Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

The next morning, Aine had healed her wound after spending the night inside Karuta’s body. It was time for an official investigation within Second Grimnoah, which was President Omotesandou Kyouka’s time to shine. Karuta had left her in charge there and the plan had been to make an early morning surprise attack on the human string pullers once she had tracked them down.

However…

“She’s not here,” he said the instant he opened the door to the student council room. “We were supposed to meet her here, but she’s not here! Hey, Marika, has she contacted you at all!?”

“No, nothing,” said Marika over the phone. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s the type to avoid communication devices and stay ‘off the grid’ when things get bad.”

That meant things had in fact gotten bad.

Crystal Girl Aine tilted her head next to him.

“Does that mean Miss Kyouka went to question the string pullers on her own?”

“But why would she do that?”

They had no reason to stay in the deserted student council room, so Karuta ran out into the hallway with his new phone in hand.

“We don’t know who the string pullers have here. ''We might not outnumber them''!”

Yes, this might not be a lone-wolf spy or sniper in a thick trench coat hiding within the crowds. Second Grimnoah was the Four Living Gods’ home turf, but the assumptions that came with that could always be overturned. For example, what if every single visitor here to see the tournament was actually a string puller assassin? Then the 1000 Second Grimnoah residents would be surrounded by tens of thousands of enemies. And that kind of ridiculous scale was exactly what he would expect from the human string pullers.

Omotesandou Kyouka was a known tactician, so he doubted she wouldn’t have considered such an obvious possibility.

And…

“No…wait.”

“Sacri-sama?”

Karuta didn’t have time to answer Aine’s question.

He went back over the examples he had come up with in his head. Was that possible? It was true Omotesandou Kyouka was not the easiest person in the world to predict, but he couldn’t deny the possibility that even she would respond in the obvious way.

Wasn’t there an answer that she couldn’t share with the other Four Living Gods? In fact, their great power would make her even more reluctant to share it with them.

“No, it can’t be…but…dammit!!”

“Karuta?” said Marika over the phone.

“Listen, Marika. Do not hang up. I’m going to give you a location, so meet me there. Hurry!!”

They had no way of tracking where Omotesandou Kyouka had gone.

But if she was going to meet alone with the culprit that made her most cautious, she wouldn’t have many options even on this 600m ship.

It had to be a location accessible with her wheelchair.

It had to be a location with multiple exits just in case.

And it had to be a location where she could secure a bright light or smokescreen to help her reach one of those exits.

And of course, it had to be a location where she needn’t worry anyone was eavesdropping.

“Omotesandou-san!!!!!!”

Karuta and Crystal Girl Aine burst into the dining hall.

No one was here thanks to all the restaurants running out of the middle and high school classrooms. They found Omotesandou Kyouka seated silently at that temporarily empty coordinate.

She did not turn back when he called her name.

She was facing someone else while seated in her wheelchair. She did not take her eyes off of them for a second.

That would be someone sent here by the human string pullers.

That was the person they had been searching for this whole time. Identifying them should have been the clue they needed to begin a counterattack against the monsters who manipulated each generation of world’s strongest to gorge on the benefits their power brought.

But.

The answer should have been obvious. Receiving full access to the special server required the biometrics of Karuta, Marika, or Kyouka.

And hadn’t Karuta considered the possibility of the human string pullers operating on a ridiculous scale? It hardly mattered that there were 1000 magicians on Second Grimnoah if every single one of the outside visitors was working for the string pullers. Karuta and the rest of his minority group would be entirely surrounded by tens of thousands of assassins.

But wait.

Wouldn’t that mean the assassins sent by the human string pullers were in fact some people they already knew!?

Karuta could only groan the name.

“''Omotesandou Shouka.''”

“Oh, you remembered my name! I still can’t believe the Four Living Gods know who I am.”

He sounded genuinely delighted.

In fact, the boy in the light green kimono may not have been putting on an act as he hopped up and down with a hand holding his hat in place. If he could make the emotions look so natural with nothing but pure acting, he had to be a better actor than a professional.

''Yes.

''A family member could do it.

No matter how strictly Karuta or Kyouka worked to not leave their fingerprints or DNA anywhere, there would still be hairs left behind in their childhood rooms.

Their preserved umbilical cord was all someone needed to get through a biometric lock that used DNA data.

“Shouka…”

Omotesandou Kyouka remained motionless.

She gripped her wheelchair’s armrests tight and kept her back on Karuta and Aine while she viewed her transformed brother.

She had pampered that boy enough to skew his standards of spiciness by always putting milk in his curry rice, but it turned out ''they'' were willing to use even familial bonds.

Was this what happened once they got their claws into someone?

“Why? Does this mean you’re with the human string pullers? But why!? How could you sell out your own family!!!???”

“String pullers?”

“''You'' gave them a hair, her umbilical cord, or something else from your house, didn’t you? You gave them the key they needed to get past the DNA authorization!!”

“Oh, that?”

Something wasn’t right.

Karuta had poured such contempt into the word “you”, yet Omotesandou Shouka’s face was bright without any hint of fear or panic.

How strange.

Whatever the reality might be, wasn’t Utagai Karuta known as one of the world’s strongest magicians? How could a boy of only 10 or 12 remain so calm when a monster like that yelled at him?

The boy was so young he was easily mistaken for a girl, but he only tilted his head curiously.

“I only did it because they told me it would help Kyouka.”

“…”

Who were “they”?

Had he not even bothered asking?

“I had to search all over the house to find her umbilical cord. I don’t know how that was supposed to help her, but all those important people said it would. I mean, isn’t that how the world works? I don’t know all of our country’s laws. I haven’t memorized the entire Book of Six Codes. I don’t even know how they go about making laws. But you can’t wonder if the people in charge made a mistake with every single law, can you?”

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

Finally, Karuta felt like he could see the outlines of a fundamental distortion he had failed to see until now. He kept talking about the human string pullers, but had he really understood the implications of a group like that?

''“I’m going to be a crystal magician one day and then I’ll be as strong as you and my sister!”

That hadn’t been a lie. Shouka had been speaking from the heart. But he had been remade into someone who saw no contradiction between that belief and what he had done.

If someone with a fancy title came along, he would sell out his family or friends.

If an online ranking said something was #1, he would believe it unconditionally.

If all the important people said something was true, how could you question it? That might seem reasonable, but it was such a relative standard to follow. If everyone else was wrong about something, you wouldn’t even notice how their wrongness corrupted you. And who was “everyone” anyway? Was he going to stare down the barrel of a laser cannon and get fried just because he saw a bunch of other people doing it? How was that any different from the insanity of war or the witch hunts?

No, maybe it was Karuta’s group that had been naïve. The human string pullers had been waging a real war against the apocalypse witches from the beginning.

Amaashi Marika had yet to arrive here.

And his phone was still connected to hers.

“Oh, Marika. What are you doing here?”

“…”

(Damn, has she run into them too!?)

Karuta frowned, but he did not have time to come up with a plan.

If Kyouka and Marika had run into trouble, why wouldn’t he too?

“Karuta.”

A carefree voice called out to him from the side.

He knew that voice all too well. It was the last voice he wanted to hear right now.

He forced out a response with a bitter look on his face.

“Dad. And mom too.”

“What are you doing here, Karuta?”

They spoke to him just like they would while watching TV in the living room.

The same as always was the most frightening option here.

It wasn’t so bad with Marika or Kyouka who noticeably went berserk. The most frightening thing was someone who only had the one mode.

“Did you do it too? Did you search the floor back home for some hairs or pull my umbilical cord out from the back of the closet? Have you all…all been working to set us up this entire tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!!!???”

“''Yes, we were setting you up for success. And now you’ve made it to the finals of this once-in-a-lifetime event. You shouldn’t be wasting time around here, should you?''”

They confessed their crime with a smile and no clue they had done anything wrong.

Karuta had expected the human string pullers to be some sketchy politicians or hitmen who wore leather gloves year round.

But that was wrong. They were not limited to the shadows.

They were exactly what their name implied.

They were anywhere that the category of “human” was found. They were the idol and athlete on TV, they were the neighbors and the childhood friend next door, and they were even your own family. Anyone could be made a part of the plan at any time with a few whispered words.

And people did not even question that system or those rules.

A policeman told me to. I got a call from city hall. A judge commanded it. My teacher at school said so. They said it on TV. My parents told me. People did not even think about it enough to begin questioning it, to confirm it was true, or to protest it. When Kyouka’s brother and Marika and Karuta’s parents received the email or call, they would have truly believed they were helping out their sister, daughter, or son. ''They might not understand how, but it had to be true if someone important said so.'' That was all it was really. They had obeyed and compromised just like they would when someone showed up saying they were there to check the gas meter or to perform maintenance on the elevator over the weekend, so they had readily placed their own family into danger. The entire planet had been set up that way from the beginning.

This wasn’t an issue of people being good or evil.

The string pullers controlled people on a deeper and more fundamental level than that. And their control was absolute.

People obeyed them because “that’s just how the world works”. They weren’t just the humans who pulled the strings; they were those that pulled the strings of humans.

(Goddammit!!!)

Karuta’s phone was vibrating.

His call with Marika was still active, but she still hadn’t shown up. He only heard the occasional suppressed sigh coming from the phone. He knew Marika had to be facing her own traitorous family.

A new popup appeared on his phone’s screen.

He tapped that to display a message without ending the call.

“Stardust (for tournament staff only): Repairs to the Sub-Category rooftop heliport are complete. The tournament will now resume with the final round. Mr. Utagai, please report to the contestant waiting room. Your match will begin soon.”

“Omotesandou-san.”

“…”

“Omotesandou-san!! We can’t waste any time here!! They don’t even know what they did, so we won’t get anything out of them!! The final round matters more. And you have to commentate, don’t you? Let’s get going.”

This was unusual.

Highly unusual.

Kyouka was the one frozen in shock and Karuta had to snap her out of it. That president made of point of being skeptical of everything while setting up her own schemes, but this must have caught her completely by surprise. This may have been the one “sanctuary” she had refused to doubt no matter what.

But they had to keep going.

When they were thinking, they weren’t moving. And when they weren’t moving, they were open to attack. They were in a zone of maximum density death, just like when they had fought the Problem Solvers and the Threat. They could not let their guard drop after falling into the human string pullers’ trap.

So Karuta grabbed Kyouka’s shoulders and crouched to her eye level like he might with a small child.

“Whatever conspiracy they might have in the works, we can end it. We just have to win this final round of the Catastrophe!! So our best bet is to focus on that. If that’s what it takes to damage and tear down their plot, then it’s worth fighting, right!?”