Horizon:Volume 10B Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Viewer of the Destination

Yes

If I can trust

What my eyes show me

If I have

The words to describe it

Point Allocation (Simply Accept It)

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“Musashi” sensed she had returned to normal.

She had freed the enemy and the enemy had freed her.

They had struck a deal.

After watching Ootani and AK jump off the ship, she focused out ahead.

Takao had already fallen, so her final ships and the Yamato were all that remained in the sky surrounded by dark clouds and lightning.

Both of them could fire their main cannon.

They faced each other and bowed.

The next move would end it all. Her opponent understood that as well.

She belatedly judged her opponent to be an excellent ship.

Musashi: “ ‘Musashino’, shouldn’t you abandon ship? Over.”

Musashino: “Without my support, your attack would break the bridge. Over.”

“Musashino” stood firm.

The Musashi was such a good ship. The best ship there was.

And as its leader, she was the best ship of all. So…

“Now, then.”

She kept Hashiba in view as she aimed.

And fired.

●

“Musashi” drew her sword.

●

Hashiba held her hand out.

●

They both gave the same command. At the exact same moment.

Their power collided and the greater one won. It was as simple as that.

●

Aboard the transport ship descending toward Osaka Bay thanks to its reduced power, Masazumi was hit by a great tremor from the sky above.

It wasn’t a sound. At this point, it was more like a solid blow from the atmosphere.

The transport ship’s deck quaked and its windows shattered.

But she couldn’t see the result. The vortex of dark clouds created by the Yamato continued to swirl overhead.

Lightning ran along the surface of the clouds, but it was suddenly thrown into disarray. The bottom edge of the vortex wavered. At the same time, a colossal object pressed down on the air, sending a rumble down toward them.

…Which is it!?

She also heard artillery fire. It didn’t continue long, meaning the battle was over.

And then it came.

The bottom of the vortex of dark clouds stirring up the sky suddenly swelled out and collapsed.

A long bow resembling an upside-down tower came into view. It was colored…

“Black and red!!” someone shouted.

Cheers spread like a wave across the transport ship.

Those were the Yamato’s colors. Which meant…

“The Musashi won!?”

And as they all moved toward the front of the deck, the Yamato’s falling bow suddenly changed direction.

●

The Yamato’s bow was falling from the dark clouds swirling through the sky. But it was just the one bow and its falling angle changed.

It was attempting to take a horizontal course.

A closer look at the shape showed that was the first port ship. Once its full form was in view, someone spoke up.

“Hold on…”

The question fell on them all as they watched what was happening.

“It’s not damaged?”

The Yamato revealed itself in the sky. And the shape of its fleet had changed. Instead of the double-hull with another central hull, it formed a single line.

The first port ship took the lead with the rest of the port ships following, the two central ships were connected to them, and it continued on with the third starboard ship in the very back. All eight ships descending as if leaking from the dark clouds were undamaged and they formed a circle below the swirling lightning.

A bell rang. The Yamato formed an eight-ship circle and rang its bells.

Something fell through the center of the circle: the Musashi.

The two white and black central ships.

But the Musashi’s shape had changed. The bow of the first central ship – Musashino – was gone, as if it had been torn away. As if it were no more than a hollow cylinder, the damage reached as far as the surface and continued all the way back to the stern.

The bridge-shaped bridge had lost its left support and was lifted up as if it were partially torn away.

Okutama was in a similar state.

A U-shape had been torn through it from stem to stern. By some miracle, the elevated area containing the academy had survived, but only the first floor of that building of learning remained.

All the other structures and the surface city had been blown away by the blast and…

“Oh.”

They were falling. The broken Musashi fell through the center of the ringing bell.

“Hey!!”

With a great splash, an ether light explosion erupted from the Musashi.

●

The collapse and the crush happened simultaneously.

Some ether fuel had been left over after firing Kanesada to preserve the ship, but that detonated, helping the ship sink into the ocean under its own momentum and weight.

The ocean attempted to use its great size to stop the fall of the voluminous object, but the collapse canceled out the repulsive force and the force of the explosion plus the collision of the rear ship falling from above acted like a hammer blow to sink it straight to the ocean bottom.

The sea was shallow here, but the Musashi itself had become a lot shallower.

As the ship broke apart, spilled pieces, sank, and exploded, “Musashi” miraculously remained aboard.

In the academy. When she had been blown away and fallen, she had caught on the wall of the foundation and remained there.

She had needed to control the trajectory of the ship’s fall. Just like Asakusa, Shinagawa, Tama, Murayama, and Takao had.

There was no response from “Musashino”. She felt bad for letting “Musashino” stay with her.

But she knew she had to direct herself to the same place the others had already sunk themselves: the bottom of the Harmonic Territory.

She arranged and worked toward that while sinking, the ocean surface fading into the distance above.

…How much of my job did I complete?

Thinking back, it had all happened so fast.

She supposed she had time to send a complaint to Sakai. She thought of him as a strange person. When she had visited Mikawa back before she had this form, he had entered the bridge just for fun and noticed her there. She had still been an OS, but her ability to “speak” had caught his interest.

As time passed, they had both aged and she had been given a body.

After the bridge engineer had informed him, he had sent her a message.

“Wait up there. I’ll be with you soon.”

That was when it had begun. Ever since, they would go up on top of the bridge when he visited. And she would wait when he didn’t.

And once he had become the ship’s representative ten years ago, she would go to him when he didn’t come to her.

After ten years, she felt she had learned his routine quite well, but…

“It doesn’t matter how often we made each other wait, does it? Over.”

And just as she was going to send her complaint to Sakai, she noticed something.

A light. Was this the light people supposedly saw on the verge of death? It was below her, so was she seeing ether fuel leaking from Asakusa and the rest? No, that was…

“Sakai-sama!”

She realized the truth leading up to this point. She understood it had all been real and it had all been true.

So she reached out her hand and sent out her words.

“Until we meet again!”

Her words were swallowed up by the water, the light enveloped all, and the ship was enveloped by an explosive blast.

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Below the ringing bells, the sea bubbled, turning white.

The white color was apparent even at night because the Musashi had exploded far below the surface and that light reached all this way.

The Harmonic Territories in Osaka Bay were all deep. Some holes were more than 400 or even 500 meters deep and they would have made good fishing spots if not for the swift current, but…

“I can’t dive down to go see you, can I?”

Sakai stared down from the edge of a transport ship and viewed the sign frame open by his hand.

It contained a single sentence. He read it while hearing the deep roar of the explosions and movement occurring deep below the ocean.

“Until we meet again, hm?

“ ‘Musashi’-san,” he said all alone, smiling bitterly down at the sea. “With no ‘over’, I’ll be waiting for the rest.”

●

And in the early morning, the eastern sky began to brighten.

The Yamato confirmed the Musashi did not resurface from the ocean bottom. After reforming its ordinary formation and recovering its evacuated crew, it entered M.H.R.R. Catholic territory at 8 AM to return to Lake Biwa Azuchi.

Meanwhile, the Musashi group left a few transport ships loaded with plenty of fuel to monitor the area and send progress reports while the rest flew to Sanuki where the Musashi’s surface area had withdrawn.

In Sanuki, they received assistance from Hexagone Française. Instead of the Far Eastern reservation, they were given permission to use an undeveloped coastal area where Musashi had the transport ships remade into a makeshift town with the surface areas and construction materials.

A week later, no change had been observed in the area of water where the Musashi had sunk, the transport ships had been swapped out, and they had completed their progress report. In Sanuki, the makeshift city named Surface Musashi – Udon Branch had been built up to several layers and the people were busy with management and trade.

At the same time, P.A. Oda chose to accept Hashiba as their leader and they officially released an overview of the Genesis Project two weeks after the showdown. They sought the cooperation of the other nations and transport ships from all over the world began coming and going with a focus on the west of the Far East.

Another week after that, at the end of September, the search for the Musashi was officially called off and the Musashi Student Council and Chancellor’s Officers resumed their activities in Surface Musashi. This was restricted to Surface Musashi and its vicinity, which made it mostly focused on trade, but by then the world nations already viewed Musashi as a thing of the past and no longer gave them a seat at the international negotiating table.

But even as Musashi was left behind by the world, they were given one bonus prize. After receiving confirmation that Musashi Chancellor and Student Council President Aoi Toori was safe and still held his positions, the Testament Union granted him his requested inherited name of Matsudaira Motonobu.

But of course, the Musashi was gone, they had lost most of their power, and they were trapped in Shikoku. Granting the inherited name was mostly insurance to prevent some other major power from inheriting the name. It was a sign that Hashiba was back in charge instead of Matsudaira.

Simply put, it was a gesture of pity saying Musashi had done their job but now that was over.

The world was now focused on what they would do about the Genesis Project.

On the surface at least, most factions appeared to believe everything had changed.

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