war while sacrificing your own past, Hajji?”

Hajji’s back did not immediately reply.

A few streams of cigarette smoke filled the air before he finally spoke.

“Their war is something only those four should have anything to do with, manager. They were supposed to save those of us who had nowhere to go and then fight another war. However, they never had the chance. We were so useless that we could only just barely manage to carry them away from Osaka back then. We were lucky we even got Tatsumi back after she was taken away.”

He continued.

“And we never did get Shinjou Sadagiri back.”

“Hm? That’s one of the girls on Team Leviathan, isn’t it? Why her?”

“Her mother understood us but also rejected us. Yes. …And, manager, let me give you one other piece of information.”

Hajji turned around with the hand holding his cigarette hiding the smile on his lips.

“Those four have absolute righteousness on their side. Theirs is so much deeper and broader than ours. But this world crushed it during that Great Kansai Earthquake. On tomorrow’s battlefield, I will reveal that perfect righteousness and where exactly those four’s war lies.”

“Does righteousness like that even exist? After the Concept War, we can only be talking about events inside Low-Gear, right? Is there really a righteousness that can convince the other unrelated Gears?”

“There is. We have a legitimate reason to make Low-Gear ours.”

Hajji took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the air.

“Funny, isn’t it? Even as we prepare to attack with our perfect righteousness, UCAT is splitting apart. Team Leviathan has disbanded for some reason, their negotiators are scattering, and some of them are even being targeted by the bearers of 7th-Gear’s Concept Core.”

“By 7th-Gear?”

“Yes.” Hajji nodded, lowered his gaze, and smiled toward the old manager. “It’s interesting that the bearers of evil would be worn down now. It’s like this world is accepting our righteousness. Don’t you think? Hm?”

A dark room was filled with silence.

The walls, ceiling, and bed by the window were all white, but they had all sunk into the darkness of the night.

The scene outside the window was a little high because this was the second floor.

The room was as dark as some watery depths and even the moonlight did not make it far past the window.

A single chair sat on the dark side of that borderline between darkness and moonlight.

A girl sat in that simple pipe stool.

It was Kazami.

She looked at what lay in the bed in front of her.

Izumo’s head stuck out from the top of the blanket.

His right arm was also exposed and it was attached to the IV stand next to the bed. The large IV pack still had about a third of its contents and the drops were dripping down the tube.

Izumo was asleep.

Kazami looked to where his left arm was under the blanket, but the blanket did not rise up as it should.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked down at her own feet. Her hair swayed and she did not bother brushing it away from her face.

“It should have been me.”

She rested the side of her head on the bed.

Her eyes looked up at Izumo’s face and she saw two objects standing next to the bed.

Those two objects were weapons.

Normally, they would have been a large sword and spear both measuring around two meters long, but they were shorter now that their cowlings had been destroyed.

Barely any of the white armor remained, the internal frames had split, and some fragments had twisted until they stuck out.

The steel protective cylinder was visible in both of them.

When Kazami thought about how both of those contained a Concept Core, she averted her gaze.

…''At the very least, I have no right to wield them.

G-Sp2 had likely been hesitant to enter that battlefield of no mutual understanding.

She had treated it like a weapon with no attempt to assuage its fears and she had ended up breaking it.

“I’m sorry.”

Right after Izumo had been injured, Sibyl had arrived and Ikkou and Mitsuaki had fled.

She had thought the development department had retrieved G-Sp2 and V-Sw, but for some reason, they were here.

…''They must think they’re ours.

She did not know for sure, but to her, all of the broken things in this room felt like her fault. It felt like they had been left here as a lesson for her.

“…”

''No,'' she thought.

A number of things bothered her.

…''What if Kaku and I had gone to UCAT earlier without stopping at my house?

What if they had taken a different route to UCAT?

“What if…what if Sayama hadn’t had Team Leviathan disband and we’d all been together?”

She muttered those words while thinking “I’m the worst”.

Just as with G-Sp2’s destruction, all the fault lay with her because she had been the one there.

She tried to bury her forehead in the blanket.

She pressed her mouth against the blanket and asked a question to the boy beyond it.

“Why?”

She took a breath.

“Why was I left unharmed?”

Their strength in battle seemed equal, but his was actually greater. After all, he had his constant defensive power. That was different from her ability to fly with X-Wi.

He was also the only son of IAI’s president while she was the only daughter of a normal household.

She did not believe in judging people’s “worth”, but when thinking about usefulness and position, who was needed on the concept battlefield and in IAI?

“It isn’t me, is it?”

With that question, she inhaled to take in his warmth through the blanket.

''No,'' she shrunk down and clenched her fists on her lap.

“I don’t want that…”

She remembered when she had snapped at Sayama about disbanding and yet he had ordered her to represent them.

She had been so forceful then, but not anymore.

She sighed and the long, heavy breath fell to the floor.

“?”

She heard a sound from outside the window. People were speaking down below.

Wondering who it was, she got up.

“Ah.”

She had been in the same position for so long that she wobbled when turning around.

She grabbed the windowsill to keep herself from falling.

At the same time, she saw five people in the hospital parking lot down below.

Harakawa, Heo, Hiba, and Mikage were leaving the hospital entrance.

“And Brunhild too.”

''Was I worrying them,'' she wondered, but that only made her feel worse.

She noticed Hiba and Harakawa were not starting up their motorcycles.

Heo tilted her head at that and Harakawa pointed at the driver’s seat.

He taught her how to use the clutch and pushed the sidecar and back seat from behind.

They were likely trying not to disturb the hospital with the loud sound of the engine.

Hiba was doing the same. He sat Mikage in the driver’s seat, taught her how to control it, and also stroked her butt in the process, but that did not matter.

Brunhild and her cat continued ahead on foot, but…

“…?”

Hiba said something and Brunhild turned around with a frown. He had likely pointed out she did not know the way to his grandfather’s place.

Brunhild took a step back and the five of them left in a row.

As Kazami watched them, she gave a small nod.

…''They can get by without me.

As soon as she thought that, Heo turned back with Baku on her head.

She turned toward Kazami.

“—————!”

Kazami instinctually bent out of the way, but Heo’s gaze did not immediately reach her.

Heo was not entirely sure where the hospital room was.

“…?”

Kazami sighed and stepped back as Heo lowered her eyebrows and clearly began counting windows from the edge of the building.

Finally, her gaze reached the right window.

“…”

She tilted her head while peering in.

Kazami wondered if she could see her, but the principle of reflection would prevent Heo from seeing Kazami from the moonlit parking lot, even though Kazami could see her.

Nodding at that fact, Kazami spoke quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

She took another step back to the chair and that place surrounded by broken things.

But just before she did, she saw Heo grow careless in her control of the motorcycle and crash into Hiba’s motorcycle.

Kazami heard a faint collision but did not watch any longer.

Harakawa had likely gotten mad at her.

…''At least they have the energy for that.

If they were safe and they could smile cheerfully, that was all that mattered. She had messed that up for herself.

She sat in the chair alone but lifted her right leg to her chest and wrapped her arms around it. That allowed her to sense the presence of her own body and she slowly sighed.

She looked at G-Sp2 and V-Sw which were placed broken before her and at Izumo who would not open his eyes.

“Why did I escape unharmed?”

She closed her eyes, wrinkled her brow, lowered her head, and clenched her teeth as the words escaped.

She had one thing on her mind.

If Team Leviathan had been whole, would this still have happened?

“Sayama.”

She spoke about what he had said.

“You told me to search for my past, but I’m different from the rest of you. I can’t do that.”

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
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|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 10

2014-11-13T03:08:07Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 10: Sounds of a Visitor */

==Chapter 10: Sounds of a Visitor==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0249.png|thumb]]
''Come

''For I have called for you

''For my very being is calling for you

The color of the night sky began to change.

The bottom of the sky to the east was growing bright.

The entire eastern sky was already lit by something rising from below the horizon, so some purple was spreading like a wave.

The sky’s color change was the preparation or foreshadowing of the breaking dawn.

The air remained still and did not produce any mist.

The final night dew sank down, but that was all.

The faint light from the east revealed the silhouette of the land.

The shadows were formed by a forest.

A mountain was filled with darkness, a valley was steeped in the color black, and a narrow yet swift river could be heard flowing between them, but trees covered it all and hid them.

The thick and massive mountains and forests were nothing but trees and slopes.

Nothing moved in this predawn hour. The nocturnal animals had sensed the morning and gone to sleep, but the diurnal animals had yet to wake.

Nevertheless, something did move through those mountains and forest.

It was a boy in a suit with a rucksack on his back.

It was Sayama.

He walked up on a mountain ridge while moving through the forest at running speed.

There was a path there. The wind and rain had naturally worn down the dirt on the ridge, so stone footing had been exposed. A mountain path along the ridge used that footing.

The Okutama mountain range was vast, but a path ran along that ridge of the primary mountains. It was currently just before November, so Okutama was approaching winter. To maintain the power lines, water pipes, and other utilities running along the ridge, people had travelled on the side paths straying from the ridge and the unnecessary underbrush had been cut away.

Sayama had travelled through most of these places back when he had been training, but his current goal was even higher.

…''A little to the north.

Mount Kumotori, Tokyo’s tallest mountain at approximately two thousand meters, was to the west. He was about seven kilometers east of it after climbing to Nippara from the south.

His destination was near Nikengoya Ridge northeast of Mount Kumotori.

If he used the hiking trail to Kumotori, it would take about half a day.

He had entered from the Ootaki mountain trail to the far west, but he had considered taking a more direct route from a more remote trail.

Most notably, he could have reached the base of Kumotori by road if he had circled around to the Saitama side.

However, he had decided against that.

He was familiar with tall mountains.

He had only climbed the Tokyo mountains of Akigwawa or Okutama, but even then, he could still come down with mild altitude sickness if he climbed a two thousand meter mountain deep in the Okutama mountain range with no preparation.

If he rested with proper posture, he could recover from altitude sickness, but that would prevent him from moving much for an entire day.

Climbing the mountain would be simple, but when thinking about the descent and what came after that, he decided not to rush things.

Travelling along the Nippara mountainside added several kilometers to his journey, but it also allowed him fuller breaths and the amount of oxygen in his blood gradually changed as he walked and took brief breaks.

''This is perfect,'' he told himself in the dark forest.

“Long ago…”

…''I climbed a mountain without this planning or consideration for altitude sickness.

That had been during his training days.

As part of that training, Hiba Ryuutetsu had chased him around with a large machete for three days. He had rushed up the mountain then, but that had kept him from moving the following day.

Afraid of an attack during that time, he had set a trap.

It had been a popular variety of trap.

When someone approached, a rope would wrap around their neck and lift them into the air.

For bait, he had used a porn magazine found in a Mount Kumotori cabin. He had doubted it would work, but only three hours later, it had caught Ryuutetsu and the old man had swayed back and forth while struggling.

Sayama distinctly remembered the heart-to-heart conversation between teacher and student then.

“M-Mikoto, you’ll pay for this one! I wouldn’t walk anywhere near a cliff if I were you!!”

“Ha ha ha. I filled this area with the scent of raw meat, so try to rest in peace once a bear eats you. Is that what you call a bear-ial? But do not worry. I will tell Toshi-kun that you were bravely eaten by a bear.”

It had been a conversation of mutual consideration. His preparations for luring in a bear had been flawless, but Ryuutetsu had beaten him back to the dojo and dinner had been a pot of some strange tough meat.

Thinking back, he decided he should have finished the man off himself instead of leaving it to something else. ''That naivety led to the loss of a piece of nature,'' he realized. ''I need to treat nature more carefully.

“This is that same tree.”

He stopped below a familiar tree. The thick tree that towered above him in the darkness was the one he had once hung Ryuutetsu from. The rope was probably still there up above.

''It is all so nostalgic,'' he thought just before a sound came from his pocket.

It was an electronic tone, but it did not come from his cellphone. He had left his phone and wristwatch in his dorm room after having Team Leviathan disband. The sound in his pocket came from the timer on a pocket watch.

He checked it and found the glow-in-the-dark paint on the hands pointing to five o’clock in the morning. The LCD screen at the bottom indicated half an hour had passed.

…''Time for a break.

“And given the time, I should eat an early breakfast.”

He nodded and came to a stop.

He sat below the old hanging tree and lowered his rucksack.

The most noticeable item in the bag was his change of clothes. A mountain-climbing suit and underwear were folded and placed inside. Next was two liters’ worth of water bottles, but he also had a straw-shaped filtration device because that was not enough water for this trip.

He thought while pulling out and eating some portable food and drinking some water from a bottle.

…''I would normally still be asleep at this time.

The watch said it was 5:10. In another hour, Shinjou would wake him or he would wake her.

…''Have I really been living such a happy life for more than half a year now?

He had not had that before. He had always gone to sleep alone and woken alone.

That solitary lifestyle had returned to him here.

“It feels so lonely, Shinjou-kun.”

He suddenly stood up.

The eastern sky had grown a little brighter and he could see the next mountain range from the ridge.

He placed his hands around his mouth.

“Shinjou-kuuuuun!!”

After a few seconds, his shout returned to him.

“Shinjou-kuuuuun.”

He focused his ears on the echo and nodded several times. Okutama’s nature also desired Shinjou.

For that reason, he pulled a portable digital recorder from his pocket and pointed it toward the dimly-lit Okutama mountains.

“Ah! N-no, stop! Don’t touch my butt! Don’t pull down my underwear! My butt!”

He placed a hand next to his ear and waited the few seconds for the reply.

“Ah. N-no, stop. Don’t touch my butt. Don’t pull down my underwear. My butt.”

The echo returned in a milder form.

…''Such deep meaning.

''Can you hear this, mountain trees, the earth, and all of nature? This is what I once did not have.

Nodding at that, he sat back down.

“But what I have with me now is not the real deal. And that includes myself. That is why I am taking this solitary journey and why I have given myself an assignment. …I will make myself the real deal.”

He shallowly closed his eyes and thought of an important person.

He then brought his right hand to his chest and muttered to himself.

“Around ten years ago, I lost my father and was almost killed by my mother.”

He frowned and strength gathered in the hand on his chest.

The usual pain filled the depths of his chest there.

The pain seemed to disturb all of the blood circulating his body. He had not felt this definite pain for a while, but…

“…”

He took a deep breath and forced it down.

He gently raised his left hand and spread his fingers in front of his face.

“I trained my body in order to sweep away that past, but this broken left fist…while it can hold a weapon, I unfortunately still cannot clench it into a fist, Shinjou-kun.”

He smiled bitterly.

He swung his left fist toward the tree behind him.

“…”

But without him telling it to, the fist slowed down and stopped before reaching the tree trunk.

On a subconscious level, he feared that phantom pain.

He sent a bitter laugh into the sky.

“How pathetic. Shinjou-kun, you understand the issue in your body and are attempting to mature, but I am simply dragging around my chest pains and left fist without changing a thing.”

He then muttered a rejection of that.

“No, this is my only chance. After all, you are sure to find something in Sakai. And whether you find success or failure, you will continue forward. If I am to be the one to accept you back, I must reach that same level. …And this is my only chance. I am alone now, so I can settle my past without worrying anyone else.”

He carved those words into his heart.

…''I will pursue my parents’ footsteps.

He told himself he would no longer look away from the truth. He could not afford to do so anymore.

It was necessary for the Leviathan Road.

It was necessary to no longer fear his own pain.

It was necessary to reach the same level as the one he cared for.

…''It is necessary for everything about me. And…

“And this is how I will gain my past. …But what about Kazami and the others? Will they be able to use the past to rethink their current selves?”

He opened his eyes and faced forward.

At some point, the sky had grown very bright. With the darkness gone…

“Questioning myself like this feels rather embarrassing.”

He smiled bitterly and the smile only grew.

''Why was I speaking to myself for so long?'' he wondered.

…''I used to be much better at restraining myself when I was alone.

“I have grown weak,” he muttered happily. “I have grown weak, Shinjou-kun. After meeting you and living with you, I have grown weak. I have simply been hiding it from you…no, you have simply not tried to notice it.”

He put away his things and placed the bag on his back, but brought a hand to his chest.

He thought of the past as he faced eastward. He could no longer see anything but mountains in the distance.

…''It was in an unseen place beyond those mountains that my mother almost killed me.

He thought along with the pain in his chest.

…''Why do I feel this pain?

“That is a simple matter.”

He recalled something. It was the same thing he had recalled to escape Atsuta’s Art of Walking when battling 2nd-Gear.

Long ago, his family had been whole and had smiled.

His father had been very reliable and his mother had been kind and gentle.

He had not shared this memory with anyone since losing them.

…''Why?

''Why did you die?

''Why am I still alive?

He did not need to worry about it. He was happy now and there was no need to question that happiness.

But the reason for his chest pains and the phantom pain in his fist was there.

…''Why?

He had asked himself that a long time ago. Since Shinjou had arrived and since he had grown serious, he had hidden that question, but he stood with it in his heart once more. He held his chest and frowned.

“I will go find the answer. Father, mother, I will follow after you, surpass your unseen forms, and continue on with only a quick glance toward you. And wait for me, Shinjou-kun. I want to be with you again, but only after I can survive without you. If I can do that…”

He held his chest as he began to walk once more.

“The world’s greatest happiness will be mine.”

The world was broken.

The night sky blazed red and a city crumbled and burned.

Something walked along a wide road in the collapsing city that sent sprays of fire into the air.

It was someone with no form. It was nothing but a gaze.

The gaze weakly climbed the tilted asphalt and reached the peak.

“…Eh?”

Only then did the gaze realize it was in a burning city.

“Eh? W-wait. Um, when did I end up here? All I did was secretly strip naked in the futon and go to sleep. Don’t tell me that made me turn invisible.”

Heo, the owner of the gaze, quickly looked in every direction.

However, her wandering gaze stopped when it spotted something in the scenery: a collapsed traffic light.

The traffic light’s base had crumbled when the asphalt had tilted and its lights had gone dark, but the sign below it gave the place name.

“Osaka Castle?”

She faced forward.

A building was gently tilted toward the broken road Heo stood on.

Beyond it were the remnants of an elevated roadway and a river.

Beyond those was a small mountain.

The mountain was formed from the accumulated rubble of a collapsed structure.

It was dark and cracked and the light of a fire leaked out from within.

That was when Heo first felt the wind.

It felt more like a scorching rush of air than a hot wind.

As the racing wave of heat washed over the trees lining the street, their leaves instantly turned to ash.

Even the metal street signs, store signs, and traffic lights instantly lost their paint and bent like melting hard candy.

…''What is this?

It was the hot gusts of wind produced in a disaster-stricken city.

Heo then realized what exactly she was seeing.

…''The Great Kansai Earthquake.

This was thanks to Baku. The small creature had taken a liking to her at the hospital before arriving at Hiba’s dojo and he was showing her an image of the past.

The night after the Black Sun battle, Heo had seen her great-grandfather’s past in a dream.

''This is the second time,'' she realized while looking around.

She saw a mountain and sea of destruction and it all matched what Sayama had described.

Her father had died here and so had Harakawa, Hiba, and Sayama’s fathers.

They were likely the reason she was having this dream. The night before, they had looked at the photograph of her great-grandfather and the others that Brunhild had brought. Mikage’s mother had also been in the photo and they had discussed it.

The photograph had contained a few dozen people in front of a mountain range. In addition to the main force of old UCAT, it seemed to include their families and the people with normal posts as well. They had not known who anyone was outside of Chao and their own relatives, so they had been forced to discuss it and use the process of elimination.

The man with pale hair in the very front had been Hiba’s grandfather. Next to him was Hiba’s grandmother Toshi and next to her was Thunderson. The man in a military uniform on the left of the back row had been Sayama’s grandfather. To the right from there had been Chao, a man who was probably Izumo’s grandfather, and then Ooshiro’s father. There were a few Arabs in the photo, but they had concluded Abram was the biggest one and not the man who looked more like a doctor or a cook.

Behind them all, a man had been sitting alone on a raised tree branch and facing the mountain range in the background. The hair on the back of his head suggested he was an old man and his left arm had been missing.

…''That was Professor Kinugasa Tenkyou.

She wondered what kind of person he had been and Sayama was currently working toward that answer.

They were simply seeing an image of him cut out of the past.

It was likely their thoughts then that had led Baku to show her the past now.

But she belatedly began to worry about Harakawa.

None of his relatives had been in the photo and he had remained silent the night before.

Sayama had said to search for their pasts…

…''But what about Harakawa?

He said nothing about his relatives. He never said what had happened with his father or grandfather.

However, his father’s grave was near her father’s and his father had also died in the secondary damages of the Great Kansai Earthquake.

…''He’s the same.

Heo nodded in her heart.

“Sayama said he saw his parents and some others entering the city.”

In that case…

“Were my father and Harakawa’s father there too?”

As soon as she asked that, someone suddenly appeared next to her.

A man landed on the top of the tilted asphalt with such force that she was afraid they would collide.

He had a medium build, he wore a combat vest, and his long black hair blew in the wind. He wore a Japanese sword scabbard on his back and held a drawn Japanese-style Cowling Sword in his hand.

He had laughter on his lips and he let out a shout while looking around.

“Ha ha ha! If you’re a man, then come at me! If you can take me on, I’ll admit you’re powerful!!”

Speed fell upon the surrounding area in response.

Five figures appeared after apparently jumping down from the surrounding collapsed buildings. They maintained a distance of ten meters while forming a circle around the man.

All of their black leather combat coats swelled out to an odd extent and they held blades that resembled machetes and were over a meter long.

They had artificial bodies and wielded cowling blades.

The man looked across the five men who looked up from below the raised asphalt.

“So the challengers look up at the ruler from below, hm? Then let me tell you something: a true man does not look up at or down on anyone.”

The man had been standing next to Heo, but the next thing she knew, he had leaped toward one of the artificial body soldiers in front of him.

She heard him speak as he did so.

“I’ll do this head-on. The position of the Five Great Peaks may have been quickly created just for this battle, but I’ll fulfill my role. I’m the temporary manager of Japanese UCAT’s Independent Action Division. The name’s Hiba Ryuuichi.”

That name surprised Heo.

…''Eh?

Once her confusion caught up with the facts before her eyes, Ryuuichi was already rushing toward another soldier to the right.

Her vision could not keep up. All she managed was seeing the first man Ryuuichi leaped toward suddenly fall to his knees.

That first man collapsed almost without warning.

Ryuuichi then tried to hit the man to the right with a backhand sword strike, but the four remaining men, including the one being attacked, took action.

The targeted one intercepted while the other three chose to attack.

Ryuuichi’s target ran right to put some distance between them and swung up the machete in his right hand. The mechanically-enhanced arm lifted the flat blade to slice Ryuuichi’s body in two from below.

The remaining three used the rising asphalt in the center as cover and prepared their left arms.

Thick metal tubes protruded from below their hands. The caliber looked the same as a machinegun.

…''Are they going to defeat their enemy without worrying about the one being targeted!?

That meant their enemy was worth enough to sacrifice one of their own.

However, Ryuuichi still took a step toward the artificial body soldier swinging the large machete.

He moved to cut down the man. Even if he dodged the blade, the bullets were coming, so Heo gasped.

But with a carefree voice, Ryuuichi placed a foot up on the machete blade.

“Eh?”

Heo watched the movements of his feet.

…''It’s like he’s climbing a staircase.

He placed his feet on the quickly rising blade, his hips floated up, and he lifted his body.

The blade was moving too quickly for Heo to see, but Ryuuichi’s movements looked awfully slow.

He stood on top of the rising blade.

He caught its strength, shrunk down his body as the blade rose, and…

“!”

The other three men began to fire once they realized what Ryuuichi was doing.

The bullets flew, but the mechanical arm raising the machete was faster.

A moment later, Hiba Ryuuichi used the momentum of the machete to leap back toward the other three.

He flipped through the air above the flying bullets, gunshots, Heo’s consciousness, the three men trying to raise their guns, and everything else.

The artificial body soldier with the machete was struck by his comrades’ bullets and was blown away.

However, Heo tried to view all of Ryuuichi’s actions this time. She looked up, turned around, looked down, and saw the man’s long hair flowing behind him as if in the wind.

He landed behind the other three. They were in a line and he was behind the farthest left one from Heo’s perspective.

That leftmost artificial body soldier turned to the right and threw a backhand blow with the machete in his right hand.

The central soldier responded by leaping backwards while making a similar backhand blow with the blade in his right hand.

The rotating backhands approached Ryuuichi from either side.

Then, the rightmost soldier made an attack to make absolutely sure. He spun around and fired his machinegun between the other two attacks.

The sound of slicing wind mixed with gunfire.

…''There’s no way he can avoid this!

But Ryuuichi reacted to it all.

He had his back to Heo and thick blades were arriving from his front left and back right.

As he stood up after his leap, he suddenly threw his body to the left.

“…!?”

Heo just about cried out that he was going to be hit, but his movement changed once he arrived right next to the arriving blade.

He slipped to the right in order to jump over the blade on that side.

…''Oh.

She understood the idea behind his evasive action.

In the intersection between the two blades, there was nowhere to evade.

But if he moved toward one or the other, a gap would open up.

By using that gap as space to move and by buying some time before the blades met, he could jump over and evade the right blade.

However, the created space was less than ten centimeters.

And that was not the only problem. The blade would try to move into the opened space.

…''So he has to move even faster than the blade.

Beyond Heo’s unease, Ryuuichi’s body spun around.

He flipped quickly to the right without ever placing his hands on the ground.

He used the height difference between the two blades to twist his flipping body through.

A few tufts of hair were cut away and the bottom of his combat vest was split.

…''His flip isn’t strong enough.

His body was slipping through, but he wasn’t rotating quickly enough.

Knowing he would be cut in two, Heo tried to close her vision even though she had no eyelids.

But in that instant, Ryuuichi placed a hand on the left blade even as he flipped.

He caught its strength and gently wrapped his palm around the blade.

“!!”

He quickly rotated over the right blade and shot away from the left blade.

He made it through.

“Wow,” said the voice of Heo’s consciousness.

…''But the machinegun.

The bullets were still coming.

''He has no way to avoid them,'' she thought.

Immediately afterwards, she heard his voice.

“Don’t make me go to so much trouble!!”

He swung his sword horizontally as he landed from his side flip and he rotated his body as he did so.

However, he lacked the necessary reach. The sword’s blade was long but not long enough to reach his three enemies.

Nevertheless, the attack reached them.

“!?”

Light raced along the path of the sword. The pale light shot through the air like a swift wave.

…''It even reached the roadway and surrounding buildings!?

The elevated roadway’s supporting columns were nearly five meters thick and the buildings over twenty stories tall, but the horizontal cut ran straight through them.

The sound of an explosion rang out.

The men with artificial bodies had their torsos cut through at the waist and the buildings were sliced through as easily as tofu.

The elevated roadway slid down from above the cut and the buildings collapsed as if sinking inwards.

The reverberating sound resembled a waterfall.

Everywhere the cut had reached crumbled in the same way.

And by that time, Ryuuichi had already sheathed the sword on his back.

He had won.

He raised his head while surrounded by the sounds of buildings crumbling to the ground, of scattering metal fragments, and of motors racing fruitlessly.

“You did a good job, Tsukuyomi Arihito.”

But even after the man had overwhelmed his enemies, Heo saw him frown and looked up into the sky.

…''What is he looking at?

She looked up as well, but she saw something else first.

“Ah.”

It was a blue mechanical dragon.

It resembled American UCAT’s mechanical dragons, but it was a little different. The shapes of the components were not quite as streamlined and she could sense its age.

The dragon wrapped wind around itself and passed by at extreme low altitude in a split-second.

It was moving quickly, but Heo saw a certain image as strongly as if it had been burned into her retinas. She saw the person sitting in the cockpit.

It was a man wearing a blue armored uniform.

“Dad!?”

After it passed by, she turned to see it shaking its tail.

The sky reflected the burning color of the city and the blue dragon grew more distant. And as if pursuing that dragon, a group of gray mechanical dragons flew up from the shadows of the burning city.

Heo saw the blue dragon tear through the sky in a rising arc. The gray dragons descended in an opposite arc and they crossed paths in an instant.

“———————”

The gray dragons became blooming flowers of red light in the sky.

Repeated explosions rumbled like distant thunder, but new gray dragons ascended to pursue the blue one.

That was when Heo saw the stars in the sky.

…''Eh?

She realized she had not seen those stars until now.

The fire may have been creating thick clouds in the sky because there was a clear division between where the stars were visible and where they were not. Heo’s attention was entirely stolen by those stars that seemed horribly out of place.

…''And yet I didn’t even see them before.

She tried to look up into the sky, but that was all she managed.

She realized the surrounding scenery was twisting and growing dark.

The past was ending.

Realizing that, she tried to gather her thoughts on what she had seen.

“So was my dad fighting in a mechanical dragon?”

…''Why? What was he fighting for?

She only knew that a battle had occurred in Osaka on the night of the earthquake and that her father had died there.

Sayama had said that battle was likely fought with the group that preceded the Army.

…''Then why was this hidden?

There was no one there to answer that question, so her mind fell into the darkness without knowing.

She was waking from the past.

Heo sprang up from her futon.

“…!?”

The scene entering her eyes was too incongruous with what she had seen a moment before.

She was in a dimly-lit room.

…''This is a room in Hiba’s grandfather’s house.

She saw Mikage curled up in a futon, Brunhild sleeping in a yukata with her futon pushed off of her, and a basket sitting by her own pillow.

When she saw the small creature sleeping on its back in the basket, Heo came to her senses.

She felt her pulse race through her entire body and she trembled.

She remembered a certain fact concerning Baku: other people would see the past he showed you.

…''Harakawa!

He was sleeping in the neighboring boys room. If she opened the sliding screen dividing the rooms, she would find him.

She wanted to hear his opinion and she wanted to compare her thoughts with his, so she jumped from her futon, opened the screen, and entered the next room.

The identically shaped room contained two futons. Her impatient mind realized it was so dark because the storm shutter was closed, but that was all she noticed.

“Harakawa!”

Someone sat up within one of the futons.

It was Harakawa. He pulled a hand from his yukata pocket, placed it on his chin, and turned a puzzled look her way.

“Heo Thunderson, what are you-…”

She relaxed a little when their eyes met.

She almost leaped toward him as she ran the short distance and climbed on top of his pushed back blanket.

The shock and unease from her dream produced a series of words from her mouth.

“U-um, it happened again while I was asleep. It was the second time and I thought I was used to it, but I tried to cry out but couldn’t and, um, everything was so hot and falling apart, so…um…”

“Stop confessing whatever nonsensical dream you head and calm down, Heo Thunderson.”

She felt his hand in the hair on the back of her head. He almost seemed to grab her scalp as he pressed her face into his chest.

…''Ah.

It surprised her, but she also managed to calm down.

She smiled a little as the blanket tickled her skin and she took a deep breath to calm down further. The past she had seen played back in her head.

…''That was…

Her father and the others had been fighting.

Despite her close connection to the man she had seen, she did not know why, she did not know who else had been there, and she did not know what had led to all that. All she knew was what Sayama had said.

…''UCAT fought a battle during the Great Kansai Earthquake.

“What does it all mean?”

“I don’t know either, Heo Thunderson. After all, I’m a newcomer. And so are you. Also, don’t make so much noise. You’ll wake Hiba.”

“Eh?”

She looked to the other futon and saw Hiba wiggling back in forth inside it.

“Nnn, ahhh! The car! The car! It’s so round!!”

“Harakawa, he’s repeating a joke and he’s become completely unintelligible.”

“Don’t nitpick how other people’s brains work, Heo Thunderson. Also…”

She felt his hand loosen on her head, so she looked up and found his eyes right in front of her.

She tilted her head at close range.

“What is it?”

“Look behind you for a second.”

She twisted her shoulders and turned her head backwards as instructed.

[[Image:OnC_v10_0277.jpg|thumb]]

Confused, she saw Harakawa’s futon blanket and something skin-colored and round on top of it.

She tried to figure out what that was.

“A butt?”

“That’s exactly right, but why are you naked, Heo Thunderson?”

Once he pointed it out, she realized she was indeed naked.

The phrase “how could you?” reached her mind before the phrase “what have I done?”.

“————!”

She gave a wordless scream and grabbed a nearby object to hide herself. That object happened to be the blanket covering Harakawa.

But that meant…

“Hey, wait. Don’t climb into my futon!”

“B-but you’ll see me naked! I’m unprotected!”

She hid between Harakawa and the blanket as if clinging to his body and she looked up at him.

He frowned as he lay below her with their bodies almost overlapping.

“What’s the point of hiding?”

“S-sorry, but can I borrow this blanket to go to the next room?”

“And leave me in the cold?”

“U-um, then I’ll, uh, warm you up myself.”

“Think about what the words mean before you use them, Heo Thunderson.”

Heo hung her head and nodded.

He sighed.

“Well, just get going. It sounds like Hiba’s still in his disturbing dream world, so I don’t think he’s noticed.”

“S-sorry. I’ll find a way to think you later.”

“Then you take dinner duty today.”

He sat up a little and patted her head a few times with a look of exasperation.

“But make it something exciting. Things have been gloomy around here lately, so make some fried chicken or something and we can all eat it together.”

“Oh, okay. I know a good spice recipe, so that’s fine.”

She began to stand up, but then she felt a gaze on her from the side.

She looked over and saw Hiba. His head was poking out of his futon and he was rubbing his eyes sleepily.

“Oh, good morning, Harakawa-san and-…”

He trailed off and his expression froze.

''Eh?'' thought Heo as the boy looked directly at her and Harakawa.

She was lying naked on top of Harakawa and they even had the blanket placed across them.

…''Um…

Just as she prepared to explain the situation, Hiba jumped to his feet.

“H-has the Eros Road to the Eros World finally opened in the real world!?”

“Calm down, Hiba Ryuuji.”

“Wh-where’s the entrance!? I want to… I want to dive into that other world! L-like this!!”

“I said to calm down, Hiba Ryuuji. There is no entrance to anywhere like that.”

However, Hiba twisted around and pointed both his index fingers toward them.

“Th-then what do you think you’re doing there!? Damn, I’m so jealous!”

“You’re supposed to keep one of those opinions a secret, Hiba Ryuuji. Just to be clear, this is a misunderstanding.”

“B-but Harakawa-san! I’ve caught you red-handed, you immoral person!”

“H-he is not immoral!!” shouted Heo. “H-he is a very straightforward person! I’m sure he needs more than a kid like me! He would probably only be satisfied with an adult who can only be described with the word ‘boing’. That’s right! Boing! Boiiing!!”

“I get the feeling you’re rejecting a part of my personality here, Heo Thunderson. And don’t use so many sound effects.”

“But!”

Heo rose up to protest, but that caused the blanket to fall off of her.

“————!”

Just as she swallowed a scream and frantically pulled the blanket toward her, she heard a sudden sound.

Something was banging on the storm shutter from the outside.

She could only think of one reason to cause so much noise at a time like this.

“A pervert?”

“I-it isn’t me, probably! I-it really probably isn’t me, right!?”

After Hiba’s desperate denial, Heo heard another sound.

This one was of destruction.

But it was different from the sounds in her dream. It was the sound of wood splitting and breaking.

…''Eh?

Her question was followed by a wind that chilled her even through the blanket.

“What is going on?”

She poked her head from the blanket and looked.

The wind was coming from where the storm shutter had been, but it was now entirely open and the early morning light and wind came in.

The twilight outlined the faint silhouette of a man.

He was a skinny old man with long black hair.

“My name is Yonkichi,” he said in inappropriately old-fashioned speech. “I take it you are awake.”

Heo heard those words and felt Harakawa’s arm wrap around her waist.

…''This is…

She knew what was happening. There was only reason he would pull her close and try to protect her.

And Yonkichi gave that reason with a bitter smile of resignation.

“It is time to fight, ladies and gentlemen.”

The word “fight” reminded her of the dream and she gasped.

However…

“Why do we have to fight?”

“Because it is fun. For us, anyway.”

“B-but what about for us!?” she replied from below the blanket.

“Well,” said Yonkichi with a nod. “Your first reward is the Concept Core, but it would seem Sayama-sama has yet to inform you of the second reward. As one of the four brothers, I will explain it once more. When you defeat us, we will tell you a little of what we know of the past.”

Heo heard what she most wanted at the moment.

“We fought in that battle in Osaka, so if you defeat us, we will leave you with a small piece of that memory. Yes, the memory of the past that created the current UCAT and your current situation!”

Heo sucked in a breath.

…''What do we do!?

She knew they had an enemy and she knew they would gain something by defeating that enemy.

…''But…

However, Yonkichi took action with no concern for her thoughts.

He raised his right arm without losing the bitter smile.

“Now, get up!”

Before his short sentence had even ended, a corner of the house exploded.

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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]]
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Owari no Chronicle:Volume10 Chapter 8

2014-11-12T03:38:28Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 8: Troublesome Visit */

==Chapter 8: Troublesome Visit==
[[Image:OnC_v10_0207.png|thumb]]
''You cannot reach them

''You cannot reach them

''You end up distancing yourself

A white automatic door slid open with a rumble to reveal the area beyond.

A paper with the word “open” on it was placed on the door which led to a room.

The white room gave a view from four stories up and an old man sat at the large desk inside.

The man wore a lab coat and glasses and he quickly looked away from the computer when he saw who had entered the room.

“Ah! I-I wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, Brunhild-kun! I certainly wasn’t enjoying a self-made 18+ game while I worked on it! After all, it’s still in debug!”

“There’s more than enough reason for you to die, Ooshiro, but make sure you answer my question before falling into an eternal sleep that is anything but peaceful.”

Brunhild wore a school uniform, had a small bird on her head, and was accompanied by a black cat at her feet. Ooshiro reacted in two different ways: he brought a hand to his forehead and he spoke with a sigh.

“Ahh, sorry, Brunhild-kun. Could you ask one thing of me at a time? What do you want first?”

“You’re right. First, fall into eternal sleep.”

“I thought your question came first!”

He spun around while shouting and a set of knuckles struck him from the side.

He rose into the air before falling back to the floor while #8 continued cleaning the window next to him.

“Testament. That reaction was directly from the manual. I do not detect the slightest problem. I am emotionally stable.”

“Th-that was a really solid hit! #-#8-kun, are you prepared to take responsibility for this!?”

“Testament,” she replied while pulling a cellphone from her pocket. “Internal line #259? I have some burnable trash awaiting disposal. I take full responsibility for-…”

“I don’t want that kind of responsibility!!”

“That’s right. Wait just a second, doll. My business comes first.” Brunhild crossed her arms. “Besides, burning him isn’t enough to get rid of him. The air currents will carry the rising smoke and pollute the world. When it rains, all of us will be soaked with Ooshiro rain.”

“Testament. I have determined that would be dangerous. I was too careless. I will take responsibility and find another method for disposing of him. …Anyway, what do you need, Brunhild-sama?”

“Well, I hear Team Leviathan disbanded and Izumo and Kazami were injured.”

“That is not entirely accurate.”

Brunhild raised an eyebrow and the cat tapped on her shin, so she kicked it.

“What isn’t accurate? Are Kazami and Izumo okay?”

“Testament,” replied a voice from the corridor.

Brunhild looked over her shoulder and saw someone in a white combat coat enter the room.

“Sibyl? How are Kazami, Sayama, and the others?”

“Testament. Sayama-sama has left for Professor Kinugasa’s home in the Okutama mountain range and Shinjou-sama has left for Sakai. Chisato-sama is unharmed because we arrived shortly after Izumo-sama protected her.”

“Then…”

Both Brunhild’s eyebrows rose slightly and Sibyl closed her eyes.

“Izumo-sama’s left forearm and hand were completely lost and he has yet to regain consciousness. Neither of their weapons have shown any signs of life even after some simple repairs. Also…”

She opened her eyes and looked directly at Brunhild as if that were all she could do.

“Chisato-sama refuses to leave Izumo-sama’s side…and she will not speak with anyone else or even look them in the eye.”

The light in Sibyl’s eyes wavered.

“Ah,” muttered Brunhild with a frown just before Sibyl looked up to the ceiling.

“Wahhhhh! Chisato-sama won’t speak with me! I know I’ve been focusing on Mikage-sama more recently and I know I haven’t been keeping up with her diet notebook, but this is too much! What’s wrong with a little fat!? What’s wrong with a soft body!? That only applies to Chisato-sama, though!”

Sibyl ran out into the corridor in tears and Brunhild glared after her.

<nowiki>#8</nowiki> turned her back to resume cleaning the window. Ooshiro faced his computer and made comments of “good” and “yes” which Brunhild decided she would rather not know any more about.

Those two were clearly intending to ignore Sibyl, so Brunhild nodded toward Ooshiro in particular.

She then took in a breath, opened her mouth wide, and shouted into the corridor.

“Ooshiro made Sibyl cry!!”

“Whaaaaat!?”

Several dozen confused replies came over the broadcast system, soon followed by the sound of a group posing.

“Let’s go, everyone! It’s eavesdropping time!!”

“It’s eavesdropping time!!!!”

Suddenly, all sound vanished from Japanese UCAT save a voice in the corridor.

“Wahhhhhh! Chisato-samaaaaaa!!”

Once the echoing crying settled down, Ooshiro frantically stood up.

“B-Brunhild-kun, how could you lie about this!? Something bad is going to happen to me!”

Meanwhile, an unseen judgment was given.

It began by trapping him.

The external defense shutters closed over all the windows to keep the prey from escaping.

She had been cleaning the windows, so #8 briefly looked at the inside of the closed shutter.

“I have determined cleaning the outside of the windows will be harder now.”

With that, she stuck the detergent container and rag between the window and shutter and used gravitational control to clean it from the outside. Ooshiro gave an impressed nod but then turned toward Brunhild in sudden realization.

“O-oh, no! I can’t escape!!”

“Why not escape through the floor like usual?”

“You’re right! I can do that!! …Secret Technique: Floorboard Reversal!!”

With that shout, he stomped on the floor with his right foot.

This activated a mechanism in the floor and one of the floorboards audibly hopped upwards.

He peered down and found a Japanese UCAT combat personnel aiming a rifle up at him.

The metal barrel and the red laser point extending from it were trained directly on his forehead.

The man wore a gas mask and Ooshiro wore his glasses, so the two exchanged a glance through their respective lenses.

“————!”

Ooshiro frantically stomped the floorboard closed on top of the soldier below and someone started banging from below.

He jumped up and down a few times to force it down and then pulled instant glue and self-defense gas spray from his pocket. He glued the floorboard to the ground and stuck the gas spray nozzle into the remaining gap.

“Take this! It’s our new product ‘My Breath – Yakiniku, the Morning After’!!”

After the sound of spraying, a shout of agony came from below the floor before vanishing.

Ooshiro continued spraying for a full five seconds after the resistance ended and then he stood up.

“Hm. That was a close one.”

He stepped from the sealed floorboard and onto another one.

This time, the mechanism opened a portion of the ceiling.

A man in stealth equipment dangled upside down from the hole.

Ooshiro reacted by jumping up to close the ceiling while grabbing “It Tingles!”, a stun gun that could be locked in the “on” setting, and alley-ooping it into the closing hole.

The ceiling closed just as someone could be heard writhing in pain on the other side.

Ooshiro sighed and landed in a light crouched pose.

This time, part of the wall opened.

“————!!!”

He closed that hole, but more and more opened in the floor, ceiling, walls, and back of his locker, so he had to close all of them.

After seeing him toss one of his socks into a hole in the floor, Brunhild sighed.

“This is almost over. We didn’t know each other long, but we made plenty of awful memories. Farewell.”

“B-Brunhild-kun, you really are cement-like to the core! You old cement lady!!”

She had been about to leave the room, but she stopped.

He clapped his hands behind her.

“Yeah, you heard me! I’m younger!! Younger!!”

She stomped hard on the floorboards while turning around, five holes opened in the floor at once, gun barrels poked out of them all, and Ooshiro closed them all with a body press.

“B-Brunhild-kun!” he said from the floor. “What would happen to UCAT if I was shot!?”

“They’d probably mourn the loss…officially at least. A few seconds later, they would celebrate the monumental event.”

She ignored him as he pretended to cry, rolled around, and hit the wall.

“Well, I’ll be going. Kazami and the others are at the hospital, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” replied Sibyl who had returned to the corridor while rubbing the corners of her eyes. “But all of them expect Chisato-sama should be leaving for Hiba-sama’s dojo soon. They were planning to spend the night there. But Chisato-sama…”

“She’s going to stay with Izumo. That’s fine. …I just have something to give the ones who can still move around.”

“Something to give them?”

Brunhild nodded, reached into her uniform’s pocket, but did not pull her hand back out.

“Siegfried found something in the Kinugasa Library that Team Leviathan should see. …It isn’t anything much, though.”

With that, Sibyl finally stopped her tears and looked over in surprise.

Happy with that, Brunhild opened her mouth with the chirping bird providing background music.

“Ooshiro, let me tell you something. A tremor is approaching here from below, so why don’t you escape through the corridor?”

Ooshiro stopped hammering nails into the floor and gave her a thumbs up.

“N-nice one, Brunhild-kun! I’ll put you in my game!! It’s a life mahjong game titled ‘I am the Riichi!’ and the tagline is ‘Always play the wrong tile in life!’. How about it!?”

Brunhild hesitated. She could not decide what spell to blast him with or if she should first attack the black cat to buy time for a large-scale destruction spell.

But Ooshiro suddenly froze in place.

A slender hand had grabbed his shoulder from the side.

“#-#8-kun? Explain this hand.”

“Testament. I have determined it is my right hand. And please wait a moment, UCAT Director.”

She spoke with her usual expression and with the footsteps of heavily-equipped soldiers racing down the corridor.

“I have yet to fulfill my responsibility.”

The nighttime scenery outside the window moved to the east.

Beyond the faint light of a city was a dark plain and above that was only darkness.

The dark plain was the sea and the darkness above was the night sky.

The window moving along that scenery belonged to a night train.

Someone stood in the shop located in the rear car of the Osaka-bound train. Shinjou was bent over a bit by the window and held a gray phone receiver.

The ends of her eyebrows lowered a little.

“Okay, Heo. So is Kazami-san okay?”

A nervous voice answered her from the receiver.

“Y-yes, but Izumo’s left arm was…um…how should I put it? It’s like from a movie?”

While listening to the extent of his injury, Shinjou recalled Izumo’s divine protection.

He must have been fighting within a concept that rendered it meaningless.

“They were fighting those four brothers who are always with Doctor Chao, weren’t they?”

“Yes.” Heo hesitated a little, but finally continued. “But how weird are they compared to the rest of you? I-I can use that to decide how cautious to be.”

“I’m not sure I like how you put that… But using Ooshiro units, they’re probably about a fifth an Ooshiro.”

“Eek! W-we can’t handle that.”

“Don’t worry. Harakawa-kun is with you, right? If things get dangerous, you can always run away.”

“Yes, but can I really rely on Harakawa?”

“Why not? Is that a problem?”

Shinjou heard movement on the other end as Heo covered the receiver with a hand.

Heo then took in a breath and whispered.

“U-um, well, you see? I made him mad earlier.”

“…? Why?”

“Well, uh… He was feeling around inside me and…”

“Inside you!?”

“Yes. He had me sit in the seat, grabbed the thick rod, said we had to perform a test, and even took records. Then he told me it was time to combine.”

“Th-that really is taking it seriously…”

“Oh, but it didn’t hurt. It tickled a lot and made my heart race, but, uh, as I sat there in a daze, I realized people were watching. …But Harakawa said he wasn’t doing anything wrong, so I think he meant he would take responsibility for whatever happened.”

“Y-you two certainly are progressing at a Western rate. …Harakawa doesn’t say much normally, but he sounds really intense.”

“Yes. But part of me wonders if I’m reading too much into it.”

“I-I don’t think so. If he’s taking it that far, he’s definitely committed!”

“But then why did he get mad at me?”

“Well…”

Shinjou thought and remembered an answer she had seen in a magazine.

“Oh, I know, Heo! You need to work to make him happy too! Like, um, embracing him or wrapping your legs around him while you do it.”

“B-but I’d crush him into mincemeat if I did that then.”

''Harakawa-kun is surprisingly delicate,'' thought Shinjou.

“Th-then…y-you can vocally tell him how much you like it.”

“Vocally? You mean like sing? My great-grandfather taught me how to yodel.”

“Singing like that would make you a pervert. So, um, well, this is hard to say, but…you can just say how you feel or what you want him to do.”

“Oh, that I can manage. Nice advice, Shinjou. I’ll do my best.”

Shinjou nodded and breathed a sigh of relief.

…''I somehow managed to give some advice as her elder.

And as if responding to her thoughts, another sigh of relief reached her over the phone.

“I’m glad I could discuss this with you, Shinjou. You gave off a scent of knowing a lot about this kind of thing.”

“I’d really like to know where you learned to speak Japanese like that, but…well…you should be fine.”

She smiled bitterly, wondered if they had both managed to relax, and looked up to see a train station passing by out the window.

The train was passing through Izu near Atami.

…''I’m going so far away.

That thought produced words hoping for the opposite.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t head back? The train is stopping at Nagoya for a bit, so I could get off and take a night train or taxi back.”

“Harakawa said you don’t have to come back since we can’t contact Sayama to have him come back. He said the two of you are like a set even when you’re apart.”

“I need to have a word with Harakawa-kun next time I see him. …But does that mean he actually trusts Sayama-kun?”

“It’s hard to say. The nuance was more on not knowing much about the Leviathan Road and so not intruding too much.”

…''What a rational view.

She thought that was a lot like Harakawa, but she did not want to say so in front of Heo.

But if Harakawa felt that way, Hiba would likely agree as his underclassman.

“Then I’ll continue on to Sakai. Call me if something happens there.”

“Sure. Oh, come to think of it, there was just an explosion on the fourth floor of Japanese UCAT.”

“An explosion? The fourth floor would be Ooshiro-san’s room, wouldn’t it? In that case, you don’t need to worry about it.”

“R-really? But it was an explosion.”

Shinjou heard a confused pause, but that only showed Heo’s inexperience with UCAT. She would adapt after half a year and then she would watch the explosions like they were nothing more than fireworks.

Heo steadied her tone.

“Anyway, I think we’re going to do what we can here to look into our pasts. After all, I don’t want Team Leviathan to disband right after we joined. …But if we do find our pasts, Sayama really will reform the team, right? So we’ll do our best. And…”

“And?”

“I’m personally curious about it because my parents would have been there.”

“…”

“Those were the people who protected us, so I want to know what kind of battle they had. …I’m proud of my parents.”

“Yes, you can think about your parents that way, but make sure you don’t think that way about some of the people in UCAT now.”

“R-right. But even with them, the records show them seriously working on their jobs.”

“It would be kind of amazing if they were getting worked up over perverted things in the middle of battles.”

''Then again, I’ve seen a few people who do exactly that,'' thought Shinjou, but she decided to keep it to herself.

At any rate, Heo had a lot of hopes for UCAT. Shinjou heard a lot of things she could not say herself and it made her happy.

There were a number of issues, but Heo was likely a suitable person for searching the past. Shinjou also wanted to know about that past battle, but she did not want to intrude because she did not even know about her parents.

And so she spoke.

“Okay, Heo. As your senior in Team Leviathan, I have something to tell you even though we disbanded: pursue the past. As someone who doesn’t know much about UCAT, your unique viewpoint will probably lead you to understand a lot we couldn’t. …And I bet a lot of people will let their guard down around a beautiful blonde girl.”

“I don’t think that last point was entirely necessary, but I’ll do my best!”

After a quiet snort, Heo spoke up again.

“Oh, but don’t force yourself. You take your time in your search too.”

“I will, and thank you for going along with that troublesome and twisted orator who loves riddles.”

“Yes, and…I do want to become one of you.”

“Eh? H-Heo, you already are one of us.”

A bitter laugh answered Shinjou’s frantic reply.

It was a self-deprecating laugh and Heo’s voice followed.

“Thank you very much. That’s all the more reason to think about all this. If Team Leviathan can reform, that’s when we can truly become one of you. That’s why I want to think about my parents, my great-grandfather, and…”

Shinjou heard the breath as Heo silently muttered another name.

“I want to do my best to pursue those people.”

“Good, but remember to discuss it with Harakawa-kun and the others after you think about it, okay? Even if you find your own answer on your own, you can’t find the answer to bring us all together without the others.”

“Then we’ll only get the true answer once you and Sayama return, right?”

Shinjou noticed a smile in the girl’s tone.

''She’ll be fine,'' she decided before giving her parting words.

“Okay, then let’s do our best. And take care of Kazami-san and Izumo-san.”

She set down the receiver while realizing that true answer was more dependent on Kazami and Izumo recovering than on her and Sayama. The telephone card was ejected with a hole near the “ten remaining” spot.

…''That was a pretty long conversation.

She looked out the window and saw the shadows of a giant mountain.

The train had entered a mountain range. According to the Japanese map she had seen in class, passing through these mountains would take them through Hakone and into Shizuoka. That would bring them closer to Toukai than Kantou.

The distance to Osaka and Sakai was shrinking.

…''What’s going to happen?

With that silent thought, her eyes turned to the darkness between the mountains.

She then realized that she had no one to discuss her thoughts with now that she had set down the phone and now that Sayama was not with her.

“…”

She held her trembling shoulders and started walking from the shop car.

She made her way to where her bed was.

If she slept, she could escape these feelings and doubts.

Quiet footsteps moved through a dimly-lit lobby.

The lobby’s white walls and long waiting room seats were illuminated by emergency lights. Across from the seats was a long counter covered by a curtain.

Signs saying prescriptions, accounting, etc. lined the counter.

This was a hospital lobby.

The footsteps slowed to look at the signs on the counter.

The large window beyond the seats was meant to let in the sunlight, but it now reflected the one producing the footsteps.

A slender girl with short blonde hair walked west through the lobby.

She was moving toward the three people on the western end of the waiting room seats.

One was a girl with long blonde hair who sat in the seats.

Another was a boy with a red bandanna around his forehead who sat next to the other girl.

The last one was leaning against the column next to the seats.

“Harakawa, I just spoke with Shinjou. It sounds like she’s going to continue on to Sakai. Um, uh…she doesn’t want to leave behind any regrets.”

“That’s probably best for her. But, Heo Thunderson, the nuance of that that expression is a bit off.”

“Eh?”

She tilted her head and stopped walking while the long-haired girl tapped on the shoulder of the boy next to her.

“Ryuuji-kun, are we leaving?”

However, it was not the boy who answered.

“Hiba is asleep, Mikage.”

Heo felt herself smile as she said that.

…''Good.

A lot had happened that day, so she was glad and relieved that she could smile at least a little now that the night had arrived.

She saw Mikage tilt her head and poke Hiba’s cheek. After four pokes, the boy moved with his eyes closed. He lowered down, twisted around in annoyance, and generally moved like an inchworm.

“Ahh, M-Mikage-san. No…stop… The fish meat!!”

“Harakawa, there’s something I want to say and it’s threatening to dynamically burst out of me, but should I say it?”

“Don’t worry about it, Heo Thunderson. Worrying about it won’t fix him.”

“You’re probably right,” she said while Mikage further tilted her head.

“Ahh, Mikage-san. No, no. Don’t suck out the center of the fried egg!”

Heo was unsure what was so arousing about that, but for whatever reason, Hiba bent backwards, his back jumped up, and he fell behind the seat.

''Ah,'' thought Heo just as she heard what sounded like a rock hitting the ground.

The dull sound reverberated throughout the empty lobby and Hiba’s legs trembled as they stuck up from the back of the seat.

Finally, he spoke from the floor.

“Ah! Wh-why am I in this pose? Wait, don’t tell me this isn’t the wall, but…the floor!? In that case…is this a concept attack!?”

“Hiba Ryuuji, I know you’re quite happy right now, but get up right this instant. That’s an order as your upperclassman.”

Hiba sat up on the white floor with a confused look, checked on his surroundings, and finally looked Mikage in the eye as she tilted her head.

“Did Shinjou-san say something?”

“Oh, um, she’s still going to Sakai. But, uh…”

Heo hesitated, but she decided to say it.

“Is your head okay?”

“O-of course it is! Just being in the blonde genre doesn’t give you the right to be so rude! I’m surrounded by strange people and you might think I am too by association, but they haven’t infected me yet!”

''That’s a lie,'' she declared in her heart with a full smile on her face.

…''But if they haven’t infected him ‘yet’, that means it’s only a matter of time.

“Anyway, Kazami won’t leave the hospital room, so how about we get going?”

As soon as she asked that, Heo saw a quick change on Hiba’s face.

For just a split-second, his eyebrows lowered.

She knew what that meant. She knew all too well why they were here and what it meant to leave alone like this.

And Harakawa gave voice to that meaning.

“The treasurer won’t leave the room and there’s nothing we can do to help, so let’s head home. …No, let’s get to Hiba’s grandfather’s place like we planned. It’s close to here and close to UCAT.”

He crossed his arms and looked up at the white panels on the ceiling.

“The president was sedated with some drugs. I don’t know the details about his arm, but I hear they’re talking about constructing a prosthetic and his arm is supposedly fixed in place with some strange technique that won’t actually heal it. …And the treasurer is looking after him even though he’s asleep.”

Heo felt Harakawa had intentionally chosen the phrase “looking after him”.

He was being considerate to them and to Kazami, but in truth…

…''She simply refuses to leave him.

When Heo and the others had arrived at the hospital about an hour earlier, Izumo was already being taken to the hospital room.

Heo had seen the bed carrying him to the individual room and she had seen Kazami. Kazami had been calling his name and shouting something else while clinging to the bed.

…''And she was crying.

When they had left UCAT, Sibyl had just returned from rescuing the two of them and she had informed them that Izumo’s life was not in danger. She had noticed the concept space, left before anyone else, and intervened as Ikkou and Mitsuaki tried to attack.

That had been just after Izumo’s arm had been smashed.

With a pale face devoid of expression, she had told them the following.

…''I doubt there is anything you can do to help at the hospital.

She had to have seen Kazami crying even more than they had.

“…”

Heo remembered how Kazami had not even tried to look back at them.

She remembered Kazami calling Izumo’s name as if to get him to notice her.

She remembered the trembling in Kazami’s voice as she shouted “I’m sorry”.

Kazami was safe and Izumo was injured because he had protected her.

''It’s a lot like when I lost my mother,'' thought Heo.

She remembered when that had happened, but how had it been compared to Kazami now?

Izumo had not lost his life, so were Kazami’s cries…

…''An overreaction?

Heo wondered that, but she shook her head. They were not an overreaction.

…''It might just be that I’m overly emotionless.

Plus, it was not that Kazami had nearly lost Izumo.

…''It was only pure luck that she didn’t lose him.

With that in mind, the overlap between Heo and Kazami was being protected by someone important to them.

But Kazami had power while Heo had not.

Nevertheless, Kazami had been protected and someone important to her had lost a part of his body.

Why was she apologizing to Izumo even though he could not hear her?

…''It’s just like I used to be.

She was apologizing for a simple reason.

“To lighten the feeling of guilt.”

“What are you muttering about, Heo Thunderson?”

“Eh?”

She looked up and realized the others were looking at her.

She frantically shook her hands back and forth and formed another smile.

“Oh, s-sorry. We’re going to Hiba’s grandfather’s dojo, right?”

“That’s right,” said Hiba as he stood up with a smile.

Heo realized he too briefly looked up at the ceiling like Harakawa had.

She then walked past him as he took Mikage’s hand and helped her to her feet.

Harakawa reacted to her footsteps by moving from the column and continuing on toward the hospital entrance.

She moved to his left and hesitated, but…

“…”

She took his left hand and held it tightly.

He received her grasp with a slight toughness and warmth, but that was all.

She looked up, but he did not turn back from his half step ahead of her.

She felt anything she said would be rejected at the moment, so she remained silent and tightened her grip on his hand.

…''Now that I have the power of Thunder Fellow and my teammates in UCAT…

What did it mean for her to lose or partially lose someone important to her?

Part of her wanted to make sure she never knew, but another part thought about Kazami who now knew. It was because Kazami had power that she had apologized for allowing the damage.

…''What’s going to happen?

What would happen to Kazami and what would happen to Heo if she found herself in the same situation someday?

While thinking about that question with no answer, Heo realized something.

Harakawa’s hand was squeezing back now.

“…”

She nodded and made sure Hiba and Mikage were following.

“Shouldn’t we hurry? It’s getting late, so Hiba’s grandparents are probably already asleep.”

“No, my grandfather stays up late. He likes to watch late-night shows without my grandmother knowing. I think today’s is Mountain Hermit Squadron Tengumen. It’s about a group of naked men with tengu masks on their crotches who destroy the evil of the world. They’ve lived in the mountains so long that they don’t know how society works and that’s used for social satire. Last time, Red was arrested after trying to get into the train station without buying a ticket, so this episode is about the others going to rescue him. The title is ‘Assault! Bring Tears to the Power of the State!’ ”

“I’m going to be staying in a house that gets that over the airwaves?”

Heo was worried now.

Suddenly, her grip on Harakawa’s hand felt him stop moving.

She looked up in confusion and saw him looking forward with a frown.

She followed his gaze and saw someone there.

“Wh-who are you!? Why do you have a black cat with you and bird on your head? Are you a friend of UCAT Director Ooshiro!?”

“I-I don’t think it’s possible to be more rude than that! I am 1st-Gear Inspector Brunhild Schild. I don’t believe I ever spoke with you properly even during the party after the 5th-Gear battle, but this is a good opportunity. Make sure you remember me, so you won’t be that rude ever again.”

Brunhild stood in the entrance with her arms crossed and faced the other four.

She then looked up at the ceiling along with the bird and cat.

“Is Kazami still feeling down?”

“Y-yes. She isn’t meeting with anyo-…”

“Hah. I’m not going to do that. Looking at a loser might infect me with their loser-ness. More importantly…”

To cut off any further comment on what she had said, Brunhild quickly pulled something from her pocket.

She held out a paper cylinder.

She flipped the cylinder around, grabbed it again, and pulled it open.

With the sound of escaping air, she pulled something out.

“A large photograph?”

“Siegfried found it while organizing the Kinugasa Library. After the National Defense Department, the old Japanese UCAT was formed. This is a group photo during a trip taken to Kansai so their main force could get to know each other better.”

She spread it out in her right hand and revealed a black-and-white photograph of a mountain ridge somewhere.

The faded gray image showed a number of people in a row with the sky in the background.

“And Ooshiro gave me this.”

Brunhild picked up something lying at her feet.

She held out a wicker object with her left hand.

“It’s just a bucket, but look closer. You can kill some time with the creature in here.”

Heo saw something stand up on the edge of the bucket.

It was a small creature that resembled a boar.

Brunhild smiled and opened her mouth beyond the bucket.

“It’s Baku. He doesn’t seem to like me, so can one of you look after him?”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume10_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 35

2014-10-10T19:19:05Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 35: Black Guidance */

==Chapter 35: Black Guidance==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0445.png|thumb]]
''I want to be praised

Heo managed Thunder Fellow’s body and Harakawa piloted it in a clash with their enemy.

That enemy’s firepower surpassed their own.

That enemy’s physical strikes surpassed their own.

That enemy’s armor surpassed their own.

Nevertheless, rejection filled Heo’s will.

Their speed was greater.

Their mobility was greater.

Their will was greater.

Nevertheless, questions filled Heo’s will.

Why did that enemy fight?

What did he seek?

And what would be his answer?

''Let’s go,'' she thought.

''Let’s fight,'' she thought.

''Let’s find that answer,'' she thought.

She currently had the body of a high-speed cruising mechanical dragon.

She was attacking a black dragon that was heavily armed.

White lightning and black shots crossed paths, the former hit and were deflected, and the latter grazed by and tore away armor.

However, Thunder Fellow found an instantaneous opening and circled above Black Sun. From the sky behind Black Sun, he accelerated straight toward the front of that black dragon.

He passed above the twin-fuselage wings that looked like buildings. Even at the speed of sound, it would take almost two seconds to travel across those six hundred meter wings. And Black Sun was also accelerating, so Thunder Fellow’s relative speed was dropping.

With her senses sped up five times over, the coming approach would last a few dozen seconds for Heo.

The sound of wind echoed off Black Sun, but Thunder Fellow left even that sound behind. The blue and white mechanical dragon no longer hesitated as he flew across Black Sun’s right wing.

He had a plan.

Black Sun’s main body was a black mechanical dragon measuring three hundred meters long and it existed in the rear center of the twin-fuselage. It was guarded by the protective field of that twin-fuselage and by its many cannons, so it would not be easy to approach.

However, there was an instant at which Black Sun’s main body was defenseless: when the main cannon on the bottom of that main body was fired.

If Thunder Fellow fired his main cannon at that moment, it would reach his enemy.

During their first meeting, his light had been blocked by the main cannon’s acceleration light created between the twin-fuselage wings.

But what if he passed those and fired at extreme close range?

…''We can do this.

They needed to fire the main cannon and to do that they needed to circle around and face the enemy.

That was why Thunder Fellow travelled over the twin-fuselage wings and fired.

Twin bolts of lightning tore into the armor panels as he travelled ever forward.

It all happened at high speed.

The cannons on the twin-fuselage wings responded with their black light.

The attacks were all at close enough range to leave no room for evading a shot after it had already been fired.

To avoid them, Thunder Fellow needed to predict the attacks by the direction Black Sun’s cannons pointed and whether they contained black light or not.

Making those predictive evasions was Harakawa’s role.

His reflexes forced the high speed cruising craft all over the place and Heo felt those movements as movements of her own body.

…''We can do this!

Black Sun’s attacks were numerous, but they were no different from his normal attacks. Once Harakawa memorized the cannons’ timing, he could take them out one at a time and destroy the twin-fuselage wings.

However…

“Black Sun’s heat level is rising!!” warned Thunder Fellow.

At the same time, Heo saw the area above Black Sun – the area they were flying through – transform into an area of destruction.

Every cannon was firing continuously.

In an instant, Black Sun’s top surface became a temple filled with thousands of black pillars.

However, those “pillars” were cannon blasts supported by Black Sun’s massive firepower. This attack’s true form was countless massive swords of continuous light that ignored the heat radiating from them.

“…!”

But rather than as swords, everything before them rushed toward them as pure attacks.

Heo gulped, but spoke with strength in her voice.

“Harakawa!”

“It’s like having a group of thugs pick a fight with you, isn’t it!?”

The tension in his voice belied his light words.

But Thunder Fellow began to move nonetheless.

He no longer had time to fire his lightning attacks, so he emitted swords of light from his wings, pushed past or cut through the approaching black blades, and continued forward.

“…!!”

Even so, his armor was torn away in several places all over his body.

Several of his swords of light broke, but each time they did, they were pulled out and produce a tremendous cut.

Metallic sounds sliced through the black forest made of black pillars. His speed never dropped as the few dozen seconds seemed to stretch on infinitely.

Heo felt pain because her senses were the same as Thunder Fellow’s.

…''But this is drawing out his true ability!

She did not reject the pain. She simply gave Harakawa permission and squeezed out all of her own strength.

All she could hear were the surrounding sounds of clashing light and darkness and a voice.

“Can’t we open a path with our main cannon!?” asked Harakawa.

“No. It is only for a slight moment, but I must stop in the instant of firing to cut off the reflux of power. If I do that, we will be destroyed. Also, you know when we must fire the main cannon, don’t you?”

“Hah,” laughed Harakawa within the shaking of shockwaves. “You’re going to blast that thing’s main body once we get through all this and circle around in front, right? The instant he fires his main cannon is the instant the inside of the twin-fuselage and his own front armor are removed. Also…”

Harakawa trailed off and Heo found that odd, so she asked him about it.

“What is it?”

“Oh, it’s just that I saw something strange just before we were shot down when facing Black Sun the first time. It was…” He hesitated again. “Something that shouldn’t have been there.”

“H-Harakawa. Did the tension of the battle make you go crazy?”

“We need to have a talk after this is over, Heo Thunderson.”

As she listened to him, one of their light swords broke on a black pillar that was quickly swung toward them on the right side.

The sword shattered with the sound of breaking glass, but it produced enough of a gap in the attacks for the mechanical dragon to slip through.

The same cycle repeated again and again.

Nevertheless, the dragon kept at it. He was almost at the end and the pillars were growing less dense.

But it was still a balancing act until he truly did reach the end.

Heo thought she heard Harakawa groan, so she quickly spoke up

“Um, Thunder Fellow? Do you have any other good weapons? Y’know, um, something you would see on that Captain Nuclear cartoon that’s popular in America.”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Why are you watching that environmental destruction cartoon?”

“I-I was trying to be considerate, so why are you two being so serious!?” she shouted.

“My only other weapon is the Vesper Cannon. The only other thing would be too dangerous to use now.”

“There’s something else?”

“There is, but it is not a weapon. It has also never been tested and a test activation would be too dangerous now that the battle has begun.”

“But…”

Just as Harakawa began to reply, Heo felt something odd.

It was a sound being sensed by Thunder Fellow’s entire body. The auditory devices located across the dragon’s body were picking up something unnatural.

There was a hole of silence behind them.

“Harakawa! Something’s coming from behind!!”

A moment later, something shot through all the black pillars behind them.

The front-facing sub-main cannon at the base of the twin-fuselage had fired on them.

Black Sun’s plan had been to surround them with the countless black blades and then fire this piercing shot.

“What a cheap trick!!”

Heo made up her mind in an instant and left all of her sensory acceleration with Harakawa.

And in exchange, Thunder Fellow took action.

What Heo saw him do was not what she had expected.

Harakawa swung Thunder Fellow’s left blade to the left and shut down the right blade.

Shutting down the blade meant to protect their side should have meant being hit on that side, but Heo did not wonder why he had done this.

…''Please take care of this!

Her only decision now was to trust him.

A moment later, lightning raced from Thunder Fellow’s right side and it was directed straight down.

A cannon was located there and the lightning blast gouged out the dome-shaped weapon and blew it backwards.

And as the black spear of an attack approached from behind, it collided with the wreckage of the destroyed cannon.

That weakened it and she heard Harakawa raise his voice.

“Let’s turn this around, Heo Thunderson!!”

Black Sun watched the movements of the blue and white mechanical dragon.

That enemy’s left sword strike broke through several of the black pillars sticking up toward the sky.

The enemy then flew into the gap this created on the left.

But the enemy could not avoid everything. Even if he broke through the pillars on the left, the bases had not been broken and the interrupted blast would recover quickly.

And he could not cover all of the black pillars coming from the right.

On top of all that, there was the sub-main cannon blast from behind. It had been weakened, but it was still plenty powerful as it struck the blue and white dragon that closed its rear thrusters for defense.

But despite the hit, the dragon somehow managed to endure.

He purged most of his armor and opened various parts along his body to allow the excess heat and force to escape. He had lost armor and gathered heat, but he still flew into the empty space on the left.

That meant the space between the twin-fuselage wings.

Black Sun had been waiting for this. His prey had entered within range of his main cannon.

He had already prepared his main cannon to fire, so the eight black pillars between the wings had gathered strength and the cannon below his body was wrapped in black heat.

But the blue and white had done the same.

While almost tumbling in between his wings, the enemy had rotated around and white light had already gathered in that enemy’s mouth as he prepared to fire his own main cannon.

Both dragons faced each other and they adjusted their power in just an instant.

They would fire at almost the exact same time, but that was acceptable from Black Sun’s point of view. Their base power outputs were different, so he was guaranteed to win in a collision between their main cannons.

He had already scanned the output of the other dragon and he knew the time it took that dragon to fire its main cannon thanks to the child craft he had sacrificed. On top of all that, he had altered his calculations to include a slight increase in ability as the blue and white dragon continued to fight.

The calculations were flawless.

The blue and white dragon would fire its main cannon, but the black main cannon would swallow up that white light.

That was the expected outcome, but the other dragon’s dragon cannon fired too suddenly.

The cannon’s light had converged and finished its firing preparations slightly before Black Sun’s had.

“…!?”

Black Sun saw what should have been impossible as the blue and white dragon fired a scattering beam of white light.

That was when he saw someone inside the cockpit in the enemy’s head.

In fact, he saw two people.

Just before firing his main cannon, the other dragon had released the power taking them inside him. He had gathered every last bit of power into his main cannon and finally accelerated that power.

“——————”

Black Sun saw the white light spreading out before him, but he was certain of one future: his victory.

His sight devices saw a black form fly in front of the approaching white light.

It was the final midsized mechanical dragon.

The white light scored a direct hit, but it could not penetrate all the way through the midsized dragon. Its armor broke, the light tore into its underside, and that light reached its back, but the dragon continued to move.

Black Sun ordered the child craft to seize the enemy.

And it did exactly that. It poured everything into its unharmed wings, slipped between the twin-fuselage wings that contained black pillars of lightning, and collided with the blue and white dragon.

A metallic sound rang out like a bell as the midsized dragon carried out its duty despite beginning to fall apart.

Its three hundred meter body desperately grappled with the thirty meter dragon.

The girl in the rear seat of the enemy’s cockpit had vanished. She had combined with the mechanical dragon once more.

An odd sensation came over Black Sun when he saw that. It was the same as the familiar scent.

Had he once known that kind of thing?

But he ignored it because the girl was a human of this world, not of his world.

The blue and white dragon moved its legs in an attempt to break free of the black midsized craft’s bonds, but it was no use.

The high-speed cruising dragon lacked close-quarters combat ability and he did not have a transformable frame, so there was nothing he could do. He might have stood a chance as a close-quarters combat model or a standard cruising model that could move its legs more, though.

Black Sun fired his main cannon.

A great roar rang out and black light filled his vision.

“———————”

The midsized dragon gave one last cry to say it had completed its mission.

A corridor was filled with white light.

The north wall contained a bathroom, a bath, a kitchenette, and the landing of the stairs down to the next floor, but all of them remained dark.

The south wall contained a counter with a large space behind it and several rooms with white wooden doors.

The label on the counter said “Nurse Station” and the neighboring rooms had the names of patients on the doors.

This was a hospital ward.

One of the wooden doors to those rooms was open.

It was the door labelled “Harakawa Yui”.

The room inside was dark and the light attached to the bed was the only illumination.

Someone in light purple pajamas stepped out into the corridor as if emerging behind the door.

It was Yui.

Her hair was damp and she had a white bath towel over her shoulders as she walked to the nurse station. Her slippers made little noise, but they sounded plenty loud in the silent hospital.

The baby room which contained the newborns was located beyond the nurse station.

The baby room’s wall was made into a window and two young women were peering through that glass wall.

When Yui saw them, she wondered if they were new mothers looking to their children inside.

As she walked past the nurse station, someone called out to her.

“Yui-san,” said a young nurse.

After spending so many years here, Yui treated this nurse as her junior and the nurse treated her in kind.

The nurse grabbed some karinto from a glass container.

“Want some?”

“No thanks. I already brushed my teeth.”

Yui shook her head and the nurse smiled bitterly.

“Taking a walk?”

“Oh, yes. I was having trouble sleeping. I had a guest today, after all.”

“Your son, right? Um…”

The woman trailed off and it likely had to do with her son’s appearance, but Yui replied with a tone that said she did not mind.

“He takes after my husband more. …And I’m proud of that. But today I had someone else visit.”

“Someone else? You mean that teacher who always trips and can never find the stairs when she leaves?”

“No, not her either. …I guess you could call her my son’s girlfriend.”

“Oh?” The nurse drew back with a smile, placed the container on the desk, and held her hands together. “Well, congratulations. If anything comes of it, have them come here.”

After saying that, the nurse gave a quick “ah” of realization.

“What is it?” asked Yui with a tilt of her head.

“Well, today’s garbage today.”

“Oh,” said Yui with a strongly bitter smile. This happened occasionally, so she knew what the woman was trying to say. “You mean the apple skin, right?”

“Yes. After cleaning, Tama-san always shows me the apple skin when you do that. It doesn’t matter how often I say not to pull trash out in front of people.” Her bitter smile grew stronger as well. “Peeling it in a single continuous strip isn’t easy. And you do it with a one centimeter width, too. But…”

“But?”

“There were two today, weren’t there? Was the other one by your son’s girlfriend?”

“Oh? Why do you think that? It’s my special skill.”

“Well,” she looked up at the ceiling for a moment as she hesitated whether to say it or not. “One of them was even thinner. It was so thin it shocked Tama-san and stopped the head nurse from scolding her like usual.”

“And which one do you think was mine?”

The bitterness left Yui’s smile as she looked to the nurse.

The nurse met her gaze for a moment.

“Well…”

“Let me tell you something interesting. I gained that skill while competing with an old friend. The men we worked with liked fruit, so we had plenty of opportunities. That friend of mine was incredibly good at it and I still haven’t reached her level.”

“Is there really a monster like that out there?’

“There was one here today, wasn’t there? And this girl worked even faster than my old friend did.”

Yui turned to the right in order to return to her room.

“Yui-san, weren’t you going to take a walk?”

“I feel better now. Our talk helped me relax. I’m sure it will work out now. Oh, and one other thing.”

She rested her elbows on the counter and showed her teeth.

“Can I have a karinto? I can always brush my teeth again.”

Black Sun saw the explosive flames in the sky.

Smoke and flames remained in the dark sky between the large twin-fuselage structure added to his wings.

That was both the final remains of his army and the remains of his enemy.

The wreckage was smashed to pieces and melted and now the wind would simply blow the smoke away.

His sight devices had already turned his thermal and gravitational vision to the west, but he still made sure to record the final attack with every one of his sight devices.

And due to the trailing smoke, his optical vision required the longest time to record.

Finally, the wind cleared away the smoke.

There was nothing there.

Black Sun saw nothing but sky all the way to his destination in the west.

He diverted more power to his accelerators, closed the armor panels that he had expanded for defense, and deployed some small airplane-like wings. He also stored his main cannon in his underside as he slowly moved forward.

This world’s characteristic stars could be seen in the dark sky overhead, but a question came to his mind.

This world – the planet he was on – had a satellite. It circled the planet at a set interval and the sun gave it the illusion of waxing and waning as it did so, but was it visible in the sky tonight?

Black Sun turned his optical sight up to the night sky and saw a circle of white light.

However, this was not the satellite he was looking for.

This was the light of an attack. It was the gathering light of the blue and white dragon preparing its main cannon to fire.

“…!”

Black Sun immediately changed his vision to a scan of the enemy.

This was definitely the previous mechanical dragon, but his form had changed.

Somehow, his pointed high-speed cruising form had become a close-quarters combat form with larger legs.

“—————!!”

The beast’s roar descended from the sky and his entire body collided with Black Sun.

An intense sound filled the air as heavy metals crashed into each other.

With a deeply lasting impact, the other dragon’s four arms dug into Black Sun’s back at the base of his twin-fuselage wings.

This intense landing had enough force to break the framework of a transforming model, but Black Sun’s upper vision told him his enemy was unharmed.

The blue and white mechanical dragon on top of him had the thick frame of a non-transforming model.

He did not understand.

He considered the possibility that there were two enemies, but the boy in the pilot’s seat was the same as before.

He simply did not understand.

And as soon as this inexplicable fact filled him with confusion, the enemy fired his pre-prepared white main cannon into Black Sun’s back.

The direct impact of the explosive blast was of course a problem, but the shockwave that spread from that point of impact tore up his armor to quickly open a hole of destruction. The second and third shockwaves tore into the inside and outside of the additional armor and smashed the connections between the main body’s wings and the twin-fuselage wings.

“—————!!”

Black Sun made an instantaneous decision.

He purged it all and cast it aside. He cast aside the twin-fuselage wings, additional armor, accelerators, and everything else he had added onto his main body through evolution.

Black Sun’s three hundred meter form shot backwards as if stripping off an empty shell.

He was the same size as the midsized craft modeled after him, but his power, armor, and firepower were all superior to theirs.

He quickly put half a kilometer between himself and the purged twin-fuselage and he made a decision.

The enemy’s identity was a mystery, but he simply had to defeat that enemy.

For a weapon, he had the main cannon which had evolved below his main body where he held it in his legs. Its power would drop without the pressurization of the twin-fuselage, but it was still powerful enough to pierce through the sky. More importantly, he would not have to wait as long to fire it.

Currently, the enemy was trying to remove his legs that were embedded in the back of the falling twin-fuselage.

In its close-combat form, it could not fly freely enough to nimbly evade the main cannon blast.

And so Black Sun immediately fired.

His goal was simply to pierce through both the enemy and cast-off twin-fuselage wings and to make those wings explode.

The black light raced out and first pierced into the twin-fuselage wings. The black structure still retained some of the residual power from its job as a pressurizer and it shook as it was pierced through during its fall.

“!”

A massive explosion scattered black smoke and red flames through the air.

The great noise reverberated through the sky and the air trembled as if from an earthquake.

The great voice of the explosion was numbingly loud, but Black Sun did not let his guard down. He made full use of his vision’s scanning ability and worked to detect his enemy.

Sure enough, he saw the enemy rising to the heavens on the other side of the blossoming flames.

“…!”

The blue and white mechanical dragon was unharmed. Shimmering heat burst from his rear accelerators as he attempted to circle around overhead to reach Black Sun.

The enemy had changed form again. The muscular body of the close-combat form had grown pointed and his four legs were spread out as wings. Looking at his framework, he was clearly a non-transforming normal cruising mechanical dragon.

Based on the timing of his flight, the enemy had to have quickly transformed from the close-combat form to escape the explosion.

This meant the enemy could transform despite being a non-transforming model.

That should not have been possible.

However, Black Sun grasped the enemy’s trick, the enemy’s evolution, and the enemy’s will.

“—————”

Black Sun changed his line of thinking: the enemy had chosen a different path of evolution than he had.

When he had lost to the enemy army, he had chosen to evolve an army to support himself.

But this enemy had desired to become a powerful single unit rather than strengthening that army.

Black Sun understood that this was a dangerous enemy.

And so he accelerated his lightened body to the western sky where he detected that familiar scent.

He could not allow the enemy to obtain the weapon there, so he accelerated in order to destroy it first.

As they approached Black Sun from above, Harakawa saw the dragon begin to race away.

“Is he trying to run!?”

“No! He is after the Vesper Cannon! He wants to destroy the weapon that can truly defeat him!”

“In that case,” muttered Harakawa while shifting from a descent to a pursuit of Black Sun. “Heo.”

He called her name, but it was so sudden that she was unable to reply.

“Are you listening, Heo Thunderson?’

“Oh, y-yes! What is it?”

He could see Black Sun’s back accelerating away up ahead. The dragon’s speed was enough to leave them behind in their normal cruising form, but Harakawa spoke calmly.

“It’s time to run. We can see the goal line and so can our opponent.”

“Right!”

Harakawa felt Thunder Fellow take in a slight breath. The breath gathered strength in his gut as if making up his mind.

And then he heard Heo’s voice.

“Let’s go, Harakawa, Thunder Fellow. It’s time to move the legs that stopped so long ago.”

Harakawa nodded, closed his eyes, and muttered the words that would set it all in motion.

“On your mark.”

He felt Thunder Fellow prepare and take in a breath as if drawing a thread taut.

“Get set.”

And he shouted.

“Go ahead!!”

From a crouching start, Heo kicked herself forward and began to run.

Her fellow runner was Black Sun and he had already taken a false start, but she did not care.

She had long ago learned that victory would come to the true sportsman who played fair.

And even if he had cheated to get ahead, that cheating would mean nothing once she lined up alongside him.

When she took the first step, she changed to a running stance.

However, she did not say anything. She had begun to focus on nothing but running. Just like breathing, she changed to her running stance so naturally that she did not even notice.

In this case, her running stance was her high-speed cruising form.

They had used this system earlier in order to escape the midsized black dragon and avoid Black Sun’s attack.

It was the untested system that Thunder Fellow had been hesitant to use.

Heo now saw it activate and change her current body.

It began with a single action: a dismantling.

Scraping sounds reverberated from her entire body as she broke it down.

Every part making up her body – the head, torso, legs, tail, wings, armor, and everything else – had their bolts removed.

Gravitational control removed tens of thousands of bolts which floated in the air as the blue and white dragon’s body split away from the primary frame that formed the core of his body.

That steel-colored primary frame was normally hidden inside, but it was now exposed.

That frame was currently a normal mobility type. It revealed the dragon’s figure as a spine with connectors for the four legs, various types of armor panels, and the metal bones of the legs.

However, that framework was swallowed up by empty air and vanished. It had entered Thunder Fellow’s concept space.

The sound of colliding metal was the first thing to arrive in its place.

Next, a long, narrow, and pointed gathering of steel was ejected from that space.

This was the primary frame for the high-speed cruising form.

The blue and white mechanical dragon had swapped out his framework at the most fundamental level.

He did not transform and he did not have a fixed form; he would remodel himself.

As his head, torso, legs, and wings floated in midair, they pressed against the frame. And they were placed differently from the normal cruising form. The front legs would be in the way during flight, so they were placed below the torso as ballast for stability. Next, the legs extended backwards with no intention of every having them set foot on the ground. Lastly, the tail was placed on the very back like an airplane’s tail.

Transformations were restricted by the movement range of the frame and other parts, but Thunder Fellow was different. He completely dismantled himself and completely altered the parts’ locations with no concern for their original connections. This allowed him to use the optimal positions for durability, air resistance, and power connections.

He had decided to use this system in order to escape the midsized dragon earlier.

It had succeeded and, during this third use, the moving parts let out cries of joy at achieving the shortest and most efficient cycle.

The temporarily separated wires reconnected along the shortest routes and his new form allowed him to bring forth his most happy power.

With a soft sound of metal, everything was set in place.

That was when tens of thousands of bolts gave a harmony of connection.

The countless metallic noises sounded like the tones of brass instruments.

All of that happened in an instant to give Thunder Fellow a high-speed cruising form.

“Complete.”

And that gave Heo her running stance.

She took the first step, accepted the power Harakawa sent to the rear accelerators, and kicked off the air behind her.

She accelerated.

The great force lifted the front of her body, but she bent her spine a little to hold herself down. She then took the next step like a spring extending forward and launched herself further ahead.

Rather than just lift her knees, she also thrust them forward.

She ran.

She did not move her legs in vain, she did not build up too much momentum and lose her balance, and she did not allow the position of her hips to rise or fall. She simply continued moving her body forward and raising her speed.

Repeating that was known as sprinting and the wind it created was known as a gust.

Her focus narrowed her vision down to a single point ahead of her.

Her increased senses had yet to be reinstated after avoiding the attack earlier and she was not looking at anything in particular as her surroundings rushed by her so quickly. She simply watched the darkness of the night, the overhead wiring of the railroad down below, and the black form not far ahead of her.

At the moment, all she had to do was overtake that dragon which had once been a friend of man.

The sound of her breathing and her pulse were all she could feel.

She did not hear or feel her surroundings.

Hearing and thinking had already left her understanding.

[[Image:OnC_v09_0473.png|thumb]]

The word “wholeheartedly” no longer applied. She had emptied her heart and mind as she ran.

She understood nothing, but…

“————”

She had wanted to run here.

This was where she had wanted to run for so long. Running here would give her an answer to everything she did not understand.

And so she ran through all the unknowns. She ran toward the goal line that lay ahead.

“…!”

She accelerated and threw her body forward.

Harakawa simply leaned forward.

They had already passed through the city, left the outskirts, and flown into the mountains.

Slowly but surely, Black Sun’s form was growing closer to the upper right.

Thunder Fellow’s acceleration had already brought them through an explosion of water vapor and several streams of mist wrapped around the front ends of the dragon’s various parts as he tore through the atmosphere.

The same was true of Black Sun to the upper right. Waving lines of water vapor were wrapped around the large black dragon as he accelerated westward.

Harakawa thought about where Black Sun was headed.

Sayama and his own mother had said IAI contained an organization named UCAT.

That was likely the dragon’s destination deep in the mountains of Okutama.

Down below, the Oume line left Ikusabata which told him how much farther to Okutama.

“About fifteen kilometers!”

At that point, he saw light to the upper left.

Black Sun was accelerating and that speed pushed his giant black form forward.

…''That bastard!!

Even if he was powerful, he still had air resistance and his own weight to deal with. Thunder Fellow should have had an overwhelming speed advantage over that three hundred meter dragon.

“Did he wish to evolve again after his experience fighting an enemy faster than any before?”

Black Sun’s wish had been granted, even if he still did not know the identity or past of his opponent.

But that was true of them as well. They had known nothing.

“But that’s different now. Listen, Thunder Fellow,” said Harakawa. “Return my senses to normal and give it all to Heo’s running so she can live up to the past.”

He received no response, but everything around him gave the answer.

His vision was now linked with their actual speed.

“…!”

But he was not afraid. He simply leaned forward to pour on more acceleration.

Without even a moment’s hesitation, he took in the power supplied by Heo. ''That’s enough,'' he thought in a world moving too quickly for him to see. ''This is your will and your power.

As if to prove that this was her full strength, the world sped up even more.

Only Black Sun was visible to the upper right due to his similar speed.

The giant black form was growing closer. Amid the dense flow of the world around them, the ever-accelerating Black Sun slowly lined up alongside his vision.

But then Black Sun accelerated even further.

“How many more gears does he have hidden away!?” shouted Harakawa.

But then he heard a voice.

“—————”

It was the quiet sound of someone’s mind leaking into the cockpit.

As Heo ran, the mind she was no longer aware of gave off a quiet noise much like radio static.

It took the form of a song.

It was a hymn Harakawa would hear at the base or the hospital on Christmas Eve.

And it was the song his family had sung the night his father had passed away.

Had it been the same for her?

“Silent night, holy night.”

They split the coming wind with a bursting sound.

“Long we hoped that He might.”

They accelerated as if kicking their body forward.

“As our Lord, free us of wrath.”

But Black Sun gave another blast of acceleration.

“Since times of our fathers He hath.”

Black Sun slowly began to pull away.

“Promised to spare all mankind.”

But Harakawa recalled a certain fact.

“Promised to spare all mankind.”

He remembered when he had timed Heo on the hundred meters. She had said her personal best was 13 seconds.

Her time at the fifty meter line had been in the upper half of six seconds. She could never have gotten thirteen seconds at that pace.

But he had said something back then.

“Heo Thunderson.”

He said it again even though she could not hear him.

“You’re the type that does better on the second half!”

And that proved accurate.

The mechanical dragon body that had already accelerated so much suddenly shook as if jumping up, but Harakawa knew what that meant.

“Are we beginning to accelerate!?”

That was exactly what happened.

In just an instant, it looked to Harakawa like they had launched Black Sun backwards.

They overtook him and their intense series of accelerations did not stop there.

Their speed continued to rise and he simply leaned his entire body forward. He felt like he was leading her, like he was standing on the goal line and calling her toward him.

They continued on.

The ground below was dark as they entered the mountains.

He felt a presence approaching from behind and saw Black Sun’s nose out of the corner of his right eye.

There was a lot he wanted to say: things he did not understand, things that angered him, and much more. However, he gathered all that into a single cry.

“Win this, Heo Thunderson!”

A moment later, they reached the goal line.

The tape they were meant to break was made of light.

Harakawa recognized the band of light from his time on the base.

It was a runway’s signal lights.

But as he shifted his balance backwards to slow Thunder Fellow, he realized it was not working.

At this rate, they would pass right over UCAT.

And he knew why: Heo was not granting him permission to pilot.

“Heo!?”

He received no response. Not from Heo anyway.

“It is no use, Harakawa. She has passed out.”

After the continuous tension of the battle and her victory in the race that followed, everything she had been holding onto must have shattered and turned to exhaustion.

He was sure he could wake her and Thunder Fellow could resuscitate her, but there was no time. They would travel the three thousand meters of the runway in only a few seconds at their supersonic speed.

…''What do I do!?

He thought and let go of the roll bars on either side.

“…”

And then he found the answer.

Black Sun realized his loss had turned to victory.

Beyond the band of light and beyond the wreckage of his child craft, he found the familiar object. He knew he would be in constant danger if he did not destroy that.

The enemy had arrived first, but for some reason, that enemy was not making a move to collect it. After all, he was not slowing down.

Black Sun had been planning to ram the enemy in the moment he tried to collect it, but he now scanned the enemy.

That was when he realized the enemy had lost control.

Based on the enemy’s course, he would pass over the building behind the cannon.

Even if he slowed down now, he was moving too fast to collect the cannon. He would either crash into the building or destroy the cannon due to the difference in relative speed.

Black Sun calmly chose to fall in behind the enemy.

And he prepared his main cannon.

However, his sight devices captured a certain movement: the false humans were frantically moving about on the runway down below.

But there were more than just people there.

He also saw a group of automatons and…

Sayama stood on the ground between the runway and the white building with a cellphone to his ear.

“It is fortunate you remembered I had called and that your phone has a callback number, Harakawa!!”

He hung up just as the blue and white mechanical dragon was about to pass by overhead.

“Here they come, everyone! Are you ready!?”

“Testament!!”

Sayama looked around as everyone around him replied.

On the runway and in front of the building were people in white armored uniforms, people in blue armored uniforms, automatons, and plant creatures.

Sayama raised his voice toward them all while waving his left arm sideways at shoulder height and then raising just the forearm.

“Begin!!”

As that word carried through the air, gunfire shot up from the surface.

It was a volley of signal guns.

The flying bullets and beams all shot toward Black Sun who pursued the blue and white dragon.

Their quick approach ended in an instant and both clear sounds and sparks filled the air.

And a response came from the sky.

Black attacks poured down like rain. Straight-line unguided shots flew toward the shooters.

“!”

But the close-range attack unit struck the black light with their armor and weapons.

Their swords shattered and their armor split, but they let out spirited cries.

Their defense had been a success. They were not unharmed, but no one had been lost.

However, it was not over yet.

The wind moved. It was a large and gentle wind.

The wind came from the Vesper Cannon which sat in front of the building.

The forty meter cannon was being lifted up.

And this was done by a black giant named Susamikado.

Susamikado used both arms to lift the Vesper Cannon overhead. The wings on its back expelled heat to maintain its balance while shimmering heat shot out around it.

“Ryuuji-kun!”

“We can do this!!” replied Hiba as he lifted the cannon.

He tossed the Vesper Cannon into the air for just an instant and adjusted his grip from below. He pointed it up at a sharp angle as if preparing to throw it like a spear.

And then Susamikado flapped its wings.

“Oh!”

While holding a cannon several times longer than itself, Susamikado forcibly spread its wings.

It floated up slowly and heavily, but it rose several meters.

A force that could no longer be called wind exploded in the space between the ground and its wings.

However, the god of war’s body and the weapon would not rise any further. They came to a stop and started to fall.

“Dammit!” shouted Hiba. “Is there nothing to help with this!?”

“Ryuuji-kun!” said Mikage’s voice. “We promised to take a bath together if this went well, remember!?”

“I’d forgotten about that!!”

He forced it. He used the acceleration of the wings to power the throwing motion and scorching wind burst from the motors across his body.

“!!”

And he threw it.

The cannon flew into the center of the sky and toward the nose of the blue and white mechanical dragon flying there.

But its acceleration was still not enough. At this rate, the dragon would run into it with too much relative speed.

In that instant, an orderly female voice came from the front of the building.

“Get ready!!”

It was #8. A total of more than sixty automatons in maid uniforms were lined up in front of her.

All of them were holding hands.

“Launch it!!”

With that command, space seemed to bend. A massive gravity lens was created at the center of the ring of sixty maids and it flew upwards as a gathering of pressure.

It was directed toward the Vesper Cannon which had been thrown into the air.

The gravity lens surrounded the cannon with a roar and launched it as if it had been hit with a racket.

“—————!”

There was only one possible destination for the flying cannon: the same direction as the blue and white mechanical dragon meant to receive it.

Thunder Fellow caught up to the Vesper Cannon that flew ahead of him.

His entire body dismantled.

He then placed his body around the Vesper Cannon’s mount instead of his primary frame. A normal mechanical dragon could not hold the long cannon because their frame got in the way, but he could truly become one with it by removing his frame and holding it in his arms.

The bolts gouged into the gaps of the different parts.

“…!”

The dragon and cannon connected together and Harakawa gave a shout from the cockpit.

“Heo!”

And again.

“Can you hear me, Heo Thunderson!?”

“Ah…”

A groan of awakening filled the cockpit, soon followed by a gasp.

“U-um, I…”

“You only passed out. The battle isn’t over yet, but…you did well.”

Silence answered his final comment, but then…

“Th-thank you.” She sounded hesitant. “But, um, sorry. It was all so amazing and I’d never felt anything like that before, so I passed out.”

“It isn’t time yet for the nonsensical post-victory interview. …The lonely dragon is on his way.”

Black Sun had not given up and Thunder Fellow’s voice gave proof of their fears.

“He has already begun gathering power in his main cannon. We can connect and charge up at the same time, but I do not know if we will make it in time. And I am sure Black Sun knows that. He will build up power to just barely fire first and divert all other power to aid his attack.”

Black Sun moved forward to line up alongside them.

He was less than one hundred meters away and continued to move forward.

“Is he approaching so we can’t even make a low-power shot!?”

A moment later, Black Sun drew his swords. Long black swords appeared from each shoulder.

“He cannot fire on us either if he approaches,” shouted Thunder Fellow. “Charge up using the Vesper Cannon’s power! Until then, fight back with my own power!!”

The large and small mechanical dragons soaring high in the sky began fighting with gunfire and extreme close-quarters combat.

They exchanged bullets and sword blows while taking repeated evasive actions.

They attacked each other from a position that prevented the other from moving away but close enough to threaten a collision.

The white blades were stopped by the black blades and the black blades were avoided by the blue and white dragon.

That blue and white dragon flew about as a torrent of black gunfire shot his way and avoided it all by reducing the surface area the attacks could hit. At the same time, he put away his swords and fired blasts of lightning, but the black dragon deflected them into the sky with his black blades.

The two dragons approached, clashed, fired, flipped their bodies around, and took a spiraling course through the sky.

Sounds of metal, of firing, and of bursting light intersected many times over and carried through the air.

The dragons were followed by shimmering heat and trails of white clouds created as they tore through the atmosphere.

They swung their entire bodies, accelerated their slashes, repeatedly fired, and evaded.

And a mixture of all those actions repeated at incredible speed.

Both of them let out cries and both of their paths through the sky intersected.

“Let’s…let’s end this!!”

It was like taking your partner’s proffered hand.

It was like supporting and rotating your partner on a turn.

It was like facing your partner and pressing your cheeks together.

“Please remember the people who meant so much to you!!”

The avoided gunfire tore through the sky and air, the blocked gunfire sent countless sparks flying through the sky, and the broken swords scattered in a spray before being replaced.

They rotated as if exchanging places, they did not let up on their attacks or evasions, the black dragon had its back to the sky, the blue and white dragon had its back to the earth, and a moment later they exchanged positions once more.

The only thing that remained unchanged was that they were both soaring.

The two dragons roared and danced through the night sky. Their attacks and evasions were the quick and unfaltering steps of that dance.

When they defended, they would strike back. When struck back at, they would defend. There was no time lag. They passed back and forth an embodiment of the word “attack”.

But their dance came to an end.

The long cannon on the bottom of the black dragon finished gathering black light.

That was when the unseen space that was their destination closed.

A change came over that space.

It moved upwards as if to create a way to escape.

Sensing that, the black dragon lowered his speed to move outside the dancing movements of the blue and white dragon.

The blue and white one responded by changing his course and rising into the sky.

They moved apart so they could both fire. After ascending and coming to a gentle stop, the blue and white dragon suddenly began fly in circles. And these circles spiraled down toward the black dragon whose back was to the earth.

White light surrounded the long cannon on the bottom of the blue and white dragon, but it was still weak.

Nevertheless, he fired.

A straight line of light tore down from the heavens and toward the earth. It ripped apart the air and created a bursting ring of wind while continuing to target the large black dragon down below. And as if to strengthen his aim, the blue and white dragon accelerated.

He moved to slam his entire body into the black dragon.

The black dragon looked up into the sky to face him.

“—————!!”

With a great roar, he fired.

A roar ran through the earth. The trees of the mountains far below were tossed up as the mountain surface shook and it almost looked like the mountain itself swelled up.

The recoil of the blast smashed the earth within a dozen or so kilometers of the black dragon.

The black light containing all that force spread out as if to envelope the entire sky, but it soon converged once more.

The concept cannon pierced upwards toward the heavens.

The descending white light was easily swallowed up.

This would end everything.

But the moment before the blast struck, something was destroyed.

The power diving blue and white dragon broke apart.

But this was an intentional dismantling.

“…!?”

Two objects descended through the black light piercing vertically through the center of the night sky.

One was the cannon held by the blue and white dragon.

The other was the blue and white dragon itself sans primary frame.

However, their falling speed was too great. Before the blue and white dragon could reattach its framework, it had passed by the larger dragon. Not only that, but it had already fired. Even if it grabbed the falling cannon once more, it would take time to recharge.

The cannon- and frame-less mechanical dragon passed by the black dragon’s side.

Wondering what had happened, the black dragon tried to turn around.

As he did, he caught sight of a point in the sky.

In the center of the heavens, he saw a single star directly to the north.

But he also saw a silhouette in front of that star.

It was a human boy’s silhouette.

This boy stood on the black mechanical dragon’s nose.

Harakawa stood on the giant black mechanical dragon’s nose.

He was gasping for breath and the tension of this gamble ruled his body.

Using the cannon as a diversion, they had dismantled Thunder Fellow both to evade and to use the dragon’s gravitational control to send Harakawa here.

It had gone well, but…

“I saw it when we first faced each other, but you probably didn’t since it’s right between your giant sight devices.”

Harakawa reached out a hand toward something white sticking out from between Black Sun’s eyes. It was shaped like a shaft and he gave its identity.

“A spear. …Heo’s great-grandfather most likely got this attack in on you.”

He grabbed it. Most of the shaft was shaped like a battery pack and there was something like a trigger near the tip. For some reason, Harakawa’s surname was written on the side of the white shaft: Northwind.

He found that odd, but pulled it out nonetheless.

As soon as he raised it overhead, Black Sun turned the light in his sight devices toward the boy.

The small cannons on his shoulders also aimed at the boy.

But Harakawa had no reason to be concerned. He pulled the trigger and felt a power in the tip of the spear slice through the wind. It was a great invisible piercing power that almost seemed to be made of wind.

“Remember this!” shouted Harakawa. “The north wind will pierce even the dragon!!”

With a clear sound, he slammed the long extending blade between the great dragon’s eyes.

“And remember what it is you are meant to do!!”

With a squeezing resistance, the blade penetrated into Black Sun’s head.

“…!!”

And after thrusting the blade down to the base, the spear broke. Whether it had overloaded or completed its duty, the white shaft shattered like pottery and scattered into the sky.

“————!”

Black Sun let out a great cry.

As that cry shook his body and reached his ears, Harakawa leaped into empty air.

He passed between the wings and armor panels on the black dragon’s back and said farewell to its giant form.

As the wind rushed past him in his fall, he saw the darkness of the earth down below, but another color filled the center of that darkness.

Thunder Fellow waited to catch him in the open cockpit down below and white light filled the cannon he held.

The sign of the conclusion could be seen from Japanese UCAT’s runway.

The Kanda Laboratory had altered the concept space to remove it from the city center and instead stretch it almost to satellite orbit far beyond the stratosphere.

The darkness filling that concept space was pierced by a single white line rising upwards.

Everyone saw that white light break through the black mechanical dragon’s chest and out his back.

And another light was visible as well.

That light came from the girl and boy standing in front of the white building.

They were Shinjou and Sayama.

Shinjou tugged on Sayama’s sleeve as he looked into the western sky.

“What is it?”

“Um,” replied Shinjou after making sure everyone else was focused on the west. “About this.”

She extended her left hand. That hand wore Georgius which was wrapped in light.

She frowned and tilted her head.

“What does this mean? Why can I wear it?”

“I do not know and it seemed the old man did not either. All I know is that my mother left Georgius with me and that only the two of us can use it, Shinjou-kun.”

Sayama reached into his pocket and pulled out the papers Roger had given him.

“I still cannot read a single word of the conceptually hidden contents, but I can read the cover now. How about you?”

Shinjou looked down at the cover.

It gave Sayama Asagi’s name as the primary developer, but it said something else as well.

“The research and development was based on some abandoned documents found in the Kinugasa residence?”

She turned toward him in surprise.

“What does that mean? Had Professor Tenkyou started to create Georgius?”

“I plan to find that out for myself. Just as you will pursue Shinjou Yukio, I will follow in my father’s footsteps.”

He then pointed at another point on the cover where a stamp had turned black when the copy was made. The black letters of the stamp said “Project Suspended”.

“It is also worth knowing why we hold in our hands the product of a project that was suspended.”

Shinjou grew pale but slowly nodded as if to support his words.

And then the people around them gasped.

“Look,” said a surprised voice. “Black Sun is rising into the sky.”

Black Sun remembered everything.

The blow into his head had fully activated his self-preservation functions. Similar to having his life flash before his eyes, it drew out all of his knowledge and experiences. This told him there was no saving him and…

…''I remember.

Black Sun’s mind grew clear and his memories returned.

“…”

And once he knew everything, he chose to rise into the sky with his fatally wounded body.

He moved toward the night, toward the sky, and toward the heavens so that he could look out over this world. From those heavens, he could confirm that this world would never be his and that it would never belong to the people he knew.

It would show him that the people who might praise him were no more.

The large black dragon rose.

He moved his wings and lifted his breaking body in his desire to move ever upward. After countless evolutions, he had gained powerful weapons, sturdy armor, and great speed, but this ascent was all he could manage now.

''It’s ending,'' he decided. ''No, it was already over.

He had destroyed his people.

Even if it had been to keep them from suffering and even if it he had been ordered to do so, he had still destroyed the world he was meant to protect.

He had trapped himself in the shell of “malfunctioning” and believed in the justification of his actions.

That had come from his refusal to accept that the people were gone and his refusal to accept that his world had been destroyed.

He had lost before the battle had even begun.

Yet he had once more taken a great number of lives and done what he should never have done.

The earth grew smaller down below.

He could see an island. Unlike the islands of the planets he had protected, it was a long, narrow archipelago.

The ocean surrounded it and another large island lay beyond that.

He belatedly realized that everything would grow dark because he was on the night-side of the planet. The planets he had once protected had had the same natural phenomenon.

The people who had created him had often asked how the world looked to him as he flew.

He had always replied that it had planets and it had people.

“…”

He could see the cities of this land too. They could be seen everywhere as dots of light.

The cities of this world’s people could be seen even in the darkness of night.

And he also saw the end of the planet. The horizon formed an arc and he visually confirmed that this world was a round planet.

He altered his vision to amplify the light so he could see everything.

Once he did that, he saw a blue planet.

''It is the same,'' he concluded. ''It matches how I always described the world to the people.

The people had always looked satisfied with that answer and they had praised him. They had told him to do his best which was only natural for a machine, but he had viewed it as an expression of praise and he had used it to judge how well he had completed his job.

He recalled his own creator.

That creator had been a man in glasses. The man had once brought his wife and daughter to the hangar for a periodic inspection.

The young girl had seemed afraid of his appearance, but she had run after him when he had flown from the hangar. He remembered how she had raced along the ground, waving at him and apologizing for being afraid. He had intentionally slowed so he could pretend to race her, but he remembered ultimately turning his back.

There had to be similar people in this world. Compared to the people of his world, they were indeed fake, but they were the real people for this world.

''I am sorry,'' thought Black Sun while admitting to his error. ''I did something unforgivable.

Even if he wanted to make up for it, his body was already broken and falling apart.

He could not even stop his own destruction and make up for his mistakes. His only remaining option was to inform the world of his loss so its people could rest easy.

He would tell them that he was no more.

He did not think of himself as a failed creation. He felt that he himself had chosen failure. Because his own compassion had led him to lose sight of his reason for existing, he had chosen a path of failure.

But…

“…?”

He saw something rising up after him down below.

The blue and white mechanical dragon was rising up in front of him.

The other dragon’s movements and heat distribution showed it had no intention of fighting and he could not have fought back even if it had.

So for a short time, he slowed his ascent and stopped.

As he watched, the other dragon set up an atmospheric protection field and opened the cockpit in the head.

Two people sat in that cockpit: the boy who had made the strike to his head and the girl who had combined with the dragon.

The girl looked up at him while standing on the seat with her shoes off.

''Why?'' wondered Black Sun. ''Why do you look on the verge of tears despite winning?

He was the one who had tried to take everything from her and from this world.

But that was over now. Black Sun named himself to the victor so that a record of his loss would remain and so that everyone would know who was responsible for it all.

“I am Black Sun.”

He transmitted his voice and it played from the other dragon’s cockpit.

When she heard the name, the girl lightly held her own body, took in a breath, and spoke.

She spoke her own name.

“————”

Black Sun heard the name.

It meant happiness in the language of his own world, and…

“…”

''Yes,'' thought Black Sun. ''I am glad I did not destroy that dragon. I am glad I was able to hear that name.

He recalled his own mission. It was the same as his brother craft White Creation: to protect the people and through that…

…''To guide the people to happiness.

That was something he could no longer do after all the lives he had taken.

Nevertheless, a result had survived to stand before him. This was a survivor of the answer that had destroyed him.

He was reunited with the answer of the people he could never meet again.

He did not understand.

He had been unable to fulfill his mission, so why was he able to hear that answer?

Why had he received this answer through his own destruction?

He did not know.

But he accepted his end. The end of his body and the end of his mission.

He would never again destroy another. And to prove it, he opened his chest and pulled out the Concept Core half. He used his gravitational control to pull out the thirty centimeter ball of bluish white light and sealed it in a gravity shell so it could be safely touched.

Finally, he gave it to the girl who had inherited the world he knew.

She hesitantly accepted it in her hands.

“U-um!”

Without waiting for her to finish speaking and without listening, Black Sun looked up into the center of the heavens.

There, he saw a star. It was the same solitary star he had seen from the surface.

He began to ascend as if to take that star for himself. He moved to leave this world and reach a place where there was nothing to protect but also nothing to harm. He made his way toward a place where he could watch over everything that had been lost because of him.

Was the girl below waving to him?

''One who has inherited the happiness of the world I was meant to protect, I wish happiness on you and your world.

“——————”

Black Sun cried out. He gave one last roar of joy.

And he continued his self-destructive ascent. He regretted everything he had done, but he felt he had fulfilled the very first mission he had been given.

And he decided that was the one and greatest happiness he had received from the people.

At 10:12, all of those in the concept space saw a light born in the sky near the North Star.

The light was far too small for the name Black Sun, but it was sharp and bright.

That was Black Sun’s signal to say they had reached the goal.

Afterwards, the light slowly and quietly vanished.

All that remained was the wind blowing in from the north. That unseen wind blew roughly through the night.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_34|Chapter 34]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_36|Final Chapter]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 34

2014-10-07T19:35:59Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 34: White Guidance */

==Chapter 34: White Guidance==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0427.png|thumb]]
''Let loose the unattractive contents of your heart

''Someone else will find them attractive

An intense battle was underway on UCAT’s runway.

Their main force of mechanical dragons was down to only two, the black god of war was on its fifth and final sword, and the red god of war only had a single blade left.

Metallic sounds rang out without end and they were joined by the sounds of hard objects being split and of bursting gunpowder.

One could also hear people shouting out special attack names, a man talking about his wife and child, and three people punching a fourth.

As these sounds repeated, the situation began to turn in the people’s favor.

In the center of all the movement, a group was firing their weapons. The gunners would surround an individual enemy and then disperse once more.

As they could use their communication devices, each group making close-range strikes could request the assistance of the gunners.

And when the dragons tried to fly and use their quick mobility, the gods of war or mechanical dragons would attack them before they could.

The wreckage of enemy and ally littering the runway functioned as barricades against the dragons as they swooped down.

The Vesper Cannon was simply placed in front of the disguised transportation building, but the black dragons glided so quickly that they would crash into the building if they did not go in for a landing. And it had already been proven that their weight and inertia would cause them to skid even if they did land. That forced them to land much farther back on the runway, but the barricades of wreckage blocked their way and they would be individually surrounded even if they made it past those barricades.

Of the shooters who unloaded bullets while surrounding the enemy, one looked down on everything else.

It was Kazami who held G-Sp2 as a cannon.

…''This seems to be working well.

This formation had been Sayama’s idea.

She could no longer see him anywhere, but he had apparently entered the transport building to gather the automatons from the purged space.

Shinjou was usually by his side, but she was now exchanging Ex-St’s red hot barrel to Kazami’s right.

“It’s not often you aren’t with that idiot.”

“And it’s strange to see you without Izumo-san.”

Izumo was currently attacking with V-Sw and commanding the northern group.

Shinjou looked in that direction and raised Ex-St without bothering to wipe the sweat from her brow or the soot from her cheeks. She had already attached the new barrel and the exhaust of the initial cleaning burst from the back.

With metallic sounds and wind surrounding her, Shinjou faced Kazami.

“Unlike with 3rd, everyone is nearby, so I can relax more. Ryuuji-kun and Mikage-san are here too.”

She gave a small smile.

''She’s changed a bit,'' thought Kazami when she saw that smile.

She wondered if Shinjou had gotten over what had made her cry the other night and thought about inviting her to go shopping without Sayama.

…''I’m like a mother-in-law.

She smiled bitterly while realizing that stupid underclassman would cause some kind of commotion but settle everything in the end.

…''If I leave it to him, will I never have to feel that unease I felt in Roger’s dream?

That dream had made her realize again what the scariest thing in the world was. It was no one’s fault and it was a scene she had been able to see because of who she was. And it was also the scene she least wanted to see.

She had learned how that felt two years ago when she had first learned what it meant to fight, but she had recently started to forget.

She also realized that everyone fighting here had some similar thing.

She had only heard about it secondhand, but she thought the former residents of 5th-Gear must have as well.

“Right.”

She nodded and held up G-Sp2, wondering where she should fire the Concept Core blast.

As she did, she heard a voice from the barricade created by a destroyed black mechanical dragon to the east.

“Hey! Something’s headed this way on an odd course!”

She saw it. She had good eyes, so she could identify it as six small mechanical dragons approaching in the night sky.

However, their course was indeed odd. They were not invisible as the previous ones had been and they showed no intention of stopping at the other end of the runway. Instead, they continued to accelerate.

“They’re using themselves as shells!”

This was a last resort for the enemy. They would give up on stealing the Vesper Cannon or protecting themselves and instead use their own bodies as shells.

It was a sort of suicide attack.

“Idiots.”

The gunners had their hands full surrounding their individual targets. The close-range attackers were all quite powerful, but there was no way they could intercept these black dragons charging in at full speed.

Then what should they do? Kazami knew the answer.

…''I can do it.

And so she yelled to Shinjou who was running to her position.

“Shinjou! Take care of my position too!”

“Sure! But what are you going to do!? You can’t catch up to them even if you fly with X-Wi!”

“Are you looking down on your upperclassman, Shinjou? Just leave it to me. I’ll show you what I’m capable of.”

With that, Kazami began to run toward the barricade to the east.

As she did, Ooki turned toward her while carrying around the green creatures as the commander of the fatigue-elimination unit.

“Oh, Kazami-san! If you’re going somewhere, how about letting these little guys suck the bad stuff out of you?”

''That makes it sound like you’re going to bleed me with leeches,'' she thought while waving her hand horizontally.

She continued on toward the sky visible beyond the barricade.

She began with a slow step but soon built up speed while running between the surrounding people who continued to fight. As her feet began to move faster, she held G-Sp2 under her right arm.

—'''Light is power.

X-Wi expanded and Kazami heard Sibyl’s voice from the forest.

“Chisato-sama! They are seventeen seconds from the point of no return on their approach!”

Everyone understood what that meant, so they shifted their focus to her without stopping their attacks.

She ran down the center of the path of focus created by all the attention gathered on her.

''This feels nice,'' she thought. ''I really like to stand out, don’t I?

So to stand out even further, she spread her wings wide but did not flap them. She raised the wings toward the heavens and kept them there while she ran low to the ground and faced forward. She faced the sky and the six shapes approaching there.

“G-Sp2, that’s our target.”

“I see them.”

“Then it’s time for your third form. You can go that far, can’t you?”

“I can go anywhere.”

After that, Kazami operated G-Sp2’s console while running.

A transformation soon began.

Before her eyes, the firing grip jutted out on either side at the base of the tip to form a T-shaped handle.

The tip had formed the cannon’s muzzle, but that tip now closed.

Instead, the bottom end opened, foot pedals extended on either side at the base of the bottom end, and a triangular armored panel sprang out as if to form the tail of an aircraft.

The completed form looked like a wingless airplane.

The same white light used for the cannon began to leak from the open bottom.

After checking on that light, Kazami flew with a single flap of the wings on her back.

“————”

She placed herself in midair, used the handle as a grip, and placed her feet on the foot pedals.

She was already clinging to G-Sp2 and she spread her wings to the side rather than flapping them again.

This created a vehicle with G-Sp2’s output as the thruster and X-Wi as the main wings.

“You can call this the Gungnir Jet!”

[[Image:OnC_v09_0435.png|thumb]]

She twisted the accelerator and her falling speed was slowed by the light blasting downwards.

The force of her fall and her ascent reached equilibrium at thirty centimeters above the broken runway.

She twisted the accelerator in her right hand and the white light reflected off the ground and brightly illuminated her and her surroundings.

The sound of squeezing metal came from G-Sp2 and it began to shake, but she ignored it while using her left hand to lower her goggles over her eyes and leaving everything to G-Sp2 by twisting the accelerator as far as it would go.

“Let’s finish this before the goggles leave a mark!”

She reached the night sky in an instant.

“…”

Kazami broke through the wind and suddenly found the mountains spreading out below her.

Before she could exhale even once and before she came back to her senses, she saw a band of light down below.

The three thousand meter runway now looked no longer than thirty centimeters.

…''Wow.

A trail of light remained from one end of the runway to her current location and that line of light continued to grow.

That meant G-Sp2 was still accelerating.

Her wings were vibrating from the wind, mist wrapped around G-Sp2’s tip, and her pulse began to race. The console in front of her gave a numerical reading on the output, but it was still hovering around 25%.

She recalled that G-Sp2 lost almost all sense of self in this state.

She could not speak with it unless she forcibly turned its focus toward her.

Two years ago, she had reached 32%.

…''And today is the second time.

She saw the enemy ahead in the sky. The self-destructive dragons outnumbered her several dozen times over.

She passed by them in an instant.

A moment later, she controlled G-Sp2 in a forceful way that could not quite be called braking.

She removed her feet from the foot pedals, kept her hands on the handle, and threw her body into the air as if on the horizontal bar.

“…!”

She faced the heavens and swung G-Sp2 around.

It was a forced action. While her legs rotated through that extreme high altitude air, her heart pounded in her ears. She began to sweat, but the wind blew even that away in an instant.

Her wings were unable to withstand the wind and shattered, but as those snowflakes of light landed on her back, she found herself looking into the western sky.

And so she twisted the accelerator.

“…”

She received enough intense acceleration and instantaneous power to feel like the night sky was drawing closer.

As G-Sp2 reversed at a sharp diagonal angle and re-accelerated, she dangled alongside it.

With her back pointed down, she followed the horizon out of the corner of her eye and spotted the lights of Saitama.

But at that point, she finally sensed the noise.

Once she realized she could hear the wind, she relaxed a little.

She looked down over her shoulder and saw the six dragons there.

While listening only to the blowing wind, she shrank down with her back still pointed to the ground. The wind washed over her as she gathered strength in her shoulders and abs and brought herself closer to G-Sp2 which flew in a crescent moon arc.

She slowly brought her feet toward the sky, placed them on the foot pedals, and reclaimed her position embracing G-Sp2.

“…!!”

And she immediately kicked the foot pedals up toward the heavens.

The recoil pointed the tip down and toward the enemies below.

She twisted the accelerator and charged forward.

She created new wings on her back, held them in close, and performed a power dive from directly above the enemy force.

“Listen, G-Sp2. There’s a story behind your origin.”

She whispered while falling and operating the console with her right hand.

“You were originally named Thor’s Hammer and you were created to end a civil war in 10th-Gear. You were stolen by 9th-Gear which had temporarily assisted the resistance force within 10th, but Kaku’s grandfather took you back. However, you were then modified into a divine spear and made into both the most powerful weapon and the storage device to absorb the concepts from 10th’s world tree.”

And…

“But you contained the genes of Zahhak, the violent dragon of 9th-Gear. That created a concept dragon that devoured the world tree, but you were successfully sealed in this world.”

Izumo had told her this. The story included his grandparents. He did not often speak of them, but his grandmother was a resident of 10th-Gear and she had apparently betrayed 10th and given his grandfather the divine spear after the creation of the concept dragon. Kazami did not know the details, but…

…''All of that was passed on to create who Kaku and I are now.

She wondered if they would ever be able to inherit all of it.

''We will someday,'' she told herself while facing forward and looking to the earth at the bottom of the sky.

She saw the shadows of the forests and mountains and she saw the group of mechanical dragons flying westward in front of those shadows.

Nevertheless, she calmly made her final preparations by punching seven letters into the console.

“G-U-N-G-N-I-R! Gungnir!”

She pressed the button on the grip.

“Let’s go, G-Sp2. Semi-barrel open – start!”

The bottom end of G-Sp2’s aerial mobility form closed and stopped the jet of light.

Now that the light had nowhere to go, it began to leak from the closed cowling on the front end. As the light spilled out like sand, it rose like smoke and drew several overlapping lines in the sky.

Before she could let out a single breath, the internal pressure caused the front end to shake, but she kept the grip button pressed and refused to let go. It was a lot like making a pet wait for its food.

Down below, the mechanical dragons could be seen so close she felt she could reach out and touch them.

A moment later, she saw the output reading reach 30%.

“Ragnarok open. Time to fight back.”

With those words, she fired G-Sp2.

A dragon plunging headfirst suddenly appeared in the night sky.

The one-horned dragon was made of white light and it seemed almost as large as the night sky itself.

And yet the dragon had yet to show its full body. It was unclear whether it actually had a neck or not, but what looked like the beginnings of one extended down toward the surface as if breaking through the night sky. All that could be seen was a face with a giant gaping maw and that neck-like area extending back twice that length.

But that was enough.

The dragon stretched its head down with a great sound of wind that seemed more like the entire world groaning.

It did not stretch far, but for such a massive dragon, it was enough to reach the surface.

Its jaws devoured its airborne food.

That food was six objects flying down below like small black fish.

They could not escape because the dragon’s great size was a weapon in and of itself.

Fangs and a tongue of light crushed that food from above as if the sky itself was falling upon them.

This caused an explosion that rivalled the white light, but…

“—————!!”

The massive jaws closed.

And that was all.

The light dragon head faded away as it descended to the earth.

It simply vanished as if to say its presence had not been particularly impressive.

The light obeyed the darkness and faded away, but an afterimage of the dragon remained in the sky for a few seconds.

Afterwards, nothing remained of the “food”, not even the explosion or their wreckage.

However, something new had appeared.

It was a sound arriving from the eastern sky.

It was a solid sound and it was not alone. Metallic sounds repeated again and again as if communicating with each other.

They were the sounds of a battle fought between those flying this way at tremendous speed.

The repeated sounds of high-altitude fighting approached without hiding the noise caused by the colliding power.

All of those on the battlefield began to notice the sounds and look to the night sky. This included the automatons treating people’s injuries, the people having their injuries treated, the plant creatures extracting their exhaustion, and the girl who had fired the dragon of light into the sky.

They all looked to the east and someone spoke.

“It’s coming.”

“Black Sun is?”

“No,” said someone else. “The answer. The time has come to settle things with 5th-Gear which cast aside their own humanity, with the machine that went mad with anguish after trying to protect the people, and with the one who has inherited it all.”

Black Sun had not overlooked the enemy approaching from behind.

He knew what was happening because the screams of his child craft had reached him several times now.

When a child craft was ordered to die, it would send a report on the completion of its mission when it died. But when one was simply destroyed, intense static was sent back.

For a machine, being destroyed before completing your given job was the same as having the very meaning of your existence denied.

And the bearer of that denial was approaching in a straight line

He remembered this enemy. He had met it in its invisible form just after rising from the ocean.

Black Sun remembered the shape of that wind.

Its shape was familiar, but not because he had seen it earlier. His sealed memories were pointing to the existence of some record of the past as if it was leaking through.

Those sealed memories told him he had met this enemy before.

However, he had a goal: reaching the familiar scent in the west. That was likely the weapon that had once defeated him.

And so he hurried westward. He also sent three midsized mechanical dragons back toward the pursuing enemy as his final guards, but he soon noticed something strange.

As soon as he accelerated forward, static reached him.

Specifically, two bursts of static reached him.

“…?”

His rear sight devices spotted the reason for the static: lightning.

Bolts of lightning raced through the sky behind him and produced two enormous explosions.

Black Sun found this “familiar” as well.

He was oddly certain that he had only ever met one mechanical dragon that attacked like that. He was also certain that the large dragon made as his pair was more offense-oriented and extremely dangerous.

It had carried a large cannon before, but it did not seem to have one now.

''But why?'' he thought. ''Why do I remember this despite having no memories?

He did not know.

He had been made to protect the people, so why had he fought such a dangerous dragon?

Why had he lost that battle, why had he lost his memories, and why had he chosen to evolve?

Why was his urge to seek out those familiar scents so very strong?

And beyond those questions, beyond his destination, and beyond his victory, were the people waiting for him? If he created a world where he could protect the people, would they praise him?

The people were gone now and he did not know why, but he thought they had to exist somewhere. He was meant to protect the people and he existed, therefore the people he was to protect also had to exist. That was the logic behind his thoughts.

Beyond the barrage of lightning, he saw a familiar yet forgotten form.

It was a small blue and white mechanical dragon.

This enemy was small but dangerous. He wished he could eliminate that familiar feeling along with his lost memories. That would rid him of these unnecessary thoughts, but he could not forget what he could not first remember.

At that point, Black Sun reached a certain answer.

He found the reason for his evolution.

“…”

It was this enemy. He prefaced that high-probability conclusion with the qualifier “most likely” and raised his internal priority of this enemy.

He set the familiar scent in the west and the familiar scent pursuing him at equal priority levels.

Here, he entered combat mobility mode for the first time.

He would intercept this enemy. Even as he hurried to the west, he would intercept the past.

Black Sun ordered the final midsized dragon to ram the enemy while continuing to evade the lightning and he accepted his own intent to fight.

He consciously approved of that intent and his entire body responded. The armor panels opened up to expose every primary cannon, secondary cannon, and even sub-secondary cannon and his motors sent out lubricant and made full use of their radiators.

Finally, he raised the power output supplied by the one thing he had certainly brought from his own world: the Concept Core half.

As long as he had that, he had half of justice on his side.

Its power circulated through his entire body.

“All cannons at full power. Enter overdrive mode.”

Black Sun began to move in order to defeat his enemy.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_33|Chapter 33]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_35|Chapter 35]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 33

2014-10-07T18:43:39Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 33: Announcement of Acceleration */

==Chapter 33: Announcement of Acceleration==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0405.png|thumb]]
''To not recognize that which was lost

''To recognize that which was lost

''To discover which is stronger

At 9:41 PM, several small enemy craft were sent ahead to Japanese UCAT in the mountains of Okutama where the lights of the city center could be seen to the east.

Those small craft tore quickly enough through the eastern sky to call their approach “sudden”.

But instead of showing themselves, they used their optical camouflage concept.

That left their visual form unclear and left only the sound and movements of the wind to indicate their presence as they flew straight down toward UCAT’s runway.

Six roars and four times as many sprays of broken asphalt filled the air. Their weight and momentum tore up the asphalt as they slid across it, but they stopped about halfway down the runway.

Still invisible, only their footprints appeared.

A cannon sat on a pallet in front of the white building at the end of the runway.

All of the footprints turned toward the motionless blue cannon and the leading set took a step toward it.

The asphalt broke and earth trembled.

In that instant, an old man ran out of the southern forest next to the runway.

He spread his lab coat as he ran onto the runway and the words “Manly Spirit” were written in ink on the inside.

He raised his thumb toward all of the invisible enemies and spun around.

“Ha ha ha! Well done making it this far! But your luck ran out the moment I showed up!”

He pointed randomly into empty air as a substitute for pointing at the invisible enemies.

“Get them, everyone!!”

His words reverberated across the runway, but that was all.

“…”

The old man fell silent while still pointing into empty air. He waited for some kind of response, but tilted his head after a few seconds.

“Huh?”

He pulled back his pointing hand, stared at it, pointed again, and looked around him as he spoke again.

“Get them?”

He looked around yet again but still saw nothing.

He checked in the forest behind him, but there was no one there.

He peered deep into the forest with a puzzled look and he crouched down to peer even deeper. He turned to the runway as a feint and quickly turned back around, but still saw no one.

“How strange,” he said while still looking into the forest.

Then something touched the tip of his extended pointer finger.

“Oh, there you are,” he said with a smile.

But once he faced forward again, there was still nothing there.

And yet his finger was touching something. It was touching something invisible.

He gently poked what existed in that seemingly empty air.

“Oh, you’re hiding. …Don’t. Be. So. Shy!”

His final word rose to a shout and he turned around and began to run.

He drew out his full strength from the very first step.

A moment later, a great pressure of air quickly began to run after the fleeing old man.

They raced onward.

The “manly spirit” old man ran out ahead with a great rumbling and smashing of asphalt pursuing him down the runway. He tested out a few different running styles and settled on an intense and girly style.

“Emergency!!”

His shout reached the forest and finally something began to move.

A group of white and blue burst from the northern forest on the opposite side of the runway.

At the lead was a boy in a white armored uniform.

“The enemy fell for our ‘natural’ decoy! Listen! Blow them away without worrying about the decoy!!”

The boy yelled instructions, ran onto the runway, raised his left hand, and looked up into the sky.

“Go ahead!!”

Gunfire filled the air and direct attacks continued after that.

Light exploded on the runway.

“————!!”

Light weapons, heavy weapons, and other projectile weapons struck the invisible enemy from the right using light, explosions, and even large slashes.

The explosive pressure of the direct hits shook the air, the forest, and the sky.

And those armed with close-range weapons charged directly into the blast.

A sword unit led by a boy with a large white sword and a reinforced armor unit from American UCAT both charged right in. They practically slammed their entire bodies into the right sides of the small mechanical dragons that had explosive blasts rising from them.

The attacks hit with countless sounds much like ringing bells.

Fireworks scattered and the colliding force had nowhere to go but up into the sky.

Amid the lingering light of the attacks, the small black dragons’ optical camouflage concept deactivated. They could no longer afford to use any output on that.

They sank down against the attacks from the north and thus from their right and they prepared themselves to fight.

An instant later, they had taken the stance to fire their secondary cannons and swipe with their claws.

But that was when all of those who had approached for close-range attacks took the exact same action: they ducked down.

The small black dragons saw that the firing unit was already preparing to fire again from the forest to their right.

Two girls in white armored uniforms stood in the center of that firing unit. The one with short hair held a white cannon that resembled a spear and the one with long hair rested a cannon almost the size of her body on her shoulder.

“Gather your will power!!”

They fired.

The two blasts rivalled a dragon cannon and they were joined by the rest of the firing unit’s attacks.

“Begin the primary attack!!”

By the time that was over, the boy in command gave a shout and a powerful attack came from the sky.

It took the form of a several dragons a few giants.

There were two giants: a black one and a red one. The black one wielded a sword in both arms while the red one had no shoulders and instead raised six swords. The dragons descending around them were all blue.

They fell directly toward the small black mechanical dragons that had lost control as they tilted to the left.

Giant blades were swung down and the lights of dragon cannons were fired straight down.

The six black dragons cried out and a great rumbling filled the air.

But within it all, the boy in command did not even look to the enemy.

He alone was not looking at the enemy before his eyes.

He instead turned east as an old man ran up behind him.

“M-Mikoto-kun! Deceiving the elderly is wrong! Are you even listening!?”

“I am not, so do not worry.”

The boy even ignored the explosions, light, and wind of the battle as he looked east.

“The second wave is coming!” His voice cut through the others’ cheers. “Sibyl-kun! How close is Black Sun!?”

“Testament.”

A girl with a peaceful expression stepped from the forest with a cell phone between her head and shoulder and a laptop on one hand.

“Black Sun is currently travelling above Haijima and he will arrive in another twenty minutes,” she said. “Also, Sayama-sama, the mechanical dragon of unknown affiliation I reported on earlier is eliminating Black Sun’s child craft while approaching Tachikawa.”

“Unknown affiliation, you say? Let me take care of that.”

He pulled out his cellphone and pressed a button. After a moment, a voice came from it.

“Who is this!? I’m kind of busy right now!”

“I will try to make this as polite as I can, but may I ask a question, you bastard? Japan or America? Choose one.”

“Japan of course! That’s where I live!”

The call suddenly ended and Sayama muttered “what an impatient person” before addressing Sibyl.

“The affiliation of the mechanical dragon is up to Heo Thunderson, but her protector seems to side with Japan.”

“W-wait! I cannot approve of that argument!”

A middle-aged foreigner in glasses cut through the group of blue armored uniforms, but Sayama spoke back to him.

“It is all up to her, Roger-kun. But…” He gave an exasperated sigh. “I cannot believe she would choose to fight when she can simply quit. This will only wear her out.”

Despite his words, he had a smile on his lips as he looked back up into the eastern sky.

A small disturbance of air could be seen along with the lights of Tokyo.

That was the enemy’s second wave and Sayama slowly raised his left hand while staring at it.

“Everyone.”

A total of eight disturbances could be seen in the eastern sky.

Everyone there prepared for a fight when they saw them, but Sayama spoke calmly as he stood in front of them all.

“Listen, everyone. The conclusion awaits.”

They all quietly nodded and Sayama continued with his back to that motion and sound.

“We have seen the past and solved the mysteries of the present. And now a girl who represents our world is making her way between a human who has forget he is human and a machine that has forget himself.” He took a breath. “So what is it we should do? Protect her? Cry for the dragon who cared for his people enough to become a villain? Or simply watch over this battle? What do you say!?”

He turned around and all of the white, blue, and others gave their answers.

They all stomped one foot into the ground and shook their heads.

Someone gave their answer.

“We are the power to end all conflict.”

“We are the spirit to brighten all futures.”

“We are those who learn of all grudges yet continue forward.”

“Yes,” replied Sayama.

He looked to Shinjou, Kazami, Izumo, the combined form of Hiba and Mikage, and to all the others with great power and spirit.

“I am the one who does not hesitate to advance into any and all ill will!”

Meaning…

“Let me say it here: the surname Sayama indicates a villain! And let me say this as well: we will save this caring villain and arrive in the same place as that girl and the others!”

They all nodded and Sayama continued.

“Our duty here is to protect her and drag all the lost memories back into reality!” he shouted. “Listen, everyone. Light the beacon of the showdown and teach this caring villain that this battle is not for those that were lost! Teach him it is for those who will move forward and gain more from here on! Hit him with your fireworks to teach him that we are the bearers of reality and that everything has not come to a stop!! Now, everyone!”

He took a breath.

“Where is your answer!?”

“Testament!!”

Both those that were human and those that were not replied with that binding word.

And Sayama used that as a stepping stone for his next loud words. He swung down his left arm and looked to the disturbances of air approaching in the eastern sky.

“Go ahead!!”

Thunder Fellow flew toward the sky above the north entrance of Tachikawa Station.

The station building stood eight stories from the surface and stretched from east to west.

The north entrance had a large bus roundabout with a terrace and those were surrounded by the city’s buildings.

When arriving from Kunitachi to the east, the only paths away were the roads stretching north and west from the roundabout.

The northern road had four lanes, but the ninety degree right turn would be impossible at their speed.

The western road continued straight on, but it was a narrow road with only two lanes. Also, the multi-tenant buildings lining that road on either side created a canyon, but the canyon gently curved to the northwest which prevented them from seeing what lay ahead.

Flying along the roads in front of Tachikawa Station’s north entrance would mean taking that unknown western route, but Thunder Fellow did so regardless.

He had decided that travelling through the buildings would make them harder to detect from the air. And if the enemy did not aimlessly overlook them, this would give them more chances to fight back.

Lastly, Harakawa was the pilot and he of course knew the streets of Tachikawa.

That was why Heo left the decision in Harakawa’s hands and Thunder Fellow accepted her eagerness.

The blue and white mechanical dragon used all of its current power to soar toward the roundabout north of the station.

Its great speed naturally created a shockwave. The side of the parking deck attached to the eastern end of the station was blown away and the panels making up its walls flew through the air.

The windows of the opposite multi-tenant building burst from a strike to the side and the glass shards and tenants’ counters and chairs were blasted into the air.

As Thunder Fellow continued past all that, three small mechanical dragons caught up overhead. They took steep dives to make up for their unsufficient acceleration using the speed of their fall and they tried to shoot the blue and white dragon’s back.

However, Thunder Fellow avoided the black light by moving further down.

He was approaching the large terrace covering the roundabout.

He was only about forty meters to the north entrance and terrace, which would take approximately 0.1 seconds to travel at the speed of sound.

The leading two black dragons moved toward each other, tilted a bit so their undersides faced each other, and chose to pass over the terrace.

Thunder Fellow, on the other hand, could only continue straight due to the enemy up above. The last black dragon calmly remained behind to finish him off and dragon cannon light began to gather in its mouth.

His blue and white body was about to crash into the side of the terrace, but just before he did, he lowered even further.

He chose the path below the five meter ceiling of the terrace.

He folded up his tail that functioned like an airplane’s tail, pulled up his legs that were used for landing, and launched himself into the darkness below the terrace.

The wind roared and the pursuing dragon missed its time to ascend.

The black dragon collided with the terrace and embedded itself deep in the metal floor.

The intense sound of impact shook the air and the inertial force lifted the terrace a little.

“!”

Ultimately, the black dragon’s body was sliced in two.

The crushed top and bottom halves of its body shot above and below the terrace and its various components and oil were thrown into the air.

The two small dragons pursuing from above the terrace did not turn around.

In only an instant, black light wrapped around the secondary cannons at the base of their front legs. They moved to either side of the pillar in the center of the terrace and they tilted away from each other to view what lay below.

They intended to attack the blue and white dragon the instant it left the terrace.

And after what felt like only a few moments even to their mechanical dragon senses, the time came.

Something flew out from below the west side of the terrace and the two small black dragons fired their secondary cannons on it from either side.

As they continued to fly toward the narrow western road, they watched the destruction of their target.

They both scored direct hits.

Four blasts of black light instantly exploded as if letting out a scream. The explosion struck the ground, bounced back up, and launched their target high into the sky.

The black dragons confirmed its destruction.

But at the same time, they realized they had fired on the wreckage of their comrade.

It was the bottom half of the small black dragon that had been bisected by the terrace.

“…!?”

The blue and white dragon had sent the wreckage ahead of him below the terrace. He had likely thrown it with his gravitational control.

The small dragons momentarily stopped once they realized the truth and that was when something shot out down below them.

It was the blue and white dragon.

Thunder Fellow had drawn his swords. He flew as if running through empty air and let loose his acceleration while piercing the small dragon on the left as if using iai.

The two swords broke through both lungs of the small dragon that was even larger than him.

And he did not stop here.

He accelerated with his enemy still held in place by the swords.

Both of them had tilted ninety degrees to the left, but Thunder Fellow let his acceleration do the talking and chose to exit the roundabout from the west while carrying the black dragon with him.

That took him to the canyon of buildings, but he did not care.

He brought himself and the captured dragon toward the southern buildings, staring with the Daiichi department store next to the station building. He moved in at a shallow diagonal angle that would scrape against the front of the building.

He collided and the expected sound of destruction reverberated along the road.

The manmade stone and glass making up the building greeted the dragon with the sound of everything scattering. The contents of the large bookstore, model shop, and other tenants were thrown into the air, but the dragon maintained his speed with more acceleration and the force of his inertia.

“—————!!”

Thunder Fellow used the forty meter black mechanical dragon as a surfboard to slip across the side of the buildings. The gentle corner taking the canyon of buildings to the northwest acted like a rising jump for him. He ignited his afterburners and rode the wave of destruction with the screams of the surfboard as his background music.

The one surviving black dragon fired as it approached the corridor, but it was too late. Most of its shots hit the wreckage of the buildings or the black dragon being used as a surfboard.

Thunder Fellow continued to ride the largest wave of destruction of that long autumn night and of the entire year.

But soon, a temporary break in the buildings arrived. He was approaching an intersection.

To jump over that gap, he withdrew his swords.

“!”

And he kicked off the surfboard and into the air.

The black board had already been mostly destroyed by its comrade’s attacks, but as soon as it shot out into the quick gap of the intersection, it crashed into the building on the other side.

After a rumble filled with the sound of shattering glass, the small black dragon exploded.

And that was all.

Thunder Fellow had already jumped to the center of the corridor using his kick off the dragon.

That sharply angled jump brought him to the side of the last black dragon that had accelerated to catch up.

And he had not put away his swords.

The two light swords easily sliced the black armor in two.

He had won, but in that instant, he quickly broke away from the black mechanical dragon.

An instant later, black light pierced into the back of that dragon and out the front.

The instantaneous explosive blast pushed Thunder Fellow onwards and he saw a formation of black dragons pursuing him from behind.

“…”

He accelerated while emitting a groaning sound that resembled grinding one’s teeth.

More attacks arrived from behind and he began to hear the windy sound of the enemy’s approach.

The sounds and attacks of a literal army slowly grew closer, but…

“Go.”

A voice reached him from the roof of the multi-tenant building at the end of the corridor of buildings.

The hoarse voice spoke in English.

Thunder Fellow looked forward without letting up on his speed. The buildings came to an end and two people stood on the roof of the one building that acted as an entrance to the vast sky.

One was a woman holding a paper broom and the other was a slender old man in a suit.

Odor removed his suit coat on the windy roof.

The battle had left the coat in tatters and the bandages around his arms were mostly gone.

He kept his annoyance over losing those bandages from showing on his face as he spoke.

“Go. Go, Heo Thunderson. This is our battlefield.”

He looked past the blue and white mechanical dragon and to the pursuing black dragons.

The blue and white one quickly approached and Odor felt a thought reach him in the instant it passed by overhead.

“Thank you.”

He nodded at the girl’s thoughts.

But the thoughts left behind a question as the dragon began to leave.

“But why?”

“That is simple. That is simple, Heo Thunderson.”

He answered the dragon that had already left and thus could no longer hear him.

He threw aside his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves to reveal his arms sans bandages. The arms were covered in countless scars.

As the passing wind struck the building, he raised his bare left arm.

It was of course scarred and the scars were all from scrapes and abrasions made by someone else.

But that was not all. Diana’s eyes opened wide when she saw something else.

“Honey, what is that?”

He had some special scars on his left arm.

These were from cuts deep enough to reach the muscle. They were clearly whiter and glossier than the others and they protruded from the rest of his skin more as well.

Most notably, these scars formed letters and Diana read them in the wind.

“Richard.”

“That is my real name. That is the real name of the odor. I was constantly called an odor and constantly scarred in the place that took me in, but I gave myself these scars above all the others so that I could trust in my own name,” he said. “Richard. Richard Davis. My father named me after his friend. And now, a girl who carries my father’s blood and has inherited everything from that friend desires help in her fight.”

He turned east toward the approaching black army before continuing.

“Diana. Diana Zonburg. Can I ask one thing?”

“What is it?”

She gave a sigh containing a hint of relief and he spoke with his back turned.

“Our marriage. Let us revoke our marriage. Now that I have spoken the truth I never revealed even to Richard Thunderson, I will accept that girl. I had thought Odor was past having any family, but now…”

“You have a relative to watch over your death instead of me?”

“Yes. Yes, Diana. So we will now part ways and-…”

He stopped when Diana stepped up next to him.

“Unfortunately, that is not possible. I simply can’t help with something that would make that girl sad.”

She formed the largest smile she could.

“And how can I leave you now that I’ve seen such a cute side of you?”

He said nothing in response. He simply raised his left arm and prepared his fingers.

“I did not want to use this! I did not want to use this because it is terribly exhausting!”

He snapped his fingers toward the black dragons flying over a kilometer away.

Heo felt an earthquake.

She wondered how that was possible while in the air and she realized the shaking reverberation came from behind her.

She looked behind with the rear sight devices and saw something unexpected. The city of Tachikawa they had just flown through seemed to have grown quite a bit shorter than when she had seen it before.

…''Was that…?

She understood what this meant. The station area had been so bright before, but all that artificial light was gone and they were replaced by sparks and explosive flames in the surrounding sky.

“Thank you.”

“Thanking people is important, Heo Thunderson, but looking where you’re going is also important.”

''Eh?'' she thought as she looked up.

The ground flowing by down below was the railroad stretching west from Tachikawa Station. It was no longer an elevated railroad and it ran straight through a residential district.

When she looked far above that railroad, she saw something else.

“What is that?”

It was a giant black shape so large that it almost looked like a storm cloud.

“Thunder Fellow, what is that?”

“I am sorry. I do not know. But…”

“But it’s our enemy, right? An enemy who was kind and had many friends but who was led to sadness by those very facts,” said Harakawa. “Our ‘enemy’, hm? To be honest, a mere student really shouldn’t be saying something like that. But Heo Thunderson and Thunder Fellow, I don’t think this is anything special.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way I see it, there’s a world where this kind of thing is as normal as breathing. It may be on a whole different level from the small battles in my everyday life, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a small thing on the level of breathing.”

“Harakawa.”

Heo narrowed her mental eyes. Hearing him speak from the heart for once made her smile.

“Then let’s go and breathe, Harakawa. Fortunately, there’s one thing I was taught a long time ago.”

“And what’s that?”

“How to breathe when running.”

Surely…

“I think Black Sun will be my very first rival in reaching the goal line.”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_32|Chapter 32]]
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_34|Chapter 34]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 31

2014-10-02T19:05:30Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 31: The Human Dragon’s Will */

==Chapter 31: The Human Dragon’s Will==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0331.png|thumb]]
''Say goodbye

''Split apart

''And understand

Harakawa heard someone crying.

It was the quiet sound of someone sobbing while desperately trying to stay quiet.

As that voice reached his mind, Harakawa wondered why he was hearing it.

His thoughts asked to playback his memories and that brought his other senses rushing back.

He had apparently passed out.

…''Twice in one day. That’s pretty sad.

He opened his eyes, but he was surrounded by the color black and wondered if he had gone blind.

From what he remembered, he and Heo had been riding an invisible dragon which had instinctually faced the enemy while saying it did not understand anything.

…''And it was shot down.

He thought they had only avoided the black dragon’s final attack because Heo had woken. When she had given her cry of rejection, their dragon had hesitated.

And that hesitation had avoided a direct hit. Still, they had been knocked away and their excess flight speed had taken them eastward.

“And we fell in the ocean. So is this the ocean floor?”

He then felt something move on his chest. It was Heo and she was clinging to his T-shirt.

“Hey, Heo Thunderson. Please don’t drool on my clothes.”

“I-I didn’t do that.”

She tried to sound defiant, but her voice shook. She apparently tried to get up, but she also apparently did not have it in her to leave his arms.

He was definitely sitting in something. The seat had him almost lying down and it felt like the one’s he had seen in the base’s F-16s. When he stretched out his legs, he could feel them reach the bottom of something like a table.

He turned his head to either side. His vision was still filled with darkness, but his eyes seemed to have adjusted because he could sense a bit of light.

“…?”

He removed his right arm from Heo and reached toward the light source. He found a soft cloth material.

“Ah, w-wait Harakawa! Just because it’s dark d-d-d-d-doesn’t mean-…!”

“Stop getting worked up over misunderstandings, Heo Thunderson. Now, about your necklace…”

The faint light was enough to see Heo raise her head in confusion.

The stone necklace she wore was wrapped in light. Blue light.

“This thing isn’t radioactive, is it?”

“I-It can’t be. My mom wouldn’t leave me something dangerous.”

“It is a philosopher’s stone,” said a voice.

Harakawa recognized it as the dragon’s voice and he looked around.

“A philosopher’s stone? …No, that doesn’t matter. Where are you?”

“I am here, but I am not with you. That is all I know.”

With that, the voice fell silent as if this was not its place.

Even after the span of a few breaths, the voice did not continue. Whether relieved or worried by that, Heo tilted her head.

“U-um, what was that voice?”

“Your savior apparently. It has no name, but it’s a dragon. Crazy, isn’t it?”

It was too dark to see each other’s expressions, but he still wondered what look was on his face.

“This invisible dragon saved you when those guys in blue attacked this afternoon and when you fell from the transport plane just now.”

“Um,” began Heo while further tilting her head. “Harakawa, did you hit your head?”

“Can you really say that after all the nonsense you asked me to believe, Heo Thunderson?”

“B-but it was only a demon that was with me. There wasn’t an attacking dragon and a saving dragon. Why did we start talking about an invisible dragon? And does that mean the darkness around us is the bottom of the ocean we can see through the dragon’s body?”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of. You remember falling, don’t you? Well, look around you. We’re most likely in the cockpit of a completely invisible dragon. Right now, we’re at the bottom of the ocean just like you said. Or if we’re unlucky, this might be Tokyo Bay’s famous toxic sludge.”

“Th-then if this really is a dragon…and it really is with me to save me…”

He could feel the movement of her chest as she gulped a bit.

“Was it this dragon that killed my mom?”

''It couldn’t have been,'' thought Harakawa.

Thinking back on its two appearances today, the dragon had always appeared to save Heo. And in the sky, it had thanked him for protecting her twice. That had likely been because he had protected her before the dragon could.

But the dragon gave a different answer to her question.

“It was.”

As the voice quietly filled the cockpit, Harakawa froze in place and Heo shrank down.

She took a new breath and prepared to say something, but Harakawa asked a question before she could.

“Is that really true?”

“It is.”

His question and the dragon’s response stopped Heo. The strength gathered in her body grew to a tremor.

“…”

Something was about to burst from her, but just before it did, the dragon spoke.

“I contain reproduced 5th-Gear concepts. He was evolving and repairing himself, but he sensed that faint signal and pursued it. That was when I first awoke, but…”

There was a slight pause.

“I did not make it in time. By the time I appeared and drove away Black Sun who did not know what he was, Heo’s mother had already passed away. …That is the same as killing her. She was attacked by an enemy pursuing me and I did not save her in time.”

“But…”

Harakawa could tell Heo had lowered her head.

He decided to let her speak because he thought this at least was necessary.

“But…that can’t be. You mean…without you, my mom wouldn’t have died?”

There was no need to ask. It was true. That was why the dragon was apologizing and making no attempt to excuse it.

She then pressed her forehead against his chest.

“No…”

Her trembling body breathed in again and opened its mouth.

“Please leave. You don’t have to come save me, so please leave! You’re a machine, aren’t you? Then throw a switch and leave! Besides, how can you even save me!? You couldn’t stand up to that black dragon just now! That’s why my mom died, so…so…!”

She let out a shout.

“Give it back…”

Her voice fell apart. It lacked the strength and volume from before and it was filled with uncertain trembling.

“Please give it back. You don’t have to save me, so please give it back.”

''I definitely don’t have to ask what “it” is,'' sighed Harakawa.

The answer was “everything”.

And then the dragon replied.

“I am sorry. …I do not know.”

“You don’t know what?” slowly asked Heo. She raised her head as if speaking to Harakawa. “What are you saying you don’t know, you machine that lets people be killed?”

“My role. I exist and have functions, but I need a name to recognize my existence and to give me an objective. Without that, I cannot use my functions toward that objective.”

Harakawa spoke to the voice and tapped Heo’s back to give himself time to speak.

“You didn’t have a name when you were made?”

“I have records indicating I once had one, but I cannot speak that name. That name belonged to what I once was, but I have remade my former self.”

“So all you can use are functions brought by the slight remnants of memory from when you remade yourself?”

…''Is that why he says he knows but does not know?

All of his memories were classified as someone else’s. His appearance to save Heo must have been a sort of instinct that had permeated his being while being remade.

Harakawa prepared to ask if he truly intended to protect Heo, but someone else spoke before he had a chance.

It was Heo.

“Of course you have a name.”

She forcefully sat up by removing Harakawa’s arms and raising her upper body.

“It’s ‘demon’, isn’t it?”

''I’m glad it’s so dark,'' thought Harakawa when he heard that. ''This way I don’t have to see the look on her face.

“So my name is Demon?”

“Yes. I…I am giving you that name, so please leave and never show yourself to me again! If the demon is gone-…”

“Heo.”

She stopped when he called her name. In the pale blue light on her chest, her silhouette curved up like a cat and Harakawa spoke while looking at that shadow.

“Are you listening, Heo Thunderson?”

“Y-yes…”

Her voice fell and some of its energy vanished. Relieved by that, Harakawa tried to keep as much emotion out of his voice as possible.

“Unfortunately, this is not the demon.”

“B-but…!”

“The demon that killed your mother is something else. This one only showed up a little late.”

He heard a gasp and felt a tremble of shock from the butt that sat on his stomach.

“Listen,” he said. “Unfortunately, Heo Thunderson, his objective is to protect you. Not to protect your mother. And another thing, Heo Thunderson. Your mother tried to save you, but failed and died. That is why he appeared. The demon was attacking you, so he had to make sure it did not kill you.”

“Th-then…”

“Enough of that. Think ahead before you speak, Heo. Now listen. You are blaming this dragon for you mother’s death, but what if you turn that idea around? Your mother died because she tried to protect you. If she had left it to this dragon…no, because he did not make it in time…”

He hesitated, but he said it.

“If your mother had left you to be killed by the demon, she would not have been killed.”

He continued to speak and felt he was almost telling himself this.

“Heo, what would you do even if he did give everything back? After all, once your mother died, you were the one that chose to be demon possessed. You did not try to deny it and you only chose to run away. Wouldn’t something similar have happened even if your mother was with you? While that was the beginning of your unhappiness, you are the one that chose to continue on in that unhappiness without rejecting it. Am I wrong, Heo Thunderson?”

After he said that, all motion vanished.

After a while, he heard a breath, but he was unsure if it was his own or Heo’s. That was just how focused he was on the faint silhouette in front of him.

The few seconds that passed felt much more dense and slow than usual.

“Why?”

“The answer is simple. I do not know, Heo Thunderson.”

He brought oxygen to his lungs while focusing.

“Isn’t it the same for you? You don’t know either, do you, Heo?”

“That’s not true. I finally heard the truth. I know why my mom died, I have someone to let my resentment out on, and I never want to see them again.”

“And do you think they’re completely in the wrong?”

“Of course I do.”

Harakawa said nothing. He simply sat up without making a noise and took another gentle action.

“Ah.”

He hugged Heo and his arms around her body told him a certain fact.

“Don’t lie, Heo Thunderson.”

“…”

Silence filled the cockpit until he heard sobbing from his chest.

“But…”

He heard her speak, but he silenced her by holding her even tighter.

…''You vaguely realize it, don’t you?

Even if she did not know about this dragon or the demon, she knew what path she was choosing.

She had chosen to reject it, but that very action of choosing had made her worried about the one-sided protection of the organization named UCAT.

''What a selfish girl,'' he thought. ''She doesn’t realize it herself and makes everyone around her deal with it.

Just as he realized she was like a cat, he smiled bitterly in his heart and tapped her back.

“Hey, can you tell me one thing? Why do you protect Heo? If it was your choice, then how did you meet her?” he asked. “If someone left you to her, that person is the one behind all this. Heo, do you remember anything? Was there some kind of ritual a long time ago?”

“Eh?”

Heo moved a bit. With her face pressed to his chest, she turned to the side and looked up at him.

He saw tears reflecting the blue light. As inexpressible thoughts filled him, he heard her quiet sobbing voice.

“There was nothing like that. Nothing more than my parents giving me the name Heo. …I can’t speak for when I was a baby, though.”

“Heo is correct,” said the dragon. “I have no memory of such a ritual. But…that is why I will open my memories. The memories of a me I do not know. I will show you those memories using the circuit allowing you to hear this voice.”

The dragon said one last thing.

“To use a word I know, this is a memory of a ‘promise’.”

Shinjou thought the pasts Baku showed her were a lot like dreams.

She felt like she had dozed off, but her eyes soon focused, she sensed light, and color filled her world.

Blue slowly filled her vision.

It was the sky.

It was a vast blue expanse filled with clouds, but there was one odd thing about it.

“There’s no land.”

She looked around in all 360 degrees, but everything was blue as far as the eye could see. The only land she saw was…

…''Floating islands?

Some objects floated here and there in the sky.

They literally were floating islands. Broken pieces of crust drifted through the sky like the wreckage of a larger piece of land.

Most of them were clumps of rock and it was difficult to tell their size with nothing else in the sky to compare them to.

She moved her vision closer and found one was a narrow slab of dark stone that measured a kilometer long. Clumps of plants with triangular leaves were attached to the top of the slab.

…''This is 5th-Gear, isn’t it?

Shinjou suddenly found a manmade object.

…''A building?

Gray and green land floated in the sky about a hundred meters below her.

It was around a hundred meters across, the gray was artificial pavement, and a similarly colored square building was located on top of it. The area behind the building was filled with bluish-green plants with long, narrow leaves.

Among them, she saw a certain shape and colors.

The shape was a dragon and the colors were blue and white.

“Xolotl 3.”

She saw someone pushing through the dense foliage in front of the mechanical dragon.

The person wore something like a scuba tank on his back and a half-face helmet on his head.

“That’s Thunderson-san, isn’t it?”

His breath was visibly white around him and the speed at which the breaths scattered suggested a strong wind. However, the scattering breaths spun around as if hitting a wall a meter away from him.

Gravitational control or something similar must have been protecting him from the air pressure and wind.

After some hesitation, Shinjou waited until the proper timing and had her vision jump down.

Her mind fell for only an instant and she landed on the lower surface with no sound or sensation of impact.

It was a gray and smooth paved road. It had a curb and the edges had a slightly raised area much like a sidewalk.

''This must have been a world that thought about people’s safety,'' she thought.

She moved her vision forward and found what looked like a house.

It was a short, square building. It was about twenty meters across on each side, three meters tall, and windowless. However, it had round fist-sized lenses on a few spots on the walls.

The entrance was located a level lower. There was a slope at the front of the building that led to a rectangular seam on the wall at what was likely the basement.

…''It’s like a shelter.

After that thought, she heard someone breathing. Someone was catching their breath to her right and on the other side of the building.

It was Thunderson, the man wearing the tank.

“Xolotl 3, I’ve made it to the front.”

Xolotl 3’s voice came from near the man’s shoulder.

“I am sorry, Thunderson. If I went, I would likely destroy it.”

“It’s fine. This is part of the investigation process. …And you’re curious about this building, right?”

“Yes, in your manner of speaking, I am ‘curious’. In my manner of speaking, I feel it is worth investigating. There might be a weapon or something else there which is sending out a faint signal. Ever since I was born in these skies, I have been ‘curious’ about it, but I am too large to enter.”

“That’s a dangerous kind of curiosity. But Xolotl 3, are you sure I should be going in here?”

“You have my spare sensory device attached to your shoulder, so I will see whatever you see and hear whatever you hear. …So please enter. I am curious. I was born as a machine, so why am I curious about the ground and why have I always come to rest here between battles for thousands of years?”

“I see,” said Thunderson before hesitating.

But he soon grabbed the meter hanging from the tank on his back.

“I’m going in. But our translation concept is weak, so tell me if anything is labelled as dangerous.”

His look of resolve was turned straight forward and he made his way down the slope to the basement entrance.

His footing was confident and the sound of his military boots soon arrived at the entrance.

The door was two meters tall and three meters wide.

“I see our standards are the same. I’m opening it.”

The door opened by dropping down.

''Huh?'' thought Shinjou as he looked at the upper edge of the door. A space opened along the width of the fallen door, but the bottom of new type of door panel soon replaced it from the other side. She could tell the metal was somewhat flexible, but she did not know how it worked.

Wind blew in front of her. The difference in air pressure at such a high altitude caused the air inside to burst out.

Most of it was dust. Dirty brown smoke mixed in with the wind and danced about and a torn paper-like fiber followed.

“That isn’t good. This could destroy the whole thing.”

Thunderson rushed into the door and Shinjou did so as well.

She heard the door close behind her as she followed the man inside the building.

The entranceway was a three square meter space.

The walls themselves emitted pale beige light. The hallway floor was black, but the spots the man stepped on glowed bluish-white and that glow spread in ripples shaped like his footprints.

The hallway continued both right and left, but Thunderson checked right first.

“Can you see this, Xolotl 3? The right side has been destroyed.”

The right half of the hallway had melted. No, it had technically not melted.

“It looks like the metal lost control. It must have broken at an early stage of the destruction and just melted into a clump.”

The metal forming the hallway’s walls was crushed as if someone had slammed a bar into it from the left wall.

The gaps in the collapsed walls gave a glimpse of the piles of objects from the rooms bordering the hallway. Some of the objects appeared to be made of wood, but whatever had covered their surface had crumbled like sand.

It had all been worn away by the passage of time.

“There is nothing to see there. Go left, Thunderson.”

“Sure,” replied the man.

The left end of the hallway had also collapsed, but he headed for the one intact door.

Shinjou realized something from the softness of the lighting coming from the walls.

…''This was a home. There weren’t any weapons here.

She then noticed Thunderson had vanished.

The door down the hallway was open, so he had entered that final room and left her alone.

She was belatedly hesitant to enter someone’s private room. She was unsure it was appropriate for someone who had only ever lived at UCAT and a student dorm.

But that thought was blown away by the beige light shining from beyond the door.

She relied on the illusion that the light was warming her nonexistent body and she set foot in the room.

“Ah…”

The room was almost ten square meters. Thunderson stood in the center and the gray dust on the floor was up to his ankles. The room was unfurnished, but the dusty walls had lines on it as if objects could be pulled out from them.

The room looked empty, but it did contain something.

The gray dust on the floor revealed a shape there.

…''A cushion?

There was a shallow rectangular bulge on the floor. It rose further on one end as if to lay one’s head on and there were dividing lines on the wall at the end. The lines were in the perfect place to look at while lying on the floor.

…''Was something like a TV kept in the wall there?

Shinjou thought about whoever had lived here.

A book or a device with similar functionality had likely been within arm’s reach. This was near the kitchen, so they would have been able to keep snacks and drinks around.

She saw a few other bulges in the dust covering the room.

Thousands of years had passed in 5th-Gear since Black Sun had destroyed the land and the people had been destroyed. This house seemed to have retained some atmosphere, but the resident or residents would have been long dead.

However, Shinjou suddenly remembered what Sayama had said just before she had been shown the past.

…''There are still questions about the fall of the 5th-Gear’s people?

She wondered what those could be, but the scene around her gave no answers.

The dust looked like gray snow and it only revealed the past through the weathered wreckage hidden below.

She then saw Thunderson pick something up from the dust.

It looked like a B5-size glass panel.

But it was actually a piece of paper encased in a clear sheet that resembled glass.

The paper contained color. The colors were those of reality. Or rather, the colors of a photograph depicting reality.

“…”

The photograph showed a girl, a man, and a woman.

They looked human. Their skin was very nearly white and their slenderness seemed to be their primary characteristic. Overall, they resembled the long-lived race.

Shinjou thought the girl standing in front looked fourteen or fifteen. The identical blonde hair on all three suggested the girl was the daughter of the man and woman behind her. Blue eyes with a hint of green smiled in the center of the photograph.

Thunderson moved his fingers to brush the dust from the photograph.

“Xolotl 3. Do you know who these people are?”

“No, I do not.”

“Then do you know why you are so curious about this place?”

“No, I do not. But,” said Xolotl 3. “To use your manner of speaking, this is a ‘calming’ place.”

That comment was followed by a sudden noise.

It came from the wall. The dividing lines Shinjou had seen before extended outward and lit up.

It became a screen.

…''Is this…?

The screen displayed the same man standing in the photograph. What looked like a factory was visible behind him. It was a large factory that seemed to extend forever and countless machines were moving about. Mechanical arms were carrying drive wheels and metal frames that looked like pieces of a giant skeleton. Other machines were welding them together.

With that in the background, the man used his blue clothes to wipe a black liquid from his hands.

“Sorry that————the periodic letter. It’s just been———————.”

The sound and video would skip. Instead of filling with static, the video partially blacked out and then the scene changed. It was still in the same factory, but the background was different. A transportation pallet was now visible and Shinjou recognized what it carried.

…''Xolotl 3?

“This is the experimental——————the separation isn’t going well. In addition to the pilot, someone else must combine with it, but their body and memories—————and can’t be recovered. The other units are similarly————————, but once this is complete, —————help Black Sun that you love so much. Once he and White Creation are protecting our world together, we can rest—————”

The video skipped again, but the location did not change. The man and his fellow workers stood in front of a mechanical dragon that looked a lot like Xolotl 3, but was not quite the same. All of them looked exhausted, none of them had shaved recently, and their clothes were filthy, but they were all smiling. Some were even waving at the camera.

But the image suddenly changed and Shinjou’s confused mind was shown something else.

The factory was being destroyed. As the ceiling collapsed and sparks flew everywhere, the same glasses-wearing man stared into the screen with a tense look on his face.

“Can you————? We were hit by a chemical———————. It was a concept bomb————————by 9th. —————headed to your planet too.”

Before Shinjou could wonder what was going on, an alarm sounded in the footage and the man closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry. Black Sun is undergoing maintenance, but——————asked him to take care of everything. If all of you are suffering, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it in time———————the planet. —————sure it will trouble Black Sun, so————”

The man opened his eyes and looked directly into the screen.

“Do what you can until the last moment. —————and tell Black Sun to find happiness.”

That was all. The video ended and the screen went dark.

And as black filled the screen, Shinjou took a dazed breath.

That had given the truth behind Black Sun’s destruction of 5th-Gear.

…''Does that mean…!?

“Could Black Sun not stand seeing the people suffer and die from another Gear’s chemical weapon, so he went out of control and destroyed them himself!? All to keep them from suffering!? And did he come up with his own reason for doing it because he didn’t want responsibility to lie with the people who asked him to do it!?”

But…

“Did a few people combine with the incomplete mechanical dragons to survive the chemical weapon?”

When they did, they lost their memories and began to battle the rampaging Black Sun.

And it was all because they had cared for each other and yet lost everything.

Shinjou then saw Thunderson look away from the black screen and open his mouth.

“Hey.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember when you were born?”

“No,” replied Xolotl 3. “But I do remember it was very ‘sad’. I opened my communications and heard what my fellow mechanical dragons had to say and they were the same. It was a reaction to losing some kind of support and losing any objective.”

“Then, Xolotl 3… Who are you?”

“I am Xolotl 3.”

“Then tell me this, Xolotl 3. How is this read?”

He looked down at the photograph in the glass panel he held.

Something was written on it. Shinjou could read the meaning of the characters written in something like bluish-black pen, but she did not know what sound the writing represented.

But she heard Xolotl 3’s answer.

“It is a name. The first word means “to” and the following word is the name of the girl in the photograph.”

“And that name is?”

“In the sounds of your world it would be ‘Heo’,” explained Xolotl 3. “It means ‘happiness’.”

As Shinjou’s nonexistent body stiffened, Xolotl 3’s voice continued.

“Why are you crying, Thunderson of the family of thunder.”

“Because I understand now,” he said. “You are human, Xolotl 3. Even if you do not understand, this girl and I do. This girl who was meant to have happiness understands and so do I. And about Black Sun…was he your friend?”

“Then…let us decide.”

Thunderson frowned.

“Decide what?”

“We will continue on and settle things with Black Sun. He will likely flee to your world as usual, but repeating that process will only wear us down.”

So…

“We will pursue Black Sun and then our entire army, White Creation included, will settle this in your world.”

Thunderson’s shoulders shook and he spoke to the camera-shaped sensory device on his right shoulder.

“With the Concept Core gone, 5th-Gear will be destroyed while you do that!”

He placed the photograph on the floor, gave a quick nod toward the three people in the photograph, and left the room. And he did so at a run.

He reached the entranceway, opened the door, and left the house.

The blue sky was now visible beyond the slope up from the basement.

A swarm of dragons had appeared. Shinjou saw mechanical dragons filling that blue sky. A white one measuring over three hundred meters long was in the center with hundreds of miscellaneously colored dragons flying around it.

Wind blew with a refreshing sound.

She then heard a voice from the giant six-winged white dragon overhead.

“One with the name of the family of thunder, will you fight with us?”

“Why… Why are you asking me that?”

“We are made to fear and prevent the destruction of 5th-Gear, so we cannot pursue Black Sun when he leaves 5th-Gear. That is why we wish for orders. As machines, we wish for a human to control us.”

The white dragon was likely White Creation. He slowly lowered his head and the dragons floating around him did the same.

“I am a machine, but you referred to my fellow dragons as human. You called them humans who have chosen to forget that they are human. …And you are a human that has not forgotten that he is a human.”

“…”

“I want to give you full authority over 5th-Gear and I want your help in defeating Black Sun.”

“Why?”

“I believe I have already stated why I chose you.”

“No,” said Thunderson before his visibly white breathing stopped.

After a moment, he took a step up the slope to widen his vision.

“Why are you fighting? This will destroy your Gear.”

“I was given a single command from my original creator,” said White Creation while the dragons lowered their heads as if nodding. “I am to guide the people to happiness. What we cannot stand more than losing our own peace is to see people’s happiness destroyed, no matter where those people might be. That is why we will destroy Black Sun. We will destroy our foolish and yet kind brother who destroyed our people and our world because he could not stand seeing them suffer.”

“That’s quite a pushy sort of happiness,” said Thunderson while slowly looking across the heavens and the earth that floated in the sky. “And you’re asking me to become a villain for that? I have to be the villain who ordered the destruction of this world?”

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and gave one last resigned comment.

“So the time for my resolve has come.”

After hearing that, Shinjou felt a sudden floating sensation.

She was waking from the past and slowly returning to the present and to reality.

Heo was curled up in the arms that supported her in the darkness.

Her senses shifted from the past she had seen like a dream and back to reality.

She felt the pulse, breathing, and heat of Harakawa who she was pressed up against.

“Is that what my name means?”

“I do not know,” replied the dragon. “But my previous self fought along with the one he chose as his pilot and scored a fatal wound on the enemy, but I too was destroyed and unable to fully defeat that enemy. The enemy fled to the ocean to prepare for a future rematch and it seems we wished to combine with a single weapon along with White Creation. That being the Vesper Cannon that I once possessed.”

Showing those memories may have established some connections within him because he continued to speak.

“And at that time, White Creation chose me as the bearer of the weapon they became. I was to completely remake my destroyed body and rest until I was needed.”

Hearing that, Heo opened her mouth and wondered how loud her voice would sound in this dark stillness.

“And why did you help me?”

“I believe it was a promise. When falling into my personal concept space, my former self made a promise with my pilot. If a child needing protection was born to the family of thunder, that child was to be given full authority over 5th-Gear and the name of happiness.”

She listened to the voice.

“As the protector of 5th-Gear’s happiness, I promised to protect that child as thanks to the one who cried for our people.”

She was left speechless, but strength gathered in Harakawa’s arms around her shoulders and back and she sank into that strength.

…''How can I find a way to reject this thing that caused what I called a demon?

But…

“I was given my name by my parents.”

She did not know why, but her parents had hoped she would be happy and that she would be protected.

…''Why did they make sure only I was protected when they were the ones that fought?

And it was hard to believe that Black Sun, that demon, had cared about people.

There was so much she wanted to say that she had difficulty sorting through it all.

And just as she tried to figure out what to do, she heard a new sound. An electronic tone rang loudly in the silent and dark space.

“A cellphone. That’s the one the treasurer gave me, isn’t it?”

Harakawa spoke, removed a hand from her back, and stuck it in his own pocket. From the movement of the air, she could tell he had placed a cellphone against his ear.

“Treasurer?”

“It is I. It seems Kanda has finally opened the communications line, so feel free to send your praise…to me.”

After a quiet electronic tone, the sound vanished. Harakawa had hung up and put the phone in his pocket.

“Looks like the bad dream isn’t over yet. I’m going back to sleep for a bit.”

“U-um, Harakawa. Was that the voice of that crazy person who came by yesterday?

As she asked that, the phone began to ring again and Harakawa gave an annoyed sigh.

“What is it, idiot?”

“Heh heh heh. Did you hear that, Shinjou-kun? Harakawa does not know his place.”

“Stop making things more confusing than they have to be, Sayama you idiot! Now what do you want?”

Heo strained her ears in the darkness and listened to the voice coming from the cellphone.

“Sorry, Harakawa, but I do not actually need you for anything. See, that is what you get. …However, I would like to speak with Heo Thunderson-kun who is with you.”

Heo looked up and felt like Harakawa was looking at her, so she tilted her head in confusion.

“Listen, Sayama,” said Harakawa from beyond the phone. “Heo said she has nothing to say to you and that you need to just go die.”

“I-I did not say that!”

“Oh, I am glad to see you are doing well. …Now listen, Heo Thunderson-kun.”

Heo listened to the boy named Sayama.

“We belong to the Japanese UCAT that functions separately from the American UCAT that is protecting you. And currently, I have demonstrated my greatness by gaining America’s approval to rescind that protection as compensation for my victory.”

She did not know what he meant by rescinding her protection.

“Eh?”

She gave voice to her confusion, but that did not stop the boy.

“Listen,” he began. “That means you will no longer be protected by America or anyone else if you do not wish for it. So live as you wish here in Japan, using the money and connections you possess. If you wish to return, either pay for the plane ticket yourself or flee to the embassy. Understand?”

“W-wait a minute.”

“Waiting will change nothing, but if you have something to say, I will listen. …What is it?”

Heo thought.

She tried to approach the phone to better make herself heard, but her forehead hit something hard. Harakawa had been thinking the same thing and held the phone out toward her.

“Ow, ow,” she said while holding her head, but she took the phone and gathered her thoughts. “U-um, well…”

She thought and pressed the cellphone against her ear.

“So my words will actually get through to you?”

“If they would not get through to me, they would not get through to anyone else in the world.”

“I detect a structural flaw in that logic,” commented the dragon.

Heo felt the dragon was exactly right, but she spoke regardless.

“Then why?”

“Let me ask you this instead. Why do you ask that?”

“Well…” she began.

“We are about to go fight what is likely the enemy that has pursued your past. …But it has nothing to do with you.”

“Wh-what? How can you say that?”

“Then why did you accept their protection that would take to a place wholly unrelated to this fight?”

He did not stop there.

“This is a negotiation. To be honest, I would like your help. If you have already had the basics explained to you, you understand what I mean by that, right?”

[[Image:OnC_v09_0363.png|thumb]]

“Yes,” she answered with a nod.

She understood from the dream the man named Roger had given her. The world would be destroyed soon and her great-grandfather had been left with full authority of the world known as 5th-Gear.

But it seemed there was more to the story of that authority.

“You have inherited 5th-Gear’s authority from your great-grandfather. That includes the right to owning the Concept Core. As proof of that, your name is a 5th-Gear word, your dragon is a 5th-Gear human, that dragon is there for you, and the weapon made for that dragon contains the Concept Core. In other words, your great-grandfather and parents have given you the ability needed to act as 5th-Gear’s representative.”

“Th-then you’re telling me to use that power to help you?”

“I never said that,” replied Sayama. “To be completely honest, your help would be appreciated. After all, the destruction of the world would rob me of a land to rule over and that would be quite a problem for Shinjou-kun.”

“Th-that would not be a problem for me at all.”

“Ha ha ha. No need to be shy, Shinjou-kun. …Anyway, are you listening, Heo-kun? There is a lot going on and I would like your help, but everyone around me has chosen to gather here of their own free will. I could use a variety of threats or enticements to call you to me, but that is not our way of doing things.”

“B-but if the world would be destroyed without my help…”

“Then let it be destroyed. A world that cannot move a single girl’s heart deserves nothing less.”

And…

“But we will do whatever we can to fight it and we are more than willing to do so. We have a lot of spare time on our hands and we will not give up no matter what. That is all.”

“Then…”

“That is what we offer in this negotiation. We will not protect you and we will not let any other organization protect you. We will not provide you with order or peace of mind. We stand in a place where we look at the unadorned facts that the world is headed for destruction and Black Sun, who went mad for the sake of the people, flies through our skies.”

He took a breath.

“You have power, but power is nothing if it is never used. I would like your help, but there is no point if you yourself will not use your power. So if you ever want to break through the goal tape yourself, just say so. That delinquent boy will show you the way. But do not cheerfully trust us, Heo Thunderson. We may be comrades with the same goal, but we are not some clichéd group of friends. We are simply a group of people facing in the same direction. If you are fine with that, then come visit us.”

That was all.

With an electronic tone, the call ended. The complete lack of parting words left Heo speechless.

Sayama looked around his surroundings with the lights washing over him.

The blue armored uniforms and the blue mechanical dragons stood on the broad runway and the white uniforms stood by the white building.

They were all staring intently at him, so Sayama first raised his left arm forcefully enough to produce a sound from the fabric of his suit’s elbow.

“What are you doing!? Black Sun’s army is on its way! As that phone call proved, Kanda has given us free use of our communication devices! Report!!”

“Testament,” said a female voice from the white building.

Sibyl had stepped out of the entrance with a bandage around her right arm.

“Six minutes ago, the American UCAT forces remaining in Chofu engaged Black Sun’s advance unit. Communications suddenly cut out two minutes ago. Currently, a group led by American UCAT’s inspector has left Yokota to intercept them near Kunitachi.”

“If that interception fails, when will Black Sun’s advance unit arrive here?”

“Most likely, around 22:00. That is approximately twenty-five minutes from now.”

That immediate declaration produced noise from everyone there. But instead of gasping, it was the noise of weapons being prepared.

Sayama was satisfied by those overlapping sounds of steel and the fact that those in blue were also preparing. He then looked across the table and at Roger who was fixing his suit collar.

“I am impressed by American UCAT’s response to an estimation based on the assumption that your inspector will be defeated. I would like to continue this as equals.”

“Testament,” replied Roger while narrowing his eyes and turning toward his fellow American UCAT members.

But he stopped and instead reached a hand toward the table and to the philosopher’s stone on Baku’s neck.

“This is a defense concept. …You really got me there.”

“You yourself did quite well to read the letter at the end.”

“Testament. When did you realize the truth?”

Sayama replied without hesitating to lose himself in the curious look in Shinjou’s eyes.

“That is a simple matter. When you read the document during our chat last night, I wondered why he never once mentioned his precious great-granddaughter. And today when I heard Heo Thunderson had been saved by something invisible, I made a guess that she had inherited something,” he explained. “I decided Richard Thunderson must have already known his great-granddaughter would be fine on her own. …And that knowledge had most likely come when she had lost her mother.”

Sayama pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It was the article about the death of Heo’s mother that he had received via Moira 1st.

“When asked why her mother had such a peaceful expression in death, some speculated a family member had been the culprit. However, that expression was proof that the Thunderson family had chosen the proper happiness.”

He felt a sudden pain in the left side of his chest.

He knew why. His own mother had attempted a double suicide with him.

…''What expression did she have?

As he thought that and held his right hand to his chest, something supported that arm.

The slender arm and slight strength were Shinjou’s, so he nodded toward her and relaxed.

“5th’s destruction and Black Sun were a simple matter as well. …A truly excellent machine will obey its people.”

He looked forward once more and saw Roger pushing his glasses up his nose.

“I see. It would seem I had grown a little too close-minded.”

This time, he really did turn around to prepare for the interception of Black Sun.

However, Sayama saw a new document that had appeared on the table.

“What is this?”

“Something I was asked to hold on to and bring here. Asked by your grandfather.”

Sayama frowned and felt his pulse quicken as he looked at the first page of the document. He read the title aloud.

“Georgius Development Plan.”

And the author.

“Sayama Asagi!?”

The pain arrived. His body cramped around the left of his chest and felt like it was breaking.

“Sayama-kun!”

Once he heard Shinjou’s cry, he gathered strength in his back and stood back up. He bore with the instant of pain threatening to bind his body.

“So you did hold an important position during UCAT’s blank period!”

“No, I was nothing more than a soldier. Among them, anyway. And once it was all over, I was given this as someone who was close to him. This is the development plan for the left and right Georgius, which are needed to end the Leviathan Road.”

“Left and right?”

“Yes. We were unable to use them. Most likely, the only ones who can are those with the surname Sayama and those with the surname Shinjou.”

Not only did Sayama stiffen upon hearing that, but Shinjou did as well.

She took a step forward and asked a question.

“But… Why my surname too!?”

“That is as much as I can tell you. I do not have the authority for anything more.” He waved his hand with his back still turned. “It may be that this negotiation had already been decided long ago. Your grandfather said the Leviathan Road cannot be ended without Georgius. If that is true, only Japanese UCAT can stop the destruction of the world.”

Roger began to walk and his footsteps on the asphalt grew more distant. As if pursuing that sound, Sibyl looked up with a cellphone to her ear.

“Everyone!”

She was frowning and her voice rang loudly.

“We have lost contact with the interception unit in Kunitachi.”

Harakawa heard a pulse and breathing in the darkness.

The quiet sounds came from the girl curled up on top of his chest.

She was not moving and the dragon carrying them said nothing.

How much time had passed?

He did not bother counting the breaths that functioned as an hourglass, but finally he heard a quiet voice.

“That’s horrible.”

It was Heo and she seemed to be testing the volume of her voice.

“How can he tell me to do whatever I want when the world will be destroyed without my help?”

Harakawa was not sure if he should say anything, but he decided to correct her.

“That idiot really means it. He and everyone around him are crazy. They all think they can do something, but if they can’t, they think that’s fine too. So even if you don’t help them, they’ll stupidly and optimistically assume they can get by somehow or other on their own.”

“Really?”

“That idiot said he ''wanted'' your help, right? If he really ''needed'' it, he would have said so. They can say that kind of thing because they all have the power to do something.”

“But Harakawa, you aren’t telling me to help you or that you need me.”

“Why would I? I’m not trying to do anything as crazy as them.”

“But…you still came for me.”

“…”

After he fell silent, a familiar question reached his ears.

“Why?”

She asked it again.

“Why did my parents, my great-grandfather, those strange people, and you do what you did?”

“How should I know? I might have a guess, but how should I know?” he said. “And let me tell you something, Heo Thunderson. There are definitely things it isn’t nice not knowing, but there are also things you can be perfectly happy not knowing.”

He recalled that the protective charm from his mother had taken the attack by the dragon’s claws for them. And he recalled when he had taken a certain girl into his room.

“There are things like that, aren’t there?”

The girl in his arms did not move and she held her breath for a moment.

However, he noticed her pulse had risen a little.

“There is happiness inside you that you don’t understand, but will you refuse to trust it just because you don’t understand it?”

“Well…”

“Answer me, Heo. Heo Thunderson. You said you do not know why everyone made the decisions they did, but there are things you can trust even if you don’t understand them. Whether you understand it or not, the fact remains that many people have protected you all this time. …And the same goes for you.”

He took a breath while noticing how everything he had to tell this girl needed to be said to him as well.

“Do not lie about the happiness inside you, Heo Thunderson.”

“Why?” She looked up. “Why do you do have to say that?’

“Because that is my happiness.”

He knew she would probably protest. She would probably ask him what exactly he meant which was not a question he wanted to answer.

And so he sealed those words inside her. And he used his own lips to do so.

“…”

Her body stiffened a bit.

“…”

But after a few seconds, the two parted and let out a breath. A moment later, Heo spoke.

“U-um, uh. Th-that was my first time…just now.”

“Calm down. I’m sure one of your parents beat me to it.”

“D-don’t ruin a girl’s dream like that…”

Her words fell apart toward the end, but in place of the tears and shaking from before, she gave a bitter laugh.

Her shoulders shook and she gave a ticklish laugh.

“That’s right,” she said while slowly sitting up.

“What is?”

“Trusting. It isn’t easy, but there is some truth there.” She gave another small laugh. “Like the fact that you pursued me and kissed me even after I pushed you away like that.”

“Wait.”

He had an oddly bad feeling, so he reached out and grabbed her again.

He then realized her body was trembling again even as she tried to sound confident.

…''So she was just faking it.

He heard her voice again.

“Please support me if anything happens.”

“If I feel like it.”

“Sure,” she said with a laugh. “Um, dragon?”

“What?” replied the voice.

She took in a large breath, exhaled, and spoke.

“I think I will pursue Black Sun.”

“But I…”

“You don’t know your name, right? And you need a name for your functionality. To be honest, I still don’t understand you very well and I don’t really think we can become friends,” she said. “But we have the same objective, don’t we? So…”

She said it.

“Thunder Fellow. You are a companion of the family of thunder, so how about that for a name?”

The voice said nothing in response.

Instead, a light appeared.

“Ah.”

The cockpit’s ceiling, sides, and front lit up.

A table stuck out below the pointed windshield in the front and a console window covered the table. Similar consoles appeared on the sides.

The cockpit had no control column or steering wheel, but a pair of roll bars could be seen on either side as if to support someone leaning in the seat.

As the light from the cockpit left through the windshield, color could be seen appearing on the dragon’s body. Or rather, the armor had stopped hiding its form.

The dragon half buried in sludge had a pointed form with blue and white armor.

Harakawa looked around and saw a second seat further back that looked like a bed.

“Lie there, child of happiness. When you are taken in and combine with me, the output limiters will be put in your control.”

“Wait, wait. Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if she loses her memory or there’s some other side effe-…”

“That was already fixed based on my previous self’s experiences. …I will protect her. I promise.”

Harakawa saw Heo nod in his arms.

“Let’s go so we can stop that lonely dragon named Black Sun.”

Her eyes were red from crying, but her expression showed she had accepted her power.

And so he sighed, lowered his shoulders, and let go.

“You really have gotten motivated. Just do whatever it is you want.”

“There is something for you to do as well, Harakawa,” said the dragon.

“What?”

Harakawa frowned and Thunder Fellow continued.

“After seeing you protect her twice before I could, I took the liberty of linking your nervous system to my control system when taking you onboard earlier.”

“Wait, wait, wait a second. What do you mean linked?”

He then realized something about when the giant black dragon’s main weapon had hit them.

…''Everything seemed to happen really slowly.

“I will concentrate the neurotransmission of my own body, you will pilot my body, and Heo will both support you and use her mind to release the limiters of my body. When I evolved, I gained a number of functions I have yet to use, but…”

This powerful voice was the dragon’s true will.

“If we do this, we can draw out my full power.”

At 9:37 PM, Black Sun and its army clashed with the American UCAT mechanical dragons deployed at Kunitachi.

They had smashed most of those to pieces and continued westward after shaking free of the few remaining ones.

Yokota Air Base was west of western Tachikawa and the Showa Memorial Park, but it had no equipment left and all of its remaining forces had evacuated underground.

Black Sun sent some leading child craft along the surface to destroy anything that could attack, but they were all sent on even further ahead by the time Black Sun himself reached the base.

There were no more enemies left.

All that remained was the familiar scent that was growing stronger. It was a powerful concept reading to the west and it smelled of the weapon that had once defeated him.

Black Sun pointed that direction and slowly accelerated.

However, he detected a new scent.

In the sky even further east of the defeated enemies was some other familiar scent.

“…”

Black Sun had eliminated his negligence, so he sent some child craft into the sky behind him. He sent enough to defeat all of the enemy forces that had appeared thus far.

And at the same time, an automaton in control of the concept space creation device terminal near Tokyo Bay saw something strange.

Something slowly rose from Tokyo Bay which was supposedly empty.

It resembled a sword.

It was a thirty meter metal structure colored blue and white.

The automaton’s sight saw the water gently split above its tip as it hovered into the air.

It was a mechanical dragon.

The automaton determined this was an unidentified mechanical dragon that was different from the black ones. It was approximately five kilometers away and her scan via ultra-long distance vision showed its form was similar to the high-speed cruising form of the full transformation models. However…

“Its frame is not made to transform?”

That meant it was a non-transformation model.

“I have determined it is limited to high-speed mobility.”

A red light ran between the blue and white armor like a pulse.

That acted as a signal.

The dragon bent its body and rolled around as if dancing in the air above the water.

“!”

It suddenly shot up into the sky.

It happened instantly. All it left behind was wind, a spray of water, and a white line of water vapor that revealed its path.

The automaton’s gaze followed the white line that cut westward through the night sky.

She moved her sight devices, turned her head, and spun her body around to follow it.

“…!?”

But she was not quick enough. All she saw was the white line.

By the time she completely turned around, that line had already vanished into the western sky.

That left only the sound.

The windy roar of supersonic speed shook her body as it arrived from behind and passed by overhead.

She had no idea what had just happened, but one thing was clear.

“It is in pursuit. The blue and white mechanical dragon is pursuing Black Sun. And…”

She spoke the estimation based on her probabilistic decisions.

“It will most likely catch up.”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_30|Chapter 30]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_32|Chapter 32]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 28

2014-09-24T22:41:41Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 28: Her Guidance */

==Chapter 28: Her Guidance==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0267.png|thumb]]
''Wait without calling out to them

''The past is already calling out

''To the path that can only lead to the present

Three colors were displayed on a twenty centimeter screen.

The colors were divided into three horizontal bands. From bottom to top, they were gray, dark green, and black.

The gray at the very bottom was asphalt, the green on top of it was grass, and the black at the top was the night.

It was an image of the night sky at the end of a runway.

A face was reflected in the glass screen. The face belonged to a girl with short, blonde hair and an orange work jacket who was standing in a small room.

The outside sound reached the small room.

That sound was loud and it had no single source. It simply washed over the entirety of the room.

The girl faced the screen while listening to it and her eyes focused on the bands of color there.

“I have to say goodbye to this country, don’t I?”

The girl named Heo muttered to herself with her gaze fixed on that screen.

Not long ago, she had heard a strange voice and the city visible in the screen had gone silent. Before, car headlights had moved back and forth between the dark green and black bands, but that movement was gone.

She knew this was known as a concept space.

She also knew that only UCAT and their enemies could create these spaces.

However, Diana had said Black Sun, her demon, was gone.

“What else is there?”

She saw something on the screen moving along the grass from the right and lining up.

They initially looked like blue dogs taking a walk on the grass, but she shook her head to eliminate that illusion. The two blue forms lined up on the green band were in the center of the twenty centimeter screen and their faces were about the same height as the screen.

She could not be sure without any other objects to compare them to, but they were likely the same size as the airplane.

…''Mechanical dragons.

Her great-grandfather and her real great-grandfather had taken part in their initial development as test pilots and American UCAT had continued to research them after the Concept War. Now, they were American UCAT’s greatest weapons.

It had been identical machines that had defeated Black Sun.

American UCAT supposedly owned sixty-eight of them and six of those would escort her through the concept space’s skies until her airplane left Tokyo.

She thought about the fact that she was being protected.

“…”

She remained silent.

But then the sound surrounding her changed. It rapidly grew and the entire room shook.

The airplane was preparing for takeoff.

The shaking of the room moved from right to left and the room itself almost seemed to float, but the sound grew even louder and the airplane’s brakes would not allow it to advance.

The airplane had to build up a lot of power so it could rise into the air and fly forward. To accomplish that, the engine’s roar grew to what sounded like a scream and suddenly…

“…”

It began to move.

The low, heavy sound of the air pressing in reached Heo from the left as she watched the screen.

At the same time, everything was pulled to the right.

The screen began to scroll from left to right. Everything in that visible world began to move.

''Ahh,'' thought Heo. ''It’s already time to say goodbye.

She had already known she was leaving by the time she had been brought to Yokota Air Base within the concept space. She had known she would leave her past life and begin a safe and protected new life.

The sound of the engine blasted through the room as if it had been released.

At the same time, the blue mechanical dragons stepped forward after a short delay and prepared to fly.

“…!?”

But there was an explosion.

Heo did not understand what she was seeing on the screen in real time.

The blue dragons had been following along in the scrolling gray, above the scrolling green, and below the scrolling black, but something had happened to the farther away of the two.

“It exploded!?”

Next, the closer one also exploded as it prepared for takeoff.

…''Eh?

She had no idea what was happening, but she saw the number of colors grow. Red was added to the gray, green, and black.

And this was the red of flames.

“…”

She took in a breath, brought a hand to her necklace, and took in another breath.

She tried to express her disbelief yet could not form the words, but a new color arrived in their place.

No, this was not a new color. More of an existing color was added: black.

A black form flew from the sky to the left and landed on the green band.

Heo saw that the black was a mechanical dragon.

But it was not alone. She saw four identical black dragons descend to the green. They were almost half again as big as the blue dragons and they raised their heads and roared into the sky once they landed.

The machines’ bestial cries reverberated throughout the night sky.

This chorus was great enough to drown out even the engines of the transport plane racing down the runway.

''They’re demons,'' thought Heo. ''A pack of demons is here.

…''But why?

“Why!?”

Harakawa charged into Yokota Air Base.

Oddly enough, the gate was unmanned. No, the absence of people had begun when he had heard an odd voice while climbing the hill in Fussa that began at the Tama River and while approaching Route 16 in front of the base.

He had turned around in confusion, but the president and treasurer’s motorcycle had vanished. They had likely started toward Okutama on the Oume Highway before reaching Route 16. Currently, all the cars on the road were empty and unmoving. A few had driven up on the curb or gotten into multicar wrecks.

Nevertheless, everything was empty and there was no sign of the police.

He was curious about the watch the treasurer had given him and that he had done with it as she had instructed. His cellphone had yet to ring, but the watch had vibrated just before everyone had vanished.

And he heard another sound.

Some engines were running on the large runway to the east of the base.

Before vanishing, the president had said Heo would be onboard the transport plane he found here.

“Why are you telling me this?” he had asked. “Will Heo join you if I’m with her?”

“That’s not what this is,” the president had said. “We’re giving her the right to choose where in the world she will be. Isn’t that what you want? Or do you plan on controlling what she does? You don’t, do you?”

The boy had acted like he understood Harakawa, so it had not been worth discussing with him.

And so Harakawa twisted the accelerator and tore through the wind.

The unmanned gate was already behind him and the broad, straight path ahead of him was filled with scarlet light. The transport plane’s idling had reached its limit and it was about to start moving.

…''This is ridiculous!

“What am I going to do!? The hatch is closed and it doesn’t have any windows. So what am I going to do? Screw this up and I could even lose my job here.”

He twisted the accelerator.

“Who cares!?”

After instantly passing between half-cylindrical storage buildings and then between the line of trees and fence beyond that, he could see a straight line of grass and asphalt cutting across from left to right. A green transport plane was facing right and thus eastward on it.

He saw the plane had begun to move.

“…!”

He then saw two objects arrive on the grass to his left.

They were giant blue beasts. It took him a second to recognize them as dragons and his motorcycle had already shot out from the line of trees by then. He crossed the auxiliary road in an instant and raced across the grass.

The tires started to spin, so he lowered his center of gravity to press them down and continue forward.

At that point, the two blue dragons exploded.

“What?”

The answer to his question arrived from the eastern sky.

He saw multiple black dragons.

There were four of them and they tore apart the grass as they landed. Their weight ripped up the lawn as they slid to a stop and they all roared toward the sky before that motion ended.

Their voices shook everything.

Harakawa did not know what was happening, but he did not hesitate. He pointed the handlebars toward the transport plane, leaned his center of gravity forward, and squeezed the accelerator.

Based on the plane’s speed and course, there was no preventing it from taking off at this point. Stopping the engines would only cause it to crash into the barriers at the end of the runway.

Its only option was to fly and thus his only option was to pursue.

His motorcycle’s engine roared and he could feel that vibration over the roaring of the black dragons.

“Go!”

The motorcycle charged onto the asphalt of the runway and instantly caught up to the transport plane arriving from the left.

However, the plane was moving more quickly.

He decided the sidecar was in the way, so pulled the release lever located between it and the motorcycle. However, it was still connected by the spare hook.

“Forgive me!”

He squeezed the accelerator and the front wheel rose. The force of that motion tossed the sidecar backwards and unhooked it, but he could no longer even hear it tumbling.

The only thing in his mind was the fact that he could catch up more easily without the excess weight.

He opened his mouth, inhaled, and leaned on the handlebars to push down the raised front wheel.

He saw the speedometer for a split second and realized he was moving at 130 kph. A fall at this speed would kill him instantly.

The raised wheel reached the ground and the stabilized motorcycle accelerated as if trying to tear into the back of the transport plane.

“Why you…”

The plane almost seemed to be running away and the wind it blew backwards seemed intent on rejecting him.

“Don’t underestimate a delinquent!!”

The gears connected and Harakawa raced forward.

He continued on and gradually caught up, but what would he do then? And what would he do about those black dragons?

The answer came from an unexpected place. A voice reached him from beyond the roar of the plane in front of him.

“An excellent answer.”

The plane shot by the figure that had spoken.

Someone stood on the runway as if waiting for him. Despite the wind and noise, not even her hair was blowing.

…''That’s the woman who was with Heo.

The tall woman had wavy gray hair, wore a black suit, and bent her eyes in a smile.

“So how about I give you a reward?”

She pulled a felt-tip pen from her pocket. It was a red one and she drew a diagram with quick movements of her hand. Specifically, she drew a flower symbol on the transport plane’s rear hatch as it passed by her.

“Open up.”

And exactly that happened.

The rear hatch suddenly opened while completely ignoring the presence of its actuators. It looked a lot like an animal opening its mouth.

At the same time, the plane lost its balance, raised its nose, and took off.

“That was fast!” shouted Harakawa as he made a split-second decision.

He stood up on the motorcycle’s seat and jumped toward the hatch as it floated up in front of him.

“Don’t get bit,” said the woman as he passed by her.

Before he could wonder what that meant, the hatch closed and swallowed him up.

The transport plane flew up from the runway and shrank into the eastern sky.

The ones on the surface watching it leave were the giant black machines and…

“Oh, honey. You’re too late to see her off.”

The woman standing on the runway gave that comment as she turned around.

Her gaze landed on a skinny elderly man standing in the center of the runway.

A blue stone hung from the string wrapped around his hand and he rolled up his suit’s sleeve.

“Okutama. Okutama is in Roger’s hands. More importantly, Diana.”

“What is it, honey? Or would you prefer I called you Colonel Odor?”

“Diana, Diana. I am currently on the job. And I do not recall asking you to offer any unnecessary services.”

“Unnecessary? Is that what you really think?”

Her eyes narrowed and she brushed her right hand through the long hair behind her.

“You need to be more honest. We’re all thinking it. That girl needs to be protected more than anyone, but she also wants it less than anyone.”

“Diana, Diana. You’re just guessing.”

“No, I am not. It’s called woman’s intuition. Also…” She tilted her head and lowered her eyebrows a little. “Why are you so intent on forcing relief onto that girl? …Is it because of those scars you once gained on your arm?”

Odor did not answer. He instead loosened his tie and raised his right hand.

“Pathetic. A pathetic story.”

Diana saw him slowly move his gaze throughout area.

There were smoking and flaming piles of metal on the grass. They were the wreckage of the blue mechanical dragons.

“If… If I had ignored my orders and come out here more quickly, I would not have let this happen. The same goes for those in Tokyo Bay and at the place called Chofu. …Diana, can I ask you one thing?”

“No wife would refuse her husband’s request.”

“Most of all… Most of all, it would anger me if any more life was lost. And I am worried about Heo. So, my wife, please do more than care for me as I die. Please take me to the battlefield, my wife who is the world’s greatest witch.”

“Testament.”

Diana removed her hand from her hair.

It now held scraps of paper made into a cylinder and rectangular strips.

“This is a broom. Its performance does not quite live up to the original 1st version, though.”

She swung the broom to the left.

That was when the great pressure of wind arrived.

It came from a black mechanical dragon.

The dragon measured over forty meters long and it tried to knock Diana away with its nose.

“!!”

A strike from the broom knocked it to the side.

A heavy metallic sound shook the air and the black dragon fell to the side, but it quickly hopped back up with almost feline movements.

The other black dragons reacted by growing more cautious. There were eight of them now, but…

“What should we do about this, honey? Do you want them all for yourself or are you prepared to praise your wife?”

“Then… Then how about you help me? These must be the enemy’s scouts. The main unit is likely flying this way more slowly. Even if the transport plane carrying Heo Thunderson has concept stealth, they will still show interest if they visually locate it. …I want to hurry.”

Odor raised his right arm and four blue mechanical dragons approached in combat form from down the runway behind him.

Diana spun her broom around and held the paper handle under her arm while watching their movements and the gazes of the black dragons.

“Then how about we dedicate the beginning of the fight to avenging our fallen comrades? We can dedicate the middle of the fight to the enemies being crushed and we can dedicate the end of the fight…” She smiled toward the black dragons. “To perfect happiness. How does that sound?”

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_27|Chapter 27]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_29|Chapter 29]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 26

2014-09-20T16:42:39Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 26: Running Destination */

==Chapter 26: Running Destination==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0221.png|thumb]]
''Your heart tells you to go

''And your voice wants to say something

''“I’m going”

A small room of about eight square meters had an arched roof.

The floor was orange carpet and the walls were covered in wallpaper made of a fairly thick white cloth.

The only furnishings were a sofa and bed affixed to the ground, a television embedded in the wall, and some shelves.

The lights embedded in the ceiling created shadows in front of the door and at the edge of the bed.

Both of those shadows were cast by a person, both of whom were female.

A tall woman in a black suit stood in front of the sliding door and a short girl sat on the edge of the bed.

“Okay, Heo. I will be leaving now, so are you sure you’re okay?”

“Y-yes. I can see what’s going on using the TV, Mrs. Diana.”

“That’s right,” replied Diana with a smile. She placed a hand on the door behind her. “Don’t worry. We just received word that Black Sun was destroyed, remember?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Heo nodded and remained sitting without even removing her jacket.

Seeing that, Diana tilted her head while still smiling.

“You don’t believe it?”

“It’s not that. I see no reason for them to lie about it. It’s just…that means there was a battle.”

“Yes, and it seems many lives were lost.”

Heo hung her head when she heard that and Diana continued speaking.

“Feeling sad is a good thing, Heo, but if you are going to actually say something, say thank you. They were fighting to create happiness, not to make people sad.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Despite the sinking tone of Heo’s reply, Diana narrowed and bent her eyes.

“But you probably won’t really understand that until later, so think about this again once you are more certain of your safety and have grown up. …Perhaps after you have children.”

“B-but I’m still a long way from getting married.”

As Heo tensed her shoulders, blushed, and waved her hands back and forth, Diana laughed a bit.

“It’s better for girls to be cute like that instead of looking sad, Heo.”

“Ah,” said Heo upon realizing Diana was comforting her.

She relaxed her body and let out a sigh.

“Thank you very much.”

She lowered her head a bit while giving her thanks, but she had formed a small smile by the time she looked up again.

She asked Diana a question in a bright voice that sounded a little forced.

“What about you, teacher? Mr. Roger told me you are married.”

“I don’t have that kind of relationship with my husband. The two of us once investigated a small organization’s source of income in the United States. We ended up fighting that enemy and, after about a month of fierce fighting, we found we had a lot in common.”

Heo’s eyes opened wide, but Diana only continued with a smile in her voice.

“We promised each other to singlehandedly bear the death of the other if they die first.”

“What… What kind of person is he?”

“Well, he rejects others, acts superior to everyone else, and believes that he is always right about everything, but at the same time, he truly hopes to find he is wrong.”

Diana’s words almost seemed directed at herself and they left Heo speechless.

Heo mouthed the words to herself and sighed.

Diana’s shoulders fell a bit as she heard that air escaping the girl’s lungs.

“Do you have someone like that?”

Heo’s shoulders tensed when she heard that question and the movement brought noise from the stone necklace around her neck.

“N-no, I don’t.”

“Heo, you know you can’t lie to me.”

Heo looked up and faced forward.

At some point the door had opened and the transport plane’s cargo hold lay behind Diana.

Heo’s room was inside a protective barrier placed inside the already concept-protected transport plane. This was a special plane that masked any concept signal when transporting concept-altered items. This guest room had been put together especially for Heo.

She felt the chilly breeze blowing in from the door. And…

“Heo.”

She heard a voice that seemed to break through the great noise of the airplane’s jet engines.

“If you had tried to stay in that apartment, I would have taken you here by force if necessary.”

“Is that because…that’s your duty?”

Diana retained her smile as the wind blew at her hair and Heo asked a sudden question.

“What is all this? I was given an explanation, but I still don’t fully understand. Great-grandfather and you belonged to the organization called UCAT…but were my parents part of it too? Did you all fight in deadly battles?”

“Yes, and that is how things ended up how they are.”

That simple answer was accompanied by no change of expression.

Heo was momentarily dumbfounded, but her words exploded out soon thereafter.

“Why!?”

Diana did not reply, so Heo continued speaking. She rose a bit from the bed and her eyebrows shot up a bit as she did so.

“I just want to live a normal life. Is that not what my parents or great-grandfather wanted?”

“But it is because of them that you are who you are. They are the ones that protected the happy life you want and people like them will support it in the future.”

“But…” Heo’s expression crumbled and twisted. “But I want a normal life. Why does everyone have to go out and fight? This…this kind of problem will fix itself if you give it enough time!”

Diana took a step back without saying anything more.

“Teacher!”

Heo called out, but Diana stepped out the door.

Heo reflexively stood up and tried to run after her, but…

“…”

She shrunk back and came to a stop. She had seen a smile in the darkness beyond the closing door.

Diana’s narrowed and smiling eyes looked directly at her through the vanishing gap of the door.

“Heo.”

The smiling mouth opened as the door reached the halfway point.

“Let us return to a previous topic. …You are an excellent student, Heo. After all, you did not sell yourself short at that apartment. Yes, a true woman must help a careless gentleman make his way and she must have the consideration to let him take the first step to lead the way.”

“Eh?”

“Just wait, Heo. The north wind that carries the dark clouds with the lonely star has not abandoned the family of thunder. And Heo, as your teacher, let me give you one answer ahead of time.”

“Eh? Oh, yes, ma’am.”

Diana’s smile grew at her student’s confused reply.

“About your previous question, it is not just time that is needed to resolve your problems. You also need…”

The smiling eyes and voice were joined by the sound of the door closing.

“Resolve. This will be on the test: Point Allocation (Your Life). Got that?”

Relaxation filled the air in an underground portion of the Kanda Laboratory.

However, this was not in a figurative sense.

In a large open space with B3F on the concrete wall, automatons were relaxing the various components of their bodies to let out the excess heat built up from overwork.

B3F was partitioned into a number of blocks and it was normally used for development research and to gather all the philosopher’s stone readings in eastern Japan. Now that American UCAT had requested the use of the large-scale concept space creation device, the entire floor and its philosopher’s stone detectors were being used for that singular purpose.

As a result, the American UCAT forces had taken damage, but the reading determined to be Black Sun had stopped.

Currently, a slight change was being made to the concept space during the time before it naturally vanished.

The concept space corridor running through the Fussa region had been bent to incorporate Yokota Air Base.

That way they could fully protect Heo Thunderson’s transport plane until it took off and entered Tokyo airspace.

Six mechanical dragons had been waiting in Yokota to intercept the black mechanical dragon, so their job was now to escort that past hero’s descendent until she reached the very edge of the concept space.

After setting all that up, the automatons announced their success over their shared memory.

“Mission complete. As is to be expected.”

They showed some reserved celebration and loosened their joints to let out the heat caused by raising their reaction speed.

The air around them grew hot.

The large-scale concept space creation device was located at the back of B3F. Technicians were gathered around the machine which contained multiple ten meter thick cylinders of different sizes which were held in place on each side by a key-shaped shield.

Those technicians were making adjustments to the machine and they had stopped trying to resist the heat coming from it. Most of them were wearing T-shirts and shorts. To cool themselves off, they had prepared buckets of ice, kiddie pools, and even anti-tank water guns, but they were still finishing up their work.

After this, they only needed to retrieve the concept space creation device terminals set up on the Chuo Expressway, national routes, and other roads. After that, they would need to negotiate with American UCAT about securing Okutama’s safety.

Apparently, American UCAT had settled for a ceasefire with the Japanese UCAT counterattack unit there.

At the same time, they did not know what to do with the Vesper Cannon that Japanese UCAT had used as a diversion. One of the automatons intercepting the optical communications spoke over the shared memory.

“They do not know how to load the Vesper Cannon on their mechanical dragons. The top of the cannon sticks out as a single long, narrow panel, so a mechanical dragon cannot climb on top of it and use its legs to grasp it from below.”

The automaton in charge of making drafts, #27, had secretly calculated out some estimated data, so they had been able to compare the new information on the Vesper Cannon’s size with American UCAT’s mechanical dragons.

“For a mechanical dragon to hold the Vesper Cannon from above, I have determined its legs would need to be nearly twice as long as theirs. At the same time, the mechanical dragon mount on top of the Vesper Cannon is about three meters, the same as American UCAT’s mechanical dragons.”

Also, their estimated data said the mount was so thin that it would not attach well to the mechanical dragons. Even if they could attach the Vesper Cannon, the mechanical dragon would wobble back and forth on the mount and lose all sense of unity. If it tried to fly with it, it would almost certainly lose its balance.

“The mechanical dragon needed for the Vesper Cannon would have legs twice the standard length and a body half as wide.”

That estimation allowed them to predict the desired mechanical dragon.

“That is impossible.”

The automatons exchanged questions while relaxing their bodies.

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because of the frame strength. The thinner the body, the thinner the frame. It could not support its own weight like that. A mechanical dragon specially made for the Vesper Cannon would be necessary, but such a dragon would be unable to fly or walk.”

“But if it could not function on its own, they would have built the Vesper Cannon into it from the beginning, right? In that case, there must be a mechanical dragon that overcomes all those problems. It must have been created to fight Black Sun.”

That comment came from 31st “Daisy” who was from 3rd-Gear.

However, someone suddenly gave another opinion.

This was 78th “Gentian” who was also from 3rd.

“But that mechanical dragon did not fight Black Sun. When Black Sun was putting up so much of a fight and was ultimately shot down, would that mechanical dragon really ignore the Vesper Cannon and do nothing?”

It was a simple idea that could be viewed as a thought or a complaint. However…

“…”

Her idea created something among them all.

It was a high-speed series of thoughts brought by their experience and it was similar to a human having a “hunch”. They connected their minds to function as a single thinking machine and they thought on a certain question.

…''Why was Black Sun defeated even though the mechanical dragon meant to fight it did not appear?

They thought and they all suddenly gave off a lot of excess heat and jumped up.

“I have determined this is dangerous!! Calculating back arrives at a single conclusion.”

That being…

“If the Vesper Cannon’s user has not appeared, that must not have been Black Sun!!”

The automatons’ shout reverberate through the underground space. A moment later, they all switched back to making individual decisions and began to move.

Those who controlled the machine moved back to their posts, those who measured readings turned back to their screens, and those who operated computers reached for their mice. A hot wind moved among them and their movement produced mechanical noises and the rustling of clothes.

“Open the optical communications! Ask them to check on the concept readings in the supposed Black Sun’s reactor to see if it truly contains the Concept Core!”

“We just received a transmission from American UCAT! Black Sun contained…a large weakened concept! The only obvious reading from 5th-Gear’s Concept Core inside the concept space is the one in Okutama! Which means…”

Amid the silence, a shout filled their shared memory.

“The defeated mechanical dragon was not Black Sun!”

A moment later, they all looked in a single direction.

A map was displayed on the ceiling so it could be seen from within any of the partitions.

It was a map of Kantou and it was synced with the radar displaying the status of the operation.

“A large philosopher’s stone reading has appeared. It is off the coast of Chiba and moving toward Tokyo through the ocean.”

An actual voice slipped from the mouth of one of the automatons.

A red dot had appeared in the blue ocean to the right of the green map of Kantou.

And…

[[Image:OnC_v09_0233.png|thumb]]

“This reading is much larger than the previous Black Sun and two…three…four…many more readings have appeared around it! There are six of them and they are each the same size as the defeated mechanical dragon!!”

Confusion swept across that underground space and an alarm began to blare.

“Send out an optical transmission!! This is an emergency! Also, activate the experimental concept space communication device!”

“B-but the alpha test still hasn’t been-…”

“That does not matter! Contact the cellphones of all UCAT personnel inside and outside the concept space! This is no longer a problem for just American UCAT or just Japanese UCAT!”

“Testament… Ah!?”

“What is it!? Did something happen!?”

“Just as I was going to contact American UCAT, the optical transmission facility was destroyed.”

After a breath, a pause that should not have occurred for an automaton, she continued.

“W-we have an intruder!”

The ceiling display instantly changed to Kanda’s underground security camera footage divided between 180 screens. The footage of individuals with a proper ID signal and those not displaying anything were then eliminated.

It finally zoomed in on a single screen which displayed a few unidentified individuals.

Four figures could be seen walking down an underground corridor.

Three of them approached with a girl behind them and those three were…

“Automatons?”

“They are unidentified. The echo scan of their joint movement sound does not match any UCAT-made model.”

They then saw the face of the girl.

“Nagata Tatsumi!!”

As if responding to their voice, she looked directly at the camera and waved.

An instant later, the camera footage blacked out.

One of the technicians spoke in the now-silent space.

“Are they here to steal information on this concept space creation device and the concept space communication device?”

The man almost sounded angry and he started toward the stairs with a wrench in hand and while wearing nothing but a black bathing suit. He was not going to let the enemy approach. However…

“Um, please wait. I will intercept them. This kind of work is my specialty.”

A dignified voice filled the air and a short figure appeared in the central passageway.

She raised her bespectacled head and spoke quietly to the others.

“I am 13th ‘Violet’ of 3rd. If anyone wishes to help, please respond with ‘yes, sir’.”

Below the starry night sky was a large schoolyard. To prepare for the athletic festival, it was divided by straight and curved lines for sporting events and by the spectator seating.

The clock on the school building to the north said it was 8:40 PM and the festival lighting was shut off.

However, a single figure stood in that schoolyard.

It was a boy. The dark-skinned boy had a bandanna over his wavy black hair. Instead of a school uniform, he wore black jeans and a black leather jacket that was a little much for early autumn. But below the jacket, he only wore a black T-shirt that looked like it would leave him feeling chilly.

He faced forward where a motorcycle with a sidecar was stopped past the edge of the schoolyard.

“Since that was fine, they must be almost completely ignoring me.”

The eyes hidden by his sunglasses looked down at the straight white line at his feet.

He looked back up and his gaze followed the line for the several dozen meters to the goal.

But when he began to walk, Harakawa stepped over the line and outside the course.

“…”

He then looked up into the sky.

…''Should I drive around on the motorcycle to distract myself?

The small radio in the sidecar said there was some lightning in the sky on the Chuo Expressway near Chofu. The announcer said to be careful as that meant a sudden thunderstorm was possible.

''In that case, it might be best to travel south along 16 until I reach Yokohama or maybe Shounan.

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that. …There’s nothing to worry about.”

…''That idiot said she would be fine.

“She said she would do her best in her new home.”

He sighed, told himself that was the last time he would think back to that, and walked toward the motorcycle.

He did not understand that girl.

She would start crying at the slightest provocation, but she also did not like making others worry.

She would readily say the most unbelievable things, but she would look confused when someone tried to believe her.

She would say she was better off alone, but she was afraid to be alone.

“She’s such a liar.”

…''And she’s such a little kid. You can always tell when she’s lying.

She was probably the only one who had not noticed.

When Heo Thunderson lied, she would shrink down. She would stiffen her shoulders as if trying to make herself disappear and as if she did not like having to lie.

If being able to lie without being found out made one an adult, then she was a child.

Harakawa recalled his most recent memory of her.

He recalled her slender shoulders when she had said she was fine and that she would do her best in her new life.

“You liar!!”

The sound of his own shout brought his feet to a stop.

He then took in a breath as if he had just remembered something and he shook his head.

…''Why am I so mad? Ignore it like you always do. You need to protect your normal life.

''You put so much distance between you and tried to drive her out, didn’t you?'' he told himself.

But another fact remained and that fact would not leave his heart.

“You’re the one who took her in because you couldn’t ignore her.”

He already had his answer to what had started this.

He lowered his gaze, but there was no longer a line at his feet.

He checked and found his stopped feet had already reached the goal. He had indeed reached this spot while walking along the outside of the course.

“…Dammit.”

His back was turned to the straight line he could see when he looked over his shoulder.

“Dammit.”

He gathered strength in his shoulders and walked forward.

And he thought.

“Dammit!”

He did not have a shift at the base today.

“…Dammit!”

But wouldn’t it be perfectly normal to stop by the base since he had some extra time?

“Goddammit!”

He was low on money this month, so couldn’t he ask for an extra shift?

“Yeah, that’s right!”

He arrived at the motorcycle. The black vehicle was stopped along the ninety degree corner leading to the academy’s main gate.

…''I’m just going. I stop by the base all the time.

He placed one leg over the motorcycle’s seat and sat down. The sidecar was empty.

He then recalled the final moment. What had Heo said when she had left?

…''A bookstore, hm?

He could guess his mother had told her. Heo had simply believed it and mentioned it without knowing at all how he felt, but…

“Is that something to say to me so proudly, Heo Thunderson!?”

He jammed the key in the ignition and turned it.

He put back on his sunglasses and took a breath.

Just then, sudden shadow and light appeared from the left.

“…!?”

Before he could erase his look of suspicion, something stopped next to him.

It was a large motorcycle with two people sitting on it.

“The president and treasurer?”

That was all he said before looking away from the two who had a giant cloth bag attached to their motorcycle.

The treasurer wore a track suit and gave a bitter smile from the back of the motorcycle.

“Oh? You don’t have any questions for us? Even though we’ve been watching you since you got here?”

“When I thought about it, I realized you’re the same breed of eccentric as Sayama. I would end up regretting anything I asked you.”

“Hold it right there, second year. You need to watch how you speak to your upperclassmen.”

“Then let me tell you something,” said Harakawa while putting on his riding gloves. “In the language spoken in the country of the father I hate so much, people address both their elders and little kids with the word ‘you’.”

“ ‘Yoo’? What’s that mean, Chisato?”

The president turned around with a frown and the treasurer punched him upwards.

While Harakawa ignored that normal turn of events, the treasurer held the head of her swaying partner.

“Harakawa, take these.”

She held out a black watch and a cellphone. He noticed she wore an identical watch but the president did not.

“Why do I have to wear the president’s?”

“Just put it on. It’s a magic tool to bring you closer to Heo Thunderson. I’ll tell you how to use it on the way. After that, do as you wish. We have work to do at Okutama, so we’ll have to leave partway there. We’ve already contacted Sayama, so he might have something to tell you.”

“I see.”

With that, Harakawa squeezed the accelerator.

He moved forward and toward Taka-Akita Academy’s northeastern gate. That was near Akigawa’s northeastern end which was not far from the neighboring city of Fussa. It was almost a straight shot to Yokota Air Base.

“Ah, wait! C’mon, Kaku!”

He heard a blow behind him and then the light began to pursue.

But despite the movement from behind, Harakawa only accelerated further. He shot past a school building and down the gravel road through the row of student dormitories.

He could hear the tires tearing across those stones.

…''What am I even thinking of doing?

Still, there were a few things he did know. The night before, she had started to cry and stopped running on the hundred meter track. And today, she had lied so he would not worry and yet had given him her support.

He had said nothing and had done nothing for her. So if he was going to make it…

“Honestly.”

He squeezed the accelerator tighter.

“This isn’t like me at all.”

“Harakawa!”

The light behind him caught up and raced alongside him. He heard the treasurer call out his name, but Harakawa did not respond. “Someone else” spoke instead.

“I’m not Harakawa right now. After all, I’m doing something that isn’t like me at all.”

“Eh?”

Hearing that tone of question, he pushed his sunglasses up his nose to hide his eyes and opened his mouth.

“Right now, I’ll use the surname of the father I hate so much.”

“Your father’s surname?”

“That’s right,” he said into the oncoming wind. “Dan Northwind. That’s my name if I take on my father’s surname.”

''It'' flew into the sky. That sky covered a burning city and a harbor.

It was over eight hundred meters long as it flew through that sky. Its main body was only three hundred meters, but it had evolved additional armor and twin-fuselage wings that greatly supported its body. This was its perfect battle equipment that it had not possessed ten years ago or the night before last.

It travelled into the western sky with its greatest fighting power.

When it had entered the bay, it had noticed some kind of concept space instantly stretch out and envelop it.

Leaving that space would be easy, but the scene visible below and the information from the child craft it had sent on ahead told it the concept space contained enough power to destroy one of the child craft.

It rode an updraft and thought on the fact that a wild beast attacked the weakest enemy first.

But it was not a wild beast. It knew it was a machine meant to protect mankind.

The false humanity existed outside the concept space, so what was this fighting force inside the concept space?

It decided this world must have machines built for the same purpose as it.

That fact seemed familiar.

It had lost its memories, but something it retained allowed it to recall the slight vestiges of a memory.

It had once fought opponents like this. That enemy had come as an army and it had once lost to them. The enemy army had been nearly destroyed, but the result of that fight had been put off until later.

“…”

It ascended, wrapped itself in wind, and accelerated.

The large black mechanical dragon decided to fight them. Was it for the conclusion of that battle it did not remember? Was it for the lost people it did not remember? Or was it simply because it had evolved to fight?

It did not know, but it did know it sought something.

It sought many things.

Why did it desire to fight?

Where were the people it was meant to serve?

Why had it lost its memories and why did it wish for those people despite losing its memories?

Why?

“…”

The black mechanical dragon stopped thinking.

It could simply crush any problems one-by-one and find the answers. The first step was eliminating the enemy that was trying to get in its way.

It wished to hurry. Its additional twin-fuselage was an extension of its wings and that closed slightly to point all of its rear accelerators backwards.

It continued on.

The air was now a wall of great pressure, but it knew that breaking through that wall to continue forward was known as flying.

A group followed in the sky behind it.

They were all black mechanical dragons.

Countless dragons appeared from the sky and the sea and they were divided between two general sizes: the small forty meter ones and the midsized three-hundred meter ones.

There were six of the midsized ones and not even the large one could determine how many small ones there were.

This was an army of black mechanical dragons.

''This is evolution,'' it thought.

In the past, it had been powerful yet alone, and that was why it had been cornered and sunk.

It had chosen the very same method its former enemy had used to defeat it. It had duplicated its own parts to create companions.

Each of the child craft it sent out to gather information obeyed their imperfect instincts and sought the enemy.

As a result, the enemy had destroyed one of those midsized craft.

Twice now, it had seen the false humanity that was its enemy.

Both times, it had removed this additional armor to approach the nostalgic scent it had detected.

The first time, its evolution had been incomplete and it did not entirely remember the incident, but it recalled that the incident had happened in front of a small building in a grassy field. A woman had tried to protect the building from it, but it had sensed the familiar scent within the building and had injured her with its claws while trying to move her out of the way.

It did not think that woman was its enemy, but it did not entirely remember what had happened afterwards.

The second time had been two days ago. It had found a man wielding a spear within a small concept space.

It did not know if it knew that man, but when it had brought its claws to the man, something had begun within it. It was as if lost functionality had restarted and the hands of a clock had begun to move again.

It had been confused.

It had been so confused by the unexpected development that it had fled. It had escaped to the northern ocean it lived in. When it had detected the nostalgic air on the way back, it had left the issue to a midsized child craft.

The child craft had been attacked and that had told it a new fight was beginning. There was a nearby enemy that gave off the familiar scent of a destroyed world.

It more or less knew how powerful that enemy was. When the previous child craft had been destroyed, that child craft had sent back an analysis if the enemy’s power. Even the enemy’s primary weapons had only barely managed to destroy the midsized craft.

However, it erased that prediction. After all, its former enemy had destroyed it.

This time, it would utterly destroy its enemy and it would destroy the false humanity that filled this world.

It did not care if it became the only thing in the world. It only needed to continue evolving, increase its army, and envelop the entire world. If it did that, it was possible the humanity it knew would eventually return.

Once that happened, would the people praise it for completely protecting the world using the machines they had created to protect people? Would they praise it for building all that up on its own?

Would they praise it and say that was a truly happy thing?

“————”

It opened its mouth and roared.

And as it roared, it recalled the name its child craft had heard during the previous battle: Black Sun.

If it became a sun in this black sky, would humanity return? While wondering that, it set Black Sun as its own name.

While letting out a cry of joy at having a name, it felt a great familiar sensation to the west.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_25|Chapter 25]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_27|Chapter 27]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 24

2014-09-16T02:56:02Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 24: Heart of Identity */

==Chapter 24: Heart of Identity==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0167.png|thumb]]
''If nothing is correct

''But pure things become correct

''Is it correct to wish for them?

Fluorescent light filled a small entranceway.

The door was shut and two people stood below that white light: Harakawa and Heo.

They were facing each other.

“Um…”

Heo began to speak and Harakawa listened silently.

Her gaze dropped to his neck but soon rose again.

“It seems the demon appeared again.”

“And it brought us on a trip to Chiba.”

“Sorry about all the trouble.”

“What you’re saying doesn’t follow, Heo Thunderson. Let’s have a proper conversation.”

“Eh?”

She tilted her head and finally looked him in the eye.

“You’re right.”

Her expression softened a bit. It now looked weak and resigned.

Meanwhile, he sighed and placed a hand on the wall.

“Why are you here, Heo Thunderson? You met the group called UCAT, didn’t you?”

During the car ride back home, he had been told about the death of Heo’s great-grandfather.

He had not been given the details, but they had said UCAT would be protecting Heo and ensuring her a place to live in the future. If she wanted anything, they would support her as much as they were able.

So if she said she wanted to run, they would continue to support her as long as she did not stop running.

…''She’ll have all the freedom she wants.

“Isn’t that just perfect? You’ll live in America where you don’t have to use any weird Japanese and you can do whatever you want. You can be surrounded by people without having to fear anything.”

He said that because he thought it was the best thing for her to hear.

…''That’s the opposite path from me.

''That’s right,'' he silently complained.

It was best for her if she did not simply give up like he had. And she had been given this blessing because…

“Someone is wishing for your happiness.”

With that, he nodded. He directed it both toward Heo and toward his own heart.

She initially reacted with silence.

“…”

She then lowered her hands from below her neck, lowered her head, and lowered her shoulders with a sigh.

“…”

But even as she hung her head, she smiled with the ends of her eyebrows lowered.

…''Why…

Harakawa thought to himself.

…''Why are you giving me that look, Heo Thunderson?

He felt like he knew why, but he had another thought as well: ''You’re simply afraid of having your environment change again.

Just as people could adapt to unhappiness and accept it as normal, people could adapt to happiness as well.

…''You should do the latter.

At that point, Harakawa wondered if that was what he had thought while speaking with Ooki earlier.

He did not know.

He had not settled his thoughts at that point.

Even now, he simply thought it was best for Heo if she went along with this and left the country.

“…”

He heard someone sigh.

It was Heo.

She finally opened her downturned mouth.

“H-Harakawa.”

She leaned toward him a bit and gently clenched her hands near her chest.

She then looked up and their gazes met. She tensed her shoulders as if demanding something, but…

“Yes. Don’t worry. I will do my best in my new home.”

Only then did she finally straighten up.

Her lowered eyebrows rose a bit and supported the smile in her eyes.

“So you do your best at opening a bookstore.”

He froze in place when he heard that.

…''How does she know about that?

Without even thinking, he realized it had to have been his mother.

But by that time, she had lowered her head.

“Thank you very much.”

Before he could say anything, she turned around and opened the door.

The wind blew, the night air entered, and her orange and blue form vanished outside.

He could see outside for just a moment. He saw the woman named Diana waving toward Ooki who left on a bicycle, the black car, and Heo rushing toward it.

“…”

The door closed.

By the time his hand reached the doorknob, he heard the car starting up.

By the time he turned the doorknob, he heard the car leaving to the left.

And so he stopped moving.

All that remained was the air that had grown as motionless as him.

Chilly night air washed over Shinjou.

She was just outside the entrance of IAI Headquarters.

She had left the reference room for a single reason.

“I need to cool my head a little. There’s just been so much that I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

The automatic door into the lobby closed behind her and she sighed when she heard it.

Sibyl had contacted them earlier. Japanese UCAT was fighting back against American UCAT and they had retaken up to the third basement. There had been gunfire in the background and Sibyl’s voice had sounded exhausted but delighted as she had said the following:

“By the time the two of you return, we will definitely have taken it all back. That is our duty as caretakers.”

“Please do,” Sayama had said before ending the call.

Everyone was working hard and, just as Sibyl had said, the fight to retrieve the facility was theirs.

And there was something else Shinjou and Sayama had to do here.

“So we can’t rush this and lose sight of our job.”

She said it aloud to drive it home.

She faced forward. She was just outside the white building’s entrance.

She saw the roundabout in front of the building and a large fountain that was not currently running.

There was light illuminating the large IAI building, but that light seemed to be absorbed by the night, the mountains, and the forest.

She gently spread her arms and walked into the wind that brought the chill of the air to her.

Beyond the fountain, she saw a lawn and then the runway and mountains.

Sayama was currently gathering a few more documents, but after that, they would wait for the periodic report and head out.

“Are we returning so soon?”

…''I hope everyone is okay.

She looked up into the dark sky and the white IAI building.

''It’s so big,'' she thought before lowering her gaze once more. A few vending machines were located along the building’s wall to the right. They may have been for those who drove to work and they were covered by a canvas roof.

Both to calm herself and as a favor to Sayama who was working down below, she thought it would be nice to buy some drinks.

She turned to the right and approached the machines. She brushed a hand through her hair while making sure not to knock out Mukiti’s flower. The night air entered through her hair and chilled her spine and the back of her head.

The touch of the chilly air helped calm her a little. Or at least she thought it did.

…''What should I do?

She muttered the question in her heart, but the answer came from her mouth.

“I guess I’ll go to Sakai.”

Once the athletic festival ended, the midterm exams began. After that was the school festival. She would have to go during the preparations for the school festival, but she was worried the others would resent her for that.

She was interested in the preparations for the greatest of Taka-Akita Academy’s bizarre festivals, but some things were more important.

After all, there would be another school festival the following year. Assuming the world still existed in some form or another, that is.

She understood her search for her parents was not actually related to the Leviathan Road. From the perspective of the Leviathan Road, they had made their trip here to pursue Shinjou Kaname as a member of the National Defense Department.

Sayama had also gathered information on Professor Kinugasa for future use.

After confirming his death, their research on Shinjou Kaname was as good as complete.

…''So searching for his granddaughter is my personal issue.

“I wonder if I can ask Sayama-kun to come along,” she said while stepping up to a vending machine.

She pulled a pink change purse from her pocket and pulled out 120 yen.

However…

“Oh, it’s only 100 yen. That’s a good price.”

She smiled and inserted the 100 yen. She heard the coin fall and the LCD screen next to the coin slot lit up with a message.

“No getting it back now.”

A very bad feeling entered her heart, so Shinjou immediately launched an attack on the coin return lever. But…

“Why isn’t it returning my money?”

She repeated her attack a second and third time before looking at the coin return lever. The bottom of the lever had a warning printed on a silver foil sticker. She read it aloud.

“ ‘This is actually a no-return acceptance lever. Too bad.’ This was a trap!!”

As if reacting to her shout, the LCD screen displayed a new message.

“Don’t worry about it!!”

She reflexively slammed her hand against the machine but only received an aching hand for her trouble.

“Fine then,” she said while lowering her shoulders and checking the drink options starting from the upper left. “Freshly Squeezed Mackerel. My Sweat – Lemon Flavor. Hot Yogurt. Drinkable Cheese. …Is this full of test products?”

“5, 4, 3.”

The LCD screen suddenly began a countdown. Sensing danger, she hesitated for one last moment, realized they were all the same, and frantically slammed her palm against the “random” button.

A slapping sound filled the air, a can could be heard falling through the machine, and it finally came out on the bottom.

She picked up the can.

“Indometacin Tea.”

“Winner!!”

''Eh?'' she wondered as the vending machine lit up in front of her. Smoke blasted from it, it opened up, decorative lights popped out, and a multicolored relay of lights flashed as it played the Warship March.

It then spat out another can. She cried out and managed the catch the can in midair.

“Iced Mitsumame Soda?”

She decided to give that one to Sayama and sighed. But as she lowered her shoulders and looked forward again, she noticed something.

“Why haven’t the lights stopped?”

She saw numbers moving along the LCD screen. Two sevens were lined up next to each other and it was vertically cycling through several numbers to the right. Soon, the speed dropped, another seven came down from the upper right, and…

“Noooo! Don’t get another one!!”

As Shinjou shouted and hit the machine over and over, the seven passed by.

“Ahh.”

''Thank goodness,'' she thought with another sigh.

Her shoulders lowered in relief, but then the seven at the bottom of the screen ended its feint and hopped back up into place. The decorative lights all flashed, the Ride of the Valkyries played as a fanfare, and Shinjou…

“Nwaaaaah!!”

“Winnnnnneeeeeeeeerrrrrrr!!”

“N-no! This isn’t a joke anymore!!”

“Isn’t it great!?”

“No, it isn’t! Why aren’t you listening!? And stop!!”

“No stopping it now!!”

Can after can shot out like a waterfall and piled up at her feet with countless heavy metallic sounds.

She cried out, stepped back, and looked around while trying to figure out what to do.

“A-a trash can! I need a trash can!”

[[Image:OnC_v09_0179.png|thumb]]

She held her hands forward and hurriedly looked behind her. That was when she noticed something.

Someone was standing on the edge of the runway past the roundabout and the lawn.

A girl in a black men’s suit stood alone in the night.

Shinjou recognized her.

“Toda Mikoku-san?”

After speaking her name, Shinjou waited for Mikoku to respond.

However, Mikoku said nothing, as if speaking her name was completely natural.

She simply stood there with her bag over her right shoulder.

…''She’s part of the Army, right?

This was certainly the girl Gyes had described and even drawn a portrait of.

Shinjou wondered what to do and was suspicious of Mikoku’s presence, but then she recalled her own situation. She had no weapons.

However, another thought came to her.

…''She isn’t a bad person, right?

That may not have been the right thing to think about someone who had defeated one of 3rd-Gear’s Hecatoncheires.

However, she calmed her breathing. Whatever the case, she had to keep the girl from moving and she could only wait for Sayama to come out as she was unarmed.

As she began to move, she thought about buying time and also about communicating.

She picked something off the ground and held it out toward Mikoku.

“U-um, Toda Mikoku-san? Do you want some…Eround Tea? …Why does this can have a picture of me on it!?”

“Is it a region-limited character product?”

“Who made this!? …And why is the answer so obvious!?”

She began to carry the can inside the building to complain to the culprit, but…

“Where are you going, Shinjou Sadagiri?”

Mikoku walked over to her.

Having her name called and the speed of the girl caused Shinjou to shrink back.

She froze in place and Mikoku’s footsteps filled the air as she approached but then stopped.

The two of them came to a stop with the fountain in between them.

And…

“Sorry I kept you waiting, Shinjou-kun. I had Miyako-kun create a philosopher’s stone of a weakened 5th concept. It is a handheld optical stealth concept, so now I can place hidden cameras more easily. Now we only need to wait for Kazami’s report and then return to Tok-…”

The entrance’s automatic door opened and Sayama stepped out with two travel bags.

When he saw the two girls, he stopped and faced Mikoku.

He did not hesitate. His eyes narrowed for just a moment and he turned back to Shinjou the next moment. He then gave an expressionless nod.

“So to sum it up, you won a lot of Eround Tea, didn’t you?”

“No!! Well, actually yes!! But the problem is over there!”

She pointed the hand holding some documents toward the fountain.

“Look! It’s someone from the Army!”

Mikoku watched Shinjou.

Shinjou waved the can of tea in her hand and spoke to Sayama who had exited the building.

“Do you see her!? You do, don’t you!? In a way, this is our first real contact with someone from the Army! You don’t see this every day!”

''This is a lot like a scene from that exploration party show on Wednesdays,'' thought Mikoku. ''Wasn’t last week’s episode about searching for the cameraman who went on ahead of them into the depths of the unexplored Amazon? Shino was really getting into it, but I did not think they would really find Team Leader Kazami.

Meanwhile, Sayama raised his hands a bit as Shinjou shouted an explanation at him.

“Calm down,” he said while pointing his palms at her. “It is dangerous over there, so come over here.”

“Oh, sure.”

Shinjou turned her back and started toward Sayama.

“Wait,” called Mikoku on reflex.

Shinjou jumped and stopped while Sayama raised his head to look toward Mikoku.

His gaze could only be called sharp as it pointed directly at her. She did not hesitate to accept it head on and she showed no fear as his gaze almost seemed to audibly pierce through her.

“I have something to tell Shinjou.”

“To tell me?”

Shinjou timidly looked over her shoulder, but Mikoku did not turn toward her. Her mind turned focused on her right hand which held her sword and bag. She made sure she could grab the cloth cover and draw the sword at any moment.

However, something stopped her intent to fight: Shinjou’s voice and anxiously lowered eyebrows.

“Why me? And…who are you?”

“Someone who knows a lot that you do not.”

Silence fell.

But Mikoku did not remove her gaze from Sayama. She saw Shinjou stiffen out of the corner of her eye, but she could not focus on her with an enemy present.

But she did notice that Shinjou gently held her own body, lowered the ends of her eyebrows, and opened her mouth.

Mikoku knew more or less what question was coming from Shinjou who had lost her memories.

…''She will ask if I know about her.

Just as she thought about replying that she did know, the mouth directly in front of her gaze opened.

“Toda Mikoku. Don’t tell me you too are the type that checks on certain things by tugging on them.”

“What? You ‘too’? And tug on what?”

“Waaaah!!”

Shinjou frantically waved her hands and stirred up the air around her. She faced Mikoku with some anger in her expression.

“N-nothing! Don’t let the words of a crazy person fool you!”

“Shinjou-kun, whose side are you on? More importantly, Toda Mikoku. Leave.”

He pointed to the forest behind her.

“Shinjou-kun and I are extremely busy. If you have something to say, make an appointment first. Call IAI and say you wish to speak with the emperor of the universe. That will get you transferred to UCAT’s complaints department.”

“Shinjou, is this boy always like this?”

“He’s usually a lot worse.”

She felt somewhat sympathetic.

''How sad,'' she thought. ''If only she had someone as normal as me nearby. Then she would not have so much trouble.

And so she spoke with Shinjou still in the corner of her eye.

“Shinjou.” She took in a breath. “Nothing I say to you now will get through to you and it is better if you know nothing. That is why I beg you to take this one thing to heart: could you perhaps leave UCAT while you still know nothing?”

“…”

“All of this… All of this comes down to our fight with UCAT.”

“Wh-why would you say that!? Why do I have to leave?”

Mikoku answered Shinjou’s question without preparing the words ahead of time. She spoke in a dignified voice so the girl could hear.

“Because you are someone who should not be involved in the fighting. This is for the sake of the world’s future.”

''That is the role I’m trying to have Shino bear,'' she thought.

And then she continued.

“The reason for this is only known by us and a few within UCAT. …And it is best if you do not know.”

Sayama watched Mikoku’s face.

Her eyes were sharply narrowed and she pushed back his gaze.

But he spoke up without hesitation.

“Let me ask one thing. Was Shinjou-kun on your side?”

Shinjou’s shoulders trembled at that. If Mikoku answered yes, it would mean Shinjou had belonged to the Army, their enemy.

But Mikoku shook her head.

“No. Shinjou’s parents did not wish for that. Neither did we or UCAT. But I know Shinjou. That is all that matters.” She shrugged. “I am not about to give you any proof, but I do not change gender. I know Shinjou from before she lost her memories, but that is all.”

“I…see.”

Shinjou’s voice spilled to the ground with some disappointment mixed in. She had likely been hoping to find someone else of her same race.

And so Sayama spoke to Mikoku in order to draw out some information to dispel Shinjou’s discouragement.

“I see. In other words, that warning was a personal one removed from our positions as the Army or UCAT.”

“That is a valid way of looking at this.”

“I see. Then…”

This is what that meant.

“To sum up, you are unable to forget Shinjou-kun, you casually approached her in Kurashiki, and you came all this way to see her. You are quite the stalker. …Now, listen carefully.”

He took a breath and pointed at Mikoku.

“Shinjou-kun hates perverts like that. You disgust me.”

A can crashed into his forehead.

He heard the heavy sound of the drink inside and his vision filled with darkness for an instant.

However, the light soon returned and he saw the sky and the can that had bounced off his head.

…''Hot Eround Tea.

He could not let that fall on the ground, so he recovered in an instant, grabbed the can in midair, opened it, and took a drink. It was delicious and it woke him up. Shinjou was smiling on the printed label. He was glad he had secretly photographed her for this.

“Excellent.”

“S-Sayama-kun? What exactly is ‘excellent’?”

“That is simple, Shinjou-kun. Your warm liquid is so incredibly delicious that-…”

“Don’t say it like that while rubbing your cheek against it!!”

Shinjou shouted at him, but her shoulders drooped in exhaustion and she turned her head to look at Mikoku.

“Thank you for the warning, but I am a member of UCAT.”

“I know that and I have no intention of recruiting you into the Army. But remember this: your parents did not want you to be on either side and you would be honoring their decision if you stopped fighting.”

“Why? Why am I in that kind of position?”

Shinjou’s question filled the night air and she tilted her head toward Mikoku.

“Who were my parents? Do you happen to know Shinjou Yukio?”

“Well…”

Just as Mikoku was trying to decide whether to agree or disagree, Sayama felt a slight wind to his left. The wind was blowing toward Mikoku.

That wind contained the color red.

The red was a women’s suit worn by…

“Gyes-kun!!”

Gyes ran.

She had thought carrying Sayama and Shinjou’s travel bags to the main entrance was a job for the Moirai, but she was glad she had gone through with it without complaining. She had never expected this.

“I have determined I am fortunate to receive this chance for revenge!!”

She shot past Sayama’s right side and then Shinjou’s right side.

The fountain lay between her and the enemy, but she did not hesitate to step over the fountain’s stone edge. Travelling over the water was the quickest route.

She rerouted the same amount of gravitational control used to control one of her swords and opened it below her feet to support her body on the surface of the water.

She kicked off the flat surface of the deactivated fountain.

She charged onward while bending backwards.

Nine swords expanded from the bottom of her suit.

“Ohhh!”

By the time she crossed the fountain and swung her body forward in midair, she was within five meters of Mikoku.

She moved her arms like wings and beat the air with her spread fingers to move ever onward.

The swords crashed toward Mikoku.

One swung toward her head from the upper left, one swung toward her right shoulder from the upper right, one was thrown toward her neck from the upper right, one flew toward the empty air to the left to prevent her from evading, one swept horizontally toward her side from the right, one swung diagonally down toward the hand holding her bag from the left side, one jabbed toward her stomach from the left side, and one jabbed toward her waist from the right side.

Mikoku fell back. That avoided all but the jabs and the throw and she likely planned to draw her sword before those attacks caught up.

And that was exactly what she did.

She took a large leap backwards.

Mikoku showed her skill by throwing her bag forward before drawing the sword.

The jabs to the side and waist were obstructed by the bag, so only the throw to the neck remained.

“…!”

But she swung her head to avoid that last attack.

She stopped falling back and drew her sword.

Gyes was still in midair and she determined Mikoku planned to target her just before she landed.

“You fell for it!”

“!?”

Gyes shouted back at Mikoku’s confused voice.

“How many swords did I attack with? Did you count them!? There were eight!”

She had one left and she drew it from where it was hidden behind her back.

She threw a single-handed strike while leaping forward.

Meanwhile, Mikoku stuck with her counterattack. She did not step back to gain enough space to attack after Gyes landed. She instead stepped forward to fill what gap there was.

…''Is she that confident in her sword technique!?

A moment later, Gyes smiled.

“I have determined that is the case!”

If this girl was skilled enough drive back Aigaion, she would view Gyes, another of the Hecatoncheires, on the same level.

Having predicted that with high probability, Gyes went in for her true attack.

She tossed her raised sword into the air.

Mikoku frowned and that was exactly what Gyes had predicted would happen.

And while acting in accordance with her predictions, Gyes grabbed the empty air with her right hand.

“Come!”

With those words, something did indeed arrive.

It was a sword, but it was far too large.

A giant blade measuring eight meters appeared in the air.

Holding the hilt and swinging it down was a giant red arm synched with the movements of Gyes’s own arm.

This was Gyes’s god of war.

As soon as she landed, she sank down and slammed her right hand against the ground.

Her automaton palm tore into the asphalt and a spray of asphalt shot into the air. At the same time, the giant blade sliced through the roaring wind as it swung down toward Mikoku.

It was going to hit.

But just before it did, Mikoku did something else.

“…!”

She threw her sword toward Gyes.

When faced with this sudden action, Gyes’s artificial mind chose to evade.

…''Oh, no!

Her failure had been in not releasing her self-preservation limiter.

She had not been prepared to go down with her enemy and that had resulted in this automatic evasion as a machine.

“!”

Her body tilted to the left and Mikoku’s sword grazed her right cheek and flew behind her.

And the sword wielded by Gyes’s god of war slipped to the left.

It fell as if tearing through the air to Mikoku’s left.

With a great roar, the giant sword tore apart the asphalt.

However, Mikoku still lived. In fact, she was unharmed and still moving.

She first spun her body around, reached into the air, and grabbed one of Gyes’s swords that had previously fallen to the ground. The tremor in the ground from the god of war’s attack had knocked it back into the air.

Her hand began a snapping motion as if to throw the sword toward Gyes. Meanwhile, Gyes was crouching down after landing and she was in the process of releasing all of her gravitational control to prepare for its next use. In short, she could not immediately move.

…''What have I done!?

That thought was immediately followed by a sudden change to Mikoku’s expression. Her eyes opened wide.

“…!?”

She let go of the sword, raised the lightened hand in front of her, and grabbed something in the air.

“A new enemy!?”

With that shout, she leaped backwards.

She held something in her hand. It was what had stopped the attack against Gyes and caused Mikoku to fall back.

It was a single silver fork. However, it was a promotional anime product, so the handle was pink.

…''Is that…?

Gyes turned and found two people standing in the entrance. One was Miyako and the other held her arms toward Gyes.

“Moira 1st.”

“I borrowed that from Lady Miyako, but I cannot fire it well on my own.”

The automaton narrowed her eyes in a smile as she spoke and Gyes heard the footsteps of Mikoku falling back even further.

Gyes tried to stand and pursue, but Miyako stopped her.

“Calm down, Gyes. This isn’t someone you can defeat if you rush things. And this is their problem right now.”

Miyako pointed forward but not at Gyes.

She pointed at Sayama and Shinjou.

Mikoku threw away the fork and ran backwards.

The asphalt below her feet turned to grass and then the runway.

She saw Gyes’s god of war vanish and she saw Sayama and Shinjou run around the fountain and next to Gyes.

“What is the Army thinking!?” asked Sayama. “What are you thinking!?”

She could not exactly answer that. ''What are you asking?'' she thought, but that seemed funny to her.

She took a breath and showed her teeth in a smile.

“Do you not get it!? Do you understand nothing!? …You’re a lot like you’re father, Sayama Mikoto, son of Sayama Asagi.”

Those words scored a direct hit.

Sayama’s blank expression broke a bit. He frowned and the look in his eyes grew sharp.

“Why do you know my father’s name?”

“Do you really think I am going to answer that? If you want to know, then pursue the past. Although you might find something that makes you want to stop partway. …But if you can overcome that, then you will see the flow of history that everyone has chosen to ignore!”

She took a breath.

“And Shinjou, let me tell you what I failed to say a moment before. This information could lead to good or bad.”

“Wh-what are you-…?”

“I refer to your parents. They were both members of UCAT.”

She spoke as if throwing the words away, but she saw Shinjou’s eyes open wide.

It was a look of surprise. However, it was a joyous surprise, not a fearful one.

…''So she is happy to hear her parents were members of UCAT.

She momentarily closed her eyes to think on that fact and she gave herself over to running.

A moment later, she jumped past the runway and toward the forest.

She then heard the roar of something slicing through the air.

Just as Shinjou’s mouth opened to ask a question, something caught Mikoku’s airborne body from the side.

The object snatched her away in midair.

“Alex!”

It was a mechanical dragon.

Previously, the steel color of his mechanical body had been exposed, but he was now colored red, white, and blue. She was surrounded by a barrier of air he held and she shouted down below even as they began to ascend.

“We will next meet on the battlefield!”

Down below, the large white structure grew more distant.

The two people standing before it also grew smaller and the surrounding scenery came into view.

Her field of vision rose and she realized they were rising into the sky.

“Mikoku! Down below!”

Alex spoke while ascending with a roar of wind and Mikoku looked back down.

She searched for something different from before that would make Alex cry out.

“Is that…?”

Someone stood on the roof of the giant white building.

It was a well-built middle-aged gentleman in a white suit. His hair was slicked back and his likeable eyes and mouth were turned toward them. Even though it was night, he made a show of placing a hand over his eyes as he looked up. It was as if he were seeing them off.

“Who is that?”

Mikoku answered Alex without looking away from the man below.

She sat on the mechanical dragon’s back inside the barrier that protected her from the atmospheric pressure.

“He was once one of our enemies. But from what we have seen, he seems to have lost all will to fight.”

She crossed her arms and looked up into the night sky. It felt like her view stretched on forever.

“His name is Izumo Retsu. He is currently IAI’s executive manager, but he was the leader of Japanese UCAT during the Great Kansai Earthquake.”

“I see. More importantly, we must hurry back, Mikoku. Tatsumi has contacted us. Word has reached the harbor that some kind of large object is traveling through the ocean near Tokyo Bay. Most likely, that woman and the automaton who threw the fork at you were on their way to inform that Sayama and Shinjou of the same thing.”

“In that case…”

Alex’s words were brief.

“Tokyo will soon be the site of a battle between a mechanical dragon and the evil organization of UCAT.”

''It'' chose to move.

Its evolution was progressing smoothly and it had developed beyond what could be called necessary. It had used that evolution to overcome the subconscious wariness that came from a past it did not remember.

Even if someone had fought back against it in the past and even if that person had harmed it, it had surpassed all that with its current evolution.

But it also wondered if this sense of superiority was nothing but self-conceit. Was it simply relying on its own predictions and not looking at reality?

But it made a further decision. It used its predictions to their fullest to create the greatest enemy it could imagine and evolved to oppose such an enemy.

When evolving, it had to choose one of two basic types of mechanical dragon.

One was a non-transforming type that could somewhat alter the position of the exterior over its primary framework to create a generic form that could both fly and fight. As the frame did not change shape, it was more durable, but its abilities in flight and combat were lacking as it had elements of both built in.

The other was a fully transforming type that could transform the primary framework and fully transform the exterior to create two distinct forms for flight and combat. As the frame was made to come apart, it was less durable, but it could produce great mobility and attack power. The main problem was the lack of defensive power.

''It'' chose the former.

It had a reason: its giant form. It was large and therefore needed durability to maintain its body. And so it was born as a non-transforming type.

As it evolved, it needed to strengthen its weaponry to handle large enemies and to thicken its armor and strengthen its accelerators to handle smaller enemies that would attack and immediately withdraw.

However, it wondered if it would be defeated and injured using that method. It was the failure of that method that had sent it to the bottom of that water and set its evolution going once more.

It then found another answer.

Its previous evolution had not been wrong. It had simply lacked something.

It wanted to move once it had gathered everything.

“…”

It moved through the ocean.

It moved to fight. It moved for the sake of the people that should have been by its side but were not.

All the while, it wondered where those people had gone.

It was not the humans who first noticed the change.

A large white facility existed in Kanda, a portion of Tokyo’s center. The automatons in the underground facility spotted a single philosopher’s stone reading on the radar.

“Reading detected! At this size, it is almost certainly Black Sun! Activating experimental large-scale concept space creation device!!”

A moment later, a long, shallow V-shaped concept space opened from Tokyo Bay to the Chuo Expressway and from the Chofu Interchange, along National Route 20, and to Okutama.

At the same time, the American UCAT mechanical dragon unit deployed to Tokyo Bay ascended into the sky.

A giant object was already flying into the air above the ocean while surrounded by massive amounts of water.

It was a black mechanical dragon over three hundred meters long.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_23|Chapter 23]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_25|Chapter 25]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 20

2014-09-08T15:57:23Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 20: Sky of Reunion */

==Chapter 20: Sky of Reunion==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0073.png|thumb]]
''Can we meet again?

''Is it more likely to happen if I wish for it?

The afternoon sun covered an area of land.

That land was surrounded by a fence except for the east side which was the back of a large house.

It was a backyard. As it was situated to the west, the sun reached it best during the afternoon.

The land contained trees, large garden stones, and a small pond.

Also, a small shrine was located next to the pond.

But this shrine did not have a torii or a hanging lantern. It was as tall as a human and simply existed as proof of something. The years had worn down its dark surface and its small tile roof was stained with moss.

A woman in a blue kimono currently stood in front of that shrine.

She was sweeping up the early fallen leaves with a bamboo broom and looking at the shrine through her glasses.

She then heard a voice from the bath window on the house behind her.

“Sister, have you put out the offering?”

“Yes, I did that at midday, Kouji. If you have something else to give, I’ll take it.”

“Are you sure you want to eat something filled with preservatives?”

“A-are you trying to kill your sister!?”

An arm with rolled up sleeves and a hose stuck out the window and sprayed water around.

“Wah! Stop it, Kouji. I’ll tell the young master that you were trying to spray your liquid all over me!”

“Please stop saying such dangerous things so naturally.”

Kouji poked his head out the window with a towel around his forehead and a deck brush over his shoulder.

“And I’m sure you’re thinking of gathering those leaves to cook potatoes over a bonfire for the first time this year, but please stop. The leaves that fall this early are too wet too burn. They’ll just make a lot of smoke and get the firefighters called in.”

“What are you talking about? Just leave it to your sister. I have an evidence-destroying torch from one of our clients and the potatoes are good ones from Kyushu.”

Water shot out and struck the gathered pile of leaves.

“Ahh! Kouji!? I’ll get mad if you keep destroying my dreams!”

She did not hesitate to pull out a cigarette-sized torch, light it, and throw it into the bath window.

She heard her brother cry out from the bath and saw a blue flash of light.

“Honestly. I was only trying to be with the young master and Setsu-chan in spirit while they’re in Kyushu.”

“The young master would not set his own house on fire! Oh, no. It scorched the painting of Mount Fuji on the wall and made a really ominous image.”

“Now it’s an image post-eruption and what’s wrong with that? …Also, Kouji.”

“What?” replied her brother along with the sound of him scrubbing the wall.

She ignored the sound and looked back at the shrine. As the sun was about ready to begin setting, she peered into the small structure.

“When the young master went to live in the dorms, our father and Honorable Sayama told us where this shrine came from, but will we tell the young master once he graduates?”

“Honorable Sayama said he regretted never telling Asagi-san, but I do wonder if it’s right for us to do it in his stead.”

“I’m sure it is. It’s better than having the young master know nothing like with Asagi-san.”

After a pause, Kouji spoke again.

“Um, sister. …Why do you think Honorable Sayama didn’t tell Asagi-san about his past?”

“Oh? You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I see, I see. If you ask me to tell you and give me a Japanese-style, super-sweet dessert that’s still below 150 Calories with dinner tonight, I might consider telling you.”

“What’s this? Have you gotten fat as a pig again? Were you the culprit who threw the scale into the pond?”

“I-I have not gotten fat! I don’t get fat!”

“Enough excuses. Just tell me.”

“Well, if you insist. …It’s simple. Honorable Sayama didn’t want Asagi-san to be like him and Asagi-san was intent on the same thing.”

Ryouko wrapped her right arm around the broom and looked up in the pale sky as she spoke.

“I still remember when Asagi-san and Yume-san were called in to work that night. Honorable Sayama stopped them out front and told them something, but…”

“Don’t tell me you were eavesdropping on them.”

“I couldn’t hear what he said,” she complained while pouting her lips. She then lowered her gaze to the ground. “A big car came to get the two of them and I’m not sure if Honorable Sayama’s final words reached them. I put the young master to sleep and waited at the front door, so I did hear what he said just as the car pulled away. He said he would tell them everything once they returned.”

Kouji asked a question while scrubbing the wall.

“Did the young master hear that?”

“I don’t know. But only Yume-san returned and then she passed away. A lot happened between me and the young master and he was truly left alone once Honorable Sayama passed away, but now…”

She lowered her head and let out a bitter laugh of resignation.

“I’m sure he’ll search it out on his own even if we don’t tell him. So while I’d like to tell him what I know about this shrine and about Asagi-san…it probably isn’t necessary.”

She looked back up and saw the road and other residences past the fence.

However, there was one odd fact about the row of houses: there was a single empty lot among them.

Despite the houses being crammed in so closely, there was still an empty lot along that main road. It was blocked off from the road by barbed wire and stakes, the three sides that bordered houses had concrete block walls, and it was filled with tall grass.

Ryouko frowned at that empty lot.

“I’m sure he will eventually learn that what he needs to know is what Asagi-san and Yume-san kept hidden and did not tell us.”

While she put on a show of looking to the west, she heard Kouji’s voice from the bath.

“Sister, I’m sure he and Setsu-kun will do what they need to do. But are you listening?”

“What is it, Kouji? I’ve got a really good pose going on here. Don’t interrupt me.”

“Sure, sure.” He stuck a hand out the window with the palm up. “Pay for the repairs. These scorch marks aren’t coming off.”

She smiled and threw another torch through the window.

Shinjou and Sayama sat on the edge of the lake with their shoes off.

In the forest, they were speaking with Mukiti who had entered the giant tree. They began by discussing the current situation and Mukiti had begun turning the conversation toward Sayama’s grandfather.

To Shinjou’s right, Sayama had his pants rolled up and his feet in the water. A plant creature supported him from behind like a chair back and a creature under the water supported his feet.

“I never would have dreamed of receiving a foot massage in a place like this, Shinjou-kun.”

“Sayama-kun, how can you relax like that?”

She gently held his left hand because Mukiti was talking about his grandfather, but it seemed the 4th-Gear creatures’ healing ability was reducing the pain his chest.

Once the conversation reached a break, the sweat had left his forehead.

''Thank goodness,'' she thought as the air moved and the tree asked a question.

“How far did I get?”

“You said Sayama-kun’s grandfather visited and gave you lots of information on Low-Gear.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mukiti. “So in terms of the Sayama here, that was the previous previous Sayama.”

“Yes. …And, um?”

She looked at Sayama and saw him closing his eyes and enjoying the foot massage now that the chest pains had receded. His lips twisted up into a fearless smile.

“Heh heh heh. Shinjou-kun, this is very nice. How about we bring one to the bath next time?”

It did not seem he was going to be of any help, so she looked back at the tree.

“Um, Sayama-kun asked earlier, but what is the promise? And why was Shinjou Kaname involved in the promise to go with his grandfather?”

“Are you curious?”

“I am.”

“So am I. I am curious what kind of person he was.”

Mukiti gently bent his body as he spoke.

“According to the previous previous Sayama, he was Tenkyou’s companion.”

“Yes. He was his assistant.”

“He said Tenkyou created some kind of gathering.”

“Yes. That would be the National Defense Department.”

“He said Tenkyou was researching something.”

She just about said that was the Concept War, but she hesitated.

…''Huh?

Sayama’s grandfather had visited 4th-Gear in 1943. By that time, the National Defense Department had already created gates and Kinugasa Tenkyou should have learned the truth of the Concept War from Rhea and Xolotl 3.

''Am I misunderstanding something here?'' she wondered.

“What was Professor Tenkyou researching?”

As expected, she received a response.

“Something to end concepts.”

“…Eh?”

Before she had finished uttering that tone of confusion, she noticed Sayama move next to her.

He folded his hands on top of his stomach.

“And what was that?” he asked.

“I do not know.”

The answer was frank and the residents of this Gear did not lie.

Shinjou heard Sayama sigh, but he went on to ask another question.

“Did my grandfather tell you anything else about Professor Tenkyou?”

“He lived in a place like this called ‘the mountains’ and that place was near the gathering. That is all.”

Sayama suddenly sat up and stared directly at the tree rather than at Shinjou.

“Do you mean Professor Tenkyou lived in the mountains near the National Defense Department and he was developing a weapon that would ‘end concepts’?”

“That is all I was told about anything related to Shinjou.”

“I see.”

Sayama relaxed and had returned to his usual expressionless look by the time he turned to Shinjou and nodded.

“So the promise itself is the only other related piece of information?”

“Yes. The promise.”

Mukiti gently shook his body. A thick, slow wind blew by and the trees shook as he formed words.

“The promise was for us to continue on in this world.”

When she heard those words that sent waves across the lake, Shinjou lifted her hips a bit and began to stand up.

“I am here. I have been accepted as the Shinjou of the promise. But…”

Her eyebrows lowered and she tilted her head.

“What was the promise? What was the promise that had you follow Sayama Kaoru here?”

The large tree began by uttering a single word.

“The promise.”

And…

“The previous previous Sayama called it the dragon’s promise.”

Shinjou recalled the term Leviathan Road that referred to what they were doing right now.

“Nice to meet you.”

She fully stood up as he gave a second greeting. She kicked the water of the lake and turned toward Sayama.

However, he was not looking at the tree. He was looking at the edge of the lake to his right.

Baku was there with his front legs raised.

A moment later, the past enveloped them.

Shinjou stood in some woods.

She was not on a mountain. This was a flat area of woods on top of a hill. She stood on a broad, unpaved gravel road near the top of the hill and brown puddles remained here and there on the road.

All of the trees on either side of the road were thick cedars and the afternoon sunlight reached her through the conifer leaves.

…''Is this in Akigawa? It reminds me of the mountains and forests around there.

She could hear cicadas.

She recognized the unique cry of the large brown cicada and realized the temperature was quite high.

As she focused on the cicada cries, she looked into the distance to the right.

She could see the ceiling of tree leaves continuing down the hill and she could see the buildings of a city beyond that. However, there was a thin layer of smoke rising from those buildings.

And it was not the smoke of rice cooking at midday.

…''There was an air raid here.

She realized this was a continuation of the past that Baku had shown them at the hotel that morning.

She hesitated, but then…

“…!”

She reflexively ran down the road. She had her mind step forward and hurry over the puddles.

She soon found a blue truck up ahead.

It was the one belonging to Sayama’s grandfather.

Past the truck were a wooden gate, a Buddhist temple, and then the forest.

This was the temple that evacuees had been brought to.

Shinjou passed by the truck and found the black tile roofed gate standing open.

She passed through and found the fifteen square meter temple grounds.

She saw a bell tower to the left, the main building and lodgings up ahead, and a storage building to the right.

The main building had all of its doors open and there were several dozen people inside.

Most of them were wearing white pajamas and lying on futons. Some were young, some were old, some were sick, and some were injured. An old man in a white coat and a female nurse were rushing back and forth between them all.

Shinjou also heard a voice. It belonged to Sayama’s grandfather.

“Excuse me. Where is Shinjou!? Where is Shinjou Kaname-kun!?”

The man producing the voice stood below the main building’s overhanging roof.

It was indeed Sayama’s grandfather and he wore a military uniform.

''Shinjou Kaname is here,'' realized Shinjou.

But she stared intently at Sayama’s grandfather’s back. She wanted to see Shinjou Kaname, but…

…''So does he.

She stopped her mind behind the man.

She was still five meters away, but that was as close as she could bear to go.

From that distance, she saw movement in the shadowy hall of the main building.

The people lying down began sitting up to see who was speaking.

The nurse turned around and walked over.

She picked up some documents from the floor and opened one as she arrived under the overhanging roof.

“Shinjou Kaname, was it? That name is on the list, but please try to remain quiet.”

“My apologies. Can I meet him?”

The nurse hesitated for a moment. “Where is he?” she muttered under her breath while turning toward the people behind her.

At the same time, a hand rose near the wall.

“…”

It was a pale and slender hand.

However, it was not a man’s hand.

It was a woman’s.

…''Eh?

Shinjou heard a voice, but it was a child crying rather than an adult speaking.

“A baby?”

She saw Sayama’s grandfather look over and frown.

“Who is that?”

“She gave birth this morning after arriving at the temple. I do not think she can speak quite yet.”

“Wait,” said the woman in the futon by the wall.

With a rustling sound, the thin futon moved as the woman tried to sit up.

The nurse frantically stood, brushed her skirt into place, and walked over.

Sayama’s grandfather walked over as well. A great many gazes gathered on him, but he walked straight through that dimly-lit hall.

It took him exactly ten steps to reach the woman by the wall.

The nurse helped the slender woman sit up, placed a few cushions behind her to prop her up, and placed the red-skinned baby in her arms.

The woman saw that Sayama’s grandfather was a soldier and used a hand to fix her hair and collar.

“Excuse me, soldier.”

“What is it?”

However, the woman asked a question. And a surprising one at that.

“Was Shinjou-sama all right?”

As that voice joined the cicada cries, Shinjou felt a chill.

However, the back wearing a military uniform did not budge in the slightest.

Shinjou asked a question to that back before her eyes. She was almost asking him to check on what she did not want to.

“A-aren’t you going to ask what she means?”

But her words did not reach him and only the cicada cries filled the air.

It was only after a few breaths that Sayama’s grandfather spoke slowly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” said the woman who the nurse supported. “The other night, I was waiting for the evacuation truck during the air raid. And then this child…”

“Did you go into labor?”

The woman lowered her head and blushed, but her eyebrows lowered.

“And then one man got off the truck to leave space for me. He said he would wait for the next one and he said his name was Shinjou. …Shinjou Kaname.”

“…”

“If he is safe, I would like to thank him for my sake and for my child’s-…”

She frowned and gulped a bit when she saw the look on Sayama’s grandfather’s face that Shinjou could not see.

“How is Shinjou-sama?”

Sayama’s grandfather did not respond.

The woman tilted her head, the nurse lowered her head, and one of the cicada cries vanished, but he still did not respond.

Eventually, the woman asked another question with a tremble in her voice.

“You are…Sayama-sama, aren’t you?”

He did not reply. He did not move at all. As if to tell him to move and to fight the silence, the woman spoke some more.

“When he stepped out of the truck, Shinjou-sama said to rely on someone named Sayama if I needed anything. He smiled as he said it.”

Nevertheless, Sayama’s grandfather remained silent.

However, his shoulders rose as he took in a deep breath, let it out, and asked a gentle question.

“What is your name?”

The woman nodded and then bowed deeply toward the man with her child in her arms.

“I am Tamiya Ryou.”

Shinjou’s mind gasped at the surname and the past suddenly switched over.

Sayama saw the past switch over.

…''Where am I now?

His mind awoke as if looking up and he saw a certain scene.

He saw the edge of a lake. The bottom surface was made of plants and it was surrounded by a forest.

It was much like the 4th-Gear reservation, so he wondered something.

“Have I woken from the past?”

''No,'' his mind answered.

Without even a close examination, there were several differences.

First of all, there was no giant stump in front of him. Also…

“The sky.”

A black expanse covered everything above.

This was not the night sky. It was a black sky and that was all.

There were no stars and the only light was the powerful one from overhead.

That light was the sun.

He looked up at the intense sunlight coming from directly above.

As he did, he noticed something odd.

Directly ahead, something like a path extended up from the forest and into the sky.

It was a green belt.

The green path rose into the sky and had collections of what resembled blue veins in places. As he looked further up, the green belt drew an upward arc as if it would circle around behind the sun.

There actually a few similar belts. There were three of them in all, including the one Sayama was looking at. And those belts formed complete circles.

…''A world of three rings with the sun at the center.

This was 4th-Gear.

The three rings each had a diameter as wide as the earth’s orbit around the sun and the ecosystem was gathered on the inward edge. They slowly rotated and mist-like smoke rose from them where they crossed paths.

…''Are they exchanging their ecosystems?

He looked up at the world of three rotating belts for a while.

“…”

But then he lowered his gaze because there was something else he had to see here.

The direction he was meant to look was straight ahead.

He saw something there that had not been present before.

Mist hovered over the lake and someone sat in the grass in front of the lake.

The person wore a brown suit.

It was his grandfather.

The wind blew gently past the man. It was a warm but transparent wind.

It produced small waves on the lake, shook the plants, and rustled the leaves of the forest.

Nevertheless, the mist over the lake did not move.

His grandfather sat cross-legged while half-sinking into the grass. His hair blew around a bit as if the wind had knocked it out of place and a plant creature grew up next to him.

However, the creature did not actively approach. It only looked at the man.

…''He has yet to make any promises with 4th-Gear.

While still facing the mist, Sayama’s grandfather held his right hand out toward the creature.

The creature looked to the mist, but finally approached and held the offered hand in its front legs.

In an instant, the creature expanded.

“Lots.”

Air blasted from the creature’s body and more joined it. The ground swelled up as if linked to the creature’s backside and a new creature was added behind it.

But the additional creature was forced to instantly expel air and another was added on.

The creatures quickly surrounded the lake and extended into the forest.

The forest stirred and Sayama looked up.

He saw a rapid change in the ring of land extending upwards in the distance.

It had been primarily green a moment earlier, but it was turning blue.

That blue quickly enveloped the one ring and the mist whirled at the intersections with the other rings.

Wind was created.

Air was produced from all over the ring. A burden from outside their world should have been an impossibility and the excess air produced wind.

Sayama heard a voice from the mist in front of him.

“It appears some adjustments are needed to deal with your production rate.”

“Yes. Humans create a good deal more heat than plants. Either way, I suppose this counts as our first interaction.”

With that, his grandfather removed his hand from the plant creature. Reluctant to part with him, the creature reached out, but the man continued pulling away his hand.

“Sorry.”

He faced forward and spoke to the mist.

“I can no longer bring Shinjou.”

Sayama gasped at how plainly he said it.

He was only a few meters from his grandfather’s back, but he did not approach.

…''I must not.

With the word “self-control” in mind, he watched over his grandfather. He did, however, have his mind sit down in the grass.

He simply set his vision’s height to the same as the back before him.

“Shinjou will not be coming?” asked the mist.

“Correct. Even though I promised he would. And even though you said you could return with me if you could heal him and use that to fuel your survival.”

“I remember. I decided to listen to what you had to say because you found me.”

“Finding you was easy. After all, I had longed to meet you without having seen you.”

“But you were the first to suddenly call out to the sky and ground as soon as you arrived here. Do you remember?” asked Mukiti’s will. “You kept saying ‘nice to meet you’ and suddenly started talking to the sky and the ground. I could not ignore that.”

“You asked why I was doing that and I said it was because I knew where you were. After all, I only wanted to speak with you. I spoke to the sky and the ground because that was you,” said Sayama’s grandfather. “You asked me to keep it a secret because the other Gears might try to forcibly extract you if they knew. And that’s why I asked you to come to our Gear.”

“Using the term you taught me, that is a ‘funny’ story.”

“It is,” said his grandfather while looking up into the sun in the black sky. “Nostalgic too. It feels like that discussion was only yesterday. …When you learned how our world did things, you asked to hold an equal position with no debts if you were to go there. That was when I realized your healing ability could give you that. And you asked for the person most in need of healing so you could earn my trust. That way you could prove your power was sufficient and you were not underestimating our demands.”

“But Shinjou will not be coming?”

“No. I’m sorry about that. My promise with you can’t be fulfilled. …And I can’t bring someone who I can’t trust and you wouldn’t want to heal someone who I don’t trust. 4th-Gear now has no way to determine whether Low-Gear can repay you or not.”

“You broke the promise.”

“That’s right,” sighed the man. “Because Shinjou is no more.”

The wind blew through as if to erase his words. It came from the ring of land turning blue up above.

“Ah,” sighed Sayama’s grandfather in the wind. “You might actually be incredibly cruel. In our world, we say he ascended into the sky, but in this world, all of the burden I had left on him is turned to wind.”

“Sayama.”

“What is it?”

“I see people can make water too.”

With that, Sayama looked at his grandfather’s back. The man finally wiped at his face with his right hand.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Let us go to your world,” said Mukiti almost immediately.

“…”

In the past, Sayama’s grandfather forcefully raised his head.

Mukiti had agreed to what the man had wanted. However…

“You fool!” He rose up and shouted. “Will you mock our negotiation!? Low-Gear and 4th-Gear negotiated as equals, but my clumsiness prevented us from completing those negotiations! That is the result! Twisting that result will not just damage Low-Gear’s honor but 4th-Gear’s as well!”

“The negotiations are not over.”

Mukiti’s words silenced the man and more wind blew.

However, this was not the same gentle wind as before. It was a mighty gust.

The air moved all at once as an audible wall.

“…”

It came from in front. The branches and leaves of the forest and the sea of grass all fell forward as if being tanned and released all their moisture into the air as mist.

A white mist danced through the sky.

It spiraled upwards and did not stop there.

It stretched out as it rose into the black space.

In response, mist rose from all three rings of land.

Sayama and his grandfather both stood up and looked around.

“I am here, yet not here,” said the sky.

The mist spiraled around the sun floating in the center of the rings.

“You said my response when you found me is called ‘surprise’.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with ignoring the conclusion of our negotiation?”

“Is there only one Shinjou?”

Sayama realized what Mukiti was trying to say.

Because he always had Shinjou by his side, he understood.

“It seems your world has a concept of inheritance.”

“…”

“Let us keep the promise. Sayama, even if you are inherited by someone else, I can trust you. Bring Shinjou to me and I will show you my power.”

“But Low-Gear needs to win the Concept War for that to happen.”

“We have promised,” insisted the voice.

Sayama saw his grandfather stop moving at that.

The man stood tall within the grass that was blowing in the wind.

His shoulders slowly rose, he took in a breath, and he did not back down.

He tightly clenched his fists, gathered strength in his neck, and looked up into the sky.

“Are you saying you will continue the negotiation? With me…and with Shinjou?”

“We have promised.”

Sayama’s grandfather thought for a moment and finally spoke.

“Then come to keep that promise. Come to keep the dragon’s promise. To ensure our negotiation, I will first destroy this world and to take responsibility…” he declared. “I will make sure you meet Shinjou. When the time comes, the surname Sayama will bring the one known as Shinjou to see you. When the world once more desires a negotiation of battle and powerful healing is once more needed, Shinjou will be brought to you as the condition for gaining your power. And to do that, I will make sure all the other worlds are-…”

He took a breath.

“To keep my promise, I say that the surname Sayama indicates a villain.”

“Yes,” said the dragon taking form overhead.

It was a dragon formed from the gathered mist.

Plant creatures then grew at Sayama’s grandfather’s feet and the three rings rapidly faded in color. The world changed from green, to yellow, and finally to brown.

“Are you gathering the ecosystem information!?”

“The large whole is being becoming a small whole.”

Mukiti lowered as he said that.

The sky grew even darker as the sun lost its light behind Mukiti who lowered his long body straight down.

Everything except for the lake was wrapped in darkness.

''A gate,'' realized Sayama as something rose beyond the lake.

It was a giant tree. Its trunk was over thirty meters wide and it broke off its own top as it rose.

Mukiti flew inside the broken end and 4th-Gear moved.

But just before it did, Sayama heard Mukiti’s will.

“Sayama, you said I was ‘surprised’ when you found me, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But why do you bring it up now?”

“I would like you to revise that description. To use the term you taught me, I was ‘happy’ that someone had found me.”

“…”

“And I wish ‘happiness’ to those who will inherit the promise.”

That signaled the end and a wind from above enveloped Mukiti and collided with the tree.

A moment later, all light vanished.

Sayama thought in that darkness.

…''A negotiation to make dragon and human equal, hm?

That was the promise. And to restart that promise and give it a new beginning, the dragon was to meet Shinjou.

''Was this why Shinjou-kun was given a spot in Team Leviathan?'' wondered Sayama. ''My grandfather and the old man would have known about this, after all.

…''If so, those old men must truly love roundabout methods and riddles.

He thought about what Shinjou was doing now. The previous vision of the past had likely been a great shock to her, so he decided he needed to support her.

And as his mind fell, he recalled his grandfather’s back that he could no longer see.

The back he had seen at the Hachioji temple had been a new sight for him, but the one he had seen during the promise with Mukiti had not.

…''That was the same back I saw until he died.

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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_21|Chapter 21]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 19

2014-09-06T14:55:56Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 19: An Invisible Known */

==Chapter 19: An Invisible Known==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0043.png|thumb]]
''There is no question

''There is no answer

''There is simply what is natural

A grassy clearing about three hundred meters across was surrounded by forest.

A lake at the center filled about half the clearing and a large tree with the top cut off lay horizontally in the lake.

The tree was over thirty meters thick. The large trunk grew from the center of lake and bent ninety degrees to lie horizontally to the east.

The top surface that was cut like a stump was mossy and hard as a rock.

Two people were inside the shadow of that giant stump.

They were Sayama and Shinjou.

The plant creature acting as their guide stood between them as they sat on the east side of the lake.

The ground was not made of dirt. The surface had a muscular structure made from intertwined plant fibers. It had been buried beneath tall underbrush in the forest, but at the core of the reservation, they could now tell that absolutely everything was made of plants.

A few points on the ground were making breathing sounds and Sayama commented on them.

“It seems this plant earth is exhaling oxygen.”

Shinjou tilted her head where she sat to his left.

“The ground here is alive?”

“Indeed it is. Rather than simply producing oxygen from carbon dioxide via photosynthesis, their metabolism functions by absorbing any and all heart, cleaning it, and returning it. I do not know how much conservation of energy applies here or if it applies at all, but they mostly seem to feed by absorbing any heat that is causing some kind of burden, cleaning it, and returning it. This is a powerful sort of metabolism.”

The ground around them shook lightly.

A plant creature had stood up from the ground to their right.

The area of two tatami mats laid end to end had stood up. The creature was made from the fibrous mass that was the ground and it was about a meter tall.

However, its form quickly hanged. The fibers covering its green body came apart to form fur. That plant fur trembled and its body swelled up.

“Is it increasing its ability to radiate heat?”

As if to prove Sayama right, the large green creature blew air from its entire body.

The air smelled clean rather than of grass.

Once it was done, the plant creature flattened itself down and sank back into the ground.

Shinjou smiled when she saw its head as the creature lay down.

“The way its narrowing its eyes makes it look happy. I wonder if it really is.”

“This earth must be like a giant circulatory system for them. By gathering together and moving about, they produce exhaustion, consume that exhaustion, and expel a portion of it as waste like we just saw. That system must be hard to maintain with a small group, but with a group this large, their weight alone is enough to produce a fair bit of strain and they gain enough food to last them an eternity without doing a thing. Isn’t that right?”

He directed that last question toward the ground between himself and Shinjou.

The plant creature that had brought them here was half embedded in the ground and swaying back and forth.

It looked up at him to reply.

“Feels good.”

“What does? The atmosphere? The mood?”

“I think he is referring to this environment, Shinjou-kun.”

Sayama looked around and saw a new plant creature slowly rising behind Shinjou so it could absorb her exhaustion.

“Their bodies are mostly made of water, so a warm and humid area like this helps them gather heat and thus ‘feels good’. The room below UCAT had artificially created this environment, but this is natural. It must feel like arriving at a hot spring.”

“Do they see us as letting all our food leak out of us?” she asked with a quiet nod.

She bowed toward the creature behind her and leaned against it.

She then looked at the giant stump in front of them.

She looked up, across, and down before opening her mouth.

“It’s so big. But,” she added while still looking at the stump. “Mukiti isn’t moving even though we’ve waited a while.”

“True. But Shinjou-kun.” Sayama asked her a question. “Do you think this giant stump is Mukiti?”

The question made her tilt her head and wrap her arms around her knees.

“Is it not? He’s called a tree serpent, so isn’t he the biggest tree?”

“Then let me ask something.”

He turned to the plant creature instead.

“Are we being tested right now?”

“Mukiti is waiting.”

Shinjou tilted her head further and frowned.

“Hm? W-wait, Sayama-kun. What do you mean by tested? And what does he mean by waiting?”

She pointed her index finger toward the giant stump in front of her.

“Isn’t Mukiti that tree?”

“Sorry, Shinjou-kun,” said Sayama. “But probably not. It is true that giant stump is the most conspicuous object here.”

He asked a question to the plant creature behind her back.

“Is that Mukiti?”

“Not Mukiti. But Mukiti will speak.”

“Eh?” said Shinjou when she heard that.

She quickly looked up at the tree and turned around again.

“I-it isn’t!?”

“It would seem not.”

She was left speechless and Sayama nodded as if it had been obvious.

“Listen. That 4th-Gear resident told us Mukiti was waiting and this is the spot he brought us to. In that case, Mukiti must be here waiting for us.”

“B-but if he isn’t this tree, where is he?”

“There is only one answer: Mukiti is not here, and yet he is here. We have simply not noticed him even though he is right in front of us. However, he considers his presence here to be so natural that the possibility that we have not noticed has not occurred to him.”

“Mukiti is waiting,” repeated the creature.

“Yes, he is waiting. And as he waits, he must be wondering why we are ignoring him when he is right in front of us. And,” he continued. “When I asked this 4th-Gear fellow about that tree, he said Mukiti would speak. In other words…”

Sayama asked a question of the guide creature.

“Does Mukiti reside in that tree to speak through it?”

“Mukiti will speak. But Mukiti not here. But Mukiti is here.”

“I see.” Sayama nodded. “It seems Mukiti chooses to use this tree, but it is not Mukiti himself.”

“How can you speak with them when we seem so out of sync?”

She glared at him and he tilted his head as if to say not understanding was more confusing.

“When they speak, they do not include what they believe to be completely natural. This is no different than reading an instruction manual that has all the technical terms blotted out. You use the verbs and adjectives to speculate what technical terms were there and then you take guesses at filling in the gaps.”

“It sounds like some kind of quiz. But based on what they said, it does sound like this tree isn’t Mukiti.”

Shinjou glanced at the tree.

“But…”

She pointed at one part of the tree. The fallen portion was not broken or twisted; it formed a perfect curve.

“Bends in trees are usually more twisted than that, aren’t they? I wonder if it moved like a dragon in 4th-Gear. That would match my vision of Tree Serpent Mukiti.”

She held her knees between her arms and frowned while turning to Sayama.

“But if that tree isn’t Mukiti, what is?”

He gave an expressionless nod toward her puzzled look.

“The people of the other Gears likely had the same question during the Concept War. After all, 4th’s healing power would have been attractive. If 4th went with my grandfather instead of any other Gear…”

“It means the negotiators of the other Gears couldn’t find Mukiti?”

“Perhaps,” agreed Sayama. “Let us give this more thought, Shinjou-kun. They are used to waiting. And this is an answer even my grandfather found with no hint. That means even a monkey can figure this one out. …You try answering it in my stead.”

“Eh!? W-wait! Why me!? How am I supposed to know!?”

She cried out in protest, but Sayama had already stretched out next to the plant creature and folded his arms behind his head. He almost looked asleep.

“If you cannot find the answer, just speak up. I will give my own theory. But the answer is simple enough to find if you look at the whole of the situation, Shinjou-kun. The answer is already before you. Try to think of it as getting to know 4th-Gear a little better.”

“B-but why do I have to get to know them better?”

Her question was tinged with resignation, but he actually answered.

“Because of the promise.”

“Eh?” she replied.

However, he did elaborate.

He simply looked up into the sky, narrowed his eyes, and said something else.

“To be honest, I think the Leviathan Road with 4th-Gear will be more or less complete once we meet Mukiti.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If the purpose of the Leviathan Road is to clear away any malice left over from the Concept War, it has been half completed by bringing you here to complete the promise my grandfather could not keep. The other half is to meet with Mukiti and have him confirm the promise has been completed. But,” he continued. “Meeting Mukiti is the difficult part. This is the opposite of the normal pattern. Both sides have already given their demands, but we are having difficulty meeting their negotiator.”

“Yes, that is the exact opposite of normal,” said Shinjou with a frown. “But can I really replace the Shinjou they asked for?”

“That is for Mukiti to decide. At the very least, the 4th-Gear residents have accepted you as ‘Shinjou’.”

And…

“This is a test, Shinjou-kun. Mukiti is seeing if we are the same as the ‘Sayama’ he once spoke with. And most likely, the same goes for ‘Shinjou’. He is seeing if the ‘Shinjou’ that ‘Sayama’ promised to bring to meet him is really worth meeting. This is a test to gain 4th-Gear’s trust.”

Sayama re-crossed his legs and sharpened his gaze as he looked at the fallen stump in the lake.

“Shinjou-kun, find the identity of Mukiti who wishes to trust in you.”

He then looked up into the sky and closed his eyes.

Below the clear sky was a city. In that city was an arcade over a shopping district.

It was a broad arcade. The tiled path beneath was a pedestrian paradise and it led to the bus roundabout in front of the train station.

The sign on the arched entrance to the arcade said Hachioji Station Shopping District.

The trees lining the arcade still had green leaves, but some of the wooden table sets down below had brown autumn decorations.

A pair of girls walked through the people there to enjoy themselves. One wore a beige dress and a stole and the other wore a brown jacket and white slacks.

Shopping bags hung from their elbows and their arms were wrapped around some bottles and smaller paper bags.

“You bought an awful lot for just walking around and eating, Tatsumi,” said the girl in the jacket.

“True. Two sticks of grilled chicken, a stick of chicken meatballs, and two sticks of salted gizzards. And a One Cup.”

“You are going to gain weight.”

“Unlike you, Mikoku, I naturally don’t gain any weight.”

“I think we need to have a talk, so keep some time free.”

“Sure, sure. More importantly, what is that you bought?”

“A café vienna and a hotdog. The latter has spicy chili sauce.”

“You’re going to gain weight.”

“I ran plenty the night before last, so I can afford this.”

Mikoku adjusted her grip on the shopping bags as she spoke.

“What do you think, Tatsumi?”

“I…still think you’re going to gain weight. Just running isn’t enough.”

“That is not what I-… Well, that might be true, but I was referring to…”

“Team Leviathan has begun negotiations with 4th-Gear and will likely begin with 5th-Gear as well. The Army is interested in a short-term battle, so we do not need 4th-Gear’s healing power and we don’t need 5th-Gear’s technology when we already have Alex. …But you were asking what we would do next, weren’t you? If you’re that interested, why not ask Lord Hajji?”

Tatsumi adjusted the position of the shopping bags’ loops on her elbows and smiled. With that narrow-eyed smile, she took a sip from her cup and walked further and further through the arcade as if pulling Mikoku forward.

…''What a difficult person to deal with.

Mikoku also adjusted the bags on her elbows and followed.

Shino was usually with her, but this time was different. Mikoku realized what it was like to follow someone taller than yourself and she imagined this was how Shino felt while following her.

“…”

“Are you thinking about Shino? Or are you curious where we’re headed? In the latter case, it’s entirely up to how I feel.”

“Are you just walking around randomly?”

“No, it’s based on how I feel. I might end up shopping partway through and I might continue walking the entire time.”

They left that pedestrian paradise on the southwest side and reached the intersection with National Route 16. Tatsumi looked into the distance along the arcade covering the walking path.

“This area used to look really exciting, but most everything has moved to Tachikawa now.”

“Yes. Tachikawa remodeling the area around the station into a multi-story pedestrian zone had a lot to do with it. Of course, this area is closer for us and it’s enough for the shopping we need.”

“Is that your comparative analysis of the two cities? You like comparing things, don’t you? Or do you prefer Hachioji because it’s recovered this much after being burned away by the fires of war? Tachikawa, on the other hand, was the city closest to the American troops after the war.”

Tatsumi smiled and her shoulders shook a little.

''She set me up for that,'' thought Mikoku as she frowned and lined up next to Tatsumi.

She noticed the other girl had finished her two sticks of grilled chicken and Mikoku took a bite of her hotdog before asking a question.

“Tatsumi, what do you think about what happened to me the night before last?”

“As Thunderson said, you were right to escape. The giant presence there was probably from 5th-Gear, but you wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“Was I any use at all?”

“When Shino was driven back by a cicada, she didn’t ask that. Also, Lord Hajji said you did well, remember? And he isn’t the type to say that just because you are family.”

“You make it sound like you understand everything.”

“That’s because I’m satisfied with what I know. Unlike you who has to be sure of everything and yet decides things for herself without checking. You can’t know how this gizzard tastes from where you stand, can you?”

“Then let me have some.”

“No. I’ve already calculated out how much I’m going to eat.”

“Calculated out? You mean the calories?”

Tatsumi gave her a serious look and shook her head.

“No? I calculated out how much of my One Cup to drink after each stick I eat. I already said I don’t need to worry about calculating out the calories, remember?”

''I am definitely going to have a talk with her at some point,'' swore Mikoku in her heart.

After Mikoku had consumed over half of her hotdog, Tatsumi took a sip of her drink and spoke.

“Anyway, you need to head out into battle more so you can see for yourself if what you are doing is right. You know we’re planning to attack UCAT before long, don’t you?”

“Yes, I have heard. …We will most likely attack toward the end of the year once the Army’s equipment is in order and our training is complete. Our goal will be…” She took a breath before continuing. “Taking the Concept Cores UCAT has gathered.”

“Yes. That will be the final battle between the Army and UCAT. It will come as a complete surprise for them, though.”

Tatsumi’s voice contained hint of a smile and that smiling voice did not end there.

“You don’t want Shino to take part in that battle, do you? That way you can hand everything over to her afterwards.”

“…”

“But she wants to help you. And that is exactly why you are so concerned about your performance the other night. You are worried that your inexperience will lead Lord Hajji to send out the two of you as a single team. Yet at the same time, you are treating her as too inexperienced to be a part of the plan.”

“You are truly an unpleasant woman.”

“Coming from another woman, that is a compliment. …At any rate, just remember that Shino is thinking about you too. Make sure you get along in the end, okay? That is why I’m teasing you.”

“That’s part of what makes you so unpleasant,” said Mikoku.

Tatsumi smiled bitterly and ate the final meatball while holding the skewer horizontally.

“But don’t worry. Even if we steal the weapon UCAT was given by 5th, it would be difficult to use given how many people the Army has available. Not to mention that Alex was made using 5th-Gear tech. …You understand what that means, don’t you? We stole Typhon because we had no other way to obtain the technology, but mechanical dragon technology is different.”

“That is thanks to your mother’s research on 5th-Gear mechanical dragon wreckage, right?”

“Yes, and with the help of a certain person, she completed it. By having the pilot combine with it rather than riding in it, its reflexes reach the level of 5th-Gear’s mechanical dragons.”

Tatsumi began to add something more, but…

“…”

She stopped and closed her mouth, so Mikoku thought on the words she had swallowed.

…''So the technology her mother left behind means we don’t need to learn from 5th-Gear’s hidden weapon.

Mikoku took a sip of her café vienna.

“In other words, the Army already has enough military might. It all comes down to training now.”

“Mikoku, how can you say that with cream under your nose?”

She frantically wiped it off with her finger and stuck it in her mouth. She tasted the sweetness and heard Tatsumi laugh.

“You really are a child, Mikoku. Are you having misgivings about fighting? Has something like fear belatedly shown up? Listen. Lord Hajji does not intend to settle this entirely peacefully with all the Gears.”

“…”

“It is UCAT’s way of thinking that has messed everything up. Low-Gear claims to be gathering all the Gears to prevent the destruction of the world, but they secretly want to clear away the past and erase what they have done. However, they have not realized that, if their false show of good is allowed, then the opposite can also work.”

“In other words, crushing Low-Gear will also gather all the Gears together and that will also avoid the destruction of the world?”

“Yes,” said Tatsumi while looking to the side.

A shop selling women’s suits was there and she pointed at a blue suit in the window’s show lounge, but Mikoku waved a hand side to side in refusal. It was too expensive.

The two of them then walked on.

“What the Army needs is a narrow but deep military force that can destroy Team Leviathan and UCAT just once and wake all of them up. We are not UCAT, so we do not need a broad and shallow military force that will advocate peace and govern all of the Gears.”

“But will the other Gears really accept it if we destroy UCAT?”

“That is why you’re worried about Shino, isn’t it? Once the Concept Cores are stolen from UCAT, you intend to fully disarm the Army and leave everything to Shino and her concept of mutual understanding. …And you likely intend to leave her once that happens. How very cool of you.”

She snickered along with that last line and the smile remained as she continued.

“Well , either way, I think all the other Gears will end up obeying the Army once they hear the reason behind our justice.”

“The reason behind our justice, hm?”

“That’s right.” Tatsumi nodded. “No matter how hard Low-Gear tries, there is nothing they can do about that.”

Tatsumi finished eating one skewer of gizzard.

“You will be sent on another mission soon. As will I.”

“Yes, a mission that you can barely call a mission: monitoring the Leviathan Road.”

“Their negotiator is probably negotiating with 4th-Gear right about now. That can’t be easy.”

“It can’t be easy?”

“That’s right,” said Tatsumi. “Lord Hajji once told me about it. During the Concept War, 9th-Gear and the other Gears were unable to gain the cooperation of Tree Serpent Mukiti, Concept Core of 4th-Gear. No matter how many times they visited, Mukiti would speak but not show his form. And when they tried to forcibly extract the Concept Core…”

“Yes?”

“He never showed up again and the readings were too weak to tell where he was.”

“He vanished? No, he went into hiding? Then what is Mukiti?”

“I don’t know. That is something only Sayama Kaoru knows as he was the one to bring 4th-Gear to Low-Gear. But…I have a feeling his descendent and that descendant’s companions will know before long.” She gave a bitter smile. “And if they do find the answer, it will make things all the more fun when we steal the Cores.”

Tatsumi audibly gulped down the rest of her drink and gave a satisfied sigh.

“Oh, dear. I got so worked up that I drank the rest of it. Do you want the leftover stick of gizzard?”

A giant tree lay collapsed in a lake surrounded by other trees.

Shinjou stood before that giant tree.

“Where is Mukiti?”

She muttered that question to herself and looked around the area.

“…”

She saw the many trees of the forest, the ceiling of branches and leaves supported by that forest, and the waves of underbrush beneath.

Before her was a lake with plants at the bottom, a giant tree, and the sky.

…''But where is Mukiti in all this?

She looked into the forest, but there was no sign of anyone there.

She began to think. For the moment, she decided to think of Mukiti as an invisible being.

She sat on the ground to help herself calm down and she looked at the large tree.

The top was pointed toward her and the end was rough as if it had broken off, but the break itself looked fresh. It was dirty and mossy from the rain and wind, but it had none of the corroded holes common in large trees. She could see the many tree rings crammed in along that surface.

…''In other words…

“Does that mean Mukiti doesn’t even go inside it?”

If it had a hole inside, Mukiti could have entered the tree to move here, but she could guess at its internal density based on what she could see.

“He wouldn’t be able to go inside. Mukiti is outside. …But then where is he?”

Her question received no answer. She wondered if he was holed up deep belowground in the core of this ocean of plants, but that did not meet the requirement of him also being here.

Mukiti had to be anywhere and yet nowhere.

And unless she found him, they could not speak with him.

Earlier, Sayama had speculated that the other Gears had been unable to negotiate with 4th-Gear.

''That might be true,'' she told herself.

Anyone who saw that giant tree move would assume it was Mukiti and it seemed he had chosen to use the tree when interacting with others. In that case, he would have looked like a literal tree serpent.

…''But what if he isn’t?

Her eyebrows gathered together as she held her knees and rested her chin on them.

Something was then placed on her back.

She turned toward the faint scratching ticklishness and found a plant creature had lifted itself up. It had risen sideways and was leaning up against her.

''It’s a lot like a dog,'' she thought with a bitter laugh.

She found comfort in that and switched over her train of thought.

“Sayama-kun, your grandfather found the answer without any hints, didn’t he?”

“No, think about it more carefully, Shinjou-kun. It scares me to think of that old ape finding the answer without a hint. Thinking back, I wonder if someone else from the National Defense Department gave him an idea that acted as a hint. Or maybe there was a cheat sheet in 4th-Gear that told him the identity of Mukiti! That’s it! There just had to be!!”

Shinjou ignored the boy’s thoughtless refusal to lose, but she did think there must have been a hint.

4th-Gear would have had this same sea of plants and the plant creatures. It would also have had the giant tree that spoke for Mukiti, but that was just a deception.

Why had Sayama’s grandfather not fallen for that deception?

“…”

Shinjou removed her backpack.

It contained the case for the lunch she had eaten on the way, a towel, and a folded umbrella. It also held her precious binder and the copied documents Kashima had given them.

She pulled out those documents and opened them. There was still a lot she could not read, but she could read the National Defense Department investigation report on 4th-Gear.

She skimmed through it and found a certain passage.

…''On March 15, 1938, they took in a moving plant found in the mountains of Kyushu.

“Shinjou Kaname reported that the plant’s movements grew more active as it approached the ley line modification facility. He proved a low level of communication was possible.”

Shinjou looked quickly through the reports on the other Gears.

After the destruction of some of the ley line modification facilities, the National Defense Department had discovered the existence of foreign beings. That had been on August 4, 1937 when Hiba Ryuutetsu and Siegfried had fought.

…''Once they realized beings from another world existed, a lost individual of these beasts arrived.

“They first entered 4th-Gear on January 10, 1943.”

They had lacked the technology to open a gate, so Sayama’s grandfather and the others had been unable to do anything more than speak with the plant creature for over five years.

…''But that means they continued speaking with the creature without ever seeing the giant tree.

If someone with gate technology visited 4th-Gear, they would hear Mukiti’s words through the tree.

But what if someone lacked that ability?

“So that’s it. He had been speaking with the creature for so long without the preconception of the tree.”

She closed the documents and turned to the plant creature supporting her back.

“Excuse me.”

She asked a question while wondering what it had been like back then.

“What happens when you are separated from Mukiti?”

“Mukiti is here. Mukiti not here.”

“You mean…”

She trailed off and smiled bitterly.

…''Just like Sayama-kun, I’m imagining what the creature is trying to say.

But she continued speaking with that bitter smile filling her voice.

“You mean Mukiti is still with you even when you leave him?”

“Mukiti is here. Mukiti not here.”

The answer was the same. That meant it did not change.

They were always both with and not with Mukiti.

What did that mean?

She thought and a sudden memory came to her. And that memory led her to the answer.

While he lay with his eyes closed, Sayama heard Shinjou speak.

“Sayama-kun, do you have a moment?”

He shot to his feet, loosened his tie, and spread his arms.

“Indeed I do!! …Why are you glaring at me and scooting away, Shinjou-kun?”

“I’m just wondering if I could word my questions a little better.”

Her expression then changed. Her eyebrows grew flat and she gave him a peaceful look.

“Sayama-kun, you said it is impossible to communicate with plants, didn’t you?”

“You mean that business about attaching electrodes? I did say that. What about it?”

“Um, about that. …Why electrodes?”

“Living things produce a faint amount of electricity. That fact was likely used to give the theory a sense of credibility.”

Shinjou let out a breath when she heard that.

Her shoulders lowered in relief and she looked back at him.

“But,” she said. “That’s a human way of thinking about it, right? These creatures have no brains and their level of life seems comparable to ours.”

She stood up and the plant creature stretched its body toward her as if to pursue. However…

“Sorry. You can do that later.”

She removed her shoes and then her socks.

…''And next the safari coat and skirt.

Sayama waited with arms spread, but Shinjou walked to the lake and turned back with a forced smile.

“Ha ha. Sayama-kun? Were you expecting something that was clearly not going to happen?”

“Heh heh heh. I see being a tease is your specialty, Shinjou-kun.”

“Oh, c’mon, Sayama-kun. Being completely crazy is your specialty.”

She returned to a serious expression and turned away.

''Is she being shy?'' wondered Sayama. ''But that is wonderful too.

He looked to the spot she had left. The plant creature seemed interested in her shoes and socks because it was rolling them around and wrapping its front arms around them.

''Could it be?'' thought Sayama just before slowly picking up her shoes and socks and pressing them to his face

“Sniff sniff sniff!!”

“Wh-what in the world are you doing, Sayama-kun!?”

“It seems every hint of exhaustion was absorbed. They are odorless.”

He saw the creature expel some oxygen, so he quickly crouched down and inhaled.

“This is the oxygen produced from your right foot’s middle toe!”

“No, it isn’t!! Well, maybe it is, but it doesn’t matter!”

“Heh heh heh. A man with a discerning nose can tell, Shinjou-kun.”

“Yes, yes, yes. But, y’know what? I’d rather you didn’t turn into a dog. …Are you even listening?”

That question was followed by a splashing sound.

[[Image:OnC_v09_0069.png|thumb]]

He turned around while holding the plant creature that had expelled her oxygen and found her with her feet in the lake.

The water was shallow and she spun around with the water only reaching her ankles.

The bottom of her safari coat flew up and her hair swayed about.

She lightly kicked the water with right foot and smiled.

“I think plants might have their own way of communicating.”

“Are you saying they have a unique form of communication that provides a connection to Mukiti no matter where they are?”

“Yes. But that still leaves a question: why can 4th-Gear’s residents speak with people like us who aren’t plants?”

She lowered her leg and bent back to look up at the giant tree behind her.

“I think Mukiti is inside this tree right now.”

“But there is clearly no gap for him to enter.”

“There is. It’s just so incredibly small that we can’t see it. And this provides the link that allows us to communicate with 4th-Gear’s residents.”

She spread her arms as if to embrace the tree while keeping her back to it.

“It’s water.”

Shinjou lowered her gaze with her arms still spread.

She looked down at the lake’s surface where she was reflected in the water.

“It is everywhere in 4th-Gear and yet nowhere. It is in all of 4th-Gear’s residents and yet in none of them. And it has no set form but becomes a serpent when residing in that tree. In other words…”

She turned around with a smile and found Sayama sniffing at the air expelled by the plant creature he held.

“Are you even trying to listen?”

“My apologizes, Shinjou-kun. …But look to your right.”

She did so and saw water.

Water spiraled up to her height.

It looked like a double helix serpent, but there must have been water flow within the pillar because it produced spray that almost looked like horns or scales.

“A dragon.”

The water serpent lowered its head at her words as if nodding.

It then raised its head and did not stop there.

“!”

It burst into a great spray of water.

But despite her surprise, Shinjou continued observing what occurred before her.

The scattering spray did not touch her. It formed a spiral in the air and flew through the sky like a mist. And…

“The tree.”

As the mist vanished, the large tree behind her began to move.

It produced many deep groaning sounds and formed waves in the lake.

It rose.

The rising tree pushed up the air and the forest cried out.

The shadow of the giant tree extended and Shinjou heard a pulsation. That was the pulse produced by the tree coming to life. With each pulse, the old water that had soaked inside the tree was expelled from the stump-like top that had already become the head.

She heard a sound much like a steam whistle, but no one responded to it. The plant creatures did not rise up and the trees of the forest did not make any more noise than necessary.

…''Mukiti is here, yet not here.

Mukiti was likely merged with all of the moisture in 4th-Gear. He existed everywhere so he could manage and control the entire Gear.

…''Is he like a swarm of liquid nanomachines?

A warm breeze circled the clearing and the large tree pulled itself fully upright.

She heard a voice. It was Mukiti’s voice. It was a distinct voice that could be taken as masculine or feminine.

“Hello, everyone.”

She found herself unable to immediately react to the sudden greeting.

After a moment, the voice spoke again.

“Let us try that again.”

“H-hello!!”

She frantically shouted back a greeting, and the tree shook a bit as if nodding.

“I am Mukiti.”

Another pause.

“Nice to meet you.”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume9 Chapter 18

2014-09-02T19:14:19Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 18: Place of Continuation */

==Chapter 18: Place of Continuation==
[[Image:OnC_v09_0011.png|thumb]]
''The movement continues

''In order to continue moving

''As if to trouble them

Heo looked across a cluster of rectangular stones.

She found Japanese gravestones strange.

…''In the US, they’re a slate to engrave the person’s name on or a symbol like a cross.

These only had the family name engraved in them and they were rectangular blocks with no religious symbolism.

She tilted her head while trying to figure out what meaning their shape had.

She looked around and saw quite a few of the gravestones. Beyond them were mountains, the sky, the sun peeking through the clouds, and the wind. It looked like there was no one else there.

“Ah.”

But for an instant the gravestones in the afternoon light looked almost like statues.

She then realized that, even if the gravestones were not shaped like people, there truly were people sleeping below them.

…''Is their vague shape supposed to help you imagine that?

She looked forward while thinking and found Harakawa had moved on ahead with a bucket in hand. She jogged to catch up while doing her best not to shake the flowers in her hands.

“Harakawa, is your family’s grave here too?”

“Yes, but it’s technically not ''my'' family’s grave. But what matters now is finding your family’s one.”

“Right.”

She looked around and quickly spotted a certain conspicuous grave.

“Harakawa, what’s with this bronze statue of a smiling man with his arms spread toward the heavens?”

“Oh, that. I don’t know the details, but it’s a famous gravestone here. All I know is that it says ‘Ooshiro’ at the bottom and there’s a slot for ten yen coins on the back of the head. From what I’ve heard, it plays Swan Lake or Tokyo Ondo when you put in a coin.”

“I see.” She nodded and noticed something odd about the large gravestone next to that one. “U-um, there’s a dirty magazine across from that one.”

“Yeah. I don’t know the details on that one either, but apparently that’s the grave for the family of IAI’s president. The employees and executives supposedly bring offerings every so often. I wonder if that moron of a student council president will end up like that.”

“That moron of a student council president?”

“Remember when those four morons showed up yesterday and I had to throw you in the closet? He’s one of them. Do you know what a student council president is, Heo Thunderson?”

“Yes. …It must be hard going to that school.”

“That’s for sure,” sighed Harakawa.

He faced forward again and began walking, but he did not forget to check the gravestones on either side as he did. Heo let out a warm breath while watching his back.

She checked the wristwatch her great-grandfather had given her and its analog display was past 2:00 PM.

…''If great-grandfather is here, I’ll have to say goodbye to Harakawa.

He had to know that as well, but he was searching for her father’s resting place instead of worrying about it. While she watched him walk on ahead, she suddenly spoke.

“Um.”

He stopped, turned around, and tilted his head.

“What is it, Heo Thunderson?”

She felt relieved that he called her name, but she realized she had not thought of anything to actually say.

She had simply spoken up in order to receive some kind of response, so she frantically continued.

“U-um, well, Harakawa.”

She knew she had to say something, but something else happened just as she was about to come up with the words.

Something flew up from between the rows of gravestones to the left. The form she saw brought words to her mind and they spilled from her mouth as a voice.

“Th-there’s a weird angel over there!”

“What?”

As Harakawa looked forward again, Heo saw it.

A girl with white wings of light on her back had flown up from between the rows of gravestones.

She did not know what was happening, but the winged girl flew by overhead and flipped around in the air.

Heo turned around just in time to see her forcefully land on top of the Izumo family gravestone. A sound of impact came from her right heel as it kicked against the top of the gravestone.

“Oh, whoops.”

She spoke in surprise as the base of the gravestone was partially ripped from the ground.

The large gray rectangle tilted as if raising a leg and it looked about to fall over.

But someone supported it from below: a well-built boy who ran out from the rows of gravestones.

“The student council president!?”

Heo looked more closely at the boy when she heard Harakawa shout from behind her. The large boy wore a school uniform and he supported the falling gravestone by using his left hand to swing the giant white sword against its stone side.

“All right! Nicely done! That was badass, V-Sw!”

The excess force smashed it to pieces.

With a deafening clear sound, the gravestone burst into a spray of stone fragments like it had been made of sand.

“Ah.”

The boy froze in surprise, looked down at his hands, and then back at the smashed gravestone.

“O-oh, crap! Now, I’ve-… Oh, wait. This was my family’s stone, so no harm do-… Oh, hey. A porn ma-… Are you okay, Chisato!?”

He went through four stages of processing his thoughts.

His final words had been directed at the winged girl who had lost her balance in midair.

The destruction of the gravestone she had landed on caused her feet to slip and she was about to fall onto her butt.

She let out a cry of surprise and frantically flailed her arms through the air.

The tip of the spear in her right hand circled around and cleanly decapitated the nearby bronze statue.

Heo saw the smiling head flying through the cloudy blue sky.

It flew in an arc and she did indeed see the coin slot on the back when it reached the zenith of that arc.

She then reached a conclusion, so she turned back toward Harakawa and swung her fists along with the flowers they held.

“H-Harakawa! I don’t understand what’s going on!”

“That means you’re normal, Heo Thunderson.”

The name he spoke brought a sound behind them.

The wings of light gave several powerful flaps to stabilize the girl and then the girl spoke.

“So she is Thunderson!?”

Heo sensed surprise and desire for confirmation in the girl’s voice, but then the sound of roasted beans popping came from the row of gravestones to the left. And the same sound repeated endlessly.

It was the student council president who reacted first.

“They’re seriously shooting!?”

Heo understood what that sound was, but the thought was refusing to enter her mind.

However, the next thing she heard was a great many footsteps and voices from the row of gravestones that was to her right now that she had turned around.

“Eliminate them! Eliminate them!!”

“Testament!!”

As she turned around, she saw men in blue outfits racing toward them.

They all held black metallic objects in their hands.

…''What are those?

The answer would not come to her, but a shouted voice brought her to her senses.

“Harakawa! Take that girl and run away!! They’re after her!”

It came from the winged girl.

She immediately understood who “that girl” was, but…

…''What does she mean they’re “after” me!?

She was reminded of the other night.

She and her great-grandfather had been pursued by something. Something that only her great-grandfather knew the identity of.

''I can’t be,'' she thought just as she realized someone’s arm had wrapped around her left elbow and stomach.

It was Harakawa.

As he pulled her toward him, his head turned toward the boy and girl.

“This is all completely ridiculous, but I can trust the two of you, right!?”

“You idiot! Harakawa, someone who’s honest about their perversion isn’t gonna lie!”

“Um, Kaku? He said ‘the two of you’.”

The student council president smiled toward the winged girl next to him, turned back toward Harakawa, and cleared his throat.

“A-anyway, we’ll explain the details later, but I’ll tell you one thing now.”

He looked to the men in blue running toward them from the right.

“They seem to be fighting for freedom and justice, but they’re going to force those things on that girl! If you don’t want that, then hurry away from here! And to help you do that…”

He took in a breath and held up his sword. A metallic sound filled the air as it opened up and transformed.

“I’ll show you a little of what I’m made of!!”

At the same time, the white wings flew toward battle with spear in hand.

The battlefield spread out in an instant.

Kazami moved about among the gravestones.

Harakawa and Heo were escaping to the west while she and Izumo stopped American UCAT from pursuing them.

The enemy was numerous and they were divided between several of the long east to west rows of gravestones.

Kazami fought along those long, narrow paths.

Despite the gravestones dividers, she could switch between paths by flipping to the side with a flap of one wing. If they fired on her, she would escape to the neighboring path and fly down that one if she found defenseless enemies there.

Because they were lined up, she could sweep a path clean with a single blast of her weapon.

She repeatedly ran, tore into them, blew them away, and either evaded or leaped.

She was prioritizing Harakawa and Heo’s escape over avoiding the enemy attacks.

That meant she was accepting some level of injury as long as she could push the enemy back.

And while repeatedly firing, she thought to herself.

…''Why do we have to do this between allies!?

A bullet ricocheted off G-Sp2’s cowling and grazed her cheek. If she had not been holding G-Sp2 so close, it would have directly hit her above the nose.

However, that had happened several times already. The most painful one was the shot through the side of her summer uniform’s cardigan. Knit materials had to be thrown out if they got a hole and she felt a warm, tickling sensation underneath it.

She was bleeding and it was enough to begin accumulating at the bottom of her shirt that was tucked into her skirt. The defensive philosopher’s stone Tsukuyomi had given her was emitting light nonstop and she would likely have been more badly injured without it.

[[Image:OnC_v09_0021.png|thumb]]

A man in a blue armored uniform charged out from behind a gravestone to the left, so she knocked him away by rotating up the tip of the spear from down and to the left. The sound of impact filled the air and she endured the recoil with the leg braced on the ground.

The spear uppercut sent the man three meters into the air.

But another armored uniform was already in front of her.

This new man was aiming a machinegun at her and her focused gaze saw the muzzle closing in on her in slow motion.

“Oh, what a pain!!”

She used all her strength to swing back down the raised spear tip.

It caught on the enemy soldier it had sent into the air and slammed him down onto the machinegun man before her.

They collided and it sounded more like shattering glass than a normal collision.

After using the recoil of the blow to leap backwards, she let out a breath, shook the sweat from her brow, and flapped her wings forward.

…''Where did Izumo get off to? I think he went after Roger, but he isn’t making out in a dream again, is he?

''He’ll be fine,'' she told herself as she landed.

She looked around and saw a man in a suit calmly step out from behind a gravestone on the right.

This was the man known as Colonel Odor.

When visiting those evacuated underground the day before, she had heard all about him. He was the one who had fought the mechanical dragon on top of that airplane two nights before, he was the one to attack Japanese UCAT the day before, he went by the name Odor, and he was America’s inspector.

…''This is the guy who uses some kind of gravity technique.

She sensed how dangerous he was from the atmosphere around him and ignored the pain in her side.

Odor faced the girl before him while breathing heavily among the rows of stone.

“Are you…are you keeping me from going any further?”

“Looks like you understand the situation.”

She replied in English.

''I see,'' he thought. ''So the language of our homeland is understood even in this uncivilized land. Who was the evangelist that taught her? Long live the homeland.

The girl raised her spear and he saw a red stain on the right side of her clothes.

At a glance, he identified it as blood.

The more time they spent facing each other like this, the greater her disadvantage due to blood loss.

The loss of blood would lower her strength and the blood trailing down her skin would bring fear and loss of concentration.

That meant his enemy would be destroyed if he merely waited.

Nevertheless, he moved forward.

“You aren’t going to wait it out like a coward?

“And give… And give my opponent an excuse? You could say you had lost too much blood to move, that it destroyed your concentration, or that it filled you with fear. And you could blame it all on me for waiting.”

He exposed his teeth in a smile.

“I will not… I will not give you such excuses. I will show you mercy without giving you a single excuse. I will have you give up by crushing you beyond question and rendering you unable to fight or even dead. …That is the kind of mercy I will show you.”

“Are America’s freedom and justice created with violence and fear?”

“Yes, yes they are. At least in my opinion, freedom and justice are no exceptions to the conservation of energy. If the people are to consume freedom and justice someone must earn it through the use of violence and fear.”

“Then how will you fill the world with justice and freedom?”

“That is simple,” replied Odor. “That is a simple matter. Before the people have fully consumed the accumulated freedom and justice, we will destroy the suppliers who are also the bearers of violence and fear. That way, the violence and fear will vanish and the people will protect and honor the remaining freedom and justice rather than consuming it!”

“Is that so?” The girl sank down as she spoke. “An idiot I know would probably have this to say about that: If you wish to fill the world with justice and freedom, tell the people to come defeat me.”

She was eight meters away.

She had wings and was too close for someone wielding a spear that doubled as a cannon.

He thought about why she would choose that distance.

“A surefire attack. You are making a surefire attack from close range, aren’t you?”

Odor raised his right hand toward the area above her head and snapped his fingers.

At the same time, wind exploded from her back.

“…!”

She flapped her wings, kicked off the ground with her left foot, and stayed low as she charged forward.

However, Odor’s power arrived in time.

A metallic sound reverberated through the air and the power attempted to drop down from above her head.

The metallic sound struck.

“!”

But Odor saw that his power had not hit the girl.

It had struck the ground in front of her and he saw the reason why.

Beyond the scattering sand, she had put a stop to her intense acceleration.

“Feints are easy to fall for, aren’t they?”

Her extreme acceleration had been stopped by a change in her stance.

With both her hands just above her chest, she held the spear to the left and right like the horizontal bar in gymnastics.

The white spear extending horizontally from her hands had hit the sides of the gravestones on either side of her.

“The stones. Did you stop yourself with the stones?”

“They’re not just stones. They’re gravestones. And they belong to people I can at least say wouldn’t take your side.”

The gravestones may have stopped her forward momentum, but they could not fully stop her inertia. With what sounded like a breath, the gravestones lifted up from their bases and slowly tilted.

“Oops.”

The girl rotated the spear around and pulled the tilted gravestones back from the other direction.

As soon as they landed back in place, she moved toward Odor as if collapsing forward.

The wings on her back were already raised in preparation to flap, so Odor reflexively snapped his right fingers.

“Break! Break and scatter in the wind!”

“That’s not gonna cut it!”

While running, she turned the tip of her spear toward the ground directly below herself.

She flew into the sky using her wings and the recoil of the blast that tore into the ground.

She jumped overhead with the same force as her forward run at almost the same moment that Odor’s metallic noise struck the ground.

She flipped around in midair and used her wings to flip upside-down while five meters above him.

“Let me tell you something. I saw you fight that black mechanical dragon, and the automaton you hit with a dragon cannon yesterday used her shared memory to tell us all how your technique works.”

Without moving, she held the spear tip down and toward him.

“When the mechanical dragon tried to circle above you the other night, you hit the airplane to shift its position. And when you had the dragon cannon fire on #8 yesterday, you tore into the blast by hitting the spatial ‘head’, didn’t you? For some reason, your attacks can only chop at your opponent’s head. To put it another way, you can only hit your opponent from directly above.”

The girl took aim toward his head, but…

“I won’t fire. That way I won’t give you any excuses. You could say you didn’t defeat me because I was out of reach, that you can’t be expected to defeat someone who can fly or against someone with a Concept Core, or that this was just a bad matchup. …Instead of those excuses, you’ll just have to accept that you lost to a girl and a doll.”

She descended. Her wings trembled and provided a powerful burst of energy as she charged downward.

Odor saw the spear tip before his eyes. As announced, it was closed and formed a blade rather than a cannon.

He raised his eyebrows, bared his teeth, and let out a laugh.

“Yes, yes. This is how you make things interesting!!”

In a split-second decision, he raised his right hand to shoulder height.

“!”

He snapped his fingers, but he did not strike the girl or the ground.

“The air. My odor can also tear into the air!”

The air to his right was crushed by the metallic-sounding strike. It was instantly compressed and slammed into the ground. The surrounding air flowed into the newly-created area of vacuum.

“…!”

He avoided the overhead attack by giving himself into that wind.

Due to her wings, the girl was also swept by that wind.

However…

“Now you can’t use your right arm.”

The girl forcefully stabbed her spear into the ground and stood up.

When he heard her, Odor looked at his right arm.

The rough wind washed across the right arm of his suit which was split open from cuff to elbow. The shirt below was similarly split and the bandage below that was ripped open.

Blood flowed down from between the arm and the bandage and he shook the arm to get rid of the blood.

He removed the bandage and released it to dance in the wind.

What was revealed below that thin cloth changed the girl’s expression. Her eyes opened wide, but she frowned.

“Those scars.”

His entire arm was covered in countless overlapping scars and swellings. It looked like someone had taken a chisel to his arm at random and the newly-made skin had grown to unparalleled thickness.

Odor looked down on the girl while blood flowed from the bulges and indentations of the scars.

“Interesting? Do you find this interesting? I was given these in childhood. There was oppression, pressure, and pain. There was also the sense of being unnecessary and being erased. Everyone referred to me as Odor rather than by my name. I was something no one wanted around. Something to be avoided. Something that should crawl along the ground. And the feelings that gave me are what led that same type of power to choose me.”

He took a breath and revealed a blue philosopher’s stone anklet attached near his elbow.

“This is an odor. This is the odor of hostility. My odor carries hatred, disgust, and malice to reveal any hostility and crush it from above with my own hostility given physical form. It forces them down and prostrates them before me.”

He then pulled his left hand from his pocket and spoke to the girl who had a look of disbelief.

“This is… This is my off hand, so I can’t hold back.”

He raised his left arm and the girl readied her spear.

With the sound of steel, the spear expanded. But the action pressed the spear’s shaft against her side and a line of red trailed down her right leg.

Still, she continued facing him. With sweat on her pale face, she raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“If we’re going to do this seriously, we don’t need that insurance against excuses.”

“Excellent. What an excellent spirit. On the same level as my wife.”

She gave a quick laugh at that and immediately raised her wings.

But…

“…!?”

She stopped and so did Odor.

They ignored the fact that they were facing each other at lethally close range and they looked to the west.

That was the direction Heo Thunderson and that boy had escaped earlier, but a shimmering as if of heat was now visible in the sky there.

“…!?”

Heo ran.

She did not know where she was going, why she was running, or what to do.

She was in a strange land, caught in a battle between strangers, and someone said she was being targeted for some strange reason.

''Why!?'' she thought. ''Wasn’t the only thing after me the demon that killed my mother?

She did not understand anything. The only thing she was certain of was that absolutely everything around her was uncertain. Her panic and everything else made her feel dizzy.

She did belatedly realize that she had relied on that demon a surprising amount. The fact that it was targeting her was supposed to be the one thing she knew for sure.

…''So why are these people after me too?

She ran and breathed, but inhaling was all she could manage. So much tension filled her heart that she could not release any kind of strength.

She could only let out small, withering breaths and her body grew heavy.

Realizing that only tensed her heart further.

''This isn’t right,'' she told herself. ''I can normally run just fine.

But that thought only invited more panic.

And just as she found herself unable to breathe, she heard more sounds of popping beans.

She finally realized what they were.

…''Gunshots.

When that word appeared in her mind, her body shrank down even further.

She was trying to run, but her unmoving legs tangled together and she began to fall forward.

“!?”

Someone suddenly wrapped an arm around from the left side of her back to her right side.

Her lungs moved in shock more than as an attempt to breathe and she released a breath that sounded like a quick shriek.

“H-Harakawa!”

“Don’t slow down, Heo Thunderson. Get your feet on the ground.”

Only then did she realize he truly was lifting her in his arm. Her toes were barely scraping the ground, so she frantically placed the bottoms of her feet back down.

She felt unsteady for a moment, but she supported herself with his arm as she gathered her strength.

As she stood up, a breath leaked out and panicked sweat poured from her skin.

“I-I’m sorry, Harakawa.”

He did not respond. He merely removed his arm from her.

“…”

And he pushed on her back.

Ahead of her, the cemetery’s main path sloped down to the west.

Finally, she heard his voice.

“Run, Heo Thunderson.”

Hearing him speak while catching his breath, Heo took the first step forward.

But her feet slowed and the thought that was stopping her entered her mind.

…''If I run here…

Wouldn’t the person she left behind disappear?

That thought made her turn around, but the thought did not prove accurate.

Harakawa’s back was right before her eyes.

His stood directly behind her in his school uniform.

She felt relieved by his presence.

But in that instant, his back suddenly collapsed toward her.

And beyond him, she saw the color blue.

It was one of the armored uniforms of the many people pursuing them. One of those people had run up and swung his rifle upwards.

Heo saw strength leave Harakawa’s knees, but…

“!”

He forcibly swung his body around and slammed into the side of the man swinging the gun.

“…!”

The counterattack knocked the man to the right where he rolled along the ground. Harakawa stood up on unsteady legs.

“…”

And he turned toward Heo.

Their eyes met and his gaze forced hers back with almost audible strength.

“Hey.”

He bared his teeth and closed his eyes.

“I said run!!”

That shout was the most he could manage.

His knees gave out and his hips dropped as if from exhaustion.

That was when Heo realized she could move again.

And her first action was to open her mouth and use all the air in her lungs to carry out the contents of her heart that did not even amount to words.

It was a shout of rejection.

“…!!”

The girl’s crying voice rose into the sky.

A narrow west wind that almost seemed to be crying slowly blew down from the sky.

Inside that wind, Izumo simply kneaded empty air.

His large white sword was fallen next to him and he was asleep on his feet with a look of happiness on his face.

Roger faced him five meters away while frowning through his glasses.

“You certainly fell for that easily.”

They kneaded or stood on a cemetery path lit by the afternoon sun.

An afternoon wind from the west blew into the mountain peak cemetery and Roger stood upwind. That was perfect for his use of sand.

“You did not learn much of anything from last time.”

Roger relaxed his stance and raised his arms.

Both of his sleeves contained small cylindrical cases.

They were both empty and sand blew west to east along the cemetery path.

He looked ahead to the boy still kneading empty air.

“I must apologize, but I had already scattered the sand before you arrived. You likely fell asleep right when you were about to begin the fight.” He gave a bitter smile. “But I suppose you cannot hear me.”

…''The dream sand’s effects last at least thirty minutes.

It was completely harmless, so it made a better means of stopping someone than a weapon that could actually do real harm.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Roger pushed up his glasses and looked at Izumo.

The boy was speaking in his sleep.

“C-c’mon, Chisato. We can’t do that here. Not officially anyway. This place is too blatant. We need to find somewhere that looks like we’re trying to hide but doesn’t actually hide us! …Hey, stop! Not that I’m complaining!”

Roger ignored his aggressively contradictory words, turned his back, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“While that is a problem, it is not a problem to the objective at hand. The situation here is complete.”

He then shifted his thoughts to pursuing Heo Thunderson.

He was also interested in the boy who was with her.

…''Is he from Japanese UCAT?

It was possible he was a civilian, so the men had been ordered not to fire.

But in the case he was more than that, it would be best not to leave this to the normal soldiers.

He took a step forward.

“I must-…”

He stopped before he could say “hurry”.

This was because he had noticed something reach his right shoulder.

It was a boy’s hand.

“…”

Roger turned his head toward the owner of that hand.

“Izumo Kaku.”

“I don’t care if guys know my name.”

Izumo tapped his own shoulder with the back of his giant white sword and the sword’s console displayed a comment.

“Your shoulders are stiff.”

“Well, this kind of battle is pretty boring.”

He yawned and Roger asked him a question.

“How did you leave the dream sand’s sleep so quickly?”

The effects of the philosopher’s stone sand extended beyond the sand itself. Merely touching the space they were flying about would put one to sleep.

The battle should have been over when they had faced each other and Roger had scattered the final sand in the wind.

…''So why!?

“It’s simple. I have a certain special ability. …Whether standing or doing whatever else, I can instantly fall asleep with my eyes open.”

“You can’t mean…”

“That’s right. When I took my fighting stance and you thought I was about to attack, I’d already put myself to sleep.”

That brought a certain thought to Roger’s mind.

…''Ahh, so he is an idiot.

But to confirm that he was, Roger asked a question.

“So that was all an act when you were groping the air earlier!?”

“That was obviously the quick dream I gave myself. Ha ha ha.

“Oh, I see. So you are always like that. Ha…ha ha ha ha.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!! Take that.”

That last comment was accompanied by an uppercut with the hilt of the sword.

The blow to his right side knocked Roger’s breath from him, but he managed to keep his knees from collapsing.

“…”

He forcibly braced his legs and tried to move away from Izumo, but then he noticed something.

A gust of wind had arrived from the western sky.

Harakawa felt wind surround him.

In his fading consciousness, he heard Heo’s cry and felt her clinging to him.

…''You idiot. I told you to run.

However, he could not speak his thoughts aloud.

He could only move his arm around to the strength clinging to his back.

…''If you don’t run, I’ll…

He turned to view her with his blurry vision, but he saw something strange behind her.

…''The wind?

It was the same as what surrounded him, but this wind took form.

Something pushed the air out of the way to make its invisible presence known.

“A dragon?”

It was easily several dozen meters long, but it did not knock over any of the surrounding gravestones.

He assumed it was a ridiculous hallucination, but then it opened its windy maw toward him.

He saw the blowing wind of its invisible fangs and could tell it was charging toward him.

He shut his eyes.

…''Oh, is this the demon Heo mentioned?

In an almost subconscious action, he held Heo in his arms.

And then his consciousness truly vanished.

Odor faced the wave of wind that pushed forward.

The girl standing before him faced to the west, the direction the wind had arrived from.

“————!!”

The wave of air shot out like an explosion.

The surging sound shook the ground and made the surrounding stones rattle. The wind raced across the area in an instant, descended to the base of the mountain, rustled through the trees, and blew away the flowers decorating the stones.

The scattering flower petals were plentiful enough to resemble snow and a single form came into view in the sky beyond them.

In the eastern sky, a white line of water vapor rose toward the heavens.

This was not a contrail from a jet engine. It was a line of cooling produced by pure speed.

It extended through the eastern sky and vanished.

“…!”

Odor lowered his left arm. He no longer viewed the girl before him as an obstacle, so he quickly walked westward where everyone else had gone.

He did not hide his wounded right hand or stop the bleeding and he ignored the sound of the girl turning toward him and raising her spear.

“Roger! Roger! Was that Black Sun!? Hurry up and capture it!!”

As his shouting voice travelled into the western sky, more wind blew in from that direction.

Meanwhile, three figures walked through a gentle wind in a forest too thick to see the sky.

The figure parting the tall underbrush in the lead was a six-legged creature made of plants.

The two people following him were Sayama in his suit and Shinjou in her safari coat.

As they walked, Shinjou looked up at the ceiling of trees and the slight bit of light seeping through.

“So this is the 4th-Gear reservation.”

“It feels more like an area of dense vegetation than a forest.”

She nodded in agreement and parted that vegetation as she walked.

Their destination was filled with humid air, thick underbrush, and trees.

However, the pathless path eventually ended.

While they followed the guiding plant creature and pushed through the vegetation, Shinjou gave a short voice of surprise.

“Ah.”

She quickly stepped up next to Sayama.

“There’s a lake up ahead, Sayama-kun.”

He looked forward where the forest opened up into a field of shorter undergrowth.

A lake of about one hundred meters across lay at the center of the field.

And the lake had a giant form in the center.

“Is that Tree Serpent Mukiti?” asked Sayama as he peered out from the forest.

A giant form of about three meters thick grew from the center of the lake and lay collapsed to the east.

It was a giant collapsed tree that’s top half had been cut away.

With the sunny clearing and lake behind him, the plant creature turned back toward the two humans.

He swayed happily and spoke.

“Promise.”

And…

“Mukiti is waiting.”

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Preface|Preface]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume9_Chapter_19|Chapter 19]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume8 Chapter 8

2014-08-17T15:15:13Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 8: Confirmation of a Word */

==Chapter 8: Confirmation of a Word==
[[Image:OnC_v08_0229.png|thumb]]
''To hear

''And to speak

''A single word

''I hid and let spill so many feelings

A certain room overlooked the ocean.

The window gave a view of a vast bay underneath the late-afternoon sky.

The room itself was divided into two spaces of ten square meters each. The bedroom space by the window had a desk and a double bed while the living room space by the entrance had a tatami mat floor. The bath and the entrance to the shared bathroom were located next to the door.

“But it seems we can use the 24-hour underground hot spring, Shinjou-kun.”

The boy placing his travel bags next to the living room table spoke and received a reply.

“Wow, this bed is amazing. I bounced back up just from sitting on it. Look, look, Sayama-kun.”

Shinjou had placed her travel bag by the bed and was checking the bed’s springs.

“Ha ha. I feel kind of bad doing this while working on the Leviathan Road, but I never thought we would get to stay in a hotel like this. Not to mention that this is my first time travelling as far as Kyushu.”

“Did UCAT not have company trips?”

“You already know about the summer training camp, but they also had one at the end of the fiscal year. They would have an Izu dancer training camp or a snow tunnel escape training camp. I never went because I didn’t want anyone to know about my condition, though.”

“Based on the names, I think you were right not to go, Shinjou-kun.”

“You’re probably right.”

She smiled, got off the bed, approached the window, and picked up the guest tourist pamphlet placed on the bed’s pillow.

“I never thought my first trip would be to Nagasaki. I thought our senior trip would be my first.”

“I see. Perhaps I should have invited you somewhere before now. It never even crossed my mind.”

Sayama crossed his arms and nodded, so Shinjou frantically shook her head.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t have to worry about that. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of chances for trips in the future and there’s still a lot we have to do. There’s also the money. Also, I’m glad my first outing like this could be with you. No one would ever guess the two of us were on a trip toge-…”

Despite sounding so excited, she suddenly stopped and her expression froze.

“We left the dorm and school with our luggage, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we left while greeting the students preparing for the athletic festival. What about it?”

“There’s probably a good chance that rumors about us might be perhaps spreading through the school right now!!”

Hearing that, Sayama pulled a calculator from his pocket and pushed a few buttons.

“Probably, a good chance, might be, and perhaps. If I multiply them together as 90% each, that drops the total odds down to about 66%, Shinjou-kun.”

“But unfortunately, that’s still over 50%, Sayama-kun. And I’ve heard rumors that you’re smart, but can I mentally deny them?”

“Heh heh heh. Shinjou-kun, any intellect measurable on the standard scale is no match for me.”

He pulled up a rocking chair from the desk and sat in it. He looked to the same sea Shinjou was watching, looked down to the harbor and city, and finally looked to Shinjou herself.

“What do you think of the view? I think this was a nice room that happened to be vacant.”

“I have a feeling you’re hiding a complaint, but yes. This hotel is connected to IAI, isn’t it? It’s fun seeing everything from seven stories up and the wind is nice.”

“Indeed. If there was a fire, there would be no saving us.”

“Stop trying to make this more exciting than it is. …Anyway, it’s nice how the airport is close by, we can reach the city easily, and we can see the ocean.”

She looked past the bay and to the few islands visible on the boat-filled sea.

“This is nice. The Seto Inland Sea was good too, but this has a different feel to it.”

“Well, most of the islands you can see here are just as empty as the ones in the Inland Sea. But you can see the Goto Islands there and far beyond them but out of sight is China.”

“4th-Gear’s reservation is on one of the desert islands, isn’t it?”

“I believe its island is not visible from here. We have to take a ship from Nagasaki Harbor to reach the IAI-owned island. I believe the IAI ship is set to leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

“So we’ll be going out to sea.”

“The Seto Inland Sea was your first time on the beach, wasn’t it? So will this be your first time out on the ocean?”

She nodded while looking out the window.

“Yes. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean. Izumo-san swam in it last night, though.”

Hearing that, Sayama replied in agreement toward her back.

…''Although you call that being “swept away” not “swimming”. But who cares about Izumo.

After he gave a nod of deep emotion, she took a step away from the window, sighed in satisfaction, and turned toward him.

“But we only got a chance to see this scenery because we got here so early.”

“Let’s wait a bit before heading out. A Nagasaki UCAT employee is supposed to bring us a communicator to contact the new headquarters in Okutama. It will apparently take some time to get here, though.”

“I see. Well, I suppose work does come first.”

She nodded and slowly walked toward him and his rocking chair.

She then sat down on his lap.

Her warmth, her softness, and the weight supporting them reached him through the double skirt.

“Let’s talk.”

When Sayama heard what Shinjou said, he nodded.

“Yes. There is a lot I want to say, but how about you go first, Shinjou-kun?”

“Sure.” She gently rested her hair and back on his chest. “Um, thank you for last night. You put up with it even when I said something strange, made an impossible request, and then started crying.”

“Did you?”

“I did. I know it’s impossible and that you lied when you said you could do it. It may be a little conceited, but I think it’s partially my fault that you had to tell that lie.”

“I see.”

Sayama recalled the conversation from the previous night.

How was Shinjou to have a child when she belonged to a race that switched between male and female at a set interval?

Everything might work fine while she was female, but what happened when she became male? She had also once said that she did not belong to any known race.

…''That means she might be a unique product of crossbreeding between two races.

He could also think of several other possibilities such as human experimentation and the effect of some form of concept.

But no matter how much they looked into the cause, it would not change the fact that she belonged to a race that switched between sexes.

That was why she had spoken out about her worries and then cried.

“Am I…okay?”

“Of course you are. You are wonderful.”

“This might be a mean question, but…do you know something?”

“I do. I know that everything about you is wonderful. Am I wrong? That is the main tenet of Shinjou-ism.”

“Then let me teach you the main tenet of Sayama-ism: this isn’t a joke.”

Her shoulders shook a little and she smiled. In order to keep that trembling inside her, Sayama lightly embraced her from behind.

“Let us get right to the point. Do you think you can never have a child with me?”

“Eh? Um…u-uh, well… If we aren’t going to read too deeply into what that means, yes.”

“Good. Now let me rephrase my answer from last night: that is not a problem, so do not worry.”

She gasped and turned toward him. Her long hair twisted and her eyebrows were lowered.

“O-of course it’s a problem.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

“B-but I still haven’t had my period and the boy side isn’t working either.”

“What if it simply takes longer for you? Or what if you still have issues with your body?”

To tell her to calm down, he gathered strength in the arms embracing her and gently moved the rocking chair.

“You dressed like this today, but was that because you think you still have issues with Setsu-kun’s body and want to remain as Sadame-kun as much as possible? But no matter how you dress yourself up, there are times when you are a boy, Shinjou-kun.”

“But…”

“I know what you want to say and this may be a step forward in a certain way.”

She looked up in confusion, but he returned her look with his usual expressionless face.

“Before, you hated your body itself and tried to stay as Sadame-kun for my sake. But now you prefer Sadame-kun because there is something you want to do. That is a major step forward. So listen. I will now resolve some of your unease.”

And he did so.

“3rd-Gear has technology for in vitro fertilization as well as cloning technology. You may not be able to carry the child yourself, but that technology will still allow you to have a child. That possibility is available to us now that 3rd-Gear has joined us.”

“…”

He heard Shinjou gulp and felt her hold her own body within his arms.

He then embraced her even more and continued rocking the chair.

“You are perfectly capable of rocking a cradle like this. We only need to take an egg cell from you, or – if that isn’t possible – modify one of your cells into an egg cell. So until we decide to do that, how about you try to do it on your own?”

“You mean…?”

“Do you still not understand?” Sayama shrugged. “The worry behind your tears has already been solved by the Leviathan Road. All that remains is to continue trying to see if you can do it without relying on that technology.”

Sayama’s words filled the air and time passed.

Shinjou took several breaths on the slowly moving rocking chair and then opened her mouth to speak.

“U-um?”

She sounded hesitant and troubled.

“C-can I really trust in that and test myself?”

“You can. At any time, at any place, and in any way. Right?”

She nodded and formed a slightly crumpled smile.

“Yes, that’s right. I can continue testing myself at any time, at any place, and in any way.”

However, her head shot up and she frantically turned toward Sayama.

“D-did I just fall for a dangerous leading question!?”

“Oh? What ever are you talking about, Shinjou-kun?”

“Y-you asked me if I would test myself at any time, at any place, and in any way. Th-that’s leading me into accepting all sorts of kinky things!”

“You say some funny things, Shinjou-kun. Ha ha ha. It takes an amusing person to refer to an ethical truth of the universe as a leading question.”

“Stop lifting my skirt while you say that!”

He answered her shout of protest with a deep nod of understanding.

“Then I will do so silently.”

He bared Shinjou’s legs and gave a cry of admiration.

Shinjou frantically tried to twist out of his grasp, but…

“Wait, Sayama-kun. Stop making me straddle you.”

“Do not ask the impossible. Also, I believe it was you that did that.”

“That’s because my stockings slipped on my skirt and my feet aren’t reaching the ground.”

“I see. So your skirt is in the way. Such a naughty skirt. Allow me to take care of it.”

With a sigh of exasperation he sincerely lifted it up to her stomach.

“Now, that should make it easier to move your- gh. Wh-why are you elbowing me, Shinjou-kun?”

“It’s strange how I feel like I did something wrong when you ask so seriously.”

As Shinjou spoke, Sayama gently twisted her skirt into place and embraced her from behind once more. She trembled a bit and twisted her shoulders around to face him.

“Um, Sayama-kun? I-it’s not even five yet.”

“Listen carefully, Shinjou-kun. We have been too busy to do this sort of thing lately and I have a certain thought. Out of her dislike for Setsu-kun, Sadame-kun gave him her hairstyle and clothes, but in a way, could that be a form of Setsu-kun that Sadame-kun is more comfortable with?”

“…”

“When testing Setsu-kun, it was almost always in the school uniform, but that may have been a mistake as it emphasized that it was him. Perhaps it would be better to do it in an outfit that you are comfortable in no matter the situation. Also, this is not the dorm room in which you originally showed your resolve. In a way, it is a place of comfort because you will never return here, so try to relax.”

“But Setsu is…”

She began to speak but stopped.

Sayama thought on the continuation of that sentence.

…''Does she still have a problem with Setsu-kun?

As he thought about what lay within her mind, he asked about it.

“Is there a problem with Setsu-kun? Is it about having a child or that he is a boy?”

It took her a fair amount of time to answer.

“…”

''What is it?'' he wondered about her.

At the very least, he felt he had answered the questions concerning Setsu that she had mentioned.

…''But what is it this time?

What he had to do was simple.

…''I can do nothing but trust in her.

He grabbed her shoulders, squeezed, and then embraced her slender body once more.

She took in a breath before speaking.

“Wait. U-um?”

She took in a few more breaths and moved her lips to test the words she was about to say.

She gently held her own body within his arms. She grabbed her elbows, held her sides, held the bottoms of her shoulders, and shrank down.

“Do I…”

Her voice trembled.

“Do I really not have to worry? Will it really be okay?”

After taking a breath, Shinjou spoke again and her voice was quieter this time.

“What is this fear I feel about being Setsu? It’s there, I still feel some unease, and I want there to be more, but…” She shook her head. “Can I really believe at least a little bit that I don’t have to worry about that?”

Sayama felt her relax in his arms and heard her let out a breath.

He felt a trembling heat in the soft back he embraced.

She then nodded and the hair that held a trace of her body heat shook between his chest and her back. After nodding a few more times, she quietly but firmly spoke.

“Will we really be able to use 3rd-Gear’s technology?”

“If you are worried, you can ask the automatons about it. They will do everything they can to serve people.”

“Then… I can have a child even if it won’t be with my actual body? I can do that?”

And…

“I can rejoice about that?”

“You can, but that is only the bare minimum of joy. If you test yourself and it goes well, you can rejoice much, much more.”

“Ah…”

She let out a sigh as she curled up her back and sank into his chest.

As she entrusted herself to him, he rubbed his cheek against hers from behind.

She then lowered her cheek in a nod.

“Right.”

In response, he slowly lifted her skirt back up.

“Ah.”

He lifted it above her knees and then exposed everything from her gently spread legs to the bottom of her stomach. Before she could change her mind, he reached for her white underwear and gently lowered it down to her knees. With a shriek, she hid her cheeks behind her hands.

While making sure not to interfere with that movement, he lifted one of her knees and removed the underwear from that leg.

“Um, Sayama-kun?” she said with heat in her voice. “Th-this is embarrassing.”

“It is all over for someone if they forget their shame, Shinjou-kun.”

“I suppose someone who long since travelled that road would know.”

“Ha ha ha. Now, let us continue.”

“This is hardly new, but what you’re saying doesn’t follow from what I said. A-also…”

She looked forward through the gaps between her fingers.

“Aren’t you going to close the window?”

“What are you talking about, Shinjou-kun? You need to show off your newfound self to the world.”

“You can do that on your own. W-wait. Stop kicking the chair and move away from the window. It’s too soon for me to try exhibitioni- Ahh! This is way too close to the window!!”

“Calm down, Shinjou-kun. We are on the seventh floor. No one can see us from outside.”

“A-are you sure?”

“I am, Shinjou-kun. You would have to be flying through the sky to see us. …Oh, look. An airplane.”

“They can see from the airplane!!”

“Just calm down, Shinjou-kun. Please trust me.”

“R-really? That won’t be easy given your previous offenses.”

“I will admit I have been rude to you on occasion, but try to remember when we first met. My behavior towards Setsu-kun was immaculate.”

“I just remembered that immaculate record began with you pressing your ear against my chest and then pulling on me while saying nonsense in the bath. The trauma’s coming back!!”

Sayama continued regardless.

“Quiet down and stop trying to close various things, Shinjou-kun. I have no proof, but I have a feeling things will go well today. How about you?”

“W-well, I feel like it might work today, too. This isn’t the same as the usual dorm room and my worries from before are gone.”

Her tone lowered as she spoke and Sayama smiled at her.

“I see. If this will go well, then perhaps I should call the lobby and put in an advance order for sekihan.”

“Y-you don’t have to do that. I’d rather this be our secret.”

''Such lovely words,'' he thought while gently rocking the chair once more.

“Ah.”

She spread her legs to balance herself and he raised his knees.

With his knees pressing up against her butt, she further spread her legs and he placed the backs of her knees over the arms of the chair. He brought her stockings to a position they could safely slip from and she brought her hands to her face.

“S-Sayama-kun?”

“What is it? I do not have time to deal with jokes right now.”

“That’s my line!! U-um? Will you please listen to me?”

She bent backwards to press her forehead against his neck and she took a breath.

“You always stop when I’m about to cry, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

“You do.” She blushed and lowered her gaze a bit. “But don’t do that today. Sometimes, I wonder if it would go better if you showed less restraint because of me.”

“I see. Then today is a day for both of us to face our problem areas.”

She gave a small smile while still blushing.

“Ah,” she said when he touched her hand. “U-um? Can I ask something else?”

“What is it?”

“Well,” she said with her hands on her cheeks. “You’re recording this, aren’t you?”

Izumo and Kazami travelled east along a road that ran along the JR Itsukaichi Line that existed between Harakawa’s apartment and Taka-Akita Academy.

To their right were a guardrail, a small embankment, and the railroad track. To their left was a field. The only other things around were the evening sun and the cool wind that carried some sand in it.

Izumo kept the motorcycle engine on, but he held the clutch and moved the vehicle forward by kicking off the ground. A sign by the field gave the speed limit, but he was moving the motorcycle well below that.

“Hey, Chisato.”

He called behind him where Kazami sat on the motorcycle.

“Come to think of it, we ended up skipping school today.”

She looked up into the sky and gave a short groan.

“Well, that may be true. We can try getting Ooki-sensei to work something out for us tomorrow.”

“No, let’s not do that. Cheating isn’t gonna help.”

He spoke lazily and she agreed with her eyebrows lowered in a smile.

He suddenly stopped moving and turned back toward her.

“Chisato, why did we stop keeping an eye on that Harakawa guy’s place and start wandering around?”

“Hm? Oh, there was something bothering me. And I don’t think I was wrong.”

“Did something happen? Not that I see any reason to keep an eye on a figure-obsessed guy’s apartment.”

“Wait a second.” Kazami leaned up against his back and tilted her head. “U-um, Kaku? Do you really think that stuff about Harakawa having a figure is true?”

“Yeah. You saw that women’s underwear, didn’t you? He’s doing the same thing Old Man Ooshiro did for a while.”

“But don’t you find it odd that a boy on Ooshiro-san’s level lives so nearby?”

“Chisato, UCAT has a lot of people on the same level as him. They just have different tastes.”

''Crap, that’s actually a good point,'' she thought.

However…

“Oh, but that Harakawa isn’t in UCAT.”

“Sayama didn’t used to be either. Strange people have the talent from the beginning. I know it can be hard for normal people like us to understand, though.”

“Yes. Sometimes I have difficulty keeping up with them. Anyway, Kaku, you’re making a decent argument, but I think it’s a little different this time.”

“You do? Then I guess it is.”

“Why did you change your mind so quickly?”

“Because you don’t lie,” he answered with a serious expression.

“That’s not true.”

“Then maybe you deceive me out of concern for me and I don’t realize it. But if so, that kind of lie isn’t gonna harm me, so there’s no problem. Anyway, you think there’s something more to this Harakawa, don’t you?”

She gave a mental nod to his calm question and shook her hair in the chilly wind that carried an earthy scent.

“What he’s hiding is one of the reasons I said to leave his apartment.”

“If it isn’t a figure, what is it? Did he abduct someone?”

“Please don’t say something I could hear Sayama saying. Although that might be it.”

She stepped down from the motorcycle and spoke in the opposite direction.

“Basically, we have a guest. Isn’t that right?”

A man in a gray suit stood behind them on the road lit by the evening sun.

He was tall and his face and hair pointed to a certain fact.

“A foreigner?”

“He was watching us from near the apartment. I thought he might need something, so I had him come here. It took some time before he showed himself, though.”

The man bowed and formed a smile in the eyes behind his glasses.

“Thank you very much for taking this outside of the public eye. My name is Roger Sully.”

Roger spoke in English and Kazami frowned.

“What did the foreigner say?” asked Izumo.

“He said, ‘I’m Roger Sully and make sure you remember it, idiot.’ ”

“I did not go that far.”

“Wait!” shouted Izumo. “So you can speak Japanese!?”

Roger narrowed his eyes further.

“I see, speaking in Japanese will work better. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am the assistant inspector from American UCAT.”

Kazami frowned at that and partially removed her hips from the motorcycle seat.

“A pleasure to meet you too. I am honored that American UCAT’s inspector would go out of his way to greet us.”

“As assistant inspector, I felt I had to greet the two who wield Concept Core weapons.”

…''I see.

Kazami’s frown became a smile.

She had referred to him simply as an “inspector”, but he had reiterated that he was the “assistant inspector”. That meant she had not misheard and he had not misspoken. He did indeed have a full inspector above him.

…''And his refusal to abbreviate the title means his organization is strict about rank.

She had heard that American UCAT was primarily made up of people from the American military. If he was the same and he would not use the same term to refer to both his own rank and his superior’s rank…

…''His superior must have the skill befitting the role of inspector.

He had likely used a spy satellite or American UCAT personnel to find the two of them.

Roger then asked a question.

“What are you two doing out here today?”

“Well, there’s a student who isn’t showing up to school and his homeroom teacher asked us to urge him to attend. However, he refused to come out, so we have to wait until tomorrow to try again.”

She was not lying and she interpreted his nod as evidence that they had not yet located Heo.

Realizing she had the advantage here, she relaxed a bit.

“But the Leviathan Road negotiator seemed to be with you,” pointed out Roger.

“Yes, the student in question is his classmate.”

As she spoke, she thought about whether she should tell the man what Sayama was doing and whether she should approach or avoid the information about Heo. Telling him about Sayama would likely satisfy him, but making Sayama’s actions sound too important could make him question the visit to Harakawa’s apartment.

She weighed the benefits and the dangers and spoke.

“But Sayama had to leave partway through for the Leviathan Road.”

“Is that so?” Roger bent back a bit and smiled. “Thank you for the wonderful piece of information. Yes, this means American UCAT must negotiate with Japanese UCAT as planned.”

“What kind of negotiation?”

“Nothing violent, I assure you. We will merely be carrying out the wishes of Mr. Richard Thunderson.”

“His wishes?”

“Yes. The reason he came to Japan. Surely you did not think he would be making the Leviathan Road run more smoothly, helping you escape the restraints of American UCAT, or introducing you to your negotiation partner, did you?”

They had thought all of those things.

''This is bad,'' thought Kazami while no longer smiling. ''Something dangerous is happening here.

…''What is this?

American UCAT was plotting something. As she wondered what, she lowered her hips into a defensive stance.

“Kaku.”

Before she could finish speaking his short name, Izumo had stopped the motorcycle and moved next to her.

Meanwhile, Roger brushed a hand through his hair and continued smiling.

“Now this is a problem,” he said.

“Is it? All I did was put up my guard. What happens now is up to you. Tell us what you’re after and why Richard Thunderson came to Japan.”

“I believe those are things I should tell the Leviathan Road negotiator.”

“Then think of this as us getting the answer out of you with a more physical form of negotiation. Got it?”

“Is that so?” Roger lowered his head a little and wrinkled his brow despite still smiling. “Then you are a little too used to peace.”

Kazami frowned at that and the wind blew through.

“…”

In that vast flat area of land, the dry wind of approaching autumn carried the scents of evening and the field.

“Hey, Chisato. I can see your panties because the wind is blowing up your-…”

She threw an elbow, but Izumo did not collapse. While she wondered if she had gotten a poor angle, Roger removed his hand from his hair.

As she wondered what he would do, he snapped his fingers.

She then heard a metallic sound from her left. It was followed by the sound of something heavy falling on the asphalt.

She looked over and saw Izumo’s motorcycle lying in two pieces. The break was perfectly straight as if a giant blade had split it. Oil spilled from the unfamiliar and complex structure inside the engine and a large piston lost its momentum and stopped.

…''What was that?

“You could say this was a bit of a concept,” said Roger with a smile. “Just to be clear, I have yet to finish introducing myself.”

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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume8_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
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Owari no Chronicle:Volume8 Chapter 4

2014-08-16T03:01:29Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 4: Morning of Conversation */

==Chapter 4: Morning of Conversation==
[[Image:OnC_v08_0107.png|thumb]]
''What are words?

''If someone asks that

''Is it made of words?

One special skill of Heo Thunderson’s was the ability to sit still for long periods of time.

At the moment, she was inside a small apartment filled with the morning sun, but it belonged to a boy she did not know. He was two years older than her and had spoken in English to introduce himself as Dan Harakawa.

He was the savior who had taken her in when she had collapsed.

She observed him while exchanging a few words with him.

Based on his skin color, she guessed he was Japanese with some Latin blood.

He sat across a table from her and the table contained a breakfast of bread, a light salad, and a fried egg.

She had woken to the unusual smell of that breakfast. She had no parents and her great-grandfather always went out to eat, so she was not used to smelling breakfast in the morning.

He had greeted her and given a quick explanation of the previous night’s events, but he had not asked about her. That was why Heo had asked a few questions and told him some things on her own.

She now spoke while looking into the coffee cup she held in both hands.

“And at some point, all the people vanished from the cars and buildings. O-oh, and all the lights went out. Yes, even the traffic lights.”

“I see. So it turned into a ghost town.”

“Yes. And my great-grandfather told me to leave, but he had sprained his ankle in the taxi and he told me to run away ahead of him.”

“Run away?”

Heo did not miss that Harakawa frowned. It was true that “run away” was not a commonly used phrase, but she nodded because the truth was the truth.

“According to him, it was a something-or-other space. Then he gave me a watch and told me I could leave the space with it.”

The watch she had worn on her left wrist had been placed next to the futon’s pillow when she had woken up. It was now next to her fork and knife on the table.

“Can I see that?”

After asking for permission, he took the wristwatch and held it up in front of his eyes.

“It’s pretty old.”

“It’s supposed to do something if you mess with the stem.”

But she did not remember the exact process. She thought she could prove the events of last night that way, but telling him everything came first. He handed the watch back to her and she put it on her wrist.

“My great-grandfather then pulled a spear out of his pocket and had me leave. I just kept running and the city suddenly regained its light. I wondered what that meant, but I was completely out of breath and I approached the building in front of me to call for someone.”

Harakawa would know the rest.

Feeling better for having told him everything, Heo thought about her great-grandfather.

…''He has to be okay.

He was healthy and he was the representative example of “strong” in her mind.

She convinced herself he was okay and tried to steady her trembling breathing.

As she did, Harakawa nodded.

“Where are your other relatives?”

“My great-grandfather was my only family. If he doesn’t show up where he told me to meet him, he said to visit IAI in Okutama and have them show me to an organization called UCAT.”

“I see.” he stood up and turned his back. “You have money, right? Then the first thing you need to do is get a place to stay. If you head north from here, you’ll quickly reach a railroad. The station is only a hundred meters west from there and you can find somewhere to stay near there.”

“U-um…”

“I have to get to school. Leave the key in the mailbox. It’ll probably take time for your clothes to dry, so you can stick around until then. …But you had better leave.”

“You aren’t going to ask about anything?”

“I’ve heard enough.”

He vanished into the kitchen and she sighed while listening to his footsteps.

…''He’s being cautious.

She hung her head as she wondered what to do.

She then saw the men’s pajama top and bottom she wore and belatedly realized a certain fact.

After leaving Heo and entering the kitchen, Harakawa placed his forehead on the white plaster wall with a serious expression.

…''This isn’t good. And I thought the only strange part was the name Heo.

He felt he had taken in a landmine of a person.

He had three reasons for this.

First, everything she said was complete nonsense.

Second, she fully believed everything she was saying.

And third, she had no relatives.

On top of that, he was well acquainted with the Okutama region thanks to making motorcycle deliveries for the American base and he had even gone to IAI several times.

…''But I’ve never seen or heard of a group called UCAT.

His danger gauge had shot into the red zone in only a few minutes.

Last night, he had called the police to ask what to do, but the officer on duty had laughed and told him to stop making jokes. He now wished he had worked harder to convince the officer instead of making a sarcastic comeback.

On the other hand, a hospital might be a better choice here than the police, but it would be a different kind of hospital than the one his mother stayed in.

…''The world suddenly became a ghost town and her great-grandfather pulled out a spear? Even cheap novels and manga are more sophisticated than that.

''Don’t worry,'' he told himself. ''Dan Harakawa, you did nothing wrong. You didn’t know there was anything wrong with her brain last night. You did a wonderful job of saving someone.

At any rate, he had to think about what to do today. His school attendance was pretty bad and preparations for the athletic festival were beginning, so he could stay until lunch to get his attendance marked and then skip out on the preparations.

“I guess I’ll go to school.”

He whispered an alteration on what he had said while standing up, he removed his head from the wall, and he nodded.

“Um…”

Someone was standing in the kitchen entrance.

He turned around and saw a slender body standing there. Her skin looked a bit pale, so he guessed she had yet to get over her exhaustion from the previous night.

“What is it?” he asked with a frown. “Did you want some water now that you’ve woken up? You did sweat quite a bit last night.”

“No, that isn’t… Well, actually I would like that, but…um…”

She held the neck of the pajamas she wore.

“Why am I wearing this nightwear? Does that mean…?”

He could easily imagine what she was going to say next. She was going to protest that he had changed her out of the clothes that were soaked with sweat.

…''Yeah, that’s got to be it.

He did not particularly care what complaint she made here. The girl before him was someone who had to leave here and he had not wanted her to dirty his futon, catch a cold, and end up staying here even longer.

In fact, he would be glad if she grew to not like him and left without relying on him any further.

He also felt that was the best option for her. She would probably feel helpless at first, but if the embassy found a relative working somewhere, she would feel relieved to have that support.

And so he answered bluntly.

“You were covered in sweat, so I changed your clothes. I’m not interested in your body, so don’t worry about it.”

As soon as he said that, she objected with her teary blue eyes.

“Will you take responsibility?”

“Wait! What the hell kind of curveball is this?”

“B-but I thought Japan had a custom of marrying the first person you let see you naked?”

“What kind of bizarre custom is that? There’s no responsibility for seeing someone naked.”

More tears filled Heo’s eyes and she finally took in a breath and gave a shout in Japanese.

“I was seen naked for nothing!! I demand compensation for my loss!!”

“Where did you learn that kind of Japanese!?”

She began to cry as if answering his question.

A vast enclosed space was filled with green.

The space was two hundred meters square and the green surrounding it was vegetation. The ground was formed from countless plants gathered together as if bathing in the light of the sunlamps hanging down from the ceiling.

Also, that ground covered the walls and even the ceiling from which the sunlamps hung.

There was a clearing in the center, but a forest covered the rest of the space’s six surfaces while centered on the walls and ceiling.

This gave the area poor ventilation and the small river flowing along the green ground brought high humidity.

It was a hot and stuffy space and a crooked sign stood from the green ground at the entrance to the central clearing.

The sign read “4th-Gear Greenhouse”.

The clearing currently contained two people.

Sitting on the thick lawn were Sayama in his suit and Shinjou in her dress.

They both held handheld game systems. Sayama’s was a compact white model and Shinjou’s was an oblong black model. The two systems were connected by a cable.

“Yay! I beat you for the third time in a row with that mounted punch!”

“Shinjou-kun, could you play a proper round of mahjong? Or maybe some other game?”

“But the rule that allows a sudden reversal through physical force is the special feature of Lovely Mahjong – Punching Edition. And this is the only IAI game that works on my latest system and the one you borrowed.”

Sayama tilted his head.

“About the ‘latest system’ you received last week…”

“Yeah, I got it from Ooshiro-san. Look, it’s a handheld, but it has color. Because the monochrome one was called the Game Lad, this one is called the Game Dad. The main downside is that it takes six batteries to run.”

She smiled, but then she saw the battery light on the screen in her hands.

“Ah, the batteries are dying! S-Sayama-kun, let’s play another round. This game has a super special attack you can only use when your battery light is red!”

“Calm down, Shinjou-kun. You should only play an hour of video games a day.”

“Eh? Oh, right. That is the saying, but… Ah.”

Her handheld system’s battery died and she lowered her shoulders in a sigh.

“Phew. I haven’t been able to play with you in a while.”

“Still, it is disappointing we have not been able to do more than that.”

She could only give a nod to that. She had not shown it while playing the game, but she was looking weak.

…''We have been pushing ourselves hard since last night.

The party to welcome the inspector from American UCAT had been cancelled.

The corpse of Richard Thunderson, the guest of honor, had been brought in and it was now in the morgue of a hospital near IAI. The opinion at the time was that he had been attacked by the same mechanical dragon that had attacked the IAL passenger plane.

…''And they predict it is from 5th-Gear.

They did not even know its name, but it was huge, it had great mobility, and it had shown no sign of being destroyed even after being fired on by G-Sp2 and kicked by Susamikado.

Hiba and Mikage had returned in Susamikado and were now sleeping in the nap room.

Kazami had gone to recover Izumo from the ocean, but he had apparently been swept away by the current and they were having trouble finding him. That was nothing but an annoyance, so Sayama had declined to receive further reports on it.

…''We have too little information.

Not only did they not know the identity of that dragon, they also did not know the identity of the man who had fought it. He had gotten Kashima to steal the IAL plane’s passenger manifest, but there had been no records of any foreigners on the flight.

Someone had gotten there ahead of them. As he was wondering who, Shinjou spoke up.

“Are you thinking about something?”

“Yes, about a lot of things.”

“I thought so. But you haven’t slept, so don’t force yourself. I got a nap, but you haven’t slept at all, have you?”

“Do not worry, Shinjou-kun. I can go about a week without sleep. I was trained by my grandfather when I was younger. We would have week-long fights around the house with rules saying we could hit the other when they fell asleep. If I had only realized that damn old man was sleeping while talking with his eyes open, I could have hit him another five hundred times.”

“By any chance are you sleeping right now while using that secret technique?”

Shinjou set down the handheld system and sighed. She then looked around the area.

“To change the subject, I didn’t expect Ooshiro-san to suddenly tell us to begin the Leviathan Road with 4th-Gear.”

“Yes. It certainly was not my first guess when he handed us the key to this place.” Sayama crossed his arms. “It is a strange action. I feel like he is hiding something. Last night, the American UCAT inspector named Thunderson was killed by a mechanical dragon thought to be from 5th-Gear. American UCAT says they have sent temporary inspectors, but they will not say what those inspectors are doing. And now the old man is telling us to carry out the preliminary negotiation with 4th-Gear in this greenhouse and then to take an afternoon flight to the 4th-Gear reservation in Kyushu.”

“He seems to be rushing things ever since that Thunderson man died.”

“There is probably something behind this, so we should be on our guard.”

“Yes. The issues of adults can be trouble. Anyway, we came here, but no one else has shown up. Does 4th-Gear have people? Are they plant people or something?”

Sayama tilted his head at that.

“I am not quite sure what you mean, but do you think plants can speak with people?”

“Eh? Don’t you hear about that every once in a while? Something about plants reacting to emotions.”

“Are you referring to the controversy that was popular in America during the late sixties? The one where a researcher hooked a lie detector up to plants and used it to read their supposed reactions?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I see.” He nodded as Shinjou rubbed her eyes sleepily. “That controversy continued for about a decade in America, but no one was able to reproduce the reactions. And after a while, the same researcher announced that he found emotion-like reactions from something else.”

“Eh? What was that?”

“Instead of plants, it was yogurt. The electrodes detected its emotional reaction to having milk poured into it. All of the newspapers there immediately stopped reporting on it because they found it disturbing.”

“So in other words…there was someone like you?”

“Ha ha ha. Sleep deprivation makes you say the strangest things, Shinjou-kun. But at any rate, plants talking with people is nothing more than a delusion of people like the old man. You aren’t thinking of using that idea for your book, are you?”

“No, no.”

Shinjou shook her head and Sayama nodded.

“The way I see it, plants are plants. If they are able to express their will, they must be something similar yet different. Confusing the two comes from the pride of another type of being.”

Sayama watched Shinjou.

She was looking back, but her head suddenly drooped before she quickly lifted it back up.

“Oh, s-sorry. What was that? For a bit now, I’ve been feeling drowsy like my exhaustion is being taken from me.”

“We can discuss it later, Shinjou-kun. I can handle the preliminary negotiation on my own, so you can sleep.”

“Okay. …But will the people of 4th-Gear think I’m lazy if they show up? A-and no doing anything weird while I’m asleep. Really. I mean it. For real.”

After making a triple insistence, she lost her balance without realizing it and tried to catch herself on her elbows as she slowly fell backwards.

However…

“Eh?”

[[Image:OnC_v08_0121.png|thumb]]

Something like a chair back supported her.

It was the ground. The grassy ground had risen up diagonally to support her back.

The vegetation slowly moved to form a U-shape that pushed up and supported her back.

“…”

A creature made of vegetation slowly formed from the risen ground. It was a meter long creature with a head and six legs. It stood up very slowly and its silhouette was reminiscent of an anteater or a bear.

The plant creature then lay down to act as Shinjou’s chair back.

Sayama watched as she shrank back from it.

“S-Sayama-kun, is this…?”

“I think it wants you to lean against it.”

“Right.”

She looked at the plant creature’s belly.

It raised its head-like portion, turned toward her, and tilted that head.

Seeing that, Shinjou glanced toward Sayama and nodded. With a resolute look, she leaned against the creature’s stomach.

With the sound of rustling grass and leaves, her thin back sank into the creature’s body. It was much like collapsing into a thick down blanket.

“Wow. It’s so warm.”

She narrowed her eyes and the plant creature raised its head toward her. It had no mouth, but it did have eye-like gaps. Sayama guessed those were its sensory organs.

When Shinjou thanked it, the creature shook its body once.

“Sayama-kun,” she said with a smile. “Um, you know how I was feeling sleepy? I think it was this thing’s doing. It’s absorbing all of my exhaustion.”

“Does it use some sort of concept to absorb the excess heat from other animals?”

Rather than a voice, he heard a reply in the form of an audible thought.

“Sayama?”

The voice seemed to awkwardly line up the necessary sounds.

He faced the plant creature supporting Shinjou’s back. Shinjou also turned toward it, so he must not have been the only one to hear it.

“Was that voice you?”

“Sayama.”

The voice repeated itself and he could sense no directionality in the thought voice.

“Sayama.”

This time, the voice brought movement. Similar plant creatures slowly stood up around Sayama and Shinjou. In all, there were around a dozen of them.

But then Sayama noticed more of the creatures rising up within the forest, on the walls, and on the ceiling.

They all tilted and shook their bodies as if troubled and asked the same question with the rustling of grass and leaves.

“Sayama?”

And so Sayama replied.

“By any chance, is the Sayama to which you refer Sayama Kaoru?”

He could only imagine that to be the case. He had never been here before and his grandfather had been in charge of 4th-Gear.

However, he received no answer. The plant creatures merely spoke while gathering together and lying down.

“Sayama is Sayama.”

They continued.

“Shinjou is Shinjou.”

“Eh?”

Shinjou gave a sleepy sound of confusion while partially curled up.

Sayama used a hand to tell her to calm down.

“They must be a race that can distinguish between categories but cannot distinguish between individuals within a category. The voice we are hearing is likely the collective consciousness of them all. They view me and my grandfather as the same Sayama and they view you and the Shinjou of the National Defense Department as the same Shinjou.”

“Then that means…”

“Yes. They know my grandfather and the Shinjou of the National Defense Department, so they must be the residents of 4th-Gear.”

The plant creatures then called to them. They began with Sayama’s name, but then said the following:

“Go with Sayama.”

“What?” asked Sayama.

As he wondered what they meant by “going with” him, they all raised their heads and spoke a single word.

“Promise.”

The JR Chuo Line’s rush hour continued from seven to nine in the morning.

Any train one boarded from any station along the Chuo Line would be crowded. Even the trains leaving Tokyo would leave one inundated by a wave of people if they did not secure a seat upon departure.

One train was travelling west to Kanda, the first station after Tokyo Station. This express train had left Tokyo Station just past eight and was on its way to Oume.

After passing Kanda, the number of passengers exceeded the capacity. Most of the passengers were office workers or students and they were securing enough space to stand on their tiptoes.

However, some did not fit those categories. In the fourth car from the back, two foreigners in suits stood in the space closest to the exit. One was a tall elderly man and the other was a young man with glasses.

Whenever the train shook, the wave of people surged and threatened the crush the two of them.

The elderly man frowned and spoke in English.

“Roger, Roger. What kind of torture is this? Who can I complain to?”

“Colonel Odor, this is a travel ritual called Sankin-Koutai that has long been practiced in Japan. When the shogun ruled a form of government known as the Edo shogunate, the lords of the local governments were ordered to travel to Edo, but that ritualistic travel brought an unnecessary number of people to Edo Castle. We left from Tokyo Station which is near the Imperial Palace where Edo Castle used to be. In other words, Tokyo Station is the birthplace of this ritual.”

“I see, I see. So should I interpret this as a bizarre Japanese custom?”

“Testament. Please maintain a tolerant heart. Also, I had to put up with these rush hour crowds every morning when I lived in Japan.”

“Roger, Roger. That is about you. It has nothing to do with me. Also, I said I wanted to observe the working situation in this country, but I do not recall saying I wanted to experience it.”

“Is that so?”

Roger lowered his shoulders and sighed.

“Anyway. Anyway, Roger. Start by telling me about the target we must search for. You knew her father well, didn’t you?”

“Testament. Heo Thunderson’s father, James Thunderson, was American and yet a member of Japanese UCAT.”

The train shook as they arrived at Ochanomizu Station. The train’s speakers played an announcement, people moved, and the density of people grew once more.

With a heavy lurch, the train began to move and Roger spoke within the surging wave of even more people.

“James was a mechanical dragon pilot. At the time, Japanese UCAT had a department for developing mechanical dragons, but they did not have a decent pilot. They tried to have one sent from American UCAT, but…”

“We refused. Yes, we refused them, Roger. I know what happened on the American end during the late eighties. American UCAT was the only one with mechanical dragon technology and we weren’t about to hand it over to someone else.”

“But one pilot went to Japanese UCAT while essentially defecting. That pilot was James Thunderson. He was young for a mechanical dragon pilot and he was our chief pilot at the time, but he suddenly left American UCAT, stole a mechanical dragon that same day, and headed for Japanese UCAT.”

“Why? Why would he betray America?”

The train shook to the left and the wave of people tilted while Roger pushed his glasses up his nose.

“It was his grandfather’s influence. His grandfather had come to Japan as a part of American UCAT and helped destroy 5th-Gear. James was proud of that fact. However, his mother was adopted by his grandfather and he apparently only learned of that in high school. I would guess that played a role in why he wanted to learn more about his grandfather,” explained Roger. “American UCAT acted to cover up this scandal. James Thunderson was transferred to Japanese UCAT and the Gulf War was used to send other young members who wished to defy the higher ups to the American UCAT forces stationed in Japan in the name of ‘assisting’. We are on our way to Yokota which, with the Gulf and the time afterwards, will be my home for the third time.”

Roger lowered his head slightly to hide his expression from Odor.

“Also, he is no longer with us. He died on the scene of the Great Kansai Earthquake which I also visited. He and many others who I can surmise were my friends never returned from that place. Afterwards, I personally erased all of the records.”

Odor gave a small snort of either laughter or contempt.

“Roger, Roger. Try to remember. Japanese UCAT is our enemy now.”

“I understand that. They were unable to protect the hero that was Richard Thunderson and they are selfishly continuing the Leviathan Road which affects the fate of the world. That will be our official reasoning, won’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it will, Roger. American UCAT will not allow them to ignore everyone else as they set the world in motion.”

The train shook as they arrived at Yotsuya.

The wave of people surged over and somewhat flowed out the door. Familiar with Japan, Roger avoided the current.

However, Odor was not familiar with the country and he was caught in the current and swept onto the station platform.

“Roger! Roger! Do something!”

While thinking of a way to pacify his distressed superior officer, Roger stepped out onto the platform while preparing himself to be late to Yokota.

Sayama communicated with the plant creatures.

They seemed to share their thoughts, but the individual creatures seemed to make individual decisions for their actions. The one in front of him was currently tilting its head while swaying as if in the wind.

“Sayama long time. Long time since Sayama.”

Sayama listened to that audible thought.

…''They said “go with Sayama”, but does that mean they want to go with my grandfather?

He felt a slight pain in his chest as he asked a question.

“I am glad we could meet ‘again’ after so long. But let me ask you one thing. Why are you ‘going with Sayama’?”

“Promise.”

“What is this promise?”

“Promise.”

“Do you know what was promised?”

“Promise is promise. Go with Sayama.”

He was making no progress and he wondered if this conversation counted as the preliminary negotiation.

…''I suppose that depends on what I say.

They said they would go with him, but as seen with 2nd-Gear, the Leviathan Road was meant to correct their current situation. If they had some complaint or request, he could not cast it aside and simply use them.

He recalled the details of 4th-Gear.

4th-Gear’s Concept Core was possessed by the Tree Serpent Mukiti, so he needed these creatures to help him reach a negotiation with that serpent.

He wondered if he could find a way to do that and asked another question.

“Can I meet the one named Mukiti?”

“Don’t know.”

“You do not know? Do I need some form of qualification before I can meet him?”

“Promise.”

The same word was repeated.

…''Everything is sealed by the word promise.

They seemed delighted to meet him and Shinjou, but they were satisfied with that and shut the door. The key to that door was the word promise.

…''Most likely, my grandfather made some sort of promise and 4th-Gear promised to go with him in return.

When he had asked about a qualification to meet Mukiti, they had spoken that single word.

…''When the promise to go with Sayama is fulfilled, I can meet Mukiti.

That pointed to a certain fact.

“Was my grandfather unable to keep his promise?”

4th-Gear’s residents gave no answer. When he saw the plant creatures merely tilt their heads, he smiled bitterly.

…''This may be one of the problems between 4th-Gear and Low-Gear.

There was a mystery here.

If Mukiti was in Low-Gear, it should have meant Sayama’s grandfather had kept his promise and the residents of 4th-Gear had “gone with Sayama”.

However, the plant creatures were in Low-Gear and yet they said that they would “go with Sayama” and that a “promise” was needed to meet Mukiti.

Had his grandfather kept the promise or not?

Why had the people of 4th-Gear “gone with Sayama”? And if they had, why did they still require a “promise”?

He did not know, but he did know one thing.

“You are waiting for me to fulfill that promise, aren’t you?”

“Go with Sayama.”

He took that as an affirmative, so he did not give up.

…''I will reveal the identity of that promise.

“What will happen when you go with me?”

“Don’t know.”

“Are you going with me even though you do not know?”

“Promise.”

“Why did you make that promise?”

“Because promised.”

He was making no progress. What mattered to them was that they had made the promise and they did not seem to question the reason they had done so, the details of having done so, or the future it would lead to.

…''What an amazingly pragmatic race.

It was possible they would not complain even if they were deceived and destroyed because of it.

While thinking about that, Sayama suddenly realized something.

…''My grandfather would have thought the same thing.

His grandfather had gone to 4th-Gear, so he would have met these creatures. And as the Concept War continued, what would he have thought of them?

The left side of Sayama’s chest hurt. Shinjou was usually by his side, but she was now curled up and sleeping on the belly of a 4th-Gear creature. He welcomed the pain if it meant he could avoid interrupting the peaceful look on her face.

“Do you remember the Concept War?”

“No.”

They may not have taken an active role in that war. It was even possible they had not even known of its existence.

Sayama decided it was both. He suspected the other Gears had not taken any direct action against them. As for why…

“Was your world filled with nothing but you?”

“Lots but the same.”

“In other words, your body was split many times over, but you were ultimately a single body and mind?”

“The same.”

“I see. So even when other Gears visited, they realized they could not fully destroy you. You had great vitality and a near inexhaustible ability to regenerate, but you had no ability to fight and they did not know where among you Mukiti and the Concept Core were. That is why they decided to leave you until the end and allow the time of destruction to take care of you.”

“Don’t know, but Mukiti knows.”

Sayama’s eyebrows moved when the creatures brought up Mukiti on their own.

“What kind of person is Mukiti?”

“Here but not here.”

Sayama replied with another question.

“In other words, Mukiti is you, but he is not you?”

However…

“…”

He received a thought of silence in return. That response meant they did not know.

Sayama began gathering his thoughts on this Zen dialogue of a conversation. He began with what the plant creatures had just said.

…''That means Mukiti is with them but not with them.

The comment contained a contradiction which was why he had asked his own question.

…''Mukiti is you, but he is not you.

That also contained a contradiction, but it had been met with silence.

He knew that there was a contradiction that received a response and one that did not.

He removed only the similar contradiction from the two questions and was left with a single word.

…''You.

That word gave Sayama something to say.

“Mukiti lived in symbiosis with you who can be called the world of 4th-Gear, but he was a second individual who was distinct from your mind, wasn’t he? He was like a parasite on that world.”

“Mukiti is here but not here.”

They did not deny it.

That meant Mukiti possessed the Concept Core and lived in symbiosis with the 4th-Gear residents.

In that case…

“Was Mukiti a control system that symbiotically managed 4th-Gear?”

Sayama had begun to lean forward a little, so he straightened up.

He took a breath and lowered Baku from his head. A nearby plant creature seemed to take interest in Baku and approached.

The two creatures relaxed, lay on their bellies, and stared at each other without moving.

…''This is a generally peaceful world.

Sayama let Baku make a friend and asked a question of the creature in front of him.

“Where is Mukiti?”

“Here but not here.”

He felt he understood the creatures words more clearly now.

“Here but not here” was not a contradictory question from a Zen dialogue.

“Yes, he is with you. As your controller, he is watching over all of you no matter where you are. However, his true form is not here. Where is it? The 4th-Gear reservation in Kyushu?”

“Far away place?”

“It is. It is cut off by a world, after all.”

“Then there. Mukiti is there. Promise. Promise with Sayama.”

''I see,'' he thought. ''It is funny how much of this is pure speculation.

However, he had no other choice but to keep his mind moving. If his thoughts were not way off base, his grandfather had also spoken with these plant creatures and met Mukiti.

…''And they promised to go with him.

If Sayama could persuade Mukiti, their controller, he could move all of the plant residents of 4th-Gear and find a use for their environmental changes.

He then realized he was walking in his grandfather’s footsteps.

…''I hope for this to be the only way in which I grab at that monkey’s short tail.

He asked another question as if to cast aside that thought.

“Can I…that is, can Sayama go meet Mukiti without keeping the promise?”

“No. Keep promise.”

He received a powerful rejection when it came to the word promise.

“If I do not keep the promise, I cannot meet Mukiti?”

“Promise. Sayama’s promise.”

Sayama then realized his misunderstanding about the meaning of the promise.

…''It is not that I cannot meet Mukiti without keeping the promise.

That was the promise 4th-Gear had made. “Sayama’s promise” was something different.

He gave voice to his realization.

“I made a promise myself to not meet Mukiti unless the promise was kept, didn’t I?”

“Promise! Sayama’s promise!”

He could hear joy in the audible thought and that thought gave him a smile.

They were surely rejoicing that their words were finally getting through to him.

He too was relieved that they were communicating properly and he went over the problem.

“I see. First, I made a certain promise and then made a second promise to meet Mukiti once that promise was fulfilled. And you then made a third promise to go with me when that happened. Is that it?”

“Yes! Promise! Promise with Sayama! First promise! First! First! First!”

“I see. So the first promise made with another in 4th-Gear’s history was made with Sayama.”

“Sayama told us. Important. Promise is important. Promise will never disappear. But Sayama is different.”

The thoughts came all at once.

“Sayama is different. Sayama is not promise. Sayama will eventually disappear.”

Sayama nodded.

Inside, he was surprised. 4th-Gear’s people were close to immortal as long as the world was not destroyed, but this meant…

…''They understand the concept of death.

His grandfather had likely taught them that.

The creatures had said that promises will never disappear but that Sayama would.

Sayama asked about the concern that would bring.

“While you have a collective consciousness and will live for close to forever, we will disappear. When my grandfather died, his promise should have died with him. While you will wait for the promise to be fulfilled for eternity, my grandfather’s life was finite.”

Which meant…

“Why do you view me and my grandfather as the same?”

At first, he had thought they were unable to distinguish between individuals because they did not have individuals themselves, but that was not the case.

“You clearly understand that we have finite lives, but you still view me as the same ‘Sayama’. Why is that?”

“Told Sayama would come again. New Sayama.”

“…”

The plants’ thoughts filled the air.

“Promise will not disappear. Sayama will come. Keep promise. Sayama will come to keep promise.”

''I see,'' thought Sayama while sighing inwardly.

…''My grandfather once negotiated with them and made their first promise with them.

But for some reason, he had not fulfilled that promise.

And yet for some reason, they had come here.

…''Most likely, he was fine with not having fully upheld his promise.

“You still desire the promise because you want to have that unfulfilled promise carried out, don’t you? That will mean both sides kept their promise and are equal.”

The word “debt” came to mind.

In terms of the Leviathan Road, 4th-Gear had already given their conditions for the negotiation.

…''They came here unconditionally.

In that case…

…''Fulfilling the promise is well worth negotiating over.

To reconfirm that, he asked a question.

“I can meet Mukiti again by fulfilling that promise, correct?”

“Keep promise, so go with Sayama.”

Sayama crossed his arms and looked at the plant creatures that shook their bodies together.

…''What was the first promise my grandfather made with them?

They knew, but they were not telling him. Their collective consciousness viewed Sayama’s promise as belonging to Sayama and they would not intrude on the territory of another’s thoughts.

''This is an assignment from my grandfather,'' he thought. ''I have to answer what it is they want.

“It is true that is the foundation of negotiation.”

…''What did he promise them and what do they hope to gain from it?

Land? Peace of mind? Some kind of power? There had to be a hint.

For example, 4th-Gear already had a reservation and this place as well.

As for peace of mind, this room made it clear any fear of external enemies had been resolved.

And as for power, not only did this race not desire to fight, but they seemed unable to fight.

…''Then what is it?

He realized he was leaning forward again, so he straightened up.

To give himself a change of pace while gathering his thoughts, he took a breath, leaned back, and placed his hands on the ground.

His fingers sank into the plants as if digging down. ''It’s all plants,'' he thought.

“No.”

Similar to his discussion with Shinjou about communicating with plants, these 4th-Gear residents just so happened to have bodies constructed from plants, but they could exchange thoughts, try to keep promises, and liked independence.

They were not something to protect or to look down on.

…''They must be the same. Even if they desired protection, they would not view us as superior to them.

Since his grandfather had negotiated with Mukiti who controlled them, it was possible they had actually had the superior position.

What did it mean to be equal?

1st-Gear had desired to recover their past pride and have a place to live on their own.

2nd-Gear had desired to accept their own power while also living in Low-Gear.

3rd-Gear had desired to clear away their own crimes yet continue to use the power that had led to those crimes.

All of them contained a common factor down at the bottom.

…''The desire to live in Low-Gear using their power.

Sayama thought on the word “power”.

“My grandfather must have negotiated to give you a place where you could use 4th-Gear’s power to live in Low-Gear and have peace of mind. That would have settled any debt.”

In that case, what was 4th-Gear’s power?

He thought and came to a certain possibility.

…''4th-Gear’s power is their vitality and their ability to heal others.

But in that case, what had his grandfather attempted to do with their power?

Sayama thought about using it for a hospital but then shook his head.

Even in the postwar times, the world had not advanced enough to accept life forms from another world. Even if they could heal and save people, it would cause a commotion if people found out about these thinking plants.

…''Was he going to have them heal injured UCAT members?

''No,'' he realized.

If they had become UCAT’s healers, this greenhouse would be much more open and used as a medical room.

''Also,'' he thought before asking his next question.

“Why does 4th-Gear not work as healers for UCAT?”

If they had come to Low-Gear to use their healing ability, 4th-Gear healing would be a major part of UCAT.

He looked forward while he wondered why, but the plant creature only lay on its belly and tilted its head.

“Promise.”

“The promise, hm?”

What had they promised to use their power on?

He continued to think, but then…

“Could it be…?”

He recalled two facts from when the plant creatures had shown up in this large greenhouse.

First, they had known a name other than Sayama.

Second, they had used their healing ability.

“And they did so by wrapping around Shinjou-kun.”

He looked to Shinjou on his left side.

She was curled up on the stomach of the plant creature bent in a U-shape.

“…”

And she was asleep. Her black hair moved a bit and her expression was one of peace.

He then looked around himself, but none of the plant creatures made any attempt to remove his own exhaustion.

They had chosen Shinjou over him.

He remembered a section from the National Defense Department documents that Kashima had sent them during the summer and that they still could not read the entirety of.

“My grandfather took over working on 8th-Gear in place of 4th-Gear. And he did so because 8th-Gear had been assigned to Shinjou Kaname who had fallen ill.”

The plant creatures looked up.

“Shinjou.”

“Yes, that is correct. Shinjou-kun. Is Shinjou-kun the promise?”

The collective consciousness responded to that.

“Promise! Shinjou! Promise!!”

He nodded and looked to Shinjou who slept while clutching her black binder.

“I do not know what kind of person Shinjou Kaname was, but my grandfather spoke with Mukiti, came to an understanding, and made a promise, didn’t he? He asked if you could save Shinjou-san who had fallen ill. And if you did have the power to save him, he asked you to come to Low-Gear where your power could be used elsewhere. That way, he could prepare a place for you even if 4th-Gear was lost.”

He took a breath.

“He promised to let you meet the person named Shinjou, didn’t he?”

If the promise had not been upheld, it meant they had not met Shinjou Kaname.

However, they had come to Low-Gear.

He did not know if that had been his grandfather’s or Mukiti’s desire and he did not know why they had done it. Whatever the result, he would look into that from now on.

And he would fulfill the promise as well.

“Promise!”

The creatures’ thoughts rang loudly.

“Meet Shinjou. Mukiti is waiting. Sayama keeps promise.”

Sayama gave another deep nod.

“Yes, I will go with Shinjou-kun to meet the one who watches over you.”

“Promise! Promise! Promise!!”

“Yes, that is a promise. It is a testament.”

“Testament?”

“That is the latest way of referring to a promise.”

“Testament!!”

As the thought voice rang out, Sayama raised his head.

At the same time, someone appeared from beyond the trees.

It was Ooki. She may have just woken from a nap because she wore pajamas and looked at the swaying and rustling plant creatures.

“Oh, my. How lively.”

“Do you think you can fit in here as a tree spirit, Ooki-sensei?”

“I don’t know…”

She smiled and her long ears seemed to stand up as if reacting to the surrounding thoughts.

She shook those ears and spoke.

“Excuse me for a moment, Sayama-kun, but I have to get to school. With the athletic festival preparations, I have to at least show up by lunchtime.”

“Oh, is that so? And I thought the one who takes attendance would have to be there in the morning.”

“Sayama-kun, why are you always so mean to your teacher?”

“I merely stated the obvious. Do you perhaps have a persecution complex? And when have I ever been mean to you, tardy teacher?”

“J-just now!!”

After shouting out, she sighed.

“Listen.” She placed a hand on her forehead and groaned while the surrounding plant creatures looked up at her. “How about we settle for this? Harakawa-kun has been absent a lot lately, so if he isn’t in class today, please go to his home and get him.”

“Ha ha ha. I understand what you are trying to say. …You are making no sense. Go yourself.”

“But his apartment’s landlord has started recognizing me lately. I got some leftover dinner last time I went, but I can’t return the dish it was in because I haven’t washed it yet.”

“Oh? Which do you think would make a better nickname for you: filthy teacher or lazy teacher?”

“Hmm. I have pretty stringent standards for elegance, so I don’t think either fit me.”

All of the plant creatures tilted their heads at that.

“Str-…string-…strange?”

“Wh-what a rude collective consciousness.”

Sayama ignored her and shook Shinjou awake.

They had to travel to Kyushu that afternoon, but now they had an extra job to take care of.

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| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume8_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume8_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume8 Prologue

2014-08-09T14:08:44Z

Agaa: /* Prologue: Blue Guidance */

==Prologue: Blue Guidance==
[[Image:OnC_v08_0011.png|thumb]]
''Where is the color of the sky?

''You can ask

''But you cannot grab ahold of it

A color could be seen.

It was the color blue. A deep, dark blue filled a great expanse above. A slightly darkened blue filled an expanse below.

Those two blues were the heavens and the earth as seen from the sky.

The sky above was empty, but the hazy blue earth was uneven and contained a white line.

The area below was mountainous and almost a desert, but with the color blue, it looked like the sandy bottom of the sea.

Something traveled through the center of that blue sky.

It resembled a dragon.

However, it had a metal body that reflected the sun and its surface contained several emblems and ID numbers.

As it cut through the wind, US-UCAT was written on both sides in white writing.

It was a mechanical dragon of American UCAT and that steel dragon was flying through the blue sky.

It was at least thirty meters long and five meters wide. It was painted blue and white and its overall form was a rectangle with a shallow slope at an acute angle.

It had a sharp face, a long tail, and no neck. Its four legs were drawn in and its two pairs of wings stuck out on either side.

Shimmering heat was ejected from what looked like the waist and the bottom of its legs.

It continued on while pushed by the accelerating heat.

The head facing its destination had a windshield. Inside that windshield was a single-seat cockpit. The pilot strapped into the deep seat wore a pressure suit and a helmet, but the suit was made of cloth and all of the consoles before him were analog.

He reached to his right toward a B5-size writing board with a few papers in its stopper. The top of the papers said “Test (Final)” and they gave the date “4.20.1945”.

They also gave the pilot’s name: Richard Thunderson.

Thunderson wrote the numbers on the instruments into a few of the fields on the documents and then returned his hand to the central control column.

The majority of the noise within the windshield was the racket of cutting through the wind at high altitude. That noise was joined by the metallic creaking of the craft and the roar of the ejected heat accelerating it.

Thunderson pulled on the control column while squeezing the throttle.

He flew.

The blue mechanical dragon turned upwards as if twisting its body. The walls of air on the top and bottom threatened to bring that turn to a stop.

“…!”

But a moment later, the dragon broke through the upper wall of resistance and the air coming from the front struck its bottom surface.

With the air resistance on its stomach, the dragon ascended as if climbing a slope.

The beating of the air sounded like an explosion and the disturbed air current burst into mist.

By the time that ended, the blue mechanical dragon had moved several hundred meters higher.

As it flew calmly through the air yet opposed the air all the while, a voice spoke over the communicator.

“b1 to base. The leg retraction and accelerators are working well. …Are your numbers good too?”

The voice was Thunderson’s and he laughed before continuing.

“Is a1… Is that him!?”

Just as his question grew into a shout of expectation, the blue mechanical dragon heard a roar down below.

Before he could think that something was coming, a white line stabbed upwards through the sky only a few dozen meters to the right.

The line of mist looked like a contrail.

“!”

But it was erased by the great roar that followed after a short delay.

And something else arrived. It was overhead where nothing had been before.

It was a white mechanical dragon.

It was also about thirty meters long, it had no neck, and it had a long tail.

It resembled the blue one, but it was still different.

In order to fly more efficiently, the blue one had closed up its legs and expanded its wings.

However, the white one’s legs were contracted but still extended out enough for landing and walking. Also, its wings did not extend out as far as the blue one’s.

The blue one spoke over the communicator.

“Isn’t that a bit sudden, James Davis?”

“I’m a1 right now, Richard Thunderson.”

The white one replied and they both gave bitter laughs.

The white one took a slightly upward path with its short wings cutting through the sky.

“Did you see that ascent speed? Mine will be the one chosen for official use.”

“C’mon now. Don’t think ascent speed is enough to win, James. Are you actually amazingly stupid by any chance? For one thing, that structure leaves you barely able to turn. You put everything into acceleration, so that’s all you have.”

“Now you’ve said it. Then again, you’re right about one thing. I haven’t shown what it can really do yet. How about yours? You’ve been making tons of small adjustments, but it still doesn’t have any explosion of power, does it?”

“An aircraft needs stability. I can’t put the pilot’s life in danger. Especially when that pilot is me.”

“That’s an excuse for rejecting new ideas. You’ve been like that since our school days and that’s why-…”

“You’re doing an amazing job of talking in circles, James.”

He sighed and they both laughed bitterly once more. After a pause, the white mechanical dragon spoke.

“I will make sure this one is chosen, Richard. This is the anniversary of my wife’s death and my kids’ birthday.”

“C’mon, I’m not going to let you win out of sympathy, James.”

“I know that, Richard. We’re doing this to keep them from taking over the sky. Ever since man began to fly, we’ve known that there’s something here in America’s skies.”

“I’ve heard the area they appear in has been shifting toward the Pacific and toward Japan over the past few years, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve lost a lot in the past. Or the fact that we have these craft because of what we gained from it. So, James, you need to cross yourself before this match for everyone’s sake. After all, you’ll be shot down before long.”

“Sorry, but I already crossed myself before taking off. That leaves you. I’ll protect you, so hurry it up.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention. I converted to Voodoo last night. And I designated you as the sacrifice.”

As they spoke, a white shadow came into view up ahead.

It was a cloud.

The two mechanical dragons spoke as they approached the white mass like it was an island.

“Richard, what will you do once we get the results today? Head back to the war?”

“I don’t know, but I feel amazingly guilty. Right now, the American people, European people, and the people of the enemy nations have lost so much, but as long as I’m here, I can’t share in that feeling. …I missed that latest fad.”

“Don’t say that. They’re working to fix this world, while we…well, it seems we still aren’t seeing it all clearly, but it does seem we’re working to protect that world.”

“Even so, James, this war that we’re calling the Concept War still doesn’t seem real to me. I was brought here because of my piloting prowess, but I feel I would’ve been better off shooting down enemy planes over the Pacific.”

“I’m not sure you should feel such purpose in shooting down living human beings, Richard Thunderson.”

“But I would be standing on the same stage as other human beings. Our brethren are putting their lives on the line, so I’m not sure you should call it just to be fighting dragons, James Davis.”

The blue mechanical dragon gave a small laugh of self-deprecation.

“And from what I hear, we haven’t found any human corpses in the cockpits of the mechanical dragons that have crashed in this world. We’re fighting a world of mechanical dragons that fly on autopilot and there are no people there. The people we’ve lost were lost for nothing.”

“No death is for nothing, Richard. Richard Thunderson.”

“Yeah,” came the lifeless response from the blue dragon as it moved down and away from the white one. “We’re talking in circles again.”

“So we are,” replied James.

“I know one thing. Today is your kids’…twins were they? Anyway, it’s their birthday. But if having your craft chosen was going to be their present, you’re going to have to console some disappointed children when you get home.”

“You made a reservation at the bar for tonight, didn’t you? Was it a cheap drink in the seat farthest back in the corner? Once you sit down, you can stoop over, say ‘congratulations James’, and return the drink to the bartender. Got it?”

As the two exchanged words, they began moving apart to the left and right.

An object was visible in front of the cloud up ahead. It was a blue airplane with a reciprocating engine.

“It begins once we pass that recordkeeping craft, James. You don’t have real bullets loaded, do you?”

“I’ve got the same as you.”

“Why do you have real bullets, you idiot!? Are you planning to have this double as a fully-equipped flight test!?”

“Why are you thinking the same thing as me, Richard?”

“Because I intend to win.”

The two of them passed the recordkeeping craft that had gone in ahead of them and they began to move to the left and right for the beginning of the test.

But in that moment, they both saw a sudden light appear.

It was a crimson light and it appeared at the midpoint between them.

The recordkeeping craft had exploded just after they passed by.

“…!?”

It broke as if struck on the center from above and it crashed into the wall of air.

Its wings broke, the body was crushed when exposed to the wind, and the small parts with little air resistance were thrown forward while trailing the smoke of the explosion.

The two mechanical dragons observed it in the small time available and immediately moved apart. They then flew into the cloud.

“James!”

“I see it. It’s him. It’s that black mechanical dragon that rules this sky like it’s a game. The researchers call it Tezcatlipoca the Black Sun, right? Can you see it on your radar?”

“No, it’s vanished. But…”

He could see the wind moving through the cloud ahead of the two mechanical dragons.

The mass of wind split the cloud and the scattering cloud and mist showed the form of a giant dragon. It was a giant invisible dragon that existed as wind.

The white mechanical dragon moved ahead of the blue one.

“a1 to base. We have encountered the enemy. It’s Black Sun. …c1 was shot down. Beginning interception.”

“James, are you going after it?”

“That’s the whole reason we have these mechanical dragons. I’ve long since resolved myself to this. Watch, Richard. I’ll show you what Team A has developed. This is what we made while paving the road of development for these machines that must handle both ground and aerial battles.”

As he spoke, the white mechanical dragon suddenly broke apart. However, this was not due to it being destroyed.

“Beginning transformation from normal cruising form to high-speed cruising form.”

And that was precisely what the white mechanical dragon did in midair.

Its dragon-like shape crumbled and it changed.

Instead of retracting the legs like the blue one did, it solidified them as the base of the wings.

All of its joints were drawn in and it was made even smaller to reduce air resistance.

All of its accelerators were oriented toward the back.

And with metallic and mechanical noises, it all came together.

Thunderson spoke aloud what it had become.

“A fighter.”

But it was still a mechanical dragon. Its shape had been warped a bit, but it was clearly a mechanical dragon transformed for aerial combat.

The white dragon stored shimmering heat in all of its accelerators.

“Richard, your Thunderbird is an all-purpose non-transforming model because you focused on durability, but my Blanca is a high-mobility all-purpose transforming model. I can’t fly for as long as you and I don’t have as much defensive power, but I can move out ahead.”

The white dragon did exactly that while leaving behind some residual shimmering of heat.

“Hey! Wait!”

The blue dragon belatedly moved out, but it could not catch up. The mass of wind was far out ahead, the white mechanical dragon was catching up to it, and the blue mechanical dragon was left behind.

The blue one broke through the air that could only be called a wall as it attempted to keep up. Meanwhile, the white one gave a shout that shook due to the impact of piercing through the air.

“Hey, Richard.”

“What could you possibly want right now, you idiot!?”

Ahead of the blue one, a distant thick cloud enveloped the wind and the white dragon.

The giant wind dragon and the white mechanical dragon vanished from view

However, the latter’s voice could still be heard.

“Hey,” began James. “Are there others fighting like we are?”

“I hear there are in Europe. There might be in Germany and Japan as well.”

“I see,” said James. “Ohara, the first one shot down by this dragon here, was half-Japanese. He said he joined UCAT because he didn’t want to go to war with his father’s country.”

“And wasn’t Hughes, the next one shot down, part German like me? …But did you just say ‘this dragon here’!? Have you caught up, James!?”

“Yeah, I finally have. Finally. It took so long. Lyle, Essert, and Curt, who was just a kid, weren’t even able to see it, but I’ve finally, finally made it. Did you know that all of the crashed mechanical dragons we’ve recovered were shot down by this thing?”

“What!? Does that mean…?”

“Team A’s conclusion is that the world of dragons we’re up against is in a constant state of civil war between this single giant dragon and countless smaller dragons.” James laughed. “It probably comes to our skies when it’s tired of that fighting at home. And after it amuses itself by shooting down the weak machines flying here, it goes back. …I won’t let it do that again.”

The blue mechanical dragon rushed into the cloud as it listened. The cloud was blown away in front of its nose.

“Wait, James Davis. We need to work together. You understand that, don’t you? When you won over your wife, it was because I hit on her first and you went in for the attack after she shot me down. So wait.”

“I am waiting, so hurry up, Richard Thunderson. Hurry to the destination of your resolve. I’ll be moving on ahead and I’ll wait for you there.”

“Wait!”

The blue dragon accelerated through the cloud. It used all of its accelerators to their fullest and broke through the wall of air before it.

A moment later, its vision filled with a single color.

That color was blue. It saw a sky without a single cloud.

In that empty expanse of blue, the identically colored dragon looked forward.

A few hundred meters away, it saw the result of it all.

That result was destruction.

The flickering wind trailed a cloud behind it. That wind was a giant dragon and it destroyed the white mechanical dragon.

Beams of light shot between the two of them. That optical weapon could be called the dragon’s breath, but while the white one drew eight white arcs through the sky, the wind dragon fired dozens of black arcs.

The white mechanical dragon writhed in agony as the many black lights pierced into it.

“…!”

But it forced itself to circle above the wind even as it was pierced through.

Meanwhile, the wind revealed itself.

Color appeared and that color was black. A black body and black wings spread out in the blue sky.

The large black mechanical dragon was over three hundred meters long.

A flat series of cannons opened in the space between the two wings on its back. All of those cannons turned toward the white mechanical dragon circling around above it and they began to gather black light.

However, the white dragon transformed as it flew in from above.

Amid the wind, its fighter-like silhouette instantly changed from an aerial dragon to a close-quarters combat dragon.

The cannon fire and the rushing dragon crossed paths.

Even as the black light stabbed into it, the white mechanical dragon forced its way down toward the large black mechanical dragon’s back.

It collided into it and raised the claws of its four legs.

“…”

But that was as far as it got.

The white dragon was destroyed. Its legs, body, and even the frame supporting its head were torn into and it could not even withstand its own next attack. The movable frame used for its transformations bent and its own heat and weight destroyed it.

It shattered like a piece of glasswork.

The white dragon raised its crying maw toward the sky.

“…!”

And it exploded.

The blue mechanical dragon soared in as if the scattering wreckage and flames were its cue.

It tried to catch up to the large black mechanical dragon that had revealed itself and that shook in the explosion.

However, the black dragon shook its body. It calmly bent its body while ignoring the air resistance of its great speed and it swept away the wreckage and smoke on its back. Once it saw the blue dragon, it opened its mouth.

At the same moment, a black light came from deep in its mouth.

This was its dragon cannon.

It produced enough light to color the blue sky black. A pillar of black light with a diameter of over a dozen meters cut horizontally through the sky.

The sound of the scorching heat drowned out every hint of the wind.

The black dragon’s light blew away all of the air as if twisting it. The surrounding clouds instantly evaporated and the black light tore into the starboard side of Thunderson’s mechanical dragon.

Even so, the blue mechanical dragon was not destroyed. However, it could no longer fly.

It crashed into the pressure of the wind and was knocked through the sky as if falling forward.

From there, it could only fall.

And so it did.

With the flames of the white dragon’s explosion still in the sky, the blue dragon simply fell toward the ground visible far below.

The large black dragon in the sky watched it fall. To fire the dragon cannon, it had bent its body as if curling up. Once it confirmed that the blue mechanical dragon would not fly back up, it opened its metal maw.

“—————”

Its roar filled the sky. It sounded like a crying voice and it reverberated through the blue sky.

As that sound continued, the black form vanished. It seemed to slowly but surely grow transparent. The color of the sky became visible through it, so the black dragon was dyed blue.

Afterwards, only the blue sky remained.

Down below, the mechanical dragon of the same color fell toward the ground.

That dragon let out a cry of its own.

“I will…I will…!”

It took a breath.

“I will defeat you! I swear it on the name Thunderson!”

It fell.

“I swear it!!”

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume8_Preface|Preface]]
| Return to [[Owari_no_Chronicle|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume8_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume6 Chapter 14

2014-06-28T02:55:09Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 14: Choices from a Cry of Suffering */

==Chapter 14: Choices from a Cry of Suffering==
[[Image:OnC_v06_0061.png|thumb]]
''Will you give a bitter cry?

''Or will you cry out in suffering?

''What is the difference between anger and weakness?

The metal and water fell to the ground in an instant.

A simple thing had occurred.

Eighteen metal water tanks had fallen inside the giant round cage created from water pipes.

As the final tank and the metal net remaining in the air fell, water burst through the gaps in the pipes making up the cage. The high pressure water included gravel and metal fragments.

It scraped at the walls of nearby buildings, broke through the windows, and produced a mist.

A single figure stood within the motion and sounds of the mist.

The large man wore a greengrocer’s apron and held metal pipes in his spread arms.

He was Aigaion.

The sound of water spraying from the cage surrounded him.

And he faced forward through the mist.

About five meters away, a single white line was visible stabbing vertically into the ground.

It was a spear over two meters long.

“That is the spear that destroyed the building earlier,” he muttered. “It must contain a Concept Core.”

He walked forward in order to take the weapon as a victory prize, but then he looked toward the metal cage where his enemies would be submerged.

…''That was almost too easy.

According to his visual records, the two of them had been together in the center of the cage just before all the metal fell.

The boy had been holding the girl from behind, but the additional concept Gyes had added meant it was actually the girl holding the boy.

Aigaion did not understand something about that fact.

“In Low-Gear, it is normally the male who attempts to protect the female.”

In all the Low-Gear stories he had seen on television and the like, that had almost always been how it had worked. The greengrocer’s owner’s youngest daughter had recently been watching the children’s tokusatsu show “Übermensch Liberator – Gewalt” which was a standard reverse political purge story on the surface, but it still followed that common theme at the core.

The owner would feed him dinner on Sundays every week and the youngest daughter always made him play the monster role.

…''Why did those two leave the standard pattern?

He quickly reached an answer. Based on their previous actions, he was able to make his decision almost immediately.

“Their brains must have malfunctioned.”

Humans were difficult to understand. While thinking he needed more data, Aigaion came to a stop.

A single spear was stabbing into the ground as water washed over the gravel.

He had no data on this weapon. He needed to acquire it and the large sword the girl had wielded in order to investigate them.

He stretched out his right arm to pull the spear out with his gravitational control, but then he heard a noise.

This sound was out of place amidst the quickly spraying and flowing water.

It was a footstep.

He heard a loud footstep of someone landing at some high place.

“…”

That single footstep was enough for him to determine the location and traits of the one who produced it.

They were about 15 meters to his front, about 8 meters high, around 50 kilograms, and a bit exhausted. He then used his sight to confirm the answer his hearing led him to.

…''Someone is standing on top of the broken water tanks?

There they were.

Beyond the mist, a figure stood atop the metal wreckage.

It was a girl.

Her white dress shirt and gray skirt whipped in the wind. She held a giant white sword that looked out of place in her slender arms.

Her shoulders rose and fell as she caught her breath and faced him.

She was completely unscathed.

Her eyebrows were raised and the intent to attack was plainly written there.

Aigaion withdrew the hand held toward the spear, prepared both hands for a fight, and asked a question.

“You weren’t crushed in the cage just now?”

His question was not answered verbally.

The girl silently answered with her actions.

“…”

She used her right hand to point her sword at him.

He noticed the white sword had changed form.

The blade’s cowling remained closed, but the rear thruster was open and the air shimmered above it.

She lightly raised the sword and spoke.

“That’s right.”

She looked over her shoulder at a student dormitory.

The window leading into the third floor hallway was missing its reinforced glass.

Seeing that, Aigaion understood what had happened.

“Did you use the sword’s thruster to fly to that window?”

In that case, he understood why the boy had grabbed her just before the attack arrived.

“Yeah. She used my body to soften the blow when we broke through the glass.”

His body had not made an appearance.

“It was enough of an impact to knock my body unconscious, so it must have hit Chisato’s mind pretty hard.” He smiled. “So I need to return the favor…using her body.”

She raised the sword and leaped toward Aigaion.

From the sound of her jump, he could tell she planned to charge forward.

“You’re heading straight toward me!?”

“Of course. This is round 3!”

As soon as he landed, Izumo ran.

He had wet gravel below his feet, a single enemy, and Kazami’s G-Sp2 between them.

There were a lot of elements to the battle, but the basic composition was simple. He only had to charge forward and smash the enemy with his sword.

He ran.

He found Kazami’s body to be light.

And he also found it moved immediately just as he had thought it would.

He had thought that from the moment he had first met her.

But back then, he had not known the language well and had only been able to be by her side.

She had often complained even though he could not understand what she said.

He had not understood the language, but he had understood that some kind of problem had occurred and she had been partially forced to quit something. When he had apologized for making her complain so much, she had said the following:

“I was trying to apologize first, but all I did was complain. That really wasn’t fair, was it?”

He had memorized the sounds and learned what it meant after he started living here.

He had also learned the meaning of the smile she had given then.

Even later, he had learned that she had been a part of some kind of athletic club, but there had been an accident leading to someone else getting injured and she had quit the club.

By the time he understood that, she had stopped complaining.

…''Did she stop complaining once I learned Japanese?

Or had she no longer had time to complain now that he was with her?

He did not know and he did not want to know. He may have gained her body, but he still did not understand her mind.

…''But I’ll never forget her expression or tone of voice when complaining back then!

Two years had passed since.

After her training at UCAT, she could move a lot more than back then. Even so, her ability to make light, detailed movements put a greater burden on her step reach and top speed.

…''I’m impressed she can keep up with a stamina-rich idiot like me.

He ran and swung his weapon using the body that normally ran alongside him. He found her breasts to be a bit in the way of his arms.

But their size was just right and everything else about her body was exactly the way he liked it too.

…''She’s such a wonderful girl. I should take her to a movie sometime soon.

As he ran, he did not feel the weight of the weapon. That proved V-Sw recognized him as its master. Since it could tell even with a different body, it meant V-Sw obeyed his mind.

…''I’ve learned a lot. This concept isn’t all that bad.

He moved forward and Aigaion approached.

Izumo attacked.

He chose a horizontal slash from the right shoulder.

As he held up the sword, a smile appeared on Aigaion’s face.

“Comparing your expression to my memories of the past, I have determined you are dangerous!”

With that comment, the automaton fell back, but Izumo continued after him.

“I won’t let you get away, greengrocer!”

With the press of a button on the grip, V-Sw’s thruster ignited.

It produced a roar and accelerated him forward.

After that powerful step, he launched a strike.

Aigaion’s back stepping could not overcome Izumo’s speed.

He was sure to hit, but Aigaion calmly reached an arm behind him.

“I do not need a thruster for additional acceleration! And if I evade once, it is over!”

His body was suddenly knocked backwards.

He had used his gravitational control.

Instead of drawing something else to him, he had drawn himself to a point behind him.

And in doing so, he evaded Izumo’s attack.

The centrifugal force of the missed swing caused him to rotate around.

“…!”

Meanwhile, Aigaion smiled and swung his right fist as he moved back.

At seven meters, his fist could not reach, but a fifty centimeter ball of shimmering appeared in front of his fist.

It was a mass of gathered gravity.

That bullet could bend light and it would contract anything it came into contact and tear it away.

The automaton bent his body in preparation to throw it and he shouted.

“Now what will you do!?”

Aigaion asked his question.

…''What will he do!?

If he threw the gathered gravity, his opponent could not avoid it while swinging around his sword, so he would die.

Killing was one job of a combat automaton.

…''But that would be boring.

He did not have many opportunities to fight.

If he was to savor this opportunity, he could not go all out and immediately kill his opponent.

But he had no intention of holding back.

''This is difficult,'' he thought. He wanted to help out his enemy so he could enjoy this longer, but he could not do that and so he had to rely on his enemy.

''Give it your best shot,'' he thought. ''Give it your best shot, enemy.

With that thought, he threw the gathered gravity with all his strength.

“!”

His large right arm launched an overhand throw.

It was a powerful fastball.

The instant after he swung his right arm, he saw the sword-wielding girl suddenly begin an attack.

“…”

She suddenly reversed the direction of her rotation.

…''How did she reverse the direction of such a heavy sword?

He soon saw his answer.

The sword’s back thruster had closed and the front blade had opened.

A light that outdid even the previous thruster came from the blade.

That light created acceleration and the girl reversed her direction.

“That light… That really is a Concept Core weapon!”

“Shut up and take my attack!!”

This second acceleration was wholly unexpected, but it did not hit Aigaion.

The back of the sword struck the gathered gravity between them.

A sound like shattering glass filled the air and the cowling on the back of the sword broke. In exchange, the shimmering of the gravity broke and scattered.

The impact knocked the sword’s grip from the girl’s hand.

With a metallic noise, the weapon flew through the air.

Aigaion smiled as he heard that noise. First Hiba and now these two.

…''These enemies know how to put up a fight!!

And so he chose not to hold back.

They had both lost their weapons, but they moved forward at the exact same moment.

Izumo ran.

He held nothing in his hands, but he had a weapon. He spread his left hand as he ran.

“G-Sp2!”

That spear stood between him and Aigaion.

The automaton caught on as well, so he raised his hand and tried to take G-Sp2 for himself. Izumo initially thought he would grab it with his gravity technique.

…''But he can’t use that so soon after using it for that gathered gravity attack!

Trusting in that assumption, Izumo did not hesitate to move forward.

…''I can make it!

“Chisato would make it!”

With those words, he did indeed clear the distance.

He made it.

“!”

But he was still in his running stance. Just because he had G-Sp2 in his grasp did not mean he could use it against Aigaion in time, so he took a certain action.

“Don’t falter!”

He kicked the base of G-Sp2’s blade which was stabbed into the ground.

He succeeded in kicking the spear up.

“I will endure,” said the spear.

As G-Sp2 rotated upwards, he ran below it.

He caught the rotating shaft on his shoulder and grabbed the butt end as it rotated upwards. Once he secured the shaft on his shoulder, he only needed to swing it forwards.

He pulled the shaft down as if beating it down and he launched an attack.

With his shoulder as the fulcrum, the blade flew down from above.

And it arrived above Aigaion’s head as he approached from the front.

But Aigaion raised his hands and smiled.

“Protect me!”

Izumo saw two attacks. Two objects leaped up from the mist-covered ground.

They were water pipes.

“!”

The twin metal serpents intercepted G-Sp2 from below.

The spear knew Izumo, but it would not let him control it as he was not its master. Without the power of the Concept Core, it was nothing but a giant blade.

The pipes were knocked away, but they managed to deflect G-Sp2 into the air.

Kazami’s slender arms were knocked upwards by the impact.

He had lost his weapon again.

Meanwhile, Aigaion came to a forceful stop and let out a laugh.

But Izumo spoke in response to that laugh.

“Not so fast, automaton.”

He held up his hands and something fell into them.

It was a sword. After being knocked away earlier, V-Sw’s hilt fell into his hand.

“I’m back.”

Aigaion stopped moving and all expression vanished from his face.

“It can’t be…”

“I can’t put too much of a burden on Chisato’s slender fingers. I only momentarily let go of my weapon earlier!”

He held V-Sw tightly and swung it diagonally to the left.

Aigaion abandoned the water pipes and leaped backwards.

“…!”

He flew.

He launched himself with his gravitational control and instantly left V-Sw’s range.

He was approximately ten meters away while Izumo did not bother stopping the momentum of V-Sw’s slash and made a full rotation to the left like a top.

As he rotated, he saw Aigaion raise his fist. That fist was quickly wrapped in shimmering.

The automaton planned to end this with a projectile from ten meters away.

…''What a predictable guy.

Izumo smiled bitterly and spoke.

“I only just introduced myself to Hiba!”

He would introduce himself here too.

“I’m Izumo Kaku, heir of the Izumo family! My current height, weight, and other measurements are just the way I like them! I’m currently repeating my time as a student and my current hobby is…”

He spun. The moment he faced forward again, he hit the switch on V-Sw as he swung it.

“…winning prizes at the batting center!”

He targeted what fell right in front of him: G-Sp2.

After being knocked into the air, the long spear was falling and rotating, so he targeted the bottom end.

As he swung, he kept the blade’s cowling closed and fully opened the rear thruster.

As soon as G-Sp2 was parallel to the ground, he struck the bottom.

“Clang!”

A metallic sound much like Izumo’s spoken sound effect filled the air as G-Sp2 was launched in a straight line.

Aigaion tried to use the gravity around his fist to defend.

“…!”

But he did not make it in time.

The spear that contained a dragon struck him in the chest.

“Out of the park with you!”

Izumo slowly rotated and looked back over his shoulder. He saw the large automaton knocked backwards and the gathered gravity scatter from around his hand.

An explosion filled with mist and dirt created a great noise.

And then the white spear flew up into the air once more.

Izumo raised his right hand, grabbed the falling spear, fell to his knees, and let out a heavy sigh.

A troubled smile covered his face.

“How does Chisato get by with this body?”

Several sounds travelled south to north along the deserted road crossing in front of the school.

The sounds were those of clashing swords and they were produced by a giant red god of war and a giant silver god of war.

They were being controlled by the two female figures who almost seemed to be dancing at their respective machine’s feet.

The red god of war’s controller wore red and the silver one’s controller wore white.

The one in red, Gyes, controlled six swords with her fingers as she moved forward and attacked.

Many different gusts of wind raged about her and metallic noises burst out again and again. Each time, she moved a bit further forward, but her mind urged her on.

…''Hurry.

She had three reasons.

One of those was the operation time of her god of war.

…''This god of war is a part of me.

It was meant to be sealed in a concept space. If she grew too exhausted or her artificial consciousness fell into disarray, the opened concept space would grow unstable and the god of war would disappear.

She had to keep this quick. Her experience told her a few more minutes was her limit.

Her second reason to hurry was Mikage who floated in the air behind her. Gyes could sense her gradually coming to and it would be troublesome if she awoke.

…''We must obtain her.

She was Rhea’s daughter and one of the two 3rd-Gear humans who remained. No matter what Apollo thought as the other survivor, Mikage was absolutely necessary to preserve 3rd-Gear’s bloodline.

And the final reason to hurry stood before her.

That silver god of war had once belonged to Rhea. She had not seen it since Rhea had escaped to Low-Gear sixty years before, but it now wielded swords before her.

Some parts of it were different from her memories. Most notably, the torso had been completely replaced.

…''Lord Zeus said he had sliced it in two.

Rhea was not inside it.

“But that is why I cannot allow this!”

Gyes thrust her right palm forward.

The three right arms of the red god of war simultaneously attacked the silver god of war. One arm swung down from above, one thrust in at middle height, and one performed a diagonal slash from below.

Sibyl leaped backwards, rotated around, and swung her right hand down.

The silver god of war moved in response. It turned to the side to avoid the attack from above, used the tip of a sword to deflect the central thrust outwards, and knocked away the diagonal slash from below by swinging down the guard of the other sword.

The sets of metallic noises and sparks scattered and they all vanished into empty air.

Sibyl tried to land, but Gyes used that moment to move forward.

Before the girl could reach the ground, Gyes used her gravitational control to throw herself right in front of her.

“…!”

Gyes could not eliminate the inertial pressure, but she could cut out certain functionality to ignore it.

And she did exactly that.

She linked the movements of her legs, hips, and arms and swung her hands from behind her.

She used her gravitational control to launch the six swords in her suit toward Sibyl’s landing position.

She thrust one each to the ankle, thigh, waist, gut, and chest and she swept one horizontally toward the neck.

It was an instantaneous attack, but it was blocked by something unexpected: a wall.

“!?”

[[Image:OnC_v06_0081.png|thumb]]

It took her a moment to realize the white wall between her and Sibyl was the white sword of the other god of war.

The giant sword stood up from the ground, but Gyes continued with all her attacks unchanged.

Metallic noises rang out and her swords broke, one after another.

The first, second, and third simply broke, but the fourth put a crack in the wall. She instantly altered the speed of the fifth and sixth and sent the decapitating horizontal slash on ahead.

Ultimately, the god of war’s sword broke.

Gyes launched her final attack while surrounded by the high-pitched sound of shattering metal.

The strike was meant to skewer Sibyl’s chest and it would reach her past the shattered wall.

“Go!”

The tip of the blade overcame the wind and pierced through while knocking away fragments of the large sword.

Gyes felt the feedback of a hit, but she saw Sibyl leaping further back through the airborne metal fragments.

…''What?

An instant later, she understood. Sibyl had kicked the belly of the blade Gyes stabbed forward.

“Are you planning to use the god of war’s sword as footing!?”

Nevertheless, Gyes’s blade reached Sibyl’s chest. It stabbed into the chest of her armor and her own movement tore the cloth.

This revealed the skin from her neck down to her chest.

“So you’re human.”

Sibyl had known about 3rd-Gear and was fighting them, so Gyes had thought she might be an automaton.

…''But this is all the more reason for you to die!

Gyes pulled back her sword and moved forward. Her opponent’s god of war had only one sword, so this was the time to attack.

As soon as she moved forward, her target took a certain action.

She turned to the side and pointed at Gyes with her right hand.

Gyes wondered what this was about as she watched the silver god of war take the same action. But the god of war threw the sword in its right hand.

Gyes instantly decided to have her god of war deflect the flying blade outwards.

This created an opening.

The silver god of war took advantage of that opening, but not with a sword attack.

It performed a tackle.

“!”

Gyes was unsure how to react to this unexpected attack, but she started by hurriedly pulling the red god of war back.

“Such a crude method of fighting! This will damage yours as well!”

The answer was accompanied by a troubled smile.

“Testament. I am in charge of maintenance, so I can only think of methods that will provide me a reason to work.”

As if to give its agreement, the silver god of war unhesitatingly stepped forward to collide with the red one.

They grappled.

For an instant, the silver god of war bounced in midair.

As it had leaned forward as if preparing to leap, a powerful horizontal impact had reached it.

“…”

It was suddenly slammed into the ground.

The fall was accompanied by the sounds of heavy metal being destroyed and it was caused by a large hole piercing from the god of war’s back to the ground.

Wind burst in every direction from the hole. It was a hot wind with a scorched odor.

…''Was this…?

As soon as she realized it was a sniper shot, Gyes looked up into the sky.

“You made it, Cottus!”

Sibyl looked up toward the heavens.

A large form was visible in the center of the blue sky.

It resembled a god of war, it was blue, and it was overall modeled after the human body. It had several rectangular objects on its back and waist that were likely cannons.

The silver god of war had been torn into by this blue giant.

Sibyl weakly lowered her shoulders and lowered her vision toward her enemy.

Past the wind, Gyes and the red god of war were falling back.

They were moving toward the point where that giant machine was descending. It was the Hecatoncheire named Cottus.

“A giant god of war…”

“Yes. He is an automaton that uses a god of war frame. Unlike a person, he can fight without being bound by time or physiological actions. However, Cottus is the only model that Lord Cronus completed.”

“Introduction unnecessary,” said the rapidly descending figure. “Requesting rapid retrieval. Hoping for immediate withdrawal.”

“Right,” said Gyes with a nod.

She gave a light wave of the hand and the red god of war seemed to fold in on itself. First the arms were swallowed up by thin air. The legs, torso, and head did the same.

Sibyl bit her lip and looked to Mikage floating behind Gyes.

“Wait!”

“You have lost, defiler of Lady Rhea’s possession.”

Gyes returned her last remaining sword to her suit and raised her other hand.

Mikage was drawn toward that hand.

“I suppose I should say farewell,” said Gyes.

Just as Cottus was about to land, he looked up with the green lights in his face that resembled eyes.

“Danger detected.”

“Danger? What could possibly…?”

Gyes’s question was cut off by someone.

It was Hiba.

His motorcycle cut right next to her.

By the time Sibyl gave a quick “ah”, he had already completed his action.

He raised his left arm and tore Mikage from the air.

“Cottus!”

Before Gyes even finished her shout, a light came from the west.

The horizontal beam of white light struck Cottus as he tried to swing a fist down at Hiba. A shallow piece of facial armor was torn off and he shook.

Two figures stood to the west at the end of the side road leading to the city street.

One was Shinjou in her summer uniform and the other was Sayama who held a long cannon on his shoulder.

“I am glad we made it in time!” shouted Shinjou. “Go, Hiba boy!”

While holding Mikage atop the stopped motorcycle, Hiba nodded.

With her in his arms, he let out a cry.

“Mikage-san!”

Sibyl saw Mikage’s eyes open in response to his voice and nod when she saw his red eyes.

Sibyl then heard Hiba speak because she could not.

“Susamikado!”

Sibyl gulped as she watched a metal torso frame appear behind the two of them as they got off the motorcycle. The moving parts and organ devices were summoned and the summoned arms, head, legs, and four wings were bolted into place.

While the metallic noises of the bolts filled the air, Mikage was enveloped by the black torso and Hiba was swallowed up as the stomach armor was attached.

A four-winged black god of war came together.

“Susamikado is complete!”

Hiba felt there was a pleasure and pain to gaining the god of war’s body.

His vision moved higher and he gained an awareness of the sides and back that he could not usually see.

He rose up toward Cottus who was the greatest threat.

His tall vision moved as he began moving at high speed. Each step covered just under four meters and Susamikado smashed the asphalt as it ran.

He went all out from the very first step.

“…!”

The movement felt wonderful. His widened vision and the warmth that enveloped him felt especially good.

His body had already combined with the god of war. He did not know the exact process by which he was broken down inside the metal, but he knew one thing.

…''The same thing happens to Mikage-san.

His own body was not actually there, but he did feel something warm wrapped around him.

He thought it felt like having Mikage embracing him from behind.

While enveloped by that sensation, he made full use of his new body.

His feet dug into the asphalt and his vision was trained directly on Cottus.

A moment later, Cottus fired on him.

Bullets flew toward him.

They were bullets of light. Those masses of great heat and pressure were thirty centimeters across and four of them approached while trailing a comet-like tail.

His reflexes were not enough to evade.

However, he heard Mikage’s voice emitted by his own body, by the god of war’s voice device.

“Ryuuji-kun.”

She could only produce that quiet voice when she had become Susamikado. She had not yet evolved the ability to speak and Hiba believed she had gained this voice specifically for combat.

But it was the only time he could hear her natural voice.

“You can dodge this,” she continued.

A sensation arrived alongside the voice.

The machine’s perception speed matched with his own mental speed.

This provided him with ultra-fast perception backed by the predictive speed of the machine.

“…”

It rushed in at him.

In an instant, a massive amount of information struck his body like music.

He loudly heard the warmth of the sunlight. The earth received and reflected it, the wind produced long breath-like music, and the trees and other plants sang the pulse-like noise of their various lives.

There were people there. The girl controlling the silver god of war was nearby, Sayama and Shinjou were more distant, and Izumo and Kazami were there as well. All of their music was slightly sped up and the tone color contained a pale heat. It was the tone color of expectation.

On the other hand, the automatons played a calmer and cooler tone. The female one named Gyes was nearby, Aigaion was approaching and his tone was in disarray due to injury, and Cottus was directly ahead.

…''The bullets…

Hiba perceived even those as music.

A powerful tone resembling a whistle approached from the front. This tone was slightly out of sync with the whole. It was the tone of destruction.

…''That’s an unpleasant tone color!

He could see their ballistic paths.

A moment later, his heightened perception left. His information processing ability had been overwhelmed and the limiter had kicked in before he drowned in it all.

But he was already moving forward.

“!”

Susamikado’s foot smashed the asphalt and its entire body flew forward as if pursuing the tone color seen before.

Hiba moved toward the center of the attack.

As he charged forward, a song escaped his lips.

“Jesus, Lord, with your birth.”

As if chasing the song, Susamikado slipped past the flying light.

It ducked low and moved forward.

It stepped, spun, tilted its body forward, scraped across the asphalt, and ran.

One bullet grazed its shoulder, but that had been expected. If Susamikado had not avoided that one, the next one would have hit it in the gut.

…''And the rest won’t hit!

Hiba stepped forward to prove his words right. He stretched out his knees and practically threw himself forward.

He made it through.

“Shows the grace of His holy might.”

The blue machine lay before him, so he prepared his right fist.

Cottus raised one of the cannons on his waist and fired at close range, but Hiba instantly slipped below it and threw a right uppercut as he stood back up.

The strike dug deep into Cottus’s stomach armor.

“!!”

The heavy sound of metal filled the air and Cottus’s heavy body floated up a bit.

But Hiba did not let up.

He went on to send his left fist into Cottus’s side to bring up his chest armor.

“!”

He then rotated to bring his right leg up and into Cottus’s chest.

The three-strike combo bent and broke Cottus’s chest armor and knocked him backwards.

Hiba began to continue forward. He knew this was his chance, so he felt something similar to impatience. He wanted to defeat one of the Hecatoncheires and to bring an end to as much of this painful fight as possible.

…''I have to act now!

But something stopped Susamikado’s movements.

It was another sound, but this one was a voice and a distinctly human one at that.

“…Kh.”

Mikage used his mouth to let out a groan of pain.

Hiba reacted to Mikage’s groan of pain.

He distinctly felt his currently nonexistent heart skip a beat and he stopped his advance. His foot smashed the ground below and he took a defensive position.

“Mikage-san!?”

“It hurts…”

It took a breath before he understood what she meant.

He recalled the damage to the chest armor and wing from the other night’s battle.

And he recalled that Mikage had taken on all those injuries in his place.

He did not even feel any pain because she took it all on herself. But if he moved now, it would hurt her. It was only natural.

“…”

''Now I’ve done it,'' he thought. ''Why didn’t I realize?

He was so close to her now and they shared the same body.

…''So why was I thinking about nothing but fighting?

He stopped moving altogether.

He saw Cottus take a defensive stance after falling back.

Aigaion had caught up, so he and Gyes stood on Cottus’s shoulders.

All three of them were exhausted or damaged in some way.

Now was the perfect time to pursue.

“Ryuuji-kun…”

The pain-filled voice coming from his mouth kept Hiba from acting.

Another voice spoke up as if reprimanding him.

It was Shinjou’s voice.

“What is it, Hiba boy!? You are the one stopping our negotiations, so why are you choosing not to fight!?”

Sayama and Shinjou came running up along the side road and Shinjou was shouting toward him from behind Cottus.

But Hiba could not move. He could only determine Mikage’s state from her voice, but it was enough to bind him.

He felt like he was directly touching her wounds.

He simply could not move.

…''Wasn’t I supposed to be protecting her?

“I’m sorry.”

As if speaking the words in his heart for him, Mikage’s voice escaped his mouth.

He clenched his fists and faced Cottus and the two automatons.

“…”

He remained silent.

There was nothing he could say. If he did anything more, it would only increase her pain.

He could no longer choose to attack. That was his choice now.

He motionlessly looked toward those who controlled the battlefield now. Shinjou ran from the western road to the city road and Sayama followed while carrying a long white cannon.

Gyes brushed up her hair on Cottus’s shoulder and she spoke.

“I assume you are from Team Leviathan. What do you plan to do now?”

“Well,” said Shinjou. “We wish to mediate for you.”

<noinclude>
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Owari no Chronicle:Volume5 Chapter 3

2014-04-08T15:38:26Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 3: Scent of Light */

==Chapter 3: Scent of Light==
[[Image:OnC_v05_0145.png|thumb]]
''The moon and those eyes cannot be seen

''But their presence can be felt

''As if they are blooming high in the sky

Miyako ran down a wide hallway.

She wore a white sheet tied around her shoulders and waist. Her outfit could not have been any lighter.

…''But this does make it easier to run.

However, a certain thought came to her as she ran down the white-walled and red-carpeted hallway.

“I need to quit smoking!”

She ran out of breath quickly.

Back when she had been a delinquent, she had been the master of chasing or being chased all night long, but she finally realized how much she had deteriorated.

She wanted to make her way downstairs. She had seen some kind of city out of the previous room’s window.

This seemed to be a facility in a mountain forest. The room had looked to be on the eighth floor and she was not sure if there were any higher floors.

…''But what kind of facility is this?

Was it a large local corporation?

The white hallway had no windows, a width of about four meters wide, and not a speck of dust. It also continued for quite a while.

As she ran, she recalled the city she had seen outside. It had small-scale buildings along with an older-style cityscape.

This was likely an area with some history to it.

The few larger buildings in the distance had to have been the train station or hotels. But she had not seen the marks left by the type of rezoning Nara or Kyoto had gone through and it had not had the green of Kanazawa.

“But it looked somehow familiar.”

Wondering where she had seen it before, she tilted her head while running. Meanwhile, she heard footsteps from the other direction.

She turned a corner to wait out whoever was coming by. As she did, several maids rushed by at the T-junction up ahead. She pressed against the wall and took a breath.

…''It would be too dangerous to head out now.

Her weak imagination then went wild wondering what would happen to her if she were captured by the kind of perverted corporation that would create a maid facility like this.

For a moment, she imagined herself having been transformed into a maid. In her head, she was sitting with one knee on the floor and smoking a cigarette.

“Keh.”

She clicked her tongue once, looked to the wall, and saw a few picture frames.

“…?”

There were three and they all contained portraits. They were oil paintings rather than photographs.

The left painting showed a gray-haired old man. The center one showed a well-built slightly less old man with blond hair and a beard. The right one showed a young woman with long blonde hair and a slender face.

She assumed these were the owners of the building.

…''So they really are foreigners?

She looked the smiling woman’s portrait in her pale blue eyes and tilted her head.

“Hm?”

Miyako realized something was lightly tapping her left leg from below.

There was something there.

That fact and her own carelessness made her heart skip a beat.

She immediately glanced to the left and lowered down defensively.

“…A water fountain?”

It looked like the button-operated water fountains seen in the corner of a school cafeteria.

…''Those things that won’t give you enough water but won’t stop shooting it into the air after you hit it a few times.

One of those was there.

The white and brown device was looking up at her from waist height.

It was staring silently.

…''Looking…up at me?

As her own thought made her tilt her head, Miyako stared at the machine while standing in front of the frames on the wall.

And the water fountain gently twisted its metal body to tilt itself to match the tilt of her head.

“…?”

Something was not right. But what?

…''No, it’s obvious what isn’t right here. It’s just on such a huge scale that I didn’t realize it at first.

As she thought, she reached out to confirm the truth she had been ignoring.

The machine moved toward her hand and let her touch it. Its metal body bent so it could rub up against her just like a dog.

“It wants me to pet it?”

While muttering her thoughts as a question, she crouched down and slowly touched the machine with both hands.

The machine happily and gently swung its body back and forth. If it had had a tail, this motion would have been wagging that tail. She rubbed over its entire body to make sure it was made out of a metallic material.

…''It’s a machine.

She took a step back while still crouched down.

And the machine bent its bottom installation parts to approach using an extending and contracting motion.

As the water fountain rubbed up against her again, it happily tilted its body.

“Is this a prototype of some new tech?” she muttered with a hand on her chin.

She tried petting the water fountains head and it pressed its head against her hand.

''It sure is friendly,'' she thought while pressing the water fountain’s button to see what happened.

Water came from the top edge. She touched it and found it was nothing more than cold water.

The water fountain stayed perfectly still so that the water would not spill and it waited for her to drink it.

And so she tried drinking the water.

“…”

It was normal. It was quite cold and it felt good on her throat after running.

But…

“Thanks.”

She petted the machine’s head again and it bowed.

After happily shaking its body again, the water fountain turned around and ran off while extending and contracting its legs.

Miyako stood up and tilted her head.

…''What was with that machine?

It was metal, but it had seemed alive.

“…!”

Suddenly, something moved in her head. Or at least, she felt like something did.

…''Eh?

There was something she had forgotten and could not remember.

It was a memory. She tried to remember, but for some reason, it would not come to her.

She felt a thick fog of forgetfulness.

She did not know what she had tried to remember from the thought that metal had been alive.

But she realized something. That memory came from the previous night. After failing her job interview, going drinking, and heading back, she had started on the road home from Ikusabata Station.

“…”

She leaned against the wall, placed a hand on her head, and thought.

…''What was it…?

She felt something on the verge of appearing from the depths of her memories.

“Ah.”

For some reason, an image of herself striking a gray alien with an iron fist entered her head.

She strengthened the strike with the motion of her waist to defeat the little grey.

After one, two, and then three solid hits, the little grey began to tap on the ground to beg forgiveness.

“That isn’t it. …What is with that B-grade memory, anyway?”

She ignored the strange image and realized there was a lid.

That lid was sealing her memories. She felt as if her true self was shouting at her from beyond the lid. She wondered if a version of herself that understood everything lay there.

…''I need something.

She needed something that would act as a key to open the lid.

And just as she nodded…

“Ah! I found her! She is in front of Lord Zeus’s portrait!”

Three maids appeared from the T-junction up ahead.

Miyako clicked her tongue and turned her head. In an instant, she observed that the approaching maids were positioned to the right, left, and right.

She had gotten some water, caught her breath, and wanted to learn the truth of her memories.

Nothing pointed to her loss.

And so she prepared herself. She stood on the central line and took on each of the maids in turn.

The first maid on the right was unarmed, the second one on the left held a broom, and the third one was also unarmed.

They likely planned to have the first one stop her with a tackle, the second one use the broom handle to hold her in check or strike her, and the third one restrain her.

Miyako first took a large step backwards.

“Wait!”

With that shout, the maids began to run faster.

However, Miyako leaped backwards while still facing them.

While back stepping further, she partially matched her speed to the first blonde girl.

The maid opened her mouth, wrinkled her brow, and shouted out a question.

“Why are you trying to escape from us!?”

For an instant, Miyako did not know what she meant.

…''It almost sounds like she doesn’t want me to leave them.

Suddenly, Miyako recalled something from a very long time ago.

One night, she had clung to the side of a man in a work uniform as that man had tried to go somewhere. She had still been a child and she had not been satisfied just with having her head rubbed.

She knew what it was like to not want someone to leave.

Despite recalling those feeling from ten years before, she replied while continuing to move backwards.

“I refuse to accept the situation I’m in right now!”

The maid did not reply. She only moved forward with an expression saying she would capture Miyako.

The maid approached quite close and her right arm reached for Miyako’s chest.

Just as the maid’s arm was about to reach her, Miyako suddenly took action.

She slowed down her back stepping.

The maid gave a look of surprise as the change in relative speed caused them to suddenly approach.

In an instant, Miyako brushed the girl’s outstretched arm upwards.

“Ah.”

And Miyako shoved her body against the maid’s open side.

She gave a light tackle by pressing her shoulder into the maid’s side and she grabbed the maid’s slender body. She used the maid’s approaching momentum to lift her up onto her shoulder and used her back muscles to bend the maid backwards.

“!”

And she began back stepping once more.

As the girl on her shoulder gasped, she rotated to the right.

She rotated on one tiptoe.

“Left!”

And she threw the maid on her back toward the broom-wielding maid to the left.

For an instant, the broom-wielding maid stared blankly at the body thrown toward her.

And so Miyako shouted out.

“Catch her!”

“Oh, yes!”

The broom-wielding maid threw aside the broom just as Miyako finished her rotation.

She now faced the direction of the maids which was the direction she had originally needed to go.

And thus her back stepping came to an end and she could begin running forward.

She poured all of her backwards-moving momentum into the soles of her feet. She moved forward. She tilted forward as if trying to press her chest to the floor, she kicked off the floor, and she ran full speed from the very first step.

She ran as if flying.

To her left, she saw that the maid who had abandoned her broom had caught the thrown blonde. She immediately passed by them, but the blonde maid and the previously broom-wielding maid could not move quickly enough.

Two down.

Miyako faced the final one.

But that maid was watching her movements carefully. The third maid had black hair and she had stopped to prepare herself.

…''A good decision!

Miyako continued forward without stopping and she reached for something in the air.

It was the broom the second maid had thrown aside.

She used the fingers of her right hand to spin it around and swing it. The end of the brush scraped against the white wall.

“Outta the way! Outta the way! Outta the way!”

Her shout caused her opponent to flinch.

But this final maid did not move out of the way. She seemed to have made some form of decision because she held out her white gloved hands as the broom approached her.

She intended to stop it and take her next action.

''That pose says she’s confident she can stop it,'' thought Miyako. ''These are nice girls.

A smile appeared on the corner of her mouth.

…''If I had a bunch of people like this on my side, I could conquer at least Kantou.

With that thought, she swung the broom down toward the maid’s head.

In response, the black-haired maid lowered her hips in a defensive stance.

And…

“You can have this. I’m terrible at cleaning.”

Miyako tossed the broom forward.

The maid watched the broom handle floating before her eyes.

“Eh?”

As the handle slowly moved toward her, she reflexively reached out toward it.

And that signaled the end of the game. Miyako immediately slipped past her side. She accelerated much faster than before. Before the maid could turn around in sudden realization, she had already accelerated away.

Miyako made her way past the maid all at once.

Not even the maid’s gaze could keep up as she left through the T-junction. She turned right because she was closer to that end of the building.

She turned her head at the same time as lowering her hips. She took the step at the same time as throwing herself to the right.

The right hallway was empty and the air seemed to be telling her to continue on.

She felt a wind. Rather than the air of a stuffy room, this chilly wind came from outside.

As she ran and swung her arms, she started to think again.

…''What is that memory? What is that memory from last night that I can’t remember?

It was faint, but she felt as if she was beginning to remember something.

As she wondered what it was, something appeared in her mind.

“A color?”

In an instant, the keyword of “night” caused the pale moon to flash into her mind. The night before, she had to have seen a nearly full moon.

…''But that isn’t it.

The color that occasionally appeared in her mind was not the pale blue of the moonlight.

Just as she wondered what it was, she saw the color.

Ahead of her was an emergency exit that was sitting open to air out the hallway. Through that open door, she saw the outside light. She saw the color of the yellow sunlight.

“!”

That was it.

That was the color she wanted to see and the color from her fragmented memories. But what meaning did that color have?

Her memories were from the night before, so where had she seen sunlight?

With that question in mind, she continued to run. She headed for the emergency exit rather than the staircase.

At the same time, a small figure came up the internal stairs to the right of the emergency exit.

It was Moira 3rd. She seemed to be trying to stop Miyako as well. She held forward her white gloved hands as she ran up the stairs.

On the other hand, Miyako paid the girl no heed. Before the short and young maid’s hands could reach her, she arrived at the emergency exit. Or she should have.

“Wham!!”

Miyako heard Moira 3rd’s delighted shout and then felt something strike her from down and to the right.

…''What?

It felt like a mass of water struck the lower right of her body, but her surprise was even greater than the impact.

After all, Moira 3rd had yet to fully climb the stairs and was too far away to reach her.

Before she could wonder what had happened, all of the different forces involved produced a certain result.

She flew through the emergency exit and into the air at eight stories above the ground.

As Miyako flew over the fence around the emergency exit’s elevator and into the air, the first thing she saw was the sky.

Her vision was pointed upwards. Ahead of her, she saw the color blue and some clouds.

''It’s so vast,'' she thought as her vision bent further backwards and brought the city into view.

It was a flat city. The only high ground was the mountain this building sat on. Everything else was just a dense collection of buildings and homes on a flat land. She also saw a Shinto shrine on the opposite side of the mountain.

The sense of familiarity the city gave her caused her to focus on one point.

An L-shaped area on the southern end of the city looked old. And it looked somehow artificially old. Amid the lines of white walls and tile roofs, she saw some of the Western architecture she had seen in text books.

…''Is that Kurashiki?

She had gone there on a field trip during high school. That old part of the city was the Bikan historical district. In that case, the one huge building there would be the art museum. She had gone there only a few years before, but she did not remember much besides buying a horseshoe crab shell as a souvenir.

“But that’s probably where this is.”

Suddenly, the movement of her vision stopped.

She had reached the peak of her arc. She would now fall.

Strength quickly left her body and she felt as if something were tugging her back downwards.

…''Am I about to die?

With that lighthearted thought, all strength vanished from her body.

She recalled many different things. She recalled the past and her hidden memories.

She first remembered an incident from elementary school. She had been playing baseball with a paper ball and the cloth case containing her recorder. She had completely missed with her swing, the recorder had come apart in the case, and the mouthpiece had flown out. The mouthpiece had struck the pitcher’s forehead and created a crescent moon-shaped injury. The pitcher had naturally been taken to the hospital.

She remembered another incident from when she had started noticing the opposite sex during middle school. She had grown fond of a certain upperclassman on the baseball team, so she had been watching him practice. When a ball had rolled up to her feet, she had thrown it back in her own type of girl’s throw, but it had gotten lost in the light of the sun. As soon as the upperclassman had looked down, it had fallen right on top of the hard, button-like ball on the top of his baseball cap. As blood had flowed from underneath his cap, he had fallen to his knees and then collapsed to the ground.

“These are all terrible memories!”

She came back to her senses and flailed her limbs around, but her hands only reached empty air.

She looked around in hopes of finding something to grab onto.

With her vision pointed upwards, she looked to the city and then back at the building.

It was a giant white building made of stone.

The stone building had been polished until it reflected light like glass. It had a giant warehouse-like metal door that stretched from the ground to about the sixth story. Above that were four stories of living space. The living space had a shallow triangular roof which gave the entire building a certain shape.

“It looks like a temple.”

That thought was immediately followed by a sudden impact across her entire body.

“!”

This was much too soon to be the ground. Her midair surprise was caused by the impact of landing on her butt, back, and legs. However, the surface continued to descend so as to absorb the impact.

As she wondered what was happening, she forced her numb body to sit up. She stopped moving and saw what lay below her butt.

“A hand?”

It was shaped like a hand, but it was much larger. A human hand would certainly not be a meter across. It would also not be colored blue or be made of a hard plastic-like material.

“What is this?”

With an odd sense of déjà vu, she turned toward the blue hand’s wrist.

The temple-like door was open and a blue arm was sticking out at a height of about three meters above the ground.

The owner of the arm exited through the door.

It was a giant warrior wearing blue armor.

It was about ten meters tall. The joints of its giant arm were all coated with a plastic-like substance, but she could not sense the pulsation of a living creature.

And so she reached the following conclusion about the giant supporting her.

“A robot? What is this, an anime?”

As she muttered to herself, she looked at its face. Its facial structure was made from a collection of metal and the lights in place of its eyes were green and continued to blink faintly.

As she looked at the color of the warrior’s eyes, a certain thought came to her.

…''This isn’t it.

But she did not know what that thought meant.

“…”

She then saw something behind the blue armored warrior.

A giant white armored warrior sat inside what looked like a hangar.

It was a size larger than the blue giant and it stood straight in the supporting hangar. Bluish-white writing appeared in a dark oblong hole on the side of the hangar.

She had never seen that type of writing before, so she could only tell that it was the writing of some other culture. However, she could tell what it said. The side of the hangar said “Typhon”.

She did not know what the word meant, but she understood that it was the name of the white giant.

That was when a memory returned to her.

“Last night.”

For an instant, those hidden memories of the past revived within her.

First, she remembered herself.

…''I screwed up the interview and…

After leaving Ikusabata Station, she had complained on the gravel road through the paddy field.

“And then I was caught in the middle of a fight involving this anime robot thing.”

As she replayed her memories, she took a certain action.

She looked upwards.

“!”

While ignoring how it was messing up her hair, she looked into the blue sky and saw a certain light in the center.

It was the light of the sun.

That warm light wrapped in the color yellow brought back another memory. Last night, the white giant had descended before her and she had seen the color of its eyes.

…''And I felt something then.

What had it been?

She did not know.

But the rapid refrain of memories left her sitting blankly on the giant hand.

She had also been saved from falling, so her tension lessened and she merely sat motionlessly.

In response, the blue arm started lowering. It was a slow and gentle motion meant to keep her from harm.

“…Ah.”

She looked down.

A large crowd had gathered there. They were all maids.

Moira 1st was there, Moira 3rd was there, and a maid with short hair of the same color was the only one looking away from her. That may have been Moira 2nd.

All of the other maids there were looking up at her with looks of relief.

…''And looks of expectation.

It looked like they thought her rescue meant that something enjoyable would continue.

Miyako sighed at the looks on their faces.

…''Why are they looking that way toward someone like me?

<noinclude>
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| Forward to [[Owari_no_Chronicle:Volume5_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
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</noinclude>

Owari no Chronicle:Volume4 Chapter 29

2014-03-02T22:59:37Z

Agaa: /* Chapter 29: Seeing Through the Lies */

==Chapter 29: Seeing Through the Lies==
[[Image:OnC_v04_0385.png|thumb]]
''There is no need to see through a lie

''But there is also no need to permit an empty falsehood

''See through those in order to save something

Sayama moved through the moonlit clearing.

His left hand, the hand that once formed a fist, now held Georgius and a sword.

He felt a slight phantom pain from the scars on his fist, but it was small enough to put up with.

He stepped forward.

He swung the sword toward Atsuta.

Atsuta evaded by bending his body to the right.

He swung Futsuno horizontally.

That was when covering fire came from behind Sayama.

Shinjou fired three shots of light from her staff. They flew toward Atsuta with both vertical and horizontal gaps.

And they hit. Or they should have.

Sayama saw Atsuta alter Futsuno’s path.

The sword heading horizontally toward Sayama suddenly shot up vertically.

The blade’s path drew a fan shape and moved to the man’s right side.

Rotating the large blade produced a certain result.

The light fired by Shinjou flew past Atsuta.

“…”

Sayama heard Shinjou gasp.

But he had expected this. And he had already taken his next action.

Atsuta dropped the sword down from the right, so his left side was wide open.

And so Sayama swung in the silver arc in his left hand.

Atsuta smiled bitterly.

“You have good instincts. Where were you taught?”

Part of the training at the Hiba Dojo included techniques to stand up to a swinging blade. Sayama used those techniques to move up to Atsuta in an instant as the man’s blade sliced through the air.

Atsuta moved back.

Sayama only heard a single footstep, but the man quickly moved back a large distance.

In an instant, he created a space of about five meters between them and Sayama’s blade sliced through air.

There was a gap between them now.

“…”

They both prepared their next stances at the same time.

Sayama prepared to charge in.

He wanted to move straight forward.

And in that instant, Atsuta suddenly spoke.

“I think that’s about enough warming up.”

Then he vanished.

Or rather, Sayama was no longer able to perceive him.

“!”

This was the Art of Walking.

Kazami held G-Sp2 as she ran.

She was fifteen meters from her opponent. She needed to instantly bring that down to zero.

As the wings on her back produced wind, she literally flew forward.

She moved quickly.

And her high-speed movement brought the trees of the forest toward her.

Her tension had narrowed her vision, so she perceived the trees rushing toward her as shadows.

Straight, right, and right.

Then she forcibly corrected her path to the left.

“…!”

She lightly flapped her wings and stepped on the ground.

The combination of the two actions supported her movements.

She moved so quickly that it swept away her sweat in an instant.

Simply flapping her wings would launch her forward.

While moving so swiftly, she could only rely on her own senses.

…''And my name.

Kazami Chisato.

As Kazami, her eyes read the wind. As Chisato, her running feet covered great distances.

The distance was down to five meters.

A single light came from ahead.

But it did not matter. She tilted her head to the side and it flew past her cheek.

“And I keep running!”

She did not stop her movements or lessen her focus. She simply continued her acceleration to the end.

“Go!”

Her feet produced the white steam of an atmospheric explosion and she blasted her body forward.

She flew.

But not into the heavens. She flew forward.

At high speed, she slipped between the last trees and covered the last bit of distance.

At the same time, light arrived before her eyes.

It was an aimed shot of moonlight. As a counterattack, it had been fired at almost point blank range.

“!”

But Kazami did not hesitate.

She swung up G-Sp2 and thrust it forward

The Cowling Spear stabbed through the air and collided with the light while wrapped in a white steam.

She could feel it hit.

A white noise burst and the light scattered in every direction.

And she looked beyond it.

If she continued forward and blew away Tsukuyomi, they would win.

However…

“She’s gone!?”

Beyond the scattered light, Tsukuyomi was nowhere to be seen.

Or rather, Kazami could not perceive her.

“Chisato!”

Izumo’s voice caused her to tremble.

Before she could even think the term “Art of Walking”, she stopped breathing and stiffened.

There was one way to break through 2nd-Gear’s Art of Walking which worked by syncing with one’s opponent.

…''Intentionally disrupt your heart rate and such to break the sync!

She had succeeded doing so against Izumo on the rooftop the night before.

She held her breath, gathered strength to encourage the flow of blood, and widened the focus of her vision.

“…There!”

Right in front of her, Tsukuyomi held her large bow with an expression of exhaustion.

But the lost instant had been too much.

Tsukuyomi had already twisted her body around and avoided the attack.

She leaped out of the forest.

Meanwhile, Kazami flew out of the forest and right past her.

The river lay ahead of her.

The flowing water was only about five meters wide, but it was plenty large to bathe in the moonlight.

As she cautiously viewed Tsukuyomi’s stance, she gasped.

As she fell toward the river, she saw Tsukuyomi head toward the river and aim the bow up toward the sky.

“After firing so much, you can’t possibly have charged up any…”

Her shout of protest trailed off when she saw the truth before her eyes.

As Tsukuyomi drew the bow with her right arm, the center of the bowstring was wrapped around the elbow.

That elbow drew the bow tightly.

The bowstring sank into her skin to the point that blood dripped down.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been drawing the bowstring with your elbow this entire time!”

“I’ve been shooting at you by plucking the half of the bowstring above my elbow. The entire time in the forest, I’ve been charging up using my elbow.”

Just as the old woman spoke, Kazami and Tsukuyomi both landed in the river.

They were approximately five meters apart.

Tsukuyomi stood on the riverbed, but Kazami’s stance had collapsed.

She fell to the riverbed as if rolling forward and she thrust her hands into the water to catch herself.

She frantically got up while looking up at Tsukuyomi.

“You put up a good effort. I’ll give you that.”

The old woman nodded and fired the bow into the sky.

The vibration caused the blood on her arm to scatter and the air was dyed faintly red.

In the next moment, light fell from the sky. And this light was much larger than any the bow had produced before.

It fell toward Kazami in an instant.

Atsuta moved forward.

The two people standing before him were not looking at him and were hesitant to move.

Their eyes moved slightly, but their gazes were wandering aimlessly.

That showed that his Art of Walking was working.

He suddenly looked down at his right hand.

Behind him and to the right, Kashima stood in front of the pier while operating his laptop. Atsuta felt as if water was tilting within Futsuno as he held it. This was due to Kashima distributing its weight in real time.

“Don’t get too serious, Kashima. It’s already time to finish them off.”

“I’m close to drawing up a pattern. Plus, I want data on slow movements like this as well as normal combat.”

“I want a fast sports car, not a Royal Saloon that’s only worthwhile at low speeds.”

“An engineer should want stability during both heavy usage and light usage.”

“Is that so?”

Atsuta’s shoulders drooped and he walked up to Sayama.

He was about three meters away. Sayama would need to take two steps to attack with his sword, but Futsuno’s reach only required a single step.

Atsuta stepped forward, but then he stopped.

He did not attack.

After a slight moment of irritation, he spoke.

“Now, then. Getting in a good attack and making you bow down to me naked would be nice, but someone as wise as me is concerned about one thing.” Confidence filled his voice. “Sayama Mikoto. As the representative of the Leviathan Road, I highly doubt you haven’t analyzed our Art of Walking.”

Sayama heard Atsuta speak.

He had already seen through the man’s Art of Walking.

He had seen a portion of the man’s ability in the cafeteria and he had realized the principle behind the Art of Walking when Ryuutetsu had thrown him.

The Art of Walking was a difficult technique to use, but it was very simple to break once you knew the principle behind it.

He had only needed to feign falling victim to it and counterattack once Atsuta approached.

But Atsuta gave an exaggerated shake of the head.

“For example, you could break free by holding your breath the instant you failed to perceive me. That would destroy the sync,” he said. “But I’m not going to bother to check whether you’ve done that.”

He held up Futsuno.

His expression made it clear he was no longer playing around. And his voice contained no hint of ridicule.

“Listen, Sayama. Cut the act and fight me.”

Sayama maintained his silence.

He could not determine what Atsuta was trying to do.

He could not even tell if Atsuta knew he had broken the Art of Walking or if he was only testing.

But then Atsuta gave him the answer.

“Ryouko trusts you. There’s no way someone like that wouldn’t break free of my Art of Walking.”

Sayama gasped.

“…”

And he straightened up. As he did, he heard Shinjou gasp behind him.

But he did not care. He faced Atsuta and spoke.

“Sword gods have become quite sentimental these days.”

“I’m grateful.” Atsuta held up Futsuno. “Let’s have a proper fight, ladies’ man. Unlike just now, I’ll use an Art of Walking tailored especially for you. Try breaking free of that and attacking me.”

“An Art of Walking tailored especially for me?”

Atsuta tightened his grip on Futsuno.

“It’s simple. I force you into sync with me. In other words, I control your body.”

“You cannot control my-…”

“Oh, yes I can. With you, I can.”

“With me?”

''What is he going to do?'' wondered Sayama.

Atsuta’s next comment seemed to be in response to his thoughts.

“Well? You want me to tell you, don’t you? You want to know what words I can use to control your body.” He tilted his head. “Hadn’t you ever wondered why exactly Ryouko trusts you?”

“I have. It is a bit of a mystery why Ryouko has such a high opinion of me.”

Atsuta stepped forward and raised Futsuno above his head.

“I’ll tell you,” he said expressionlessly. “I heard her talk about him so many times. She said your father was kind and smart. I heard her say there was no problem he couldn’t solve. That is how she felt about your Sayama Asagi, your father!”

Sayama suddenly heard his father’s name.

He had expected to hear something about himself, but that named stabbed at him instead.

“!”

That single name brought a reflexive scream to the left side of his chest.

He instinctually bent over from the pain and Atsuta shouted out as if providing the finishing blow.

“She once delightedly told me that his son was exactly like him!”

His words called in the past.

For just an instant, he recalled his father.

…''Not good!

His rejecting will outdid the memories.

He knew even less of that existence than of his mother and he had sealed the memories deep in his heart. These references to him brought a squeezing pain to his chest. The pain was intense.

“…Kh.”

His voice leaked from his throat as if his lungs were being crushed.

“Does it hurt? That pain is how I will control you!”

At the same time, Atsuta vanished from his perception.

The man had stepped into his pain.

For a moment, he entered his memories and wondered if his father was truly the kind of person Ryouko said he was, but then he turned his thoughts to the present.

…''Those are indeed words which can control my body.

As he doubled over, he heard Atsuta’s voice.

“It’s too bad, Sayama’s brat. Ryouko has a lot of issues…but she doesn’t lie! You did well, but that ends here!”

As he spoke, Atsuta truly vanished.

Moonlight fell from the sky and toward the forest river.

Tsukuyomi faced her prey while standing in the river with the water up to her knees.

That prey was Kazami.

She was one of the two main vanguard members of Team Leviathan. Two years prior, she had been caught in the middle of a battle started by 6th-Gear remnants attacking a Concept Core transport. As a result, she had become the master of G-Sp and X-Wi.

It had been Tsukuyomi and the development department that had altered G-Sp into G-Sp2 for her and fine-tuned X-Wi.

…''You are something like a daughter to us.

“Which means we need you to be able to turn back the power of this light.”

But Kazami was currently on her hands and knees in the river and she could not move. She would be unable to read the wind now. The wings of light growing from her back were dim and beginning to vanish.

“In that case…” replied someone else.

It was Izumo. He charged from the forest and leaped toward Kazami’s back.

While in midair, he held his sword down and opened his mouth.

“Ah!”

He cried out and launched an attack just as he landed in the river.

''It is useless,'' thought Tsukuyomi.

She knew V-Sw’s abilities by heart.

…''Using its first form is not enough to defeat the falling moonlight.

What were they going to do? Were they simply going to use their weapons as tools of power?

Immediately afterwards, Izumo shouted out and shattered Tsukuyomi’s thoughts.

“Ahhhhh!!”

As he let out a roar, he swung V-Sw up from below.

But he was not targeting the moonlight.

“The water!?”

As Tsukuyomi watched, a great splash rose up behind Kazami.

The strike had used the full power of the weapon’s first form, so it thoroughly swept up the river’s water.

It produced a reverse waterfall.

And Izumo shouted loud enough to be heard over the din of water.

“Chisato! Quit pointing your ass at me and raise your wings!”

Kazami raised her head.

She looked into the sky and saw the falling pillar of moonlight.

Tsukuyomi also watched the moonlight as it arrived directly above them and…

“Into the spray…”

The water Izumo had sent into the air struck the light.

The collision between moonlight and water lasted an instant.

But it did not produce destruction. It did not produce an explosion, a shockwave, or collapse.

It produced harmony.

It was water and light. The great amount of airborne water reflected the moonlight, took it inside, reflected it inside itself, and scattered it everywhere.

The moonlight danced through the sky.

And Tsukuyomi saw Kazami crouch down below the water and light.

Her expression could now be described as an acute angle and a voice escaped her throat.

“Thanks, Kaku.”

And with that, she formed a smile and light shot from the two wings stretching up from her back.

The concept activated.

—'''Light is power.

In an instant, her wings of light grew past two meters in length and they did not stop here.

They took in the moonlight.

“This power…is the same!”

The wings responded to Kazami’s shout. As they rose up into the sky, they stabbed into the glowing water and absorbed the light that had been scattered by that water.

With a soaring sound, the wings twisted as if shuddering in agony and they continued to grow while absorbing the surrounding moonlight.

The light vanished as the wings swallowed it all.

And wings measuring about dozen meters appeared in its place.

Atsuta stepped forward.

His slight deviation from the sync was as perfect as ever.

Intense pain was the easiest sensation to grasp.

A single pain great enough to fill the entire body was enough to take over every sense in one’s body.

He now only had to attack.

It was a mock battle, his blade had a cowling over it, and both Kashima and Tsukuyomi had told him not to kill, but he would still beat the boy with the mass of metal until he could no longer fight.

“Don’t hold it against me, Ryouko!” he shouted as he swung down Futsuno.

Sayama was doubled over in front of him. It almost looked like the boy was bowing to him.

It gave him a nice feeling.

All that remained was to smash Sayama’s body with Futsuno.

“…”

But Sayama suddenly moved.

As Atsuta watched, the boy opened his right hand and grabbed the left side of his chest.

Before Atsuta could wonder what he was going to do, Sayama spoke.

“I have remembered my father! It is not much!” He clenched his teeth until they creaked, but he continued on. “But it is still more than you know!!”

He stood up.

He used his full strength as if breaking free of his bonds.

He relied fully on strength like a struggling child.

He wrinkled his brow and his expression twisted, but he truly faced Atsuta.

He had broken free of the Art of Walking tailored specifically to him.

''How?'' wondered Atsuta with a frown.

“I can give myself even more pain than you can give me!” shouted Sayama. “I can do so using a past you know nothing about!”

He looked up into the sky and raised his voice.

“Everyone!”

He took a breath.

“It is time to settle this!”

As Sibyl sang on the grassy plain, she heard a voice from the direction of Susaou.

“As we use even the past to bring victory, let us begin the true negotiation.”

As Ooshiro focused on firing beams, he heard Sayama over the communicator.

“Listen, everyone! Gather your will into your surname and draw the meaning of your birth from your given name. Tonight, we ask our questions with our birthplace in hand. Are you listening!?”
As Ooki worked with the others to fire Boldman, she turned toward Susaou and narrowed her eyes in a smile.

“Understanding, peace, reconciliation, and everything else will come later! We must knock some sense into those who wish for the status quo and teach them what it is like to cry out and struggle to break free of the status quo!”

As she watched wings of light develop before her, Tsukuyomi heard a single voice.

“I, Sayama Mikoto, make this announcement with my authority as Team Leviathan’s representative. We will face destruction as a whole. We will not yield to any past. We will recall everything and see what lies ahead of it all. And we will remain together until the end!”

He took a breath.

“This is an order. All team members, advance on them. And make sure to bring them back even if you have to beat them into submission. Bring them back to a world of more than just names. Force the past into these name-obsessed people’s hands and kick them out of their peaceful bed!”

Before Tsukuyomi’s eyes, Kazami’s giant wings had finished their rise into the night sky. They pierced through the forest and the night.

Meanwhile, the water had lost its light, so gravity dragged it down.

“…!”

A single strike from the moonlight wings caused the water to burst and become a mist.

And a question arrived from the direction of Susaou.

“Where is your response?”

While bent over with her wings facing the heavens, Kazami opened her mouth.

She gave a single word in response.

Behind her, Izumo shouted the same word.

“Testament!”

Sayama heard the word testament.

It came from beyond the forest, within the forest, and from the sky.

Testament, testament, testament.

It had already gone beyond Team Leviathan. Members of 2nd-Gear had joined in.

''I see,'' thought Sayama. ''This is quite pleasant.

He began to understand what it was they wanted.

“The only conclusion we desire is victory!” he shouted before taking action.

Pain still filled his body, but he could move while driving away the pain.

As Futsuno flew in before his eyes, he jumped backwards.

He poured all his strength into this evasive leap.

And once his feet hit the ground…

“!”

He threw his body forward.

As he leaped, he drew and struck with his sword.

The silver line raced toward Atsuta.

“…!”

After swinging Futsuno down to the ground, the man swept it upwards.

He intercepted the strike from below.

But he did not make it in time. He had tried to cut the blade, but deflecting it upwards was the most he could manage.

The blade with a Low-Gear name struck the blade with a 2nd-Gear name and a metallic noise rang out.

Sparks flew and illuminated the two sword wielders.

Atsuta then moved back.

He created a gap of five meters. At that comfortable distance, he prepared his stance once more.

Meanwhile, Sayama remained in the stance he had landed in. He clicked his tongue once as he watched Atsuta.

He had failed to defeat the man.

…''If I do not get an attack in soon…

The pain in his chest was taking over his body now that he had stopped moving.

The pain he had used to break the bonds of the Art of Walking was becoming a new set of chains.

Atsuta no longer spoke. Nor did he move forward.

He held Futsuno up in both hands.

“…!”

And he suddenly swung it down.

He was using Futsuno’s cutting ability to cut through everything in range of the sword’s pressure.

“This is a shameful method for a sword god, but it’s the only way to ensure victory!”

The blade sliced through the air and stabbed into the ground.

With a roar of the ground being struck, a change occurred.

A shimmering appeared from Futsuno to a few hundred meters behind Sayama.

This was the advanced notice of Futsuno’s explosive strength. It was the initial stage of the blade slicing through everything.

“Go, Futsuno! Use your slicing blade to cut through Mikoto!! Cut through his life!!”

An instant later, Sayama saw the explosion of the sword god’s strength.

A bursting sound reached him.

But he also heard a voice amid it all.

“Sayama-kun!”

It was Shinjou’s voice.

Shinjou moved within the shimmering.

She suddenly remembered when she had first met Sayama.

When faced with the werewolf, she had been unable to do anything and it had put him in danger.

…''How long will I be dragging him down?

She felt this was something she would never be able to forget. And if she did forget it…

…''I wouldn’t be able to save him.

She asked herself what she should do now.

She knew the answer.

And so gave voice to her words of self-understanding. She spoke so she could hear it.

“Concepts of 2nd-Gear! Earth, air, and sky that provide power to names!”

She held up the staff resting on her shoulder and faced forward. She faced Sayama’s back.

His back remained motionless as if waiting for her words, so she spoke.

“In accordance with my name, I reject the cutting power that is trying to cut through Sayama Mikoto!”

''Accept it,'' she thought. ''You are no longer Sadame or Setsu. Accept your true name once more.

“My name, Sadagiri, does not cut away life,” she shouted. “It cuts away the bonds of destiny, freeing life!”

As she spoke, she pressed the trigger button.

[[Image:OnC_v04_0411.png|thumb]]

A light appeared.

It was a straight beam of light that possessed seemingly unending force.

The light was fired from Ex-St as it rested on her shoulder. That was the cannon with the name Tiger Star.

“…!”

With a metal roar, the recoil knocked Shinjou backwards and a clear noise rang out.

The front portion of Ex-St broke.

In response to its master’s will, the machine readily destroyed itself.

With the sound of a metallic explosion, Shinjou’s body was blown backwards.

But the light flew forward.

The white light formed an arc and struck Futsuno’s cutting power head on.

As the light crushed each consecutive slice, it produced a sound resembling a bombing.

A clear sound and a deep sound struck the air.

The light continued forward.

As the cutting power attempted to expand over a wider area, the light kept it in its compressed form, broke through it, and continued on.

And the light struck Futsuno.

A high-pitched noise reverberated through the air and Futsuno flew through the sky.

The blade that symbolized 2nd-Gear’s current form slowly, slowly rotated as it flew up into the sky.

In the forest river, Tsukuyomi saw Kazami disappear.

No, she had not disappeared. She had flown.

In just an instant, she had flown up into the heavens.

Tsukuyomi looked up into the sky.

Two wings were visible in the night sky which was filled with named stars.

They were moonlight wings. They beat the sky and seemed to bounce back toward her.

Tsukuyomi looked at the wings flying directly toward her and the spear travelling with them.

“Testament, hm?”

She smiled.

As she realized that expression contained no hesitation or error, she aimed her large bow into the sky.

She aimed overhead, past the approaching wings and spear.

She targeted the orb with her name and released the bowstring from her bloody fingertips.

After a bursting, high-pitched noise filled the night sky, the one bearing the conclusion flew down.

Kashima saw one object in the sky.

Floating in the moonlit night sky was a falling and rotating sword.

As he observed its shape, he noticed something about the cowling covering the blade.

…''It’s gone.

The shot from the girl named Shinjou had knocked the cowling away, leaving the steel-colored blade exposed.

He watched the curve of that metal arc reflect the moonlight.

…''This is dangerous. It could bounce off the ground and hit someone.

He was from a military god family, so he was used to handling dangerous things.

With that in mind, he reached his hand out overhead. The sword fell into his open right hand.

The chill, weight, and reliability of steel entered his hand all at once.

“Oops,” he said as he dropped his laptop.

The laptop bounced off the weeds once and the LCD monitor faced him.

For an instant, he could not decide whether to prioritize the sword to the right or the laptop to the left.

A window opened on the laptop screen.

The shock of the fall must have hit the mouse button.

And something appeared on the screen.

“A video…”

It showed his home on a sunny day. In front of the doll stand in the yard, a woman held a baby.

The camera was zoomed in on the child, but the child did not understand what was before her.

She merely faced the camera.

And as she faced the camera and everything behind it, she smiled and spoke.

The speakers were not activated, so he could not hear her voice.

But he could read the child’s lips and he had seen the video countless times before.

He knew exactly what she was saying. The baby had said the following.

“Ah.”

And then she had opened her mouth again.

“Ah.”

She repeated herself.

What had she meant by “ah, ah”?

The camera pulled back and showed the woman holding the child.

The woman’s short hair shook and she gave a surprised look.

But then she formed a smile and opened her mouth.

Kashima remembered what she had said as well.

“Do you think she meant ‘papa’?”

He tried to remember what he had said.

…''She might have said ‘mama’.

That might have been it. But it might not have. He may have been beautifying the important parts.

He smiled bitterly and looked at Futsuno in his right hand.

…''I can’t feel Futsuno’s weight.

As he wondered why, he realized he did not need to ask why.

“I am a man of 2nd-Gear and I have remembered my power as one. …That is why.”

He nodded.

“The surname Kashima indicates a military god.”

He gathered strength in his right hand and looked down.

In the laptop window, the woman faced the camera and waved while still holding the baby. She waved with her left hand which lacked two fingers.

The video ended and the window closed.

Kashima faced forward and saw Atsuta looking his way as he stood empty-handed on the weed-covered clearing.

“Are you done with the family videos? Then go deal with them.”

Atsuta used his chin to point to the right.

Two people stood in that direction.

Sayama and Shinjou.

They stood next to each other, but Sayama had drawn the sword at his waist.

And so Kashima asked a question in a carefree and inviting tone.

“Shall we go settle this?”

He held up Futsuno and pointed the tip toward Sayama.

Shinjou looked at Sayama with the ends of her eyebrows lowered.

Kashima read the emotion there and understood their connection.

And so he spoke.

“Susanoo slays the serpent and marries the princess. Is that it?”

“It is too soon for that. Eight dragons still await after this. The marriage will have to wait a while.”

Sayama’s comment caused Shinjou to blush.

She then seemed to realize something, so she faced the sword in Sayama’s hand.

“Sayama-kun, can I see that sword for a moment?”

“What is it?”

“Just a protective charm.”

She held the sword and slowly cut off a tuft of her hair.

She let out a breath and held the hair.

“Sorry if you find this creepy, but this is a type of good luck charm, right?”

She then lightly tied the hair to the sword and Sayama’s left hand.

Kashima interpreted it as a type of shimenawa.

“That should suffice,” he said. “The hair of someone with the name Sadagiri should give the sword the protection of that name.”

It would be difficult to cut through it even with Futsuno.

Sayama gave a testing swing of the sword and faced Kashima.

“I would like to keep Shinjou-kun by my side during this battle. Would that be acceptable?”

“Go right ahead.”

Right now, he always had his wife and child with him in a way.

“But if something happens to her, the responsibility lies with you.”

“Of course. And as long as it is Shinjou-kun, even a corpse is fine by me.”

Sayama then asked him a question.

“What about you?”

“I don’t think I’d like that…”

“Heh heh heh. Then I win this round. Rejoice, Shinjou-kun! …What is with that look?”

“D-don’t say you win if I die!”

''What a strange Susanoo and princess,'' thought Kashima with a bitter smile. ''I wonder how strange a Yamato Takeru and princess we are?

But he erased his own smile and held up Futsuno.

He was from a military god family. The sword he held would tell him how to wield it.

In his hands, the almost perfectly tuned Futsuno would be a powerful weapon indeed.

“Let’s begin, bearer of the Leviathan Road. Let’s walk down the road of battle that leads to the conclusion.”

“Yes, I shall take Totsuka and answer Yamata’s question.”

“Can you do it?” asked Kashima. “If so, then decide what lies ahead once we break free of the status quo. Is it Low-Gear or 2nd-Gear? Is it the truth or lies? Or…is it something else entirely!?”

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