Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter3

Chapter 3

Part 1

The low thrum of motors filled one section of Second Grimnoah.

But not because some bizarre new weapon had been powered up. Large washing machines were lined up within a laundry room. They were pay models that could be operated by holding your phone up to them.

The academy ship had become a deadly labyrinth crawling with the Threat, but it was also Karuta, Marika, and the others’ home. Their classrooms and dorms were here. So were their cafeterias and shower rooms.

They could use any part of the school infrastructure they wanted.

That only seemed so twisted because the Threat had taken over.

“Ugh, this is just awful,” said Amaashi Marika.

Karuta and Aine were standing watch outside. Only the three girls remained inside, but she, Matsuda Imi, and Hashizaki Tayori had stripped off all of their clothes. All of the machines were open for use, so they separated their underwear, blouses, blazers, skirts, etc. and put them in separate machines on different settings for the true luxury experience.

Gyaru-ish Tayori looked up at the ceiling (while naked).

“Those are making a lot of noise. Won’t the Threat notice?”

“It’s a pretty big ship and there are mechanical noises coming from all over the place.”

Why were they doing this anyway?

“I have detected a chemical very similar to diallyl disulfide within the Threat liquid found all over Miss Marika’s group. It is not on Sacri-sama or myself, so it may be used to assist them when they attack.” Aine explained from the other side of the thin door. “That is normally used in crow repellants, but it can also be used as a marker to track down a target when combined with a hound or another animal with an excellent nose. It is colorless and, when watered down, it does not have a strong enough odor for humans to detect. The best solution would be to remove all of your clothing and shave off all of your body hair, but if you are opposed to continuing the mission in the nude, I would recommend thoroughly washing your clothing with a chemical detergent. Immediately.”

Tayori tilted her head.

“Why can she detect smells that humans can’t?”

“Aine-chan’s senses are the same as a human’s, but she apparently stores things in her mind differently. If she licks salt, she doesn’t sense it as ‘salty’ – she senses which of the six tastes it stimulated. So she would probably overlook something if the magnitude was too low, but I guess she can still classify things if they’re simply mixed with other smells.”

That crystal girl was not shy about letting people know pure gold was her favorite food, so she had a very different idea about what was mouthwatering.

At any rate, they were forced to strip off even their underwear and throw it all in the washing machines despite the danger. They had avoided any laundry rooms with windows covered in Threats, but all the noise was still unnerving.

The girls also had to dump detergent over their heads no matter how bad for their skin it was. Gyaru-ish Tayori must have been confident in her looks compared to Marika because she made no attempt to cover up as she let down her wet hair and dried it off with a towel.

“He cut that thing down, didn’t he?” she said.

“Yes…” replied Marika with a thoughtful look.

What had created the difference between her group and him when they were trapped by the Gestalt’s illusion?

Marika tried to find an answer as Tayori’s calm voice reached her ears.

“We had seen jellyfish ones and the tadpole ones could count as frogs, so it was possible there would be a Threat that used color or camouflage. …It makes sense in hindsight, but Utagai Karuta predicted it in advance. It’s like he has a more active imagination, or like he’s extra cautious. Then again, that really saved our butts.”

That boy prepared himself based on the assumption that he would step right into any trap awaiting him, his opponent would always be trying to deceive him, and there would be an opening somewhere he could use.

Marika sighed at Tayori’s comments.

“Yes, but there is a downside. His way of thinking can easily lead to paranoia if he isn’t careful. And that’s all well and good for him if he can keep things in balance, but how can we ever tell if he’s doing that when his only explanation is ‘he has a feeling’?”

Everything felt unpredictable, but they did know the Threat could be defeated. That was some hope at least.

Tayori glanced over at the washing machines.

“Also, you didn’t put any fabric softener in with our uniforms, did you? Based on the tag, that’ll cause them to fade like crazy. Although it might be like how lab coats are made to stain easily so you’ll notice anything toxic you got on there.”

“Oh? You’re surprisingly knowledgeable about this stuff.”

“Was that ‘surprisingly’ really necessary?”

And….

“Eek, eek, eek, eek.”

An odd breathing sound came from one point in the room.

Marika and Tayori looked over to see Matsuda Imi curled up in a corner of the laundry room. There were benches available, but she still had her bare butt directly on the tile floor wet with puddles of seawater. She had her back against the wall and her hands on her head.

She was acting strange.

She had not stopped trembling ever since they defeated the giant Gestalt sea anemone. She had always been an innocent and active girl. She would often teasingly hug you while changing for gym, but now she was trying to reject everything about the world and run away.

Her bright and extroverted personality may have left her unequipped to retreat inward at times like this.

She had not even removed her clothes herself. Marika had watched as Tayori was forced to help her out of them like a parent would do to a small child. After what happened, her age may indeed have regressed.

They did not know what the Gestalt’s camouflage had shown her, but she may have grown attached to it.

Karuta’s voice reached them through the door.

“Hey.”

“No, it isn’t about that.”

Tayori casually rejected that idea while grabbing the dryer.

Yes, Marika also knew why this had happened to her friend. Now was not the time to retreat to ridiculous ideas like her growing attached to the camouflage.

Imi’s fearful eyes were not directed at the thin door that Karuta and Aine stood on the other side of. No, those eyes were directed squarely at Amaashi Marika. At the friend she had gotten along with and had always hung around with.

“No…”

Her voice was quiet, but the intonation was unnatural.

It contained the tension of someone who had discovered unexploded ordnance that could go off at any moment.

“No. I’m going back to the others.”

“What is…”

Karuta started to ask something through the door, but Marika only quietly shook her head. And after realizing he could not see that, she spoke aloud.

Still naked, she pressed her back against the door.

“Leave her be.”

Marika’s group had experienced their own drama. A different sort of drama that Karuta and Aine could not hope to imagine. The three girls had not survived “just because”. If you did not create your own reason for survival, anyone would die in this world.

The next one to speak was Tayori in her mature gyaru-ish way.

Once her hair was dry, she held her hair tie in her mouth and reached back to do up her long hair in a complex fashion.

“Hey, Utagai-kun. Did you see a leg somewhere on your way here?”

“Y-yes.”

“That was Imi’s.”

They heard an obvious gasp from beyond the door.

Soft and honest Karuta may have assumed the fear and pain had broken Imi and he may have felt that was the proper reaction for a normal person. Being functionally able to fight was not the same thing as being emotionally able to fight. The regeneration preset did not eliminate the fear. To continue fighting was to face that fear and pain head on. So allies who always pushed you onward could become an indirect source of fear.

But he had the wrong idea.

After using the hair tie to keep her hair in place, Tayori confessed the real answer.

“The attack tore right through the barrier and took her leg off at the base of the thigh. Just like the blood vessels in your wrist, the femoral artery is pretty thick, so bandaging it up wouldn’t be enough to stop the blood normally. That would be fatal.”

“Eh?”

There was more confusion than pain in Karuta’s muffled voice because Matsuda Imi was in fact alive right now. A fatal wound should have crystallized her entire body along with her clothing instead of healing her after just 30 seconds.

“So.” Marika slowly explained the proper action she had taken. “I used my laser to cauterize the wound, buying her enough time for the regeneration to complete. That was the only way to save her.”

“Eek. Eeeeek!!!???”

Imi trembled even harder while curled up in a corner of the laundry room. That classmate had always had a bright smile on her face, but now she was holding her head while her legs (one newly regenerated) squirmed awkwardly below her. Even with only other girls here, she would normally have done a little more to cover up.

Tayori moved up next to her and gave her a hug while she wept.

“I can’t take it anymore! I just want to crawl in bed forever!! This isn’t right. I thought it was the Threat that did these awful things to people, so why are other people doing that now!?”

Karuta’s mental anguish seemed to seep through the door.

Marika breathed a heavy sigh.

She had saved her dying friend’s life. That was an undeniable fact.

But pursuing a mystery and learning the truth did not always solve everything. They had sensed this ugly feeling during their revenge against the Problem Solvers and while fighting the decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach. Karuta had to be experiencing it again here.

And.

Aine’s emotionless voice spoke from beyond the door.

“Sacri-sama, does Miss Imi wish she had died instead?”

“Aine.”

“Based on that report, I do not see any other way she could have survived, so it is unfair to view Miss Marika negatively over it.”

Marika shook her head in response, scattering some water droplets from her hair, but then she clicked her tongue at that habit.

She had to speak aloud right now. She had stripped bare, but that did not mean they could read her thoughts.

“Stop. Please.”

People did not always like what was right and dislike what was wrong.

Everyone felt differently about things.

Most children knew intellectually that vaccinations and dental fillings were necessary, but could they use that knowledge to erase the fear they felt rising from deep in their body when they saw the syringe or heard the motor grinding at their tooth? Could they remain smiling throughout?

Tayori had crouched down and hugged her friend while gently stroking her trembling back like she was soothing a small child.

“Imi can’t go on,” she said.

“…”

“But no matter how much she wants to leave, flying out of the ship will only get her swarmed with and devoured by the Threat. I doubt even changing back into the silent diving suit hidden at the bottom levels and diving into the ocean would work anymore.”

“Probably not,” agreed Karuta through the door.

Plenty of the jellyfish Threats had burst from the ocean when he had flown in just off the ocean surface in Aine’s arms.

He had already explained that to the others.

And inside the ship, they had defeated the sea anemone one that Marika’s group had named the Gestalt. After disturbing the Threat inside and outside the ship, the Threat was bound to have changed their formation. They had to assume what had worked a moment before might no longer work.

After a while, Karuta managed to say more.

“We have to continue on and kill the lion on the roof to make the sky safe for flight. Then we can call in everyone from Grimnoah. Restarting Second Grimnoah doesn’t require any of us as individuals. We’ll have achieved our goal as long as we defeat the Sparkle. Anyone who wants to leave can withdraw back to the airport during all the confusion.”

“That probably is best. Imi will only be a burden now that she’s lost the will to fight, but let’s carry her with us for a while longer.”

“Sure.”

He was saying that was fine with him.

They had already seen the lion and the sea anemone, so they knew there was more to the Threat than being tough and violent. Second Grimnoah was crawling with types they had never seen before, so there was no safe zone here. Marika was more exasperated than impressed that he could state that with such confidence. He could not leave behind that classmate who could not face the fear on her own. There was no benefit to that, but he still could not bear to leave her here.

But Tayori looked puzzled even though she had made the suggestion.

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“Three of the four world’s strongest are here, so I didn’t expect you to accept someone else’s opinion so readily. I thought the bar would have been raised and I would be shut out for not making the cut.”

Karuta fell silent on the other side of the door for a bit.

Marika knew what that meant. He was smiling bitterly.

That would have been how it worked with the Problem Solvers. Which was the entire point.

Marika knew exactly how that soft childhood friend would respond and she was proven right soon thereafter.

“I’m working to not be that kind of strongest. So is Marika.”

Tayori shrugged a little. The short silence must have told Karuta that she was not panicking like Imi, so he asked another question.

“What about you? Do you want to quit?”

“I’ll follow whoever’s right,” dryly said Hashizaki Tayori. Her voice was different again from Aine who did not understand human emotion. “I don’t choose based on what I like or don’t like the way this girl does. But don’t let that put you at ease. If you ever stop doing the right thing, I’ll be disappointed in you and drop out, so keep that in mind.”

“…”

It took him 0.5 seconds before he said he understood.

That’s pretty harsh, thought Marika in the nude.

Marika understood that Karuta was thinking about the survivors of the first ship. He did not need to explain it to her. He was putting the still living students and teachers of the second ship in danger to save his dead friends from the first ship. He was clearly weighing their lives differently and he had to have noticed the contradiction there.

Even though it would be easier if he just went and did it.

Marika would use her full power as the world’s strongest to protect those she cared about, but Karuta lived a much more awkward life. If he used the watering can to water the flower pot, the flower would blossom, but he instead tried to water the entire desert with it.

(So…)

They heard a beeping as the large washing machines stopped spinning. They had finished the draining and drying phase.

(So I need to protect him. No matter what it takes.)

She let out a soft breath and reached for the drum’s lid.

She had not gotten there in time for Imi.

But she had managed to save that girl’s life. And life gave her the right to hate Marika for it.

That was thousands of times better than whitewashing death and letting her friend die.

That was her decision, no matter how harsh it was. And this was not just a whimpered excuse she made to herself – she could actually do it. That may have been what made her who she was.

“Now, all our preparations are complete,” cheerfully said the active girl. “So let’s take another peek into the depths of hell.”

Part 2

They were back in the floating general airport’s control tower.

“No, like I said in my report, we need to majorly rethink the risk presented by the Threat and- no, that is not what I am saying. If you would just look at Document #4495 I uploaded, you will see we must be cautious about using the Pinaka III because…”

Letnahe repeated her explanation again and again over her military smartphone.

President Omotesandou Kyouka shrugged and waited until the call was over.

Meanwhile, the redheaded buns Secretary whispered in her ear.

“Thank you for working such long hours for us. How about I use this time to change your socks?”

“Why? My feet are not swollen yet.”

“It is crucial that you give your feet some rest before you begin to feel it.”

The redheaded buns girl knelt on the floor without waiting for a response.

Kyouka smiled bitterly and lifted one ankle with her long legs still crossed. She could move them to an extent, but she still had difficulty with shoes and socks. This was not a normal Secretary duty, but she was still glad to have a subordinate who went above and beyond in looking after her.

She had not asked for it, but the girl gave her a massage while removing her leather shoes and socks. Her big toe and second toe clenched and unclenched in response to the stimulation to the sole of her foot, but then she heard a heavy sigh. Letnahe must have finished her call because she stuck her phone in her pocket.

The silver-haired brown-skinned wife turned toward Kyouka.

“It’s no use. They insist a special envoy is only supposed to convey their opinion, not present an opinion of her own.”

“I imagine so.”

“How can you just accept this?” Letnahe wrapped her left hand in her right hand and spoke with some barbs in her voice. “You’re the one that said we can’t expect a nuclear attack to work against the Threat.”

“Well, Letnahe-san. You don’t mind if I use your first name as a sign of affection for someone else who knows the truth, do you?” The President smiled while her kneeling subordinate put new socks on her feet. “I said I ‘imagine so’ because I know your higher ups aren’t going to change their plans just because they’ve been given new information. They had decided from the beginning they were going to make a nuclear attack. They would input the launch codes no matter the situation. They could always find some excuse or another: maybe you failed to contact them or maybe there was a mechanical malfunction.”

“But why?”

Letnahe blinked behind her glasses as she did a double take.

A nuclear attack was a big deal. If it succeeded, they might just defeat the Threat at the cost of a great many lives. But if it failed, they would only lose those lives and possibly more. It was a high risk, high return gamble, so surely the Indian Space Force would carefully recalculate everything if the situation changed, right?

Kyouka sighed before answering.

“Because they don’t mind if it fails.”

“Eh?”

“They have a plan ready for if they launch the nuclear attack and it fails. They have the rails set up so they can benefit even then. So they won’t recalculate anything. But they would have a much harder time if it got out beforehand that the attack would fail, right?”

“B-but that doesn’t make any sense! The entire country doesn’t want to commit diplomatic suicide, so why would they choose a path of failure from the very beginning!?”

“Strange, isn’t it?” The President tilted her head like a child. “But the fact remains that the coalition force has continued to take actions that clearly have no chance of success. Even you have noticed how unnatural it looks, haven’t you? The Indian Space Force is not incompetent, yet they are rejecting a plan that makes perfect sense if you think about it for two seconds. Why is that?”

“…”

“Do you want to know the answer? But your curiosity is strange as well,” smoothly continued Kyouka. “You’re an outsider here, so you could wait until you’re safely out of Japan before you puzzle over all of this. Are you worried about your Asian neighbors as a member of the Indian military? Or do you feel responsible as part of the coalition force? But this area is crawling with the real Threat and your allies could launch a nuclear weapon at any moment. To be honest, I doubt all those PR niceties really apply in a situation like this.”

“Well…”

“Do you have some reason why you can’t leave the country and think over it all while sipping at some tea? Hee hee. Yes, sorry. I know you could never do that.”

Letnahe looked up with a gasp.

The demon in a wheelchair smiled up at her like a child and did not hesitate to present the answer.

“Your left hand”

Her tone was innocent and thus precise.

She immediately attacked straight at the woman’s weak point.

“The ring is sensible enough, but that mobile watch makes no sense. It’s cheap and just not your style. In fact, it’s a men’s watch.”

Kyouka had mentioned earlier that it was an old model.

It was an antique from over a decade ago and the company had long since stopped supporting it.

Continuing to use it because you liked it did not work in this case. When the company stopped supporting an internet-connected device, it ceased to function. Plus, the military was strict about data management, so a soldier could not just sync something like that with their own phone. In fact, the phone she was carrying was a military model not available to the general public.

Yet she had made it all work.

If she had kept the mobile device functioning without the company’s support and manually solved any security problems that cropped up, then she had to be extremely attached to it. She would not have done that all this time if she simply liked its color or shape.

“Wearing someone else’s gift on the same hand as your wedding ring is rather impure, don’t you think? But you have a solid reason for doing so.”

There had been some hints scattered around.

For example, her age.

She had been familiar with the humidity and air quality in Japan in a way that suggested personal experience.

It was also curious that she had followed the President without needing any additional explanations when they discussed Crystal Magic.

Not to mention how she placed such emphasis on breathing.

She had a habit of holding her left hand in her right when feeling nervous, but she did not clutch at her ring when she did so. Her protective charm was something else that she had treated as a valuable and kept on even when she showered.

The President could deduce some things from all that.

“Your loyalty to the Indian military never really mattered to you.”

“Stop.”

“If you had remained in your comfortable home surrounded by your lovely husband and adorable children, you never would have been exposed to the danger of the Threat and a nuclear attack. What happens to Japan is irrelevant to someone living in India, right? Yet you traveled all the way here. To accomplish some other goal.”

“Please stop!!”

The enigma of Letnahe was all summed up by her left hand. She wore a ring on the ring finger and a mobile watch on her wrist. That unfaithful hand carried gifts from two different people.

The demon stated her conclusion to the other demon.

“Was Kiyosawa Hadome a friend from your school days? Someone you couldn’t forget even after marrying someone else? And now you wanted to get him away from this deadly place. That is your true purpose here, isn’t it?”

Letnahe Kurent’s knees gave out like she had taken a shot directly to the heart. A light beeping sounded from her mobile watch. It was a warning about her breathing and heartrate.

“You wanted to stop it from the beginning.”

The silver-haired brown-skinned soldier who had gone to such lengths to externally manage her internal organs had abandoned all of that.

Only Kyouka’s words filled the room.

“You wanted to stop the Indian Space Force’s nuclear attack. Why was it you tried to get a report on our plan? Were you hoping to use your viewpoint as a professional soldier to secretly correct all of our mistakes so you could convince them it was not yet time to launch the nuke?”

The military was the ultimate system of hierarchy where everything progressed according to a complete flowchart of yes or no questions. But that meant a soldier who knew what those questions were could prepare the data like a chess problem in order to keep the nuke from being launched no matter what.

She could prevent it from happening no matter how much the unseen string-puller wanted to hit the launch button based on emotion.

The President sighed softly.

“I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“…”

“I’m almost jealous of you for living a fulfilling enough life to have to choose between your marriage and your first love. Knowing your desires is a form of guarantee. I know I can trust the current Letnahe Kurent who abandoned her military orders and comfortable family to protect an old memory.”

“How…”

This was not to protect someone or to defeat the Threat.

The soldier got out what little voice she could after having everything revealed and shattered by this teenage girl.

“How can you trust someone as despicable as me?”

“I can trust the purity that brought you this far, biting your lip all the way. Goodness and purity are not always one and the same. And I am much fonder of you for approaching possible death while biting your lip than I am of the powerful who can give a public apology like it is nothing. No matter how terrible a person you might be, I know you will never lie when it comes to Kiyosawa Hadome. Isn’t that right?”

She fell silent.

Letnahe Kurent sat blankly on the floor while covering her face with her hands.

Omotesandou Kyouka knew this soldier was part of the string-pullers. She was the wicked woman who had approached Natlena, set her up as an avenger, and given her a false identity to send her to Second Grimnoah.

But what had she thought when she realized Kiyosawa Hadome was on that ship? How about when she learned he was being attacked by the decoy Threat at that artificial resort in Iceland, or when she learned he was at risk of being killed by the real Threat or a nuclear attack here in Japan?

What if she was one of the string-pullers, but only one of their agents. What if she was not in a position where she could protest such a major decision?

Kyouka placed a hand on her cheek.

“Couldn’t you have taken just Kiyosawa-sensei away with you? Either by knocking him out or drugging him?”

“I couldn’t.” Letnahe sounded like she was casting a curse with her hands still over her face. “I just couldn’t. Taking only Hadome-kun to safety wouldn’t actually save him. I know him. It would utterly destroy him to know so many students had died on his watch. He could never be like us. It would break his heart.”

This anguish was something she had been unable to share with anyone in the military or in her family.

But another wicked woman could help ease the pain as her heart was being crushed by the goodness remaining there.

“Lieutenant Colonel Letnahe Kurent,” whispered Kyouka. “This is a question that can never be answered by sending it to your higher ups and waiting for an answer like normal. But you can find an answer if you take a bit of a detour.”

With both her shoes back on, Kyouka rotated her wheelchair around.

She grabbed the headset from some control equipment.

“All sorts of transmissions are flying around here and I can intercept them with this. But the random number table needed to decrypt them is another matter. Letnahe-san, you would have that table thanks to your position deep in the Indian Navy, wouldn’t you?”

The hands lowered from her face.

The soldier spoke not so much with resentment as with the tone of a sulking child.

“Are you insane? That might save the world, but it would make me a traitor.”

“It would. Which is why this is a request, not a command or a suggestion,” said the President. “But there is a decision you can make that will protect the person you came here to protect. You took the risk of visiting the target of a planned nuclear attack, right? All so you could stop that attack from occurring.”

“Couldn’t you attack me and take it? Maybe you can’t use Crystal Magic anymore, but you have plenty of hounds you could sic on me.”

Still seated on the floor, Letnahe looked over at the redheaded buns girl who was slowly standing up. She was a Grimnoah Crystal Magician and the President had made sure to keep her around during this conversation.

But Kyouka shook her head.

“That might be easier, but I won’t do it.”

“Why not!?”

“Because we are both the type to work from the shadows and we have shared our secrets here. So I will not attack you and make just one of us the villain. If you wish to do this, you must accept just as much responsibility as me.”

The soldier squeezed her eyes shut behind her glasses.

She clenched her teeth and looked up at the ceiling. She looked about ready to stomp her feet in frustration.

“Can you not do it now that your momentum has been stopped?” whispered the President. “Then leave Japan right this instant and leave your old regrets here. The Threat is here and a nuclear attack will soon be launched, so Japan is no place to hang around for no good reason.”

“I am the special envoy sent to provide a message from the coalition force as a whole.”

A quiet jangling sound came from her neck.

But this was not her dog tags. When she removed a thin chain from her neck, flash memory smaller than a tube of lipstick was pulled from her large chest. She displayed her resolve as the wicked woman who wore both a ring and wristwatch on her left hand. She tossed the flash memory to Kyouka while trying to shake free of her doubts by speaking.

“Whatever the Indian military might be planning, a nuclear launch is unlikely to benefit the coalition as a whole, so I must reassess some information.”

“Hee hee. You’re willing to go this far for the first love you couldn’t bring yourself to forget even after getting married and having children?”

Kyouka held a hand to her mouth as she laughed and she did not hesitate to continue from there.

“If this is discovered and the Indian military kicks you out, come to us. Second Grimnoah will hire you. At the very least, you will be closer to the center of the world here than with that coalition force.”

The two wicked women shook hands.

Letnahe knew she could never tell anyone about this and she could never again walk with her head held high.

Nevertheless, there was something in this world she wanted to protect.

Part 3

“Keep going, keep going! This way!”

The silver iodide artificial rain had soaked up the oil fire’s smoke, creating a truly filthy downpour that plastered Sophia Firenze’s flaxen hair to her cheek. She was looking up into the night sky and waving her hands around. Even as an adult, she had a look of puppy-like energy on her face.

It was unclear how much it would draw the enemy fire away from the city, but Natlena Blast and the other students were accurately landing at the floating general airport. They took an almost vertical descent more like a helicopter or VTOL craft than a passenger plane that traveled down a long runway.

The woman in a soaked suit grinned (while entirely unaware that her unexpectedly boldly-colored underwear was showing through her white blouse).

“Good work, everyone. You can get a bath or change of clothes in the staff lobby. We also have a hot meal ready for you. Heh heh! If you want some food, please visit the café lounge.”

Natlena sighed at the mention of fresh clothes. She would be heading back out and getting soaked all over again after a short break, but dry clothes would still make her feel better.

She heard Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke chatting as they landed on the artificial float after her.

“Tch. What was Karuta talking about when he called her a puppy!? All she does is lecture you at length no matter what you do. If anything, she’s a grumpy cat. The kind that claws up your walls and furniture!”

“M-maybe it means she only opens up with Utagai-kun. Damn, I’m jealous.”

“Senpais?” said Natlena while slowly turning around, causing the high school boys to jump and scatter. They were the perfect example of disappointing boys. Natlena sighed at how her ideal view of older boys was crumbling before her eyes.

(Karuta-senpai must have really been working hard to look like a responsible adult.)

At any rate, she entered the hidden space through a small staff-only entrance and accepted a spare uniform and underwear. She was sorely tempted when she saw the sign on the wall for the shower room, but she shook her head. She was going to head out again soon anyway, so she wanted to avoid warming up too much before heading back out into the chilly rain. She instead used the locker room to strip off her clothes and dry her hair and body with a towel.

She spread out the provided underwear between her two hands.

“Ugh, this is a bolder color than I expected.”

Whose taste was this? She would have preferred a more subdued color since she was going to get soaked in the rain and they had not provided another thick sports innerwear. Not that she would have wanted some beige granny panties either.

The inability to intuitively choose something in between those two extremes suggested these had been chosen by Sophia (who was wearing something surprisingly bold). Natlena quickly got dressed in the new clothes, placed her wet clothes in a small plastic container, attached a sticker with her class and name written on it, and handed that to the student on laundry duty.

(Well, I didn’t choose this underwear, so it won’t be my secret showing if it shows through. And I have my perfect band-aid defense just in case.)

Oblivious to her own unusual views on the subject, she walked to the café lounge where she was met with the smell of spices. She tilted her damp-haired head and realized she had forgotten to use a dryer.

“I wonder what they’re feeding everyone. Curry rice???”

“Oh, Jane-san! Over here!!”

The female teacher hopped up and down and ran over with some rice balls and sandwiches without Natlena asking for anything at all. Jane Ignition was the false name she had been given back when she infiltrated Second Grimnoah for revenge, but she did not have much of an attachment to it now. She simply had not had a chance to tell the teacher what her real name was, so she was a little unsure what to do now.

Sophia Firenze smiled in a perfectly puppyish way.

“Here, have some food. You should start with something light, but if you want something more, we have seafood curry, cabbage rolls, and chukadon.”

That menu was awfully international, or a jumbled mess really. Natlena wondered how they had settled on that, but then she realized they were borrowing the ingredients available at the airport’s cafes and restaurants. The unnecessarily fancy and international selection meant there was probably a buffet somewhere in the airport.

“I recommend the tonkotsu ramen! They had a lot of souvenir packages in stock and the one I tried was just like the real deal! How exciting!!”

Hadn’t this teacher been fixated on some expensive cup noodles from a famous Japanese restaurant when they were at the Crystal Beach? Not getting any there must have caused her desire gauge to fill up even more here.

“Um, why would a Japanese souvenir shop sell tonkotsu ramen which is the same in every part of the country? Not to mention those mysterious shortbread cookies.”

“I don’t know.”

The grownup seemed legitimately puzzled. Then again, Sophia was not Japanese, so why would she know so much about Japan? Natlena was better off asking someone like Utagai Karuta about this mystery similar to how Tokyo’s train station bentos sold better than those at any other station around the country.

Natlena took a packaged sandwich and then sat in one of the one-person sofas lined up alongside the reinforced glass windows. “Sophia-sensei!” called some girls in the distance, so the tight skirt teacher rushed over to them. She was apparently fairly popular.

Natlena looked down at the clear box sitting in her lap.

She had expected ham or egg since Sophia had called it “light”, but she found it to be quite thick when she picked it up. It was a club sandwich, but it had an excessive amount of chicken. It was so greasy she could barely taste the spices.

(Does she think girls need to eat a lot to grow up?)

Natlena felt like Sophia Firenze and Amaashi Marika would get along. Meanwhile, she grabbed one triangular sandwich slice in both hands, took a small bite from a corner, and swallowed it. She realized she had forgotten to get a drink, but she did not feel like waiting in line now.

She finished off the three sandwich slices even though it grew difficult toward the end.

“Don’t let your body cool down! Focus on your breathing while resting to make sure your body is idling on the inside. Mobile watches are great for objectively measuring your metabolism, but don’t let the numbers control you!!”

She could hear overbearing and muscular Kiyosawa Hadome’s voice.

He was causing a scene a short distance away. The massage chairs and energy drinks were apparently growing popular, but Natlena had no desire to join the crowds of people. She knew she had a habit of seeking out peace and quiet at times like this.

Just like her sister Anastasia had.

“…”

But then…

“Here.”

Someone spoke to her from the side and tossed her something. She caught it in a hand to find it was a U-shaped pillow.

Yamane Deiri waved at her.

“We’re heading out again after a short break. We’ve got a long way to go, so get some sleep while you can.”

“Um, is that really best?”

“This is a marathon, not a sprint. And if you let your guard down at any point, the anti-air lasers will get you, so don’t do anything that will hurt your focus later. Even 10 or 15 minutes of sleep can make a lot of difference. I know that from experience, so listen to your upperclassman here.”

“O-okay.”

“Because napping in class gives you all the energy you need to make the most of your lunch break! Ah ha ha!!”

Deiri left while laughing.

She felt so stupid for thinking highly of that older boy for even a moment. But it was true she had nothing to do now that she was done changing and eating. Crystal Magic did not require refueling or resupplying and no maintenance or inspections were necessary.

(10 or 15 minutes, hm?)

The green beams of light continued to occasionally tear through the darkness of the sky visible through the reinforced glass with rain pounding against it. Other students were drawing the anti-air laser fire. They were operating in shifts, but she still felt bad relaxing while they were out there doing that. Same with Marika’s group who had gone silent after leaving for Second Grimnoah and with Karuta and Aine who had gone to save those three. They were all fighting with their lives on the line, yet here she was.

On the other hand, getting some rest was part of her job.

And fretting here would accomplish nothing. She told herself that sleeping would be better than staying awake doing nothing, so she placed the U-shaped pillow behind her neck, folded her hands in front of her stomach, and then leaned back in the sofa.

She shut her eyes.

Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke looked quietly down at 12-year-old Natlena Blast as she slept soundly in her large seat.

“Uhh, Karuta-senpai…zzz…”

The two boys smiled bitterly and placed a blanket over her.

They were heading back out soon, but they decided to leave her be.

“She’s been working way too hard for a little brat,” said Deiri as he turned around.

“H-high schoolers like us are supposed to protect the middle schoolers. Especially the girls.”

“And we’ve definitely gotta ask Karuta about that dream of hers when he gets back.”

“He’d better tell us his trick to winning middle school hearts!!”

They were the decoys who could never deliver a finishing blow themselves but were also constantly at risk. Some might see that as drawing the short straw, but they looked perfectly satisfied.

Deiri spun one arm around and cracked his neck with a wild smile on his lips.

“Okay, let’s get Round 2 started to protect our pal out there.”

“R-right. We’ve gotta show off how cool high schoolers are and let those middle schoolers know there’s a single upperclassman out there waiting for them.”

Part 4

Aine produced a soft sound by hugging Marika from the front. She buried her face in the girl’s large chest and sniffed.

“Hm, acceptable.”

“Th-thanks?”

“Now we need not worry about the Threat tracking us using your scent. Sniiiiiff.”

“W-wait, um, Aine-chan, th-th-th-that’s embarrassing!”

Was more people a good thing or a bad thing?

It probably depended on the situation. In a traditional battle where both sides rushed at each other to fight, greater numbers provided an absolute advantage. But for a sniping or infiltration mission where you could not afford to be noticed, more people only increased the risk of detection.

But Karuta came to understand something now that he experienced it for himself.

Greater numbers did at least help reduce the psychological burden. Just like the grammatical terms of first person, second person, and third person, gathering three or more people may have helped provide more objectivity. He was able to keep his cool while observing and understanding his surroundings a lot better than when he had been nearly crushed by the paranoia-like pressure before. (Although part of that was because he could not share the burden with Aine since she was not even human.) The increased objectivity gave them an urge to actively share the thoughts in their heads.

In other words, it made them talkative. Dangerously so.

“Come to think of it, why did the real Threat come here at all?” asked Karuta.

He was currently crouching below the hallway windows and moving slowly along the wall. The Threat had covered these windows with metal panels and other materials just like elsewhere, but they were still concerning.

The scratching of claws on the outside had not changed, so they must not have been noticed. The Threat on the other side of the metal panels could not hear the noises from the hallway. And if those were the wharf roach and tadpole ones, they may not have been anatomically structured to “look down” even if the metal panels had not been in the way.

This seemed to confirm it.

“This means I was right about the wharf roach and tadpole ones using their red lenses to visually locate targets. Heh heh,” said Aine.

“Yes, yes. I’ll buy you a pacifier and some baby formula later, so just be quiet.”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Stare.”

“D-don’t silently stare at me like that, Aine. It’s scary.”

“Criticizing me for obeying your orders is unfair.”

She puffed out her cheeks while only 10cm away from him, so he was unsure what to do about her.

For now, he glanced toward a window.

“Anyway, why are they still clinging to the outside like that? They should be able to break through the glass easily enough and they even reinforced the windows with those metal panels and other junk.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like they want to get in but can’t,” agreed Marika.

The slate pencil urchin and the Gestalt sea anemone were confirmation enough that the Threat was already active within Second Grimnoah. They had no problem getting inside, yet there was clearly one group that did so and one group that did not.

The curly twintails childhood friend crouched below the windows as she snuck down the hallway.

“So do they have some kind of division of roles? Hmm, like maybe the ones covering the outside are meant to hide what’s going on inside the ship.”

“You’re assuming the inside is more important and the outside is just armor, but that’s a human way of thinking. They might just want to eat the paint and barnacles attached to the ship. We don’t know anything about the Threat’s biology or how they think.”

“We’re not just talking about the ones on the outside of the ship,” sighed gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. “We saw an alert network of jellyfish and sea anemone ones surrounding the ship on the ocean floor. They were spread out so far it’s hard to think those are what really matter. I think Second Grimnoah really is their central point.”

If the ones spread across the ocean were the most important, then the academy ship would be an intruder and it would be odd for the all-destroying Threat to not eliminate it. In that case…

“Does the Threat have some reason for occupying Second Grimnoah instead of sinking it? It doesn’t look like they just want to destroy our mobile base.”

“But, Karuta, Second Grimnoah is just a floating school, right? Did we have any special materials onboard?”

The ship itself had been made by buying and fully remodeling a cruise ship. It may have been unusual when compared to an ordinary life, but cruise ships could be found all over the world. There was no real reason to target Second Grimnoah specifically.

“What are you talking about?” Pale-faced Matsuda Imi’s lips moved. She let out a depressing groan of a voice while her teeth chattered even though it was not cold. “Of course there’s something special on this ship. It’s the only place in the world where you can find dead and crystallized magicians.”

“…”

“She has a point, Sacri-sama. If they are preparing to fight Crystal Magicians, they would most want to test the limits of your preset regeneration. How far must they go to defeat one? How much of a risk is there of a defeated one returning to the fight? It is reasonable to assume the Threat would want to investigate such things.”

Crystal Magicians were not immortal like Susannia Evans of the Problem Solvers, but someone who did not know how their regeneration worked might see them as zombies who kept getting back up no matter what.

Killing them was not enough to relax.

So the Threat would want to know how far they had to take it before they could relax.

(It does make sense!!)

Karuta himself had checked through the corpse(?) of a decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach to figure out how they worked, so if he were in the Threat’s position, that was exactly what he would do.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to suggest they go check on Gekiha and the others.

They were kept at the very bottom level of the three-hull ship’s central hull. But to defeat the Sparkle lion so their Grimnoah allies could fly here, they had to climb to the roof of the middle school building. Those were opposite directions and illogically making a U-turn now might destroy any trust Imi and Tayori had in him.

He wanted to avoid creating a rift between them here.

This had nothing to do with who was stronger than who. Traveling through Second Grimnoah was a risky thing. If Imi finally hit her limit and screamed, broke through a nearby window, or called for help using her Crystal Blossom, the Threat would notice. And then none of them would survive.

(And either way…)

He came to a stop and shut his eyes.

He clenched his teeth and dragged up the despicable part found deep inside him.

He forced himself to think it.

(Either way, the Threat has been occupying Second Grimnoah for a while now. If they really are here to investigate those crystal statues, Gekiha and the others won’t have escaped unharmed. With this much time, I have to assume the Threat has already done something with them!!)

“Aine…the rest of you too. We’re headed to the roof.”

“Yes, Sacri-sama.”

“We need to slaughter these pieces of shit no matter what and step one is neutralizing the lion’s anti-air lasers on the roof. So…”

Just as he squeezed those words out, he and Aine jumped behind a pillar sticking out from the wall, Marika got down and slipped into the narrow space below a water fountain, and Tayori dragged Imi into an empty classroom to hide.

Something large had come down from the stairs.

It was a slate pencil urchin, suggesting there were more than one of them in the ship. But it must not have noticed them while moving around because it wandered for a bit near the entrance to the stairs and then rolled back through that entrance. They could not tell if it had gone up or down, but it was probably moving between each floor every so often.

It was on a patrol.

“Looks like we can’t use the stairs,” whispered Marika from below the water fountain. “Should we find another route? There are probably small elevators for the kitchen carts.”

Since they could fly, they did not need to follow the ordinary routes. Marika had suggested an elevator, but that did not require them to press the button and move the car like normal. They could just fly up the shaft like it was a chimney.

(But where can we actually find a usable shortcut?)

If they spent too long in the hallway, another Threat might just find them, so they moved to a nearby sliding door, slid it open a crack, checked to make sure the windows were covered by metal panels and other materials, and then hid inside.

The room was two or three times the size of an ordinary classroom. In the darkness, their eyes were drawn to the electric jigsaws, drills, and the vises attached to the thick work tables. Karuta did not have the middle schools’ layout memorized (despite helping out with some of their classes), but he could guess this was the shop classroom.

Imi had to be the most sensitive to fear because she clung to her gyaru-ish friend and spoke with legs trembling.

“Wh-what do we do now? We’re done for if we can’t get up to the roof.”

“Sacri-sama.” Aine pointed her crystal sword up toward a rectangular grated cover on the wall near the ceiling. “If necessary, we could use that.”

“The air duct?” asked Marika while looking up.

Karuta felt just as skeptical.

“Can we really fit through such a narrow space?”

“We are in no position to eliminate possibilities based on speculation. We cannot know for sure without checking first.”

“Fine, then.”

It was true none of them had any better ideas. The duct was on the shop classroom’s rear wall, so they could reach it by standing on the hip-high tables lined up there.

For some reason, Childhood Friend Marika put her hands on her hips and puffed her cheeks out.

“Why is it you’ll do almost anything if Aine-chan asks you?”

“Because she doesn’t ask for pointless things like you do.”

But…

“Oof…damn, I can only barely reach it while on my tiptoes. Getting inside would be difficult.”

“Sacri-sama, lift me on your shoulders.”

He just about agreed on reflex, but then he stopped.

“You’re a girl in a skirt.”

“Yes, and?”

She only tilted her head while standing on the same table as him with her bright thighs exposed.

The crystal girl really did have no issue with being touched despite not liking having her skin seen. She still had some learning to do.

Her white dress had a large slit on both sides, presumably so it did not hinder her movements. That made it more revealing than a China dress but less revealing than a kunoichi outfit.

It bothered him.

It bothered him so much, but then she placed her small hands on his shoulders and pushed down. She was convinced he had to be on the bottom.

“Hold on, hey, this is embarrassing! Do I really have to stick my head into this tunnel!?”

“Sacri-sama, struggle too much on the desk and you will fall off.”

“Ah, ahhh…I’m inside it…”

He looked like he had just caught a glimpse of a new world, but he had to focus on his knees and hips as he felt something warm and soft squeezing against his cheeks. He slowly stood up on the unsteady table and then Aine began to squirm on top of him. She was apparently removing the duct cover with both hands.

“Hmm, I got the cover off, but I am still not quite high enough. I cannot see inside.”

He tried to look up, but the inside of her skirt covered his entire face. It gave off a faint warmth and a sweet scent.

“Pwah, A-Aine, what are you doing up-”

“I can gain a little more height if I use my flight.”

Her thighs lifted upwards while still squeezing at his head.

The thigh heaven quickly became a hanging. Karuta flailed his legs that could no longer reach the table below.

“Agwgggghhhh!?”

“What is this?”

“I’m dying!? M-my head’s gonna pop off! Bgweh, Aine, I’m sorry! I’m sorry there was a part of me that thought I was lucky to do this!! Bweh!!”

“Ah ha ha. This is what we call karma, Karuta.”

For some reason, Marika triumphantly put her hands on her hips.

It could not have lasted more than 10 seconds, but it was a terrifying 10 seconds due more to the pain of his neck bone feeling it was going to pop out than due to suffocation. Pain you were not used to feeling could be a very different experience, like skinning your knee or cutting your finger with a knife.

“W-wait, if you could just use your flight, why get on my shoulders at all?”

Aine slowly descended and freed the boy’s head, but she was still seated on his shoulders as she tilted her head.

“Traveling through here would be difficult.”

“Is it too small?” asked Tayori from below.

“No.” Aine shook her head. “It is filled with something similar to spiderwebs.”

“Spiderwebs?”

“Something similar to. There may be a spiderlike Threat variety. These are probably simple metal wires with a current running through them. I estimate them to be weaker than paper, so if you carelessly touch one, it will break and they will immediately detect your presence. Given the density, traveling through here without being detected would be effectively impossible.”

“There wasn’t anything like that in the smoke vent.”

If the Threat had something like that, why was it not laid out all through the hallways and classrooms? Karuta had his questions, but Aine did not have all the answers. Maybe the Threat only had so many materials to work with, or maybe they decided it would be inefficient in the ordinary passageways where other Threats were traveling.

Karuta crouched down on the table to lower the thigh girl.

“We might be able to use that.”

“Are you going to ignore my warning and use that route anyway?” asked Aine.

“No, so don’t get upset. If we can’t find any other route, we can break the threads with some kind of timed device to draw the Threat’s attention. If that slate pencil urchin leaves the stairs, we can use them ourselves, right?”

That would be a last resort, of course. The risk of running across the Threat was higher if they were off their usual patrol route. If you absolutely had to approach a hornet’s nest, you would prefer to tiptoe around. Very few people would want to throw a stone and rile up the hornets before sneaking in.

(How are things over there?)

Karuta crouched in front of the classroom door and slid it open a crack to peek outside.

The stairs were silent.

Just as he started to lean out more, he quickly pulled his head back inside. He stuck a plastic ruler out as a mirror and confirmed that the slate pencil urchin was indeed there.

It made regular patrols, leaving no openings for them.

Marika leaned over him to peek out into the hallway herself. She may have thought she was only placing her head on top of his like two dango on a skewer, but she was actually placing something else on top of his head. What was it? A pair of weights. And she seemed entirely unaware how perfectly they were resting on his head.

“Yeah, there’s no getting through there. We could probably run down the hallway while it’s away, but we would run right into it if we tried to climb the stairs to the roof.”

“Y-yes. That’s probably more or less it. Maybe.”

“Why are you being so noncommittal???”

He was too distracted to give a clear answer, but then something occurred to him.

“Hold on.”

“?”

Marika could not initially tell what he was focused on.

“I hear something,” said the boy. “It’s coming from down this hallway. I think that’s where the gym is. We could pass through there, couldn’t we?”

“That might work if we just want a way to the roof to attack the Sparkle.” Tayori slid open the empty classroom’s door a bit and nodded. “The gym uses space from multiple floors to give it more height, so we could fly right up to the roof from there. And unlike a cramped and restrictive elevator shaft, we might be able to escape if the Threat has laid an ambush for us.”

They all nodded.

After the Threat patrolling the stairs appeared again and moved back up the stairs, they made their move. The route took them near the stairway in question, but they ignored it. The Threat was gone for now, but they could not blindly rush up the stairs when they could run across it at any point.

Instead, they made their way to the double doors at the far end of the hallway. Those led to the gym.

After approaching and pressing against the door, Karuta groaned. He was focused on the crack between the double doors.

“(I can see light through the door. They have the lights on in there.)”

“(That doesn’t sound good.)”

Marika sounded cautious, but she was actually raring to go. This was different from anything they had seen before, so she may have thought they would find some crucial hint about the Threat inside.

“(The Threat has some level of intelligence.)” Aine was more pessimistic. “(Based on the tentatively-named Gestalt, they are at least intelligent enough to deceive humans for an easy victory. Nowhere else has had the lights on, but it could easily be a trap, similar to a military tablet being ‘abandoned’ on top of a landmine on the battlefield.)”

They both had a point.

Karuta crouched down, pressed his hands against the double doors, and shut his eyes.

He clenched his teeth, reopened his eyes, and spoke.

He had made his decision.

“Let’s go. We have business with that lion on the rooftop regardless.”

“We must have been cursed…”

Imi’s gaze wandered diagonally up through empty space while Tayori held her close. It was unclear who she was trying to talk to.

Karuta gathered strength in his hands and pushed. The door slowly and silently opened.

The light pierced his eyes.

It felt as bright as a car’s headlights. Had the gym’s lights always been so bright?

Eventually, his senses returned to him.

They had entered on the second floor of the gym instead of the large flat area used to play basketball or volleyball. Specifically, they were in the far back.

He raised his head while still crouched down to see an orderly arrangement of steel beams and halogen lights. The roof where the lion awaited was just above those.

However…

“(I knew something wasn’t right.)”

He was focused more on the floor below than their destination above.

This rear second floor space was meant for spectators, but since it had a railing-like wall set up to prevent people from falling, they could hide from anything below by crouching. The wall was only about hip height, but they had no way of seeing what was happening while hidden there.

Yes.

“(Something’s happening in here. But what is this sound???)”

Still crouched, he approached the railing-like wall. Taking a detour from their objective would only needlessly delay the mission and put everyone’s lives at greater risk. And in this case, “everyone” was more than just him, Marika, and the others here. It also included Natlena and that group. He knew that, but he could not resist the urge.

It took him more than two minutes to reach the wall.

Curled up behind the hip-height wall, he focused his ears on the disconcerting noise he could hear.

(What is this?)

He was no longer speaking with anyone.

The confusion only grew in his mind as he slowly gathered strength in his knees. He hesitantly rose up from his crouch to peer over the low wall.

And.

He saw it.

Part 5

The floating general airport’s control tower had enough communications equipment to intercept transmissions on any frequency, but now Omotesandou Kyouka had the random number table needed to decrypt the Indian military’s transmissions.

A vast amount of clear voices and data were revealed to her.

But even with it all visible and audible, it used a lot of technical terms and codewords meant to hide those terms, so a normal person would have had a hard time comprehending what was being said. But she was different.

“I see.”

“Wh-what is it?” hesitantly asked Letnahe Kurent.

She would not escape this untouched now that she had handed over the flash memory containing the random number table. She had shaken free of her hesitation, but she would still want something useful to come of it.

She had cast out her spirit of justice for this.

Even after marrying and exchanging rings, she had never been able to throw out her first love. She would protect Kiyosawa Hadome from this crisis. She would not back down on that no matter what.

Kyouka removed her headset.

“The Indian Space Force wants to launch their nuclear strike no matter what. Since they refuse to recalculate their schedule even as the conditions change and new information comes in, they are most likely planning for their attack on the Threat to fail. I explained that much before, didn’t I?”

“But why!? If they launch a nuclear strike but it doesn’t show results, the international backlash will be fierce. Does the Indian military want to commit diplomatic suicide!?”

“What if they could bring another country down with them?”

Kyouka laughed and Letnahe stared in shocked silence.

“On who will responsibility fall if the nuclear strike fails? This mission is not being run by the Indian military alone; it is run by the larger coalition force. I don’t know if the US or China are in charge, but whatever superpower is at the top will take the blame more than any of the individual countries making up the coalition. All those smaller countries will refuse to take the blame, insisting that the superpower pressured them into it.”

“So you’re saying,” the silver-haired, brown-skinned soldier gulped while touching the side of her glasses. “Everyone would take damage, but not the same amount? And if another country took more damage than their own, then the Indian military would benefit? That’s their game!?”

“Everyone signs nuclear reduction treaties, but nuclear weapons never seem to go away, do they? Why is that? If the treaty says each country must reduce their nuclear weapons by 30%, then the burden is vastly different for a country with 100 versus a country with 10,000. Which is why they never succeed. Well, they might do it so they can dispose of the excess they don’t want to bother keeping around any longer, but a compromise to bring peace? That’s only an excuse used once they have carefully thought through everything and they know the burden on the other nation will be greater. It’s a strategic move, similar to something from shogi or chess.”

With a normal nuclear reduction treaty, the damage would not be all that great.

They only agreed to a target to aim for and there were no actual penalties in place if they failed to achieve that target. The country could weasel out of it with their usual equivocation.

But things would be different this time. They would have made a nuclear strike that failed to defeat the Threat. They would have caused many unnecessary deaths. And it would be unclear whether responsibility lay with the Indian military or the entire coalition force.

Would that be allowed to stand?

The furious people of the world would undoubtedly demand a forced reduction treaty with actual penalties for noncompliance. The actual reduction amount might be 50% or 80%, but whatever it was, the countries with more nukes would have to pay more to dispose of them.

India was officially recognized as a nuclear power, but they had far fewer than America or Russia. If they could keep the damage to themselves low, they could effectively rob their opponents of national power.

“What is my homeland doing?” asked Letnahe like it was a curse.

She cared about the family represented by her ring, but she also could not throw out the memories of her first love contained in her watch.

While trapped between those two, she had to be aware that everyone in the world had people they cared about in the same way. And they had met other people they found irreplaceable. But all of that would be brought crashing down as simply as performing a sum or subtraction.

But Kyouka shrugged.

“I can’t really blame them.”

“?”

“All of humanity must join together to fight the Threat. That one excuse is all anyone needs to endlessly expand their military these days. But the fight against the Threat will end someday. And what will everyone do with their stockpiled weapons then? Do you really think they will dispose of them after spending so much money on them? Do you honestly think the top brass will throw out all their privileges and make themselves unemployed?”

“But…”

“The fight against the Threat might end, but they will still find a way to make those weapons necessary. How about they fight against natural disasters? They could use powerful missiles to drive the greenhouse gasses out of their country and they could use underground nuclear experiments to create artificial earthquakes that provide a safe release for the power of the plates. Really, it could be anything, even missile farming or drone mining. They will all find some reason or another to protect their way of life. …We will continue to live in an age where every country wants as many weapons as it can get. So is it that strange for someone to decide now that they should take weapons away from the other nations?”

Letnahe gasped this time.

She could not believe how far this conspiracy went. Each individual piece might seem reasonable enough in isolation, but the end result had put Omotesandou Kyouka’s home of Japan in the crosshairs. Not only had she been born and raised there, but her trusted companions were fighting on the front line just before this meaningless nuclear strike that was never meant to succeed.

Yet she “couldn’t really blame them”?

She actually sympathized with India’s plans and what they hoped to gain?

“What is going on in that head of yours?” Letnahe was dumbfounded, but she could not keep her questions inside. The words came out on their own. “Do you know how many civilians with no connection to the fight against the Threat will die!? And not just from the direct blast and heat! The wind will carry the fallout across this entire archipelago!! This isn’t just some number calculated out on a document. The lives being snuffed out here are all people who someone cares about more than anyone else in the world. That someone cares about so much they would be willing to violate all their principles and morals to protect them!”

“Yes.” Even now, Kyouka responded as promptly as ever. “I’m sure you already know since you must have done a thorough investigation on me, but my family lives in Kyoto. My parents, my grandmother, and my little brother. Oh, and the servants and drivers who have worked for my family long enough that they’re basically family to me. Their only real source of information is TV and the newspaper. That and anything they hear people talking about in the neighborhood, I suppose. They’re as normal as they come and a little too accustomed to peace, so I have my doubts if they would even evacuate after hearing the siren blaring. Even so, they are fairly well known in the local area.”

“…”

“I care about them more than my own life. In the event of a nuclear explosion, they will receive a large dose of radiation. And if Crystal Magic fails and the Threat is free to attack, they might just wipe out all of Kansai.”

Yet she was unmoved.

She remained her usual self and took only the optimal actions.

She had lifted her mind to a place that Letnahe had never managed since she kept her ring on even while wearing that white military uniform.

“But why should I weep and wail? What would that change?” Anyone who saw the President here would realize that even smiles came in multiple varieties. This one looked like her face had been sliced open in a crescent moon shape. “The first ship taught me all too well that death does not discriminate. Pray all you want, no god is going to answer. God is not a vending machine that dispenses miracles for anyone who wants one. Do these not sound like the words of the strongest? Writing up a formal complaint about life being unfair would be a waste of time. We need to focus on the good fortune we have to find ourselves here and with a few different options available to us. We can still change how this plays out. So what is it we can do? And what should we do?”

“Are you saying…you know the answer to that?”

“Whether it is an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding’ or a ‘communications failure’, the Indian Space Force wants an excuse to launch their nuke. They want something that shows Grimnoah has lost and the adult military must take over.”

“Are you saying you can keep them from doing that by taking away their excuse? Like…having Grimnoah defeat the Threat right away? No, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you could-”

“Wrooong,” cut in the President. Then she presented her conclusion. “We can’t defeat the Threat right away, but don’t you think we could obscure the result, ensuring no one can tell if we won or lost?”

Part 6

When Karuta looked down from the second-floor of the gym, he saw the real Threat there. These were the legged tadpole ones, but there were a lot of them. Each one rivalled a large semi truck in size, but more than 100 of them were lined up here.

Yes, lined up.

This was odd. What were they doing? Instead of causing mayhem or crawling around, they all remained entirely motionless while staring in the same direction. A few possibilities came to mind – waiting, sleeping, resupplying – but none of them seemed quite right.

A home theater projector that could be used with the lights on was projecting some kind of footage onto the stage.

Aine had speculated the tadpoles used their vision to locate targets.

If that was true, then they were watching something here.

It included audio:

“Crystal Magic produces supernatural phenomena from the unseen occult pressure differences similar to high and low pressure fronts that are created by the collision of the powers pouring down from space and the power emanating from the Original Crystal Embryo in the center of the earth. Just like the priests and priestesses of an older age gained enough power to gather the people’s support and rule entire countries or the world by reading the wind to predict the weather for use by sailing ships or farmers.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

His breathing stopped.

He could not believe what he was seeing here.

What…what were they doing??? His mind could not keep up, but the cheerful female voice from the reference video did not stop.

“That is why Crystal Magic uses a god’s name to gain the ability to ‘read’ the occult calendars and horoscope charts found in different mythologies and religions. Crystal Magic cannot create the wind out of nothing and cause miracles that way, but it can cause phenomena impossible for an ordinary person by riding the existing wind and using the great power found there. Just like a windmill grinds wheat or a glider soars through the sky.”

“The Threat…the real Threat is taking a class in school?” groaned Marika like she too could not believe what she was seeing.

Why had the Threat occupied Second Grimnoah without sinking it? Why had they attacked the academy ship in the first place?

This was the answer.

“This is bad,” said gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. Instead of retreating to surreal sarcasm, she laid out the actual risks. “The Threat is powerful enough already, but are they analyzing our Crystal Magic now? That’s the human trump card. If they learn to do the same thing, their tougher bodies will let them win.”

(Is that really it?)

Karuta had his doubts.

If those Threats (that had somehow gotten their enormous bodies through the entrance) were hooked up to a computer with a cable and were mechanically installing the data, he might have feared the same thing.

But this was different.

The gym’s atmosphere was relaxed. Even if the purpose of this was to learn, he sensed something else in the atmosphere hanging over the tadpoles.

Yes.

When Karuta and his classmates had learned about Crystal Magic as a means of fighting the Threat on the first ship, they had not had a clear vision of how it would be used. They had been more focused on whether they would go to the cafeteria or the school store for lunch.

Some of the Threats here were secretly napping. Some were swaying in time with some kind of rhythm. Some were scratching at the floor with their feet. They were drawing out orderly doodles. If these tadpoles were given thick paper textbooks, they would probably draw out a flip book on the edge of the pages.

But that would mean…

(Do they not have a goal? These tadpoles are just aimlessly passing the time? Almost like they’re dying for this class to end. But could mere machines do that??? An AI that gathers data from past weather forecasts is only doing that because it was given that specific goal. Machines can’t take a break unless it’s set as a necessary task for achieving their optimum goal, like if they need to cool down or limit energy consumption. There’s no such thing as a program that can just “kill time” if you tell it to. Then are they not machines? Are they just like us?)

“Wait, wait!! Could they be harmle-”

Karuta was cut off by a dull bang.

It came from Imi who was still held in Tayori’s arms.

Her eyes were wandering while she held out her right hand. She held a bizarre weapon that had medical equipment like a scalpel and forceps spread out like a multitool in place of a bayonet.

She had already fired.

There was a hole in the head(?) of one of the legged tadpoles on the floor below.

They had been so tough, yet this one had gone down so easily.

This was the first time someone other than Karuta and Aine had defeated one.

But he could not rejoice over this because something felt off.

“No. I can’t take it anymorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!!!!”

She had been pushed to the very limit and her scream echoed across the gym.

“Sacri-sama.” Aine calmly announced their coming execution while adjusting her grip on her crystal-like katana. “We have hit the limit.”

All forms of killer intent stabbed in at Karuta’s group.

Those tadpoles had been aimlessly attending the class, but that did not mean they were powerless. Karuta and Marika had attended their classes on the first ship in much the same way, but they had possessed enough power to crush the Problem Solvers, hadn’t they?

“Tch! Tezcatlipoca, power up!!”

Marika stood up immediately. She must have decided there was no point in hiding any longer. Pointy crystal armor jutted out from her body while she drew a rapier-like device out of empty air. But that was not only a close-range weapon. By turning the round guard around, she could use it as a laser sniping unit.

Several laser beams shot down like lightning strikes.

The gym floor shattered.

The doodles drawn in the middle of class were destroyed.

Karuta clenched his teeth as he turned toward Aine and gestured over the wall with his chin.

“Always have an escape route in mind and cause them some trouble without getting yourself killed!!”

“Understood.”

Aine did not hesitate at times like this.

Marika tended to solve everything through combat and even she was forced to only snipe down from the upper floor, but Aine immediately jumped down from the railing to fight on the front line below.

Meanwhile, Karuta turned toward Imi and Tayori.

“What gods’ names did you input into your Crystal Blossom circuit boards?”

“I used the Norse monster Fenrir and Imi used the Egyptian medical goddess Neith.”

Tayori activated her crystal armor with a sound like a thick spring being released. Thick claw-like weapons attached to the back of her hands. She was apparently limited to infighting and had no projectiles.

Fenrir.

A weapon named after the wolf that devoured the top Norse god might possess great power in every single blow.

“Power up complete. What do you want us to do?”

“We won’t last long like this. I want to destroy the Sparkle on the roof ASAP if possible.”

“That would be difficult. But if I went unnoticed…”

“?”

“I’m a close-range specialist, so I could climb onto the roof and bite that lion. Getting close to it would be the hard part, but if I could do that…”

Karuta nodded.

But then he heard an unusual sound from the floor below. That was not the sound of heavy and solid metal clashing. It was a high-pitched and piercing sound similar to glass.

Glass.

Crystal.

“Aine!?”

Driven by a very bad feeling, Karuta leaned over the hip-height wall and looked down despite the danger. That was when he saw it.

The legged tadpoles were shaking their truck-sized bodies. But even with the laser sniping from above and Aine going wild with her katana, they did not fight back. Was this part of their division of roles? Instead of trying to fight, they were trying to escape to safety so their accumulated knowledge could be passed on to the rest. Or to put it another way, Aine was chasing down the unresisting tadpoles and mercilessly cutting them down from behind. If his side stopped trying to fight, this hellish scene would go away on its own, yet the hell before his eyes never ended.

This almost made it look like his side had started it.

All they had wanted to do was take back their school.

When one tadpole’s leg was cut off, it rolled over, exposing its belly.

Aine used her flight to jump straight up in preparation to deliver the finishing blow.

Just then, the tadpole did something strange. It forcibly bent its humorous elliptical body to bring the long tail-like part in front of its belly to defend itself. Almost like it was terrified of the coming pain.

“Wai-!!”

Not even Karuta himself knew what he had wanted to shout there. And Aine’s sword completed its merciless attack before he could get the command out. Instead of aiming for the obvious belly, she bisected the upside-down tadpole’s head starting with its giant jaw.

The giant black thing screamed, the slicing of its mouth distorting the cry.

Karuta watched on in shock as Marika fired more lasers down. She could not finish them off with that, but she could cause the other scattered tadpoles to flinch. And when that brought them to a brief stop, Aine would attack. All without batting an eye.

He had thought he understood her.

At least a little.

She had learned to feel embarrassment when her skin was seen, but she had failed to learn to feel the same when her skin was touched. She would stand by his side with sword at the ready no matter how hopeless the situation and she had accepted the bitesize chocolate reward while complaining that it was inefficient. When he had shown off his ugly side, she had held him to her flat chest and pointed out his faults like a mother.

But her sword showed no hesitation whatsoever.

The reaping had begun.

(What…?)

He could not breathe.

The next thing he knew, he was holding his head and screaming. But he was not giving any clear command. Aine would continue with her current actions until he gave her an additional command. And wasn’t he the one who had told her to “always have an escape route in mind and cause them some trouble without getting yourself killed”?

He had caused this.

He had destroyed a school and taken lives.

How was he any different from the Problem Solvers who had destroyed the first ship and taken his peaceful school from him and his fellow students?

In fact, this may have been worse. This was like unchaining a ferocious dog and releasing it in a peaceful park on the weekend.

Unlike Aine, Marika seemed focused on simply holding the Threat back. To make sure they did not customize themselves using the tadpoles that had been cut down. But was that effort even necessary in the first place? The Threat was under attack here, but they were focused on running away and did nothing to counterattack.

(What is this? What are we doing???)

“This started with Imi lashing out, but it’s still the right thing to do,” insisted Tayori. She would follow them as long as they did the right thing. Her stance there had not changed. “They don’t seem to have anything like high-speed wireless internet, but if they can carry out the knowledge stored inside them and spread it to the rest like an ant sends pheromone signals, we won’t stand a chance. What do you do if you need to stop the roaches from breeding before the majority of them develop a resistance to your bug spray? You find the ones that survive the bug spray and you squish them. That’s the best plan.”

The best plan.

If she really thought that, she could have kept quiet. Since she had gone out of her way to say it out loud and seek his agreement, this must have left a bad taste in her mouth on some level. And an excuse disguised as a justification was not going to reach Karuta.

The gym ceiling was torn through and the orderly arrangement of steel beams rained down. The anti-air laser lion dropped down along with the artificial cover it had destroyed.

That was the Sparkle.

That was their key strategic figure. The Threat should have wanted to protect it more than anything, yet it had chosen to drop down itself.

“This is our chance!!” shouted Marika as she aimed her rapier-like device at this new target.

Karuta could not understand why this made her so happy.

A straining sound filled the gym. Glowing rain poured down while rage ruled this place. Its lion-like form had changed. To reiterate, the Threat could customize itself into a more powerful form by devouring the corpses(?) of the fallen ones.

It consumed the tadpoles.

Its companions had been defenselessly cut down and it devoured the remains of those it had most wanted to protect and absorbed their parts to change its own form. The lion was not functionally capable of shedding tears, but that did not mean it felt nothing.

The twisted chrysalis created from the slaughter was torn open.

“Crystal Magic is a top candidate for the next world’s strongest, so it must be used for the public good without letting national or racial boundaries get in the way.”

The cheerful female voice sounded so out of place now as that silly reference video continued to play up on the stage.

The lion stopped walking on four legs while it emitted a burning pressure from its entire body. That 3m mass of metal now planted just two legs on the floor just like a human to display a body far more powerful than a human’s.

Something it had absorbed caused its color to change.

It looked a lot like an armored warrior creating a fusion of Eastern and Western by wearing a suit of armor glowing a reddish-purple with black belts holding it tight in places. The capacitors remained as wings on its back, but the obvious lion’s head and mane were gone. It had abandoned its identity to fulfill its objective. That stance seemed to ooze from its armor. A pair of red eyes glowed like burning flames within its newly-acquired helmet.

It held a single sword in its hand.

The sword was longer than its reddish-purple armor was tall and it looked far too heavy for a human to wield. But there was something odd about that sword. The guard extended far out to the front, but it barely existed on the back of the blade. Instead, there was a metal loop on the front. It initially reminded Karuta of an oscilloscope, but he soon realized he was mistaken.

That was a tonfa and handcuffs.

That may have been meant as a response to the jitte-like part of Aine’s sword. But unlike that laser gun unit, this did not appear to have any practical use. Does it want to steal the title of justice that badly? thought Karuta while clenching his teeth.

Its metal fingers grasped the sword’s hilt unexpectedly smoothly. That might look like armor, but it was clearly structured differently. If it was hollow, it could not move those slender fingertips that much. That was a body, not armor.

The blade of the long sword emitted a light as bright as a welding torch. At the Port of Kobe, the tadpoles’ teeth had crackled with electricity, but this was even more intense. White light surged out like the hamon was leaving the surface of the blade, so plasma emitted from the tip may have ran along the blade before being absorbed and stabilized within the guard. Or in other words, the sword was being exposed to a massive amount of heat with no effect.

Simply releasing its power seemed to cause physics to break down. All the rain-wet wreckage from the roof began to defy gravity by floating up like helium balloons.

(An electric…ionocraft?)

An unnatural humming sound shook the entire space.

It was like the amplified buzzing of an insect or like a bug zapper or transformer that used high-voltage currents.

If the excess energy escaping from it was enough to affect its surroundings like this, the power stored inside it had to be enormous. Carelessly touching the inside of that thing would turn a human to charcoal.

All of that energy was created within the armor, spread through its entire body, and then shaped into a weapon. It went out of its way to create the complex shape of a hand and then created a separate sword for that hand to hold. Why not have the weapon combined with the arm? Why even prepare an arm at all? Efficiency and logic could not explain any of this. The decisions were based on some other standard.

A sword and light. Big and strong. And a metal culture. It was like a symbol of justice – the leader of a war for good.

This was no longer the lion-shaped Sparkle.

This was a different Threat.

This armored warrior could be called…

“The Warrior Doll,” said Karuta.

He spoke loudly enough for anyone to hear him even as he felt like he was wandering through a muddy nightmare.

“You have all passed the Crystal Blossom selection process,” continued the video. “But that is not why you should feel proud. Be proud that you can use this chosen power to protect the weak. Keep that in mind as you aim to be a strong and noble magician. Keep your ears open to the cries of those in need and rush to their aid faster than anyone else. Become the people’s hope. The world became a brighter place from the moment you chose to learn Crystal Magic!!”

Its bipedal form was less stable, its center of gravity was located high up, and it had created a complex hand to hold its weapon.

If this form was only meant to fight, then its evolution could not have been based on practicality. This may have been the aesthetic sense it had learned from Second Grimnoah.

It had watched them from the sea below, boarded the ship once they left, and then learned of justice.

It had learned the meaning of wearing armor and wielding a sword.

With the baton and handcuffs, this Threat had tried to dye itself in every form of justice it could find, so it may have respected humans in a way. Not the power of Crystal Magic itself, but the way of life that had led them to wield that power. Even though the current world’s strongest were the kind of garbage people who would not hesitate to cut down unresisting lives.

“Ha.”

Utagai Karuta started laughing.

What else could he do?

This was a good reminder of his position in life. Yes, it was absurd for him to be on the side of justice. He was only a persistent stalker who had completed his filthy quest for revenge. None of the praise heaped on him by the rest of humanity could change what he was deep down.

Whenever he stood up, justice would stand up to oppose him.

It had been that way with the Problem Solvers, it had been that way with the three middle school girls controlling the decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach, and now it was happening a third time. At this point, it could not be a mere coincidence.

You’re saving the world? You’re rescuing your friends?

No, all you ever do is kill the righteous.

Admit it.

“Ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha, hah hah hah hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!”

He laughed.

He laughed and laughed and laughed.

So of course his vision grew blurry. Laughing so hard was bound to bring tears to his eyes.

Those tears did not fall to the floor.

They were pinned in midair and began to float upwards.

Then he made his move. Shocked Marika tried to stop him, but he ignored her, climbed over the hip-height wall, and dropped down from the second floor. There was no logic to his action. As long as he was close enough to command Aine, he would be safer while hidden.

But he no longer cared what happened to him.

His body slammed loudly against the floor and excruciating pain raced through his spine rather than his skin. Why aren’t you dead? he cursed himself as he slowly stood up.

So much had happened here.

This Warrior Doll had lost everything.

Yet it stood perfectly still with the long sword held in both hands. It made no surprise attacks. It would attack fair and square and from head on. This was different from the Gestalt’s mimicry. Karuta could sense a definite will in this reddish-purple armored warrior.

Simply gathering strength inside itself pinned the falling raindrops in the air and caused the wet rubble to float up in defiance of gravity.

It was a 3m mass heavier than steel.

It did not matter whether or not the armored warrior Threat knew the actual words

The shared concept stabbed into Karuta’s heart all the same.

I am allowed the pursuit of righteous vengeance.

I challenge you to a duel, human.

Karuta actually felt jealous.

He felt jealous of this twisted and horrific monster that had cannibalized its own to grow stronger.

All of that was allowed if it was done out of righteous anger. That armored warrior could remain on the side of justice, so it looked so bright to Karuta.

He clenched his teeth and trembled at how puny he was himself. He hated himself for being unable to die. Humanity had truly lost if the other side was the just one. He had failed in his duty as strongest. He had not protected their justice and simply handed it over to the other side. This was about more than himself. He had brought down all 5.5 billion humans.

The white light traveling along the curve of the sword was probably a plasma jet. That weapon decorated with a temperature hotter than the sun’s surface was thrust straight out. As if to prove its own righteousness.

The distance between them did not matter.

The overlapping armor at the back of the knees, behind the helmet, and elsewhere opened up and a green explosion burst from those gaps. By the time Karuta noticed that, it was already right on top of him.

That was some form of booster.

The 3m giant brought a shockwave as it approached, so its body alone would have been as deadly as an artillery shell.

Karuta could only stand there in a daze.

So what happened next was not his doing.

“Sacri-sama!!”

He could not understand it.

A dull sound rang out.

A small white figure had moved in between them at the last second. His Crystal Magic looked outmatched against that 3m armored giant, but her cold blade had caught The Warrior Doll’s hot one.

The Warrior Doll had more than just leg strength. It could accelerate its heavyweight armor using the eruption of green light behind it.

That explosive propulsive force gave the reddish-purple armor mobility surpassing that of a fighter craft. Even without its sword, it could break a warship in two with a simple tackle. How powerful would its sword strikes be if it had optimized the techniques needed to kill? The edge of a sword was determined by how much speed could be placed behind its weight.

A high-pitched sound rang out.

It had broken the sound barrier.

It was a testament to Aine’s skills that she had managed force her slender form in between the boy and the Warrior Doll and stop the latter with her crystal-like sword.

But then came the second explosion.

The white welding light ignited along the armored warrior’s blade burst outward to slam into the crystal girl trying to lock blades with it.

Karuta had researched swords since Aine wielded one. In the world of samurai, there had been attacks aimed for the face of an opponent locking swords with you. For example, spitting needles that sent a large number of needles toward the enemy’s face.

Even if that attack lowered the Warrior Doll’s strength a little, Aine had no way of blocking the heat and shockwave.

“!!”

Nevertheless, she forcibly clenched her teeth. Even Karuta could hear the straining sound. He also detected a scorched smell, like the hair drier had been blowing on something for too long. Aine adjusted her grip on her crystal sword to protect the boy and she ignored her own damage as she once more attacked the Warrior Doll in front of her.

There was a franticness to her action that was not like her. Her blade of course did not reach the armored warrior. Each time it caught her sword on its own, it caused a massive explosion to wear down her small body.

What?

What was happening?

Karuta could not believe what he was seeing. He knew for a fact he had never ordered her to do this. He had told her to always have an escape route in mind and to cause them some trouble, but this was the complete opposite.

“Oh.”

He realized something while watching that small back.

He realized why she kept going and kept getting back up from the wet floor even though she could not have any strength left.

Was it because his spirit had broken?

Was she trying to make up for what he had lost?

“Ai…ne.”

Her small back seemed to be working hard to prove something.

To prove that it was not wrong to try and take back the second ship.

To prove that it was not wrong to try and save Gekiha and the others from the first ship.

To prove it had never been wrong to fight in Kyouka’s place since she could not do it herself and to come all this way searching for Marika’s group.

It was just that the crystal girl could only express herself through combat.

“Aine.”

There was an obstinance to her actions.

And she did not seem to understand what it was she had done.

But.

She looked so small. He could not see her face with her back turned. He knew she would not be hanging her head or biting her lip, but he could still sense something from her. Even as she continued the intense battle, was hit by the wall of wind, and was gradually worn down. The sense he got from her was not of a heroic fighter or a horrific murderer. He sensed something sad, like he was looking at a lost child.

Was Aine really the one in the wrong?

Who was it that had boarded Second Grimnoah to fight the Threat?

The battle in the gym had been started by Imi’s outburst.

Aine had not started any of it, but right now that small girl had been left all alone with only her sharp sword to work with.

“That’s enough, Aine!!!!!!”

He gathered what little strength he had to approach her small back.

He hugged her from behind.

Her crystal sword came to a brief stop as he placed his hand over her smaller one.

“I’m sorry, Warrior Doll.” He tried to catch his breath while facing the armored warrior again. “Your anger is probably justified. I was clearly using her wrong.”

That should not have mattered to the Threat.

Yet it did not attack. It waited for him to speak with the tip of its plasma jet sword aimed his way.

Even though it probably did not understand human language.

“This was entirely my fault. We could have turned back as soon as we found Marika’s group safe. And even if we couldn’t find a way back, this wouldn’t have happened if we just hadn’t approached the gym. This wasn’t somewhere we had to go. I just thought it would make for a good shortcut.”

Karuta staggered to the side.

No, he moved to stand next to battered Aine. And he pulled out the puny modified military flashlight he used as a weapon.

“We’re one and the same, so Aine will have to fight too.”

He was at fault for all of it. Even if they were one and the same, he would not back down on this.

“But please. Please don’t hold this against her. Your vengeance should be targeted at me. Give me this one thing, please.”

He suddenly found himself bowing.

He could not escape this vengeance, but the Warrior Doll had to understand that challenging him directly like this introduced the possibility of being killed in the attempt. Even though that was not necessary. Karuta’s group had secretly gathered information on the Problem Solvers and then made cheap surprise attacks in every way they could. But the Warrior Doll had left a chance for its own defeat.

That was why Karuta wanted to apologize to Aine and tell her to survive.

To do that…

To do that, he was willing to lift his head!!

“I challenge you to a duel, Warrior Doll!!!!!!”

After tumbling down to the position of the despicable challenger once more, Utagai Karuta looked up at the peak from down in the mud.

Between the Lines 2

He had agonized over it.

He had worried, screamed, and wailed.

Utagai Karuta had roared from deep in his throat as he considered the pain of something inhuman and sympathized with the suffering of something inhuman.

That should have been painful to watch.

Anyone would have wanted to put a stop to it as soon as possible.

But one girl was different: Crystal Girl Aine.

The boy had hugged her from behind. He had stepped up next to her to stop something. She glanced over at him with her sword still at the ready and a thought entered her mind.

(If…)

The thought was like staticky noise.

It was a distraction from the task at hand.

Yet there it was.

(If Sacri-sama can treat inhuman things that way…if he lets himself do that…)

The thought trailed off there.

But she hesitantly moved it along as if slowly reaching out her small hand.

(Could it be?)

That Crystal Magic – that girl who belonged to the world’s strongest as a Crystal Blossom – completed the thought.

(Does he see me…that way too?)

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