Horizon:Volume 10B Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Arrivals in the Arrival Airspace

They have made the past into the future

To ensure the future

Forevermore

Point Allocation (Letter)

●

…What an incredible underclassman.

This was Kiyomasa’s thought as she caught the falling Ex. Caledfwlch. And immediately…

“Uni-sama!”

She saw Uni down on hands and knees, occupied with catching her breath.

“Ah!”

She was sweating profusely. Kiyomasa could tell she was lightly dehydrated, so she ran over and produced a Shinto water charm from the first-aid kit stored in her hip armor. Sticking that in your mouth and sucking on it would produce about a liter of water. The charm wasn’t all that necessary in the Far East where water was plentiful, but it was a necessity on the battlefield.

She externally activated Uni’s exhaustion reduction protection as an emergency method for helping her catch her breath. And then…

“Th-thank you!”

Kiyomasa didn’t mind at all. Uni clearly already knew what the charm was because she immediately held it in the side of her mouth and sucked on it.

And after taking a breath, she looked up at Kiyomasa.

“U-um!”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to continue!?”

Her gaze still carried plenty of strength and Kiyomasa reacted half in surprise and half with a smile.

The devilish darkness that had been lurking inside her was gone now.

Kiyomasa raised her mobile shell’s broken right arm to show it off.

“I would not make for a good opponent anymore. This was already my spare.”

“Then…”

“That means you win, Uni-sama.”

Uni gave her a look like that didn’t compute.

So Kiyomasa opened a lernen figur.

“Shall I make the report?”

“N-no, you can’t! That’s my reward – no, my duty!”

Uni stood up and, as she was still unsteady, Kiyomasa propped her up with her right arm. Kiyomasa could fight on equal footing with Fukushima and this girl had broken through her right arm. Furthermore…

…That final screw attack was thanks to me, wasn’t it?

Was it shameful to see it that way? Whatever the case, Uni, aka Kani, opened a lernen figur and raised her voice.

“The enemy commander Katou Kiyomasa has been defeated!”

Hearing that, Kiyomasa noticed a certain change.

Excalibur’s remnants formed a glowing dust that flowed down from the sky.

That trail slowly but surely shifting rightwards as if flowed aft.

…That must mean…

The Musashi and the Azuchi had to be changing course after entering Osaka Bay.

●

A few attacks crisscrossed through the sky.

The combined Technohexen broom known as Zwei Eisen and the combined Technohexen broom known as Zwei Fraulein were pursuing each other, evading to slip past each other, and launching attacks at each other.

Zwei Eisen had the greater evasion.

Zwei Fraulein had the greater speed.

The two brooms picked up their speed and circled the battlefield sky before finally taking parallel courses and repeatedly firing on or evading each other.

The pair with the iron name took a geometric course as they evaded and advanced, launching primarily homing bullets.

The pair with the feminine name soared along a curving course as they evaded and advanced, launching primarily artillery attacks.

But both their maneuvering suddenly changed.

Their courses bent.

The reason why flew below them.

The Musashi and the Azuchi had entered a rapid eastward turn in north Osaka Bay with the coast of M.H.R.R. visible nearby.

The Azuchi had accelerated.

To prevent the Musashi from entering M.H.R.R. Protestant territory.

●

“Masazumi!”

Suzu hurriedly altered the model Musashi’s course in response.

She sensed the Azuchi approaching them. It was really something like a desperate tackle. But…

“The sound!”

The sound reaching them from the Azuchi included the standard sounds of a running ship, but the sounds of interior components being rapidly rearranged were especially prominent.

…The thrusters!

She knew what was being done, but she could only guess what would happen. The movement and order of those sounds were the preparation for the Azuchi’s next action.

It had been flying parallel to the Musashi so far, but that was about to change.

“They’re planning…to fight a…ship battle!”

●

“So we’re at the big finale,” muttered Masazumi at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Okutama’s bow deck.

Without thinking, she stopped there, looked down and thought.

“Damn that powerful nation!”

“Hm? What do you mean, Honda Masazumi?”

“Judge,” she replied to Urquiaga’s question. Kanou, keeping an eye on their surroundings at her side, nodded as if waiting for her to speak. So Masazumi explained, aware of the tension in her shoulders.

“Even if we do sink the Azuchi here, P.A. Oda and M.H.R.R. still have plenty of aerial forces left. But if they manage to get even a single attack in on the Musashi, they will have achieved a significant political performance.”

Meaning…

“Hashiba has the Ten Spears and their invasion of our ship, but on top of that they are making an appeal to the other powerful nations and they are willing to sacrifice the Azuchi for it. That may make them look desperate, but they can insist that just shows how important the Genesis Project is and how little they can afford to have anyone interfere. By opposing us, Hashiba is attempting to boost the value of the Genesis Project and strip us of our political influence. And they are doing so in multiple waves.”

“Then what do we do about it?” asked a voice from above.

Masazumi looked up the stairs.

Ookubo stood nearly at the very top step, glaring down at Masazumi.

“Do you think we lose if we all we do is survive this?” asked Masazumi.

“That’s what Hashiba wants. Being treated as our equals is a big win for them since they’re supposed to only decline from here on out.”

“You’re right.” Masazumi had to agree. “Victory is our only option. At the very least, we can’t afford anything that can be interpreted as a loss here.”

“Judge. So don’t hold anything back. I’ll consider what happens if that isn’t enough and make arrangements, so call on me if you need me. I might have a role to play later on.”

Then Ookubo pointed upwards.

“The nudist’s group is up here. Hurry on to them. And give Kanou-kun back to me. This is too much work to handle on my own.”

●

Yoshiaki realized they were fast approaching a resolution.

Hashiba was currently in a difficult political position. Their history recreations were nearly complete and, despite ruling the Far East, their authority was losing its actual usefulness. Even if they did gather attention and approval with the Genesis Project, they still needed the actual interests and assets. As things were, another nation could end up influencing the Genesis Project enough to drive it to failure.

So they had to restrain their greatest obstacle: Musashi. Matsudaira would rule the Far East after Hashiba. Musashi were the inheritors of that name, so Hashiba had to stop them and then convince them to accept, protect, and complete the Genesis Project.

Musashi had to be stopped here.

The landing troops had made decent progress on the Musashi. They had also made some preparations.

Even this would be enough for the nations that supported Hashiba to only conditionally accept Musashi’s power.

But they could take this further and acquire more than just political power.

“We’re trying to win this.”

Below, the Azuchi was making a desperate push to settle things with the Musashi.

Their final attempt to stop the Musashi would be a ship battle. It would have been Takenaka, who could make decisions the rest of them could not, who had concluded they could win if they dedicated all their fighting power to this.

That meant Yoshiaki and Angie had to hurry up. They had to stop their mothers here to prevent those two from joining the final showdown between the ships.

And while dodging the homing scattershot launched by those opponents, Angie called out from the other side of their joined broom.

“Kime-chan! Let’s do it!”

It saddened Yoshiaki that she couldn’t give a “sure thing” in response, but that was just how she was.

●

Naruze viewed the movement below from the sky above. She activated an observation spell outside of the joined Weiss Fraulein and sent the recorded data to the Musashi. At the same time, she handled firing control by drawing a bunch of spells and shoving them mostly into Schwarz Fraulein’s bullet stocker.

“It’s mostly ether bullets since we can’t scatter physical bullets everywhere, but that’s pushing our fuel closer and closer to the danger line!”

“I’d really like to end this quick and get back to the Musashi!”

But their daughters were putting up a fight. Yes, they saw those two as their daughters more than their enemies. After all, their handling of their schale besens and the way they used their wings to make course corrections were nearly identical.

So as she fired, Naruze would think “Oh, I bet they’ll dodge this like that” and that prediction would prove accurate.

So with that in mind, she sent some attacks with the timing intentionally thrown off, but…

…They still dodge them!

Their course would occasionally become geometric. That was a huge pain to deal with.

Because Naruze had a habit of thinking of her enemy as an object being carried by the wind. That led her to predict their course along curving lines, but those two would take sharp corners to dodge.

Was that the result of using gravitational control to fly?

Meanwhile, Naruze did have to let the wind carry her to dodge their attacks. Dodging the tightly-packed homing attacks took a lot of doing, so…

“Not bad!” happily exclaimed Margot as she reduced their acceleration as if holding their heads down.

Naruze understood. Those two were their enemy, but they were also their descendants.

Part of her was proud of them for surviving and making it this far.

She no longer doubted their claim. Not after they put up a fight like this. But…

…Yeah.

It’s about time, she thought. And Margot, while bringing their acceleration back up…

“Ga-chan.”

“Yes,” replied Naruze. She was about done. “It’s ready. I’ve drawn up their ‘quirks’ that let me predict their evasive maneuvers with a greater than 90% success rate, so load it into our homing settings.”

She tossed a spell over, which Margot dropped into Schwarz Fraulein’s targeting section. The spell was immediately sent to Schwarz Fraulein and Weiss Fraulein’s ammo bucket, followed by the clink of as many 10-yen coins as they had ammunition.

“Let’s take this as far as we can. To pay those kids back for what they showed us.”

I’m taking this really seriously, huh? thought Naruze as she looked to Margot.

Margot was smiling a little.

“What is it, Margot?”

“Oh, I was just noticing how much more grownup you seem.”

“Just get on with it,” said Naruze as she gave fire control authorization.

“Herrlich!”

●

Here it comes, realized Angie. This was not the same gun blasts or homing scattershot from before.

“Kime-chan!”

Their mothers launched rolls of coins while flying nearly side by side. And Angie thought she sensed something different about these ones. No, there really was something different.

The previous ones had tried to obstruct them by blocking their way forward.

But these were different.

These took a straight line toward Angie and Yoshiaki, making them almost seem lazily tossed their way.

Yoshiaki seemed to sense danger from Angie’s shout and the path of the bullets.

“Angie!”

Telling Angie to begin evasive action, Yoshiaki sat up a bit from Weiss Fürstin. But…

…Uh, oh!

The bullets flying toward them were too well centered. Their opponents had launched the rolls of coins in positions that ensured the distance from the bullets and the danger presented by them would be the same no matter which why they flew. Which meant…

“We can’t dodge these!”

Angie’s senses accepted that fact and, just as she realized evasion wasn’t an option, the bullets split apart and scattered.

They covered the full 360 degrees. The barrage seemed to envelop them as it flew in and Angie thought it looked a lot like a wing.

So she made a decision. No, she had already decided what to do when her senses told her it was hopeless.

“––––!”

She followed her instincts, doing whatever she thought was best to resist and to avoid losing.

●

Hirano saw light burst in the sky.

The ether light component was powerful. She knew what had been loaded in the blast, but…

“Are those…?”

Shards. Black metal shards were thrown across the sky. Her targeting spell detected a blade made from hundreds of Orei Metallo and her memories told her it was…

…Schwarz Fürstin!

Only one thing could have made that aircraft explode into ether light and scatter shards.

It had been shot down.

●

No one cheered.

On the Musashino bridge, Suzu had been following the dogfight between the four people and the two brooms.

Currently, Zwei Fraulein were flying north above the Musashi as it was forced into a counterclockwise turn by the Azuchi. And they left an explosive force behind them.

That was the enemy and Naito and Naruze’s daughters. The automata coolly accepted this fact.

“Are they alright? Over.”

Suzu hurriedly checked the situation in the sky. And…

…Eh?

She detected someone in the scattering shards and ether light.

She could tell there were two of them. And she could tell they were the Ten Spears’ Technohexen.

But there was one thing she couldn’t tell at the current resolution of her perception. Those two had supposedly been shot down, but they weren’t falling. They simply existed there within the explosion. And…

“Watch out!” Suzu shouted into the divine transmission. “They haven’t lost!”

●

“Failure isn’t an option…”

Yoshiaki stood in the sky, catching her breath.

She was alive. She wasn’t harmed. Despite the size of the explosion, she didn’t have a scratch on her. But…

“Angie!”

She held Weiss Fürstin in her arms. On the other side, a black winged figure had her arms wrapped around the broom with her head lowered.

That was Angie.

She had separated Schwarz Fürstin and thrown it into the path of the homing barrage.

Even Yoshiaki’s split-second analysis had concluded that barrage had cut off all escape angles. Angie had responded by using Schwarz Fürstin as a shield.

They had used Weiss Fürstin and Schwarz Fürstin’s defense modes to avoid blasts and airborne detritus during the Battle of Shizugatake.

Angie had just done that against the barrage.

Before Yoshiaki realized what was happening, Angie had already rushed out ahead. And with a smile back toward Yoshiaki…

“This is where I’m supposed to take the lead.”

Standing on Weiss Fürstin’s nose, she had thrown Schwarz Fürstin forward and activated it.

From there, everything happened just as she had seen it. Schwarz Fürstin was hit and broken, Yoshiaki caught Angie as she was thrown back, she sent Weiss Fürstin onward, and she activated its anti-ship cannon mode.

“Mama!” she shouted, aiming.

Thinking she could launch an attack now, she gave full authorization to the fire control.

“Herrlich!” she tried to shout, but never got the full word out.

Because she saw a light in her targeting spell.

Up ahead, she didn’t see their mothers’ departing combined broom. Instead…

…A gun barrel!?

Their mothers were aiming their schale besen this way in sniper mode.

●

Suzu understood everything once the resolution increased.

She understood that the shots Naito and Naruze had fired before had only been meant to buy time.

Their true attack came later. Naito sat atop the separated Weiss Fraulein, wielding Schwarz Fraulein as a sniper cannon.

Occupying the seat backwards, she placed Schwarz Fraulein atop the rear thruster to fix the cannon in place and aim it at the two Technohexen behind them.

Naruze, meanwhile, had her feet on the control panel below Weiss Fraulein’s seat, leaning forward but twisted around to look backwards.

Suzu couldn’t tell from here what the two of them were saying. The low resolution kept her from seeing their faces clearly, but she could tell Naito nodded.

That concluded their conversation. Weiss Fraulein jerked in slight acceleration.

Meanwhile, Schwarz Fraulein was aiming at the two Technohexen and their one cannon.

“Yes…”

Suzu thought “sorry”, but she remained silent. Because that word would show contempt and pity for the two Technohexen who had worked so hard out there.

She simply nodded and sensed what happened.

As the two Technohexen wielding the cannon, their cannon broke apart starting from the end and…

“––––––”

The two of them were blown away and began to fall.

●

“Ga-chan.”

Naito sighed and called to her partner. And before Naito could turn around, Naruze let out a breath and spoke.

“I would love to soak in a huge hot spring and complain about how worn out I am.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Naito turned around, pulled Schwarz Fraulein toward her, changed its direction, and hopped onto it.

Then she looked to Naruze who had returned to her seat while looking down.

She was worried about the falling pair. Naito was as well, so…

“Can you see them?”

“No, I can’t. They’re not showing up on an ether scan, so I think their brooms were completely destroyed.”

But Naruze stopped talking altogether after that.

“What is it, Ga-chan?”

Naruze was the more intuitive type. If she had an opinion, it was safest to hear it. So Naito tilted her head and…

“The existence of those brooms means Edel Brocken exists in the future, doesn’t it? And those brooms were contained in those two’s phase space allotment.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. …The External Blessings used as a catalyst to extract them from the future apparently also brought over any divine weapons stored in their allotted space.”

That kind of gear probably counted as part of them. Naito wanted to ask Asama-chi for her opinion on that, but…

“…Ga-chan?”

“Eh? Oh, I just had a thought is all. We Technohexen don’t do things in half-measures, right?”

Then…

“What did our future selves do with those kids?”

●

Yoshiaki was falling.

…I can’t believe this.

They had lost. Physically dropping through the air also caused her mood to drop, but that metaphor didn’t seem to fit when she was flipped upside-down like this.

And while she wanted to say she was plummeting straight toward the ground, she was actually being blown around a bit as her wings caught the wind.

She honestly felt nauseated.

They say winged species have tougher internal organs, but apparently they still can’t take a long drop from extreme high altitude. That’s a new discovery.

But the taste of defeat was a bitter thing.

They had made it through so much over the past few years and they had followed their mothers’ activities since they became Musashi officers.

Several factors had worked against them.

She wanted to blame it on their exhaustion from Shizugatake.

But a loss was a loss.

So she was falling.

However, that was more about her mood.

She was falling, but she wouldn’t sink into the sea. She wanted to right herself and work her wings to regain control before it reached that point. And just as she thought that…

“Kime-chan!”

With that sudden cry, someone grabbed her arm.

She heard a loud flapping of wings overhead as Angie soared in.

…Eh?

It shouldn’t have been a surprising reunion since they had been falling together, but Angie was in weirdly high spirits.

“What is it, Angie?”

Her falling momentum vanished. So she spread her wings and sensed the salty air rising from below. Realizing just how far she had fallen, she took a look around.

“––––––”

Angie was looking her way with the nighttime coast of Osaka Bay behind her.

But Yoshiaki realized something. There was light around them. It was early morning, yet things were plenty bright and the distant rumble of the Azuchi and the Musashi artillery continued.

But Angie’s face was not masked with shadow.

Because she held something with her left hand while holding Yoshiaki’s arm with her right.

A Magie Figur. It displayed a divine mail, informing them of a delivery. It read:

Notification:

Good evening. This is the Edel Brocken R&D Department.

We imagine our world has already vanished and you are busy working to recover it. We will continue resisting for the time being, but it is likely we will be unable to support you for much longer.

Therefore, in the unlikely event the Weiss Fürstin and Schwarz Fürstin we have given you are damaged beyond repair, we would like to grant you the right to use these prototypes as a spare.

Contents:

Prototype Weiss Fürstin Form 2

Prototype Schwarz Fürstin Form 2

If you are seeing this message, it means you have used your Weiss Fürstin and Schwarz Fürstin to the very limit. While these are prototypes, we believe you are qualified to use these new models. Please use them to their fullest. This will likely be our last job for you, so we would like to proudly present you with these products as our way of saying goodbye.

That wasn’t all. There was another divine mail as well. The second one to appear was only two lines long.

The two lines were handwritten and they recognized the distinct handwriting of each line.

“How are things going? Have you grown up yet?”

“But it’s okay if you’re still kids.”

●

Yoshiaki shouted. She spread her arms toward the sky and yelled.

“Come, Weiss Fürstin!”

Angie raised her voice. She spread her arms up into the sky and yelled.

“Come here, Schwarz Fürstin…!”

Immediately, a giant coffin was ejected behind each of them.

●

“Ah,” said Suzu.

It happened all of a sudden. The appearance, the insistence, and the speed all carried greater strength than she had ever seen, so at first she thought a ramming transport ship or a Kanesada-class cannon blast had shot up from below the ships.

But she was wrong.

…An aerial warship?

No. It was about seven meters long. But the ether reading displayed to her through heat was too hot for her to touch.

“Suzu-sama! What is that? Over!”

“Musashino” initially expressed caution with her voice. But that mass of power was in fact…

“Schale besens!?”

Suzu recognized the thruster light pattern they produced during acceleration. These were high tempo versions of the schale besens used by Naito and Naruze’s daughters. So…

“Ga-chan! Go-chan! Be…careful!”

●

Yoshiaki was crying.

She had initially suppressed it all again, but when she realized it wasn’t going to end there, it all came flooding out.

…We will stop you.

They would stop their mothers. She had had her thoughts on that, but she had always worked to keep a cool head so those feelings wouldn’t control her.

Because if they failed here, their helplessness would hit them all the harder. They had already failed to do anything when their mothers left and when their world disappeared and they had only been able to pray when working to repair their world.

Was it arrogant to think they could stop their mothers when they had failed to do anything before?

It was that thought that had led to her defeat and fall.

She thought that had been an answer to the question.

But she also remembered some things.

First, when their mothers had left. Next, something she had kept suppressed for so long rose up from her memories. It was something she had kept sealed away because she thought she couldn’t accomplish anything.

“Mama!”

The word she had shouted when firing the shot that failed to reach them was in fact what she really wanted.

They had asked if they had grown up.

They had said it was okay if they were still kids.

Yes.

It’s okay to be kids. It’s okay if we’re children.

We’re here to stop you, so it’s okay if we’re your children. We just have to show you what we inherited from you, how much we can do, and how much power we have.

“…!!”

She flew up high into the sky.

And when she looked down, she saw their mothers there. Those two were already aiming their combined broom’s nose this way.

…They’re ready.

How long had it been since she let her mothers see her cry? No, this was her first time letting those two see it. There was no point in wiping away the tears. She only had to make sure that she never need receive a divine mail like that again.

And to prevent all of that from ever happening…

“Angie.”

“Sure thing,” replied Angie, flying alongside her. “You take the lead from here on, okay?”

●

Naruze could see a great change in their daughters’ brooms.

…How is that fair!?

Zwei Fraulein’s second form was quite large for a schale besen, but this one was the size of a large flying boat and just the thrusters made from acceleration panels were the size of Naruze and Naito’s brooms.

It had two main wings and front wings. Simply based on the volume, it had to have nearly eight times the acceleration panels of the previous schale besens.

“Yeah, this is the problem with the future.”

Margot was right about that. But they had no choice but to fight back.

So instead of just watching, they flew right in.

“Let’s go, Margot!”

By the time the words were out of her mouth, they were being pursued by their daughters’ broom.

…Huh?

She didn’t know what had happened. But she knew what the result was.

Their daughters had circled behind them in an instant.

●

…That’s not good!

Naito got them started as if kicking their combined broom forward. They had had plenty of acceleration before, but she had concluded it wasn’t enough for this opponent.

She didn’t rely on intuition, so she “understood” that this opponent was dangerous.

This was Edel Brocken’s doing.

Schwarz Fraulein and Weiss Fraulein’s first and second forms had greatly different specs. The point was to expand on the brooms’ strengths, but what if the same had been done to their opponents’ brooms?

Those brooms were meant to fly using gravitational control alone.

That size wasn’t for show or a bluff. When making full use of gravitational control, that was the ideal size.

This was not good.

Zwei Fraulein used thrusters and was designed to catch the wind and soar. Even taking some bias into account, thruster acceleration operated in straight lines, so they had to catch the wind with their wings to curve their course.

That meant they took a curving course when making a turn, but their opponent’s broom could ignore all that and take perfect right angle turns.

Naito and Naruze couldn’t gain any ground during a loop anymore.

“Ga-chan!”

“I’m drawing it!”

Naruze drew them flying along the optimal course and set that as a guide line.

Their opponents’ broom was directly behind them. They couldn’t pull away at all.

…C’mon, future!

What were our future selves thinking? wondered Naito. Couldn’t you have built something better than that monstrous thing? I’m serious.

But they were truly being chased here. And on the top of their opponent’s broom, the white Technohexen, Katou Yoshiaki, was crying.

…Oof. We didn’t do anything, but I guess we did something.

At any rate, those two seemed to be really fired up. Naito and Naruze had to do something about it, but they were already approaching their top speed and would be pushing up against their limits from here on.

But this was all they could do.

Their opponents could take the shortest route at all times. Naito and Naruze only had a chance in their straight-line acceleration. Along a direct course, acceleration method didn’t matter.

But even then, their opponents were superior.

“This is bad,” said Naruze. “I didn’t know they were our daughters, so I drew a doujinshi about them during the Iga Crossing. I wonder if they saw it.”

“Wow, you’re a terrible mother, Ga-chan. I wonder if they’ll forgive you.”

The daughters mercilessly increased their speed.

●

It all came down to an instant.

Just as Zwei Eisen was closing in, Zwei Fraulein opened its ammo bucket and fired a volley of homing shots.

Those turned into hundreds of beams of light that drew out curves toward Zwei Eisen.

Zwei Eisen danced in response.

Ignoring the air and wind this high in the sky, the Magie Figurs on the wing-like metal panels activated the atmosphere buffering spells used by aerial ships. It tore through it all and transformed.

Zwei Eisen was a collection of acceleration panels. They were held together by gravitational control, so they used that gravitational control to become something else. So the acceleration panels cleared a path for the incoming homing shots or, when that wasn’t possible, rearranged its wings, all without losing speed.

From the outside, it appeared to be hit by the homing shot counterattack. But the schale besen’s surface tore itself open and, like falling dominoes, carved holes and valleys along the paths of the bullets.

The enemy shots passed through those transformed holes and valleys.

Then it all re-transformed, the holes instantly filling in, and its original form returning.

It didn’t defend.

It remained untouched by remaking itself to allow the enemy shots to pass through it. And Zwei Eisen took a certain response when some of the homing shots still closed in.

A thruster panel covering the width of the wing separated off from the rear of the wing and split into countless smaller panels.

Each of these small thruster panels followed along as a part of Zwei Eisen. And when the homing shots noticed them and began pursuing them…

“––––––”

Zwei Eisen accelerated a bit, as if taking a single step forward.

The homing shots attempted to strike the thruster panels lined up behind it, but they were allowed to pass through where they collided with each other and erupted.

They detonated.

Zwei Eisen fully accelerated, leaving the multi-stage explosions and other attacks behind.

It resumed pursuit of Zwei Fraulein out ahead.

It closed in. The coast of the Catholic part of south M.H.R.R. was visible below. In the sky above, Zwei Eisen pursued its mother broom and dove into a position directly behind it.

Immediately, Zwei Fraulein split apart.

The two Technohexen spread their wings at high speed, the black one directing her schale besen straight up and the white one directing hers straight down before they accelerated.

The wind roared and gold and black feathers scattered from their wings as they forced an air brake.

That way Zwei Eisen would overshoot them after losing sight of them in the center.

●

…How about that!?

Naruze’s idea had been a sudden air brake. No matter how high the specs of a broom, as long as it had a pilot, its reaction speed would be that of its pilot.

At high speed, even the slightest reaction delay to something occurring out ahead of you would be dangerous. In even a second’s delay, you would travel hundreds of meters.

So that was what they had done.

By splitting up vertically, their opponents wouldn’t know which one to pursue.

It caused them damage too when they crashed into the air like that, but nothing less than this would have worked on opponents like these.

From there, Naruze only had to aim toward the opponents who had shot past them and fire on them while Margot did the same.

“To settle this!”

But just as she readied Weiss Fraulein, she sensed a presence behind her.

…Huh?

She didn’t even need to turn around. She recognized the cool metallic noise produced by a collection of thruster panels.

“What kind of broom is that?”

As soon as she shrugged and expressed her thoughts, she was blown away by a point-blank cannon blast.

She took a direct hit.

●

“Ga-chan!”

Naito understood what had happened.

Even while flying at such great speed, the Zwei Eisen broom had returned using gravitational control, split apart, and then circled behind Naito and Naruze.

Naito pursued Naruze and Weiss Fraulein as they fell below, but…

“Stop, Naito Mama.”

She heard a calm but slightly out-of-breath voice at her ear.

Wakisaka Angie. A Schwarz Hexen. Naito had prioritized Naruze over attacking, but this girl hadn’t overlooked her and pursued.

Knowing what was going to happen to her, Naito spoke. She didn’t even look back and continued her pursuit of falling Naruze.

“We should talk sometime once this is over.”

“…Yeah.”

That word was followed by a blow.

Why am I trying to act cool? wondered Naito as she reached her hand out toward Naruze.

But her hand didn’t reach and the impact she took dropped her vision into darkness.

…Wow.

Feeling like everything was spilling from her hand, she fell.

The two of them were swept apart by the wind, reaching a point past the nighttime scenery of M.H.R.R. She thought it was a mountain range, but that was her last conscious thought.

●

“Mama.”

Yoshiaki was weeping and looking up into the sky, but Angie didn’t stop her.

The two of them were here now with more power than they knew what to do with.

Did this mean they had claimed air superiority? But their battlefield had strayed far from the Azuchi and the Musashi, taking them north. They wanted to hurry back and assist, but…

…Oh, our fuel’s getting pretty low.

Their previous brooms hadn’t been great in that regard either, but these ones really ate up the fuel. They would have to check to see if they could refuel at the Azuchi first, but something else mattered more at the moment.

“Kime-chan.”

“We stopped them.”

“Testament. We did.” Angie then spoke the words in her heart. “It was a long road here, huh?”

“Thank you.”

She didn’t know what Yoshiaki was thanking her for. After all, they had shot down their mothers, sending them to the pit of darkness below.

But they knew this had been the only way. If they were to use all of the power they had, there hadn’t been any other way.

Angie looked down.

She couldn’t see their fallen mothers anymore, but those two were Musashi residents and flying Technohexen. They would have descent spells ready and the spells were likely set to activate automatically. So she would just have to trust what her mother had said.

“…We’ll be able to talk sometime.”

So for now, she told the others what they had accomplished. She opened a communication Magie Figur and transmitted to the Azuchi.

“Zwei Eisen here. Mission accomplished.”

She conveyed what they had wanted for so long.

“We stopped ours!”

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