Difference between revisions of "My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume9 Chapter 4"

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==Chapter 4==
  
==Chapter 4==
   
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===Part 3===
  
===Part 3===
  +
  +
Our daily routine was broken even further.
  +
  +
It was the afternoon but still not late enough for school to be out, yet we left the school grounds and entered the city.
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
The Class Rep was still shaky from shock, but that was exactly why I didn’t want to leave her back at the school. Yeah, I’ll admit it. It was half my fear of the moral hazard there, but half my own selfishness. So I took her hand and had her come with me.
  +
  +
Even though I normally wouldn’t physically be capable of that or even able to work up the courage to try.
  +
  +
“Maxwell.”
  +
  +
“Sure. I am still in contact.”
  +
  +
However, there was no way of reaching Erika since she was asleep. I instead called Ayumi while searching around the area, but there was no sign of Umikaze anywhere.
  +
  +
“The microplastic snow is still falling and will have covered up any footprints, but this is more than that,” said Maxwell. “As a Scylla, Umikaze Speechia can use those special legs and a fish tail. That means she can distribute her weight to not leave footprints and maybe even swim through a river or through the sewer down a manhole. Using a 2D map app to look for possible escape routes will not be enough to track her down.”
  +
  +
A silent missile had already been launched.
  +
  +
Our job was to get ahead of it and shoot it down before it hit.
  +
  +
Unfortunately, we didn’t know who exactly Umikaze was going to attack.
  +
  +
“Wh-what do we do? What can we do?”
  +
  +
After we left the school grounds, Itou Helen’s previous courage seemed to vanish. She looked about ready to gnaw on her thumbnail if left to her own devices.
  +
  +
But this situation left us with no choice.
  +
  +
“Itou-san, we need to split up.”
  +
  +
“Eh?”
  +
  +
“We don’t know where the ‘missile’ is going to hit, so staying together will only slow us down. You go ensure your own family is safe.”
  +
  +
It might look like I was abandoning her, but this was actually the right thing to do. She could defeat the Scylla on her own without a scratch. The Class Rep and I would only weigh her down and having to check on a stranger’s family or my sisters would be too much of a burden when her own family was at risk.
  +
  +
“But if Umikaze got there first and took your family hostage, make sure to contact us. We’ll sneak in and save you. No matter what she threatens to do, do not get rid of your phone.”
  +
  +
“B-but what if she’s gone after one of your families!? You’re human, so you can’t protect them!”
  +
  +
“I’ve contacted Ayumi and she’s an Archenemy, so things will change once I meet up with her. Doing it like this is the only way that makes sense.”
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
“And if we split up, it’s impossible for her to wipe us all out at once. If Umikaze shows up at our place, I’ll contact you. I’d really appreciate it if you came to rescue me.”
  +
  +
“Don’t do anything rash before I get there.”
  +
  +
She looked terribly conflicted.
  +
  +
But she had to be worried about her family.
  +
  +
“I mean it, Senpai.”
  +
  +
She probably wasn’t going to leave me herself, so I raised a hand to say goodbye and made my way down a separate street.
  +
  +
The Class Rep was with me.
  +
  +
While we naturally took the same route, that childhood friend spoke to me.
  +
  +
“Hey, Satori-kun. I’m sure that girl noticed what you were doing.”
  +
  +
“I know she did.”
  +
  +
Umikaze Speechia was a villain.
  +
  +
But she was also a coward, so she was more aware of the hierarchy of power than anyone. She would never choose the option that would force a battle with someone she couldn’t beat.
  +
  +
If she could choose between a human and an Archenemy, she was bound to aim for the human who she could beat.
  +
  +
And if she knew enough about my family, she would know the only presence in my house during the day was my Vampire sister who couldn’t leave her coffin.
  +
  +
But.
  +
  +
“To be honest, I’ve had her do too much already. She fought a few times before saving you, Class Rep. She was even crushed beneath a collapsed ceiling.”
  +
  +
I had no guarantee of success.
  +
  +
Itou-san had bailed me out every step of the way. I had failed miserably already, so I couldn’t continue relying on her. If I kept going to her since she was an Archenemy, how could I ever make up for it if something happened to her?
  +
  +
“But that underclassman might not appreciate this, you know?”
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
“Then again, it might be how you actually worry about these things that leads so many Archenemies to open up to you.”
  +
  +
This was the usual route home, but my feet felt so heavy. The weight in my gut seemed to grow with every step I took.
  +
  +
And.
  +
  +
“Fugu?”
  +
  +
I heard a familiar voice once we arrived in front of my house.
  +
  +
Ayumi was impatiently hopping up and down on the road in front of the small gate next to the newspaper box.
  +
  +
“I ran all the way home since you said to hurry back, so why did you leave me waiting here?”
  +
  +
…?
  +
  +
Ayumi’s question suggested she had not found any trouble yet.
  +
  +
“Where’s Umikaze? Do you mean nothing happened after all???”
  +
  +
“Don’t ask me.”
  +
  +
Umikaze Speechia was an Archenemy.
  +
  +
A Scylla was an ocean monster, so she would have a different range of movement than humans like us. Had she not been after a hostage after all and instead dived into the ocean to swim away from Kukyou City while all ordinary transportation routes were sealed off?
  +
  +
“I wonder what’s happening with, um, that girl?”
  +
  +
“Her name is Itou-san.”
  +
  +
I called my cute underclassman just to be safe.
  +
  +
“No, there’s no trouble here,” she said. “Well, other than the trouble I’m in with my mom for returning from school so early.”
  +
  +
Based on the normal routine, that made sense.
  +
  +
Our school had partially devolved into a fight for our lives, but none of it would sound real to anyone outside the school. Social media was so full of misinformation that no one would be taking anything there seriously.
  +
  +
So.
  +
  +
“Um, Senpai, what are we going to do now?”
  +
  +
“Hm?”
  +
  +
Umikaze hadn’t shown up.
  +
  +
But we had to qualify that with the word “yet”. Since we didn’t know where she was, we would have to stay on our guard. Taking a hostage was the simplest and most effective method for Umikaze, so things might be peaceful now, but that could change in the very near future.
  +
  +
Which meant…
  +
  +
“Any home or workplace she could have looked up in the school’s database is too risky. We’ll have to move our entire families elsewhere until we settle things with her.”
  +
  +
“Um, but how?”
  +
  +
“We’ll have to find a room for them, so maybe a weekly apartment or a business hotel. And if all of those are full up…given the state of the city, sleeping in a car would be too dangerous. In the worst case, we might have to use a manga café or spa.”
  +
  +
“No, um, I don’t mean that.”
  +
  +
My underclassman wasn’t sure what to say, but I finally realized what she meant.
  +
  +
She hadn’t asked where we would go.
  +
  +
She had asked how.
  +
  +
“Umikaze-san is your classmate and she hasn’t actually broken into anyone’s house yet.”
  +
  +
“Are you for real?”
  +
  +
The Class Rep and I exchanged a glance.
  +
  +
Reality had suddenly rushed in at us.
  +
  +
Her family was not going to act until a crime had actually been committed.
  +
  +
This felt like dealing with a cop who only did the bare minimum to continue taking home a paycheck.
  +
  +
“H-how am I supposed to convince my parents? Asking them to leave home and live outside with the microplastic snow falling isn’t going to go over well. I feel like they might just get mad without really hearing me out.”
   
 
===Part 4===
  
===Part 4===
  +
  +
If this were a movie or a drama and we knew a great enemy or disaster was approaching our home, we could throw a bag full of clothes to our family and shout “Get in the car, now!”
  +
  +
But what were you supposed to do in reality?
  +
  +
“Fuguu.”
  +
  +
On that front, I was fairly lucky.
  +
  +
My parents were stuck outside the city and thus relatively safe, so I didn’t have to convince them. That left Erika and Ayumi, but neither of them was normal. They were weirdly used to this sort of thing, so that “now!” would actually work with them.
  +
  +
This would be more of a problem for…
  +
  +
“Oh, no. Is that Class Rep having to argue with her mom? It’s been half an hour since she went in, but she still hasn’t contacted us.”
  +
  +
My little sister was as impatient as ever.
  +
  +
“Here, Ayumi, you’ve got snow on your head.”
  +
  +
“Fugu. That’s microplastic, so it won’t come off if you brush at it with your hand.”
  +
  +
I had thought the Class Rep would be out soon, but snow had accumulated on our heads out here. We should have brought an umbrella.
  +
  +
We hadn’t solved the Umikaze Speechia problem.
  +
  +
Itou-san had pumped her full of venom, so she was as good as defeated already and she would pass out sooner or later. But at the same time, the Circe Witch and the Scylla were related Archenemies, so that venom wouldn’t work as well against her.
  +
  +
So there was no guarantee.
  +
  +
Even if she was barely clinging to life, if Umikaze refused to give up and managed to attack someone in their sleep, that was that. We couldn’t abandon our families until we were 100% certain of their safety.
  +
  +
Everything outside was covered in the microplastic snow.
  +
  +
Its flammability had already been proven yesterday. Some malicious person could start a great conflagration like a single spark starting a wildfire.
  +
  +
“What do we do if that Class Rep comes crying to us?” asked Ayumi.
  +
  +
“We’ll have to go convince her mom ourselves.”
  +
  +
“But how do we do that???”
  +
  +
Ayumi had been like this the whole time.
  +
  +
I doubt she had any real problem with the Class Rep’s mom, so it felt more like she had seen a ghost and was wondering how to avoid being sent to a mental hospital after trying to explain what she saw to someone who stubbornly denied the existence of ghosts.
  +
  +
To be clear, the Class Rep’s mom was a normal person.
  +
  +
She was not a special or rare sort of person like my biological mom Magatsu Taori who had modified her own body for use against Archenemies or like my stepmom Amatsu Yurina who was in fact the ancient Demon Lord Lilith.
  +
  +
She was an adult woman who was fairly pretty for her age. Unlike my mom, she was a fulltime housewife. She did not have a part-time job or job she worked from home. Despite having glasses in common with the Class Rep, she had a gentleness to her that her daughter lacked, but she was also not some weak-willed person who would let her child tell her what to do. She had enough sense to not just accept the things said on talk shows and in tabloids, but she could be convinced to purchase the latest fad health foods or diet products advertised on midday infomercials. If I remembered correctly, she had a weakness for ads that emphasized time saving and efficiency.
  +
  +
Yes.
  +
  +
For better or for worse, she was an ordinary person.
  +
  +
Before Ayumi and the others became a part of my life, back when my original parents had turned my home into warzone where things could get bad at the drop of a hat, that normalcy had looked so bright when I saw it through the window.
  +
  +
“Fugu, I think you would have the best chance of convincing her, Onii-chan.”
  +
  +
“Don’t be silly. She isn’t some naïve person who will believe anything I say.”
  +
  +
I had taken shelter at the neighbor’s during that “war”, so she knew my tastes in food and what kind of pillow and toothbrush I liked. She had done so much more for me than she had to for a simple neighbor, so I was forever thankful. In that sense, she was like a third mother to me after both Magatsu Taori and Amatsu Yurina. Man, a chart of my relationships would be a real mess, wouldn’t it?
  +
  +
“Maxwell, create a conversational flowchart.”
  +
  +
“Will something like a phone scam guide work? Although I doubt it will be very effective.”
  +
  +
I had to offer the Class Rep some help before long.
  +
  +
I felt like it would break my spirit to ask something so seemingly absurd while looking the woman in the eye, so I decided to call her instead. I could tell I was getting cold feet before even starting, but that was because Maxwell had likened this to a scam. That made me feel like maybe this would work even with an adult.
  +
  +
So I called up the Class Rep’s phone.
  +
  +
I made an actual phone call instead of sending an email or leaving a message.
  +
  +
But…
  +
  +
“She isn’t answering. Is she being lectured right now or something?”
  +
  +
“Really? It’s going that bad?”
  +
  +
Her mom had never seemed like the type to just give an angry lecture like that, though. She had been the type to cut off all escape with a merciless barrage of super reasonable arguments and to do it all in the gentlest tone of voice possible.
  +
  +
It rang a few times before the connection died.
  +
  +
…?
  +
  +
“What’s wrong, Onii-chan?”
  +
  +
“Maybe nothing…”
  +
  +
I tilted my head while staring at my phone that had returned to the home screen.
  +
  +
Didn’t her phone connect to the voicemail service after a bit? Why had she switched that off now of all times???
  +
  +
This was different from being unable to touch her phone while her mom lectured her or being told to power it off until afterwards.
  +
  +
So what was this?
  +
  +
“Ayumi, just to be absolutely certain, you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when you arrived ahead of us?”
  +
  +
“Fugu. I checked all around inside the house, but nothing was out of place. There was no sign of anyone hiding in there and I could hear Onee-chan breathing inside the drawer she uses as a coffin. Although I didn’t actually open it since it’s still daytime. Besides, you’re the only one with a key to that queen size bed. Even she can only open it using the internal lock within the drawer below the bed.”
  +
  +
“Then what about the neighbors?”
  +
  +
Ayumi did not answer.
  +
  +
And her face gradually grew pale.
  +
  +
Yes.
  +
  +
During the ordinary routine, you could not just enter the neighbor’s house to search around. She would only have looked at the exterior and noted that none of the windows or locks were broken.
  +
  +
Umikaze had to have done something, but she had not been at my house or Itou-san’s house.
  +
  +
And hadn’t I mentioned that she was a coward and thus more aware of the hierarchy of power than anyone? She would focus her attack on humans instead of Archenemies. She would go for the weakest target first.
  +
  +
Which meant…
  +
  +
What if this was an SOS from the Class Rep? What if she was in too pressing a situation to send an email or message? What if all she could do was hold her phone behind her back and change this one little setting, hoping I would notice?
  +
  +
Archenemy Scylla.
  +
  +
She did not make the attack herself. She waited for the ship to cross the strait to reach her.
  +
  +
“Dammit, she’s in the Class Rep’s house! Is that where she laid her trap!?”
   
 
===Part 5===
  
===Part 5===
  +
  +
Umikaze Speechia was waiting.
  +
  +
The Class Rep had sent an SOS from the silent neighbor’s house.
  +
  +
The most important point was to not allow the Scylla to realize we had realized the truth. Does that sound confusing? Basically, we didn’t want to provoke the hostage taker. We were already a step behind and things would only get worse if she grew more cautious.
  +
  +
“(Ayumi.)”
  +
  +
I started off by confirming the rules via the social network app on our phones.
  +
  +
Our real instructions would be passed through the phone and everything we said out loud would be fake.
  +
  +
“Ayumi, we should probably bring an umbrella after all.”
  +
  +
“Fugu. Do you think we need a brush too?”
  +
  +
I had my Zombie little sister head back into the house. Separating the human from the Archenemy was risky, but we had no choice here.
  +
  +
''She'' had to be watching.
  +
  +
She would be holding her breath and peering out through the gap in the curtains to spy on every little thing we did out front.
  +
  +
So we had to use that to our advantage.
  +
  +
We would fix her gaze on one of us.
  +
  +
Ayumi had gone back inside, but I was still out on the street. That would leave Umikaze Speechia feeling uneasy. Especially since the phone in my hand could call in Itou Helen.
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
I would be messing with my phone regardless since I needed it to contact Ayumi, so why not use it to scare Umikaze at the same time? I was powerless to do anything myself, but I could at least scare the Scylla into watching me. Just like someone running an ego search despite fearing what they would find.
  +
  +
She had broken into someone’s house, prevented anyone from going in or out, and taken the residents hostage, but now she would be peeking out through the curtains in paranoia.
  +
  +
You’re nothing more than a criminal, Scylla.
  +
  +
This is just sad.
  +
  +
What happened to the Umikaze who was a mysterious transfer student, who behaved politely but always kept a position of superiority, who was beautiful, and who had an inimitable talent as an Archenemy?
  +
  +
A social media message arrived on my phone, but it was not from Maxwell.
  +
  +
“I’m inside the house. What do I do now, Onii-chan?”
  +
  +
“You’re free to move around because the Scylla’s eyes are on me. But you only have as long as it takes to grab an umbrella, so at most 3 minutes. Any longer and she’ll get suspicious.”
  +
  +
“And what am I supposed to do?”
  +
  +
“Use the 2nd floor balcony to climb in through their window. Or if there’s snow blocking that up, jump over onto the roof.”
  +
  +
The 2nd floor jump between houses was scary, but a human like me had done it on occasion. Zombies had 10 times the strength of humans, so Ayumi wouldn’t have any trouble at all.
  +
  +
Umikaze may have thought she had tricked Itou Helen and me by staying a step ahead of us at every turn, but she had broken into my childhood friend’s house. I knew the layout like the back of my hand.
  +
  +
She had underestimated that decade of experience.
  +
  +
“Miss Ayumi appears to have jumped from one roof to the other,” said Maxwell.
  +
  +
“I can see that.”
  +
  +
“Are we going to continue waiting on the ground as a distraction?”
  +
  +
“Of course not. We need to get ready in case dumb Ayumi screws this up.”
  +
  +
“Fuguu! This is a group chat, so I can see everything you type, Onii-chan!!”
  +
  +
Ayumi used her phone’s camera to begin a video chat. She used the phone’s screen to display the social media chat while using the lens on the back to show us everything she was seeing. …Of course, that meant she was walking around while using her phone, so I was a little worried about how her vision and one of her hands were occupied.
  +
  +
That meant we were still communicating via text, but the messages now popped up at the top of the screen. The way the video wobbled a lot as she typed in her message made me feel a little queazy.
  +
  +
“There must be at least two hostages,” I said. “Locate them first.”
  +
  +
“I know that.”
  +
  +
Ayumi moved from the roof to the balcony.
  +
  +
She checked in the windows of a few rooms.
  +
  +
“Doesn’t look like they’re on the 2nd floor. They could be in a closet or under a bed, though.”
  +
  +
“The Scylla wouldn’t be able to see me out here from there, so we at least know she isn’t hiding there. Anyway, can you open the window? If you have to break it, have Maxwell search out a good method.”
  +
  +
“No, it opened. I can get in through here.”
  +
  +
With one of the windows open, she stepped inside with her outdoor shoes still on.
  +
  +
“This looks like a married couple’s bedroom.”
  +
  +
“Don’t spend too long looking around. We’re short on time.”
  +
  +
But…
  +
  +
Even if the curtains were blocking out the light and keeping it dark, it was hard to believe that footage was of the Class Rep’s house that had seemed like such a safe space.
  +
  +
The rooms hadn’t been ransacked and there was no rust-smelling liquid splattered on the floor or walls, but I could still sense something sinister even through the camera.
  +
  +
Almost like Ayumi was exploring an old, abandoned building.
  +
  +
How lived-in the place looked, the cute stuffed animals, and the smiling mascots looked creepy because they felt almost out of place.
  +
  +
“Umikaze Speechia might not have a blade at the Class Rep and her mom’s throats. She might have placed a portable gas cylinder in their hands and then bound them with duct tape to do it more remotely.”
  +
  +
Ayumi made sure to check under the bed, below the dresser, in the closet, and anywhere else someone might be hidden. Then she cut silently across the room and apparently stuck her head out into the hallway. The phone in her hand was not held quite as high as her eyeline, so I could not see the hallway myself.
  +
  +
“Onii-chan, does that mean, in the worst case, securing the two hostages and the hostage taker will mean moving in on three points simultaneously?”
  +
  +
“If you need help, just ask. I can assist you from out here.”
  +
  +
“Then my top priority’s gotta be the Scylla.”
  +
  +
She put it dryly, but she was right.
  +
  +
It was natural to want to rescue the hostages first, but Ayumi would only be able to secure one of them at a time. So instead of playing her single card on just one of the hostages, it was safer to use that card to capture the single hostage taker. If the Scylla could not do anything, no one would get hurt.
  +
  +
“Nothing out of the ordinary on the 2nd floor. I’m heading down to the 1st.”
  +
  +
“Wait, Ayumi. There’s only one stairway. And unlike at school, walking on it will make noise someone below can hear. You can’t let her notice you.”
  +
  +
I knew the risks. It was scary, but it had to be done.
  +
  +
I did my best to act natural while I wandered up in front of the Class Rep’s house. That alone made it feel like I had run into a solid barrier of air. The Scylla was definitely watching. Instead of walking past their fence, I pressed the intercom button next to their mailbox.
  +
  +
“Class Reeep? Are you still not done? Hey, Miss Forehead Glasses!”
  +
  +
I decided to ring the intercom over and over.
  +
  +
I wanted that noise to distract Umikaze and cover up the sound of Ayumi descending the stairs.
  +
  +
The Scylla wanted to trap us, so she wouldn’t want me to realize I was being watched. What does that mean? It means she would want the Class Rep’s house to seem as normal as possible. This silence may have been her trying to decide whether or not to ignore the ringing intercom. But since she knew I knew the Class Rep was inside, she couldn’t just pretend like no one was home.
  +
  +
So what would she do?
  +
  +
Would she try to mimic the Class Rep’s voice over the intercom, or would she grab the Class Rep’s phone and send me a message saying she’s changing and can’t come out right now?
  +
  +
It didn’t matter to me.
  +
  +
What mattered was Ayumi’s view I could see through my phone. She was descending the stairs maddeningly slowly in her effort to be as silent as possible.
  +
  +
I was pretty sure the intercom monitor at the Class Rep’s house was on the dining room wall. If the Scylla was biting her thumb in front of that, my sister would not encounter her in the entranceway at the bottom of the stairs.
  +
  +
Right?
  +
  +
Hopefully the Scylla wasn’t pressed up against the front door using the analog peephole to look out.
  +
  +
My sister finally took the final step and her feet arrived on the 1st floor.
  +
  +
“Made it.”
  +
  +
“The dining room is highest risk. Check around before going there. See if you can find the Class Rep or her mother.”
  +
  +
“Class Reeep?” I called out loud again while moving from in front of the main entrance and circling around into the garage space. I came across the bath window before reaching the back garden.
  +
  +
The frosted glass window was closed, but I aimed my phone toward it regardless.
  +
  +
“Maxwell, analyze the polarization pattern and reconstruct the image.”
  +
  +
“There is no one inside.”
  +
  +
Frosted glass altered the image a lot less than a randomized digital mosaic. If you could send a laser from your phone to analyze how the light was scattered or analyzed the pattern of the reflected light, you could easily display the “original image”.
  +
  +
…This is for emergencies only. Do not abuse the ability, gentlemen.
  +
  +
I continued on around to the garden where the window had normal glass. Except there were white lace curtains in the way. The location meant this would be the living room. A simple cloth curtain was enough to prevent mathematical analysis from seeing through, but…
  +
  +
“Maxwell, switch on the night-vision camera option. Use IR to see inside.”
  +
  +
“Sure, sure. Why must I have a perverted user who only ever asks me to help him peep? (￣ー￣)”
  +
  +
It was well-known you could see through white swimsuits with IR, but you could do the same with thin dresses and curtains too.
  +
  +
“Nothing detected.”
  +
  +
“There are only so many places on the 1st floor you could stuff two people: the bathroom, the dressing room, and the dining room I’d already identified as a threat.”
  +
  +
Did Umikaze have the hostages lying at her feet? Even if their hands were tied behind their back, they could still resist. Keeping them there would take guts even if you were an Archenemy.
  +
  +
Or was she not thinking clearly due to the venom from Itou Helen?
  +
  +
That was no reason to relax. Just like with someone who had nothing left to lose, this would only make her a lot harder to predict.
  +
  +
“Be on your guard, Ayumi. The Scylla and the hostages might all be in the dining room.”
  +
  +
“But I’m in the dining room.”
  +
  +
“!?”
  +
  +
When that message popped up on the top of the screen, I just about had a heart attack.
  +
  +
I frantically moved aside the camera app I had filling up the small screen.
  +
  +
But.
  +
  +
Would Ayumi really have time to type out that message if she was facing Umikaze Speechia while a hostage or two were used as a human shield?
  +
  +
I brought back up the video that let me share my sister’s vision.
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
The stove and sink seemed lower than the ones in our kitchen. They must have been designed for the Class Rep’s mother’s height. I wasn’t as familiar with the price of kitchen stuff as I was with computers and phones, but it looked like each item had been chosen based on what suited her best instead of trying to keep a consistent aesthetic.
  +
  +
Ayumi opened up all the spaces that could be hiding someone: the fridge by the wall, the oven, the storage closet, and even the under-the-floor storage for spice bottles and an emergency supply of cup noodles.
  +
  +
“There’s no one here.”
  +
  +
“They must be somewhere else then.”
  +
  +
“I’ve checked the bathroom and dressing room. I even checked inside the diagonal drum of the washing machine. There’s no one in the house.”
  +
  +
“How is that possible, dammit!?”
  +
  +
I didn’t have it in me to continue acting.
  +
  +
I swore loudly and entered the living room from the garden. The dead silent room filled me with an awkward feeling, partially fueled by how I was standing inside with my outdoor shoes on. This was the awkwardness of entering someone’s house when they were out.
  +
  +
Ayumi poked her head out from the dining room.
  +
  +
She had apparently completed a circuit of the 1st floor.
  +
  +
That twin butter roll sister shook her head.
  +
  +
“Maxwell, what about the door to the underground shelter?”
  +
  +
“No. Only the one for your high school was opened. I doubt it is possible Umikaze Speechia could have used that to get in or out.”
  +
  +
“Even though you say she was probably in that facility back when it was running?”
  +
  +
“That only puts her at the same level as Miss Ayumi.”
  +
  +
Just to be sure, I peeked down the stairs to that door, but I could tell just from shining my phone’s light down there. I didn’t see anyone in front of that door which looked like it led to a bank vault.
  +
  +
I came to a stop in the foyer.
  +
  +
They weren’t here.
  +
  +
No one was here.
  +
  +
The Class Rep, her mom, and even Umikaze had vanished like a ghost ship out at sea.
  +
  +
Where had they gone?
  +
  +
What had the Scylla done and were those two all right!?
   
 
===Part 6===
  
===Part 6===
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
I needed to calm down and focus.
  +
  +
I had to throw out all speculation and think about what had actually happened.
  +
  +
The first thing I knew for sure was that the Class Rep had entered her house alone.
  +
  +
I knew her phone’s settings had been changed.
  +
  +
And I knew she had vanished from that house.
  +
  +
Everything else was speculation.
  +
  +
She had definitely disappeared, but the changed setting might not have been an SOS. It was even possible Umikaze Speechia had never been here.
  +
  +
But what would that mean?
  +
  +
Could the Class Rep have chosen to flee through the back garden of her own volition while we were waiting out on the street? Or could her mom (who we didn’t actually know had been at home) threatened her and taken her somewhere?
  +
  +
“It’s no use. I can’t figure anything out.”
  +
  +
“Fugu.”
  +
  +
Throwing out my assumptions was turning into an obsession that was in turn keeping me from thinking. I was avoiding the most straightforward possibility.
  +
  +
I had to think through this honestly.
  +
  +
I had to stop forcing myself to look for more-unlikely possibilities and I had to gather up what hints I had. But what conclusion would that lead me to?
  +
  +
“The Class Rep’s house would have been the best target for Umikaze.”
  +
  +
There must have been some kind of attack.
  +
  +
But the house had not looked ransacked and none of the windows or locks had looked broken.
  +
  +
It wasn’t impossible they had run afoul of some random robber or home invader, but that idea didn’t sit right with me.
  +
  +
The most likely option was Umikaze.
  +
  +
The living room window I had climbed in through had not been locked.
  +
  +
The Class Rep’s mom would have been surprised to see someone show up through there, but what if that person was wearing the uniform of her daughter’s school and said she was her daughter’s classmate? And what if that girl, who held a finger to her lips to ask for silence, had looked sickly pale from all the venom in her bloodstream?
  +
  +
That woman would have realized things were dangerous outside the home.
  +
  +
But.
  +
  +
That was exactly why she might have invited in the haggard girl, especially if she claimed to be her daughter’s friend. The girl wouldn’t be a stranger, so she couldn’t just throw her back into the danger outside.
  +
  +
On the other hand, Umikaze would not strictly need to deceive the woman.
  +
  +
If it didn’t work, she could break the window and use the woman as a human shield. Her trap would no longer function then, but she would still end up with the upper hand.
  +
  +
However…
  +
  +
“If Umikaze left along with her hostages, what actual options remain for her?”
  +
  +
Whether or not she was aware of it, the venom in her bloodstream would knock her out sooner or later.
  +
  +
So…
  +
  +
“Fugu. Come to think of it, she couldn’t win by taking a hostage and holing up in a single location. I mean, a long-term battle is bad for her, isn’t it?”
  +
  +
“Yeah, but running around with a hostage isn’t much better for her. Time is on our side, so we would only need to surround her from a distance and tell her to give up and come on out. We wouldn’t even need to locate her and capture her.”
  +
  +
That’s why I had assumed she would go for a short-term trap. I had assumed I was meant to notice something was amiss with the Class Rep and go investigate next door where the Scylla would be waiting to strike.
  +
  +
But she was gone.
  +
  +
She had run away.
  +
  +
Why would she draw this out like that?
  +
  +
“No, that is not an adequate explanation.”
  +
  +
“Maxwell?”
  +
  +
“If we assume Umikaze Speechia the Scylla has run away, how do we explain the disappearance of the two hostages?”
  +
  +
“Because she wanted them as human shields in case we tried to chase after her, right?”
  +
  +
“One hostage would be sufficient to stop you, user. I do not know how much stronger a Scylla is than a human, but taking two possible enemies with you while woozy from venom is highly illogical.”
  +
  +
“Fuguu. I really don’t want to hear the answer, but what if she brought them with her so they couldn’t give us any hint where she was going?”
  +
  +
“No. Then she could have simply killed the mother or the daughter and left them here. What reason would she have not to at this point?”
  +
  +
My heart felt like an invisible thread was squeezing it tight.
  +
  +
“I cannot see what the Scylla is trying to do. User, if you had an unknown venom in your veins, what would you want to do first?”
  +
  +
“I’d want an antidote, I guess.”
  +
  +
“Sure. Before choosing whether or not to defeat your enemy and whether or not to preserve your position, you would want to eliminate that venom. Yet Umikaze Speechia came here first instead of visiting a medical specialist. Why is that?”
  +
  +
“Fugu? But didn’t Onii-chan say it’s an Archenemy poison? A normal hospital can’t help you with that.”
  +
  +
Itou-san was a Circe Witch, so she used animal transformation potions.
  +
  +
A serum or antidote for the original animal’s venom might be able to save her, but those clear tentacles were a rare thing. Japanese hospitals wouldn’t be able to heal the venom from an Australian jellyfish.
  +
  +
Which meant…
  +
  +
“Even if she went somewhere else first, her ultimate goal would be Itou-san. She would demand an antidote for the venom.”
  +
  +
That meant she would want a hostage to get Itou-san to do as she said, so she would want to capture someone close to Itou-san.
  +
  +
And yet…
  +
  +
“No.”
  +
  +
Maxwell’s message felt like an attack.
  +
  +
“The forehead glasses Class Rep’s mother is like a friend of a friend for Itou Helen, so they have likely never even met. She would be unable to abandon the woman for moral reasons, but would seeing the woman in danger really make her feel like her heart was tearing in two?”
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
“Umikaze Speechia cannot defeat Itou Helen. The Circe Witch is the Colosseum Queen and she is also ranked above the Scylla. With that power balance in place, Umikaze cannot leave any room open for resistance. This will all be a waste if the antidote she is given turns out to be an even more powerful venom. So coming here seems like too much of a detour.”
  +
  +
“Fugu. So is she first using those hostages to get Onii-chan to obey and then using him to get that Circe girl to obey?”
  +
  +
“No. Like I said, that is too much of a detour. The Scylla cannot determine how long until she passes out, so she would want a solution as quickly as possible.”
  +
  +
If she was simply after an antidote, she would have attacked Itou-san’s family, taken them hostage, and used them to negotiate despite the risk. She had to act now due to the venom, so was Maxwell saying she would ignore the realistic risks and take a gamble?
  +
  +
But that isn’t what had happened.
  +
  +
Then had Umikaze come here for some other reason? We couldn’t work out where the Scylla had gone until we figured out what that was.
  +
  +
“M-maybe she didn’t give it that much thought.” Ayumi sounded hesitant to say this. “Maybe she’s desperate and wanted to take someone else out with her.”
  +
  +
“No. I have nothing to fully reject the possibility of her acting on illogical emotion, but if it could have been anyone, she would not have specifically targeted this house. For example, she could have set fire to the microplastic snow around the school to burn down that former fortress of hers.”
  +
  +
That was a frightening thought, but Maxwell was right. Umikaze had some kind of goal in mind. Taking hostages with you had to be a lot more difficult than I could imagine. It wouldn’t be as simple as putting a cat in a carrier to bring it to the vet.
  +
  +
Umikaze had come here.
  +
  +
Why?
  +
  +
She had taken the Class Rep and her mom away instead of killing them here.
  +
  +
Why?
  +
  +
“My house and the Class Rep’s are next door, yet she chose this one.”
  +
  +
“Isn’t that because she wanted to attack the powerless humans?” asked Ayumi.
  +
  +
“Even though the only person at our house was Erika who has to sleep during the day? She couldn’t resist any more than a human.”
  +
  +
“Then why?”
  +
  +
“She would have been feeling woozy from the venom, so a coffin would be too heavy to carry around as a hostage. I mean, that coffin is the drawer below a queen size bed. But if she dragged Erika out, she would turn to ashes in the sun. She wouldn’t be much of a hostage if she died. Umikaze needed someone who could walk on their own two legs.”
  +
  +
“Isn’t that still too much of a detour for simply pressuring Miss Itou Helen into providing an antidote?” asked Maxwell.
  +
  +
“It could have been anyone.”
  +
  +
Look at it the other way around.
  +
  +
Someone really had disappeared, so Umikaze must have had a reason for choosing them.
  +
  +
“She stole our personal information from the school database and that would include information on Itou-san’s family. She would at least know that Itou-san is the only Archenemy in her family. And what would Itou-san do if she’s shown a hostage?”
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
Ayumi was a Zombie.
  +
  +
She had incredible strength and she could make more Zombies by biting people.
  +
  +
But having power did not mean you would just use it blindly. Archenemies could join the rest of us at school because of that element of trust.
  +
  +
“Archenemies aren’t feared because they have monstrous power. It’s only when they lose the conscience that guides that power that they get treated as monsters. So what Archenemies fear most is having people think they’ve lost that conscience. …Itou-san won’t be able to hold back in front of her family. Even if the hostage is a complete stranger, she can’t choose to not hand over the antidote.”
  +
  +
Plus, Itou-san was generally the nervous small animal type.
  +
  +
Her experience in the nationally-broadcast Colosseum probably played a role, but she did not like having attention focused on her.
  +
  +
She was afraid of betraying people’s expectations.
  +
  +
She was afraid of standing up on the stage in the spotlight. If her family or any of us pressured her to hand over the antidote, she would hesitate to attack the Scylla even when she could easily win. Because she was afraid of destroying her relationship with her family or school friends in the process. She did not want her family to look at her with fear in their eyes and think of her as a coward or a monster.
  +
  +
If she screwed that up, she would lose everything.
  +
  +
Because when one available option made her look like a saint, every other option looked barbaric by comparison.
  +
  +
The Scylla was an Archenemy that used location and situation to divide up a group and plunge them into panic so she could control them as she pleased.
  +
  +
“That would be a dangerous gamble for her,” said Maxwell.
  +
  +
“Take it up with Umikaze. She might not be thinking straight thanks to the venom. But we do know she went for option 2. She’s after us as friends of Itou-san instead of just grabbing some random passerby.”
  +
  +
Itou-san could not choose to abandon a stranger in front of her family, but just in case she would choose to attack anyway, Umikaze must have wanted me or the Class Rep.
  +
  +
“But that does not explain why she took both hostages,” said Maxwell. “The Class Rep alone would work for that plan.”
  +
  +
That…was a good point.
  +
  +
We were the ones that could not allow a single person to be lost. Umikaze wouldn’t care.
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
But wait.
  +
  +
If I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I thought about it, was I wrong about some fundamental aspect of it?
  +
  +
“Maxwell.”
  +
  +
“Sure.”
  +
  +
“How much time would Umikaze have had left once she arrived at this house?”
  +
  +
“I have very detailed data on Miss Itou Helen’s specs from when I was supporting her in the Colosseum. To be blunt, it is strange that Umikaze Speechia is even still conscious. That may be due to the commonality between a Circe Witch and a Scylla.”
  +
  +
“In that case…”
  +
  +
“Did you figure something out, Onii-chan?”
  +
  +
Archenemies without special powers weren’t the only ones influencing this situation.
  +
  +
Even without Maxwell’s assistance, a human could find something they could do.
  +
  +
So could it be?
  +
  +
“Umikaze would have been so woozy she could barely stay standing.”
  +
  +
“Fugu. And?”
  +
  +
“But that wouldn’t eliminate her malicious intent. In fact, being so close to her limit could mean any attempt at playing innocent failed. …But the Class Rep’s mom is human. I was admittedly a lot younger at the time, but she had enough of a heart to shelter a stranger like me when she didn’t have to. So she would probably do the same for someone else. But what if she learned the person who showed up at her home without warning was actually lying in wait to harm her daughter?”
  +
  +
“Ah!?”
  +
  +
“Do you think she would have just let it happen? Sure, she was up against an Archenemy, but Umikaze would have been barely staying on her feet and it’s not like she could just call the police. She probably would have felt pressured into doing something herself.”
  +
  +
What did that mean?
  +
  +
Everyone had vanished from the house.
  +
  +
But what if it hadn’t been the Scylla who wielded violence there?
  +
  +
“Y-you mean that Class Rep’s mom did it!?” asked Ayumi.
  +
  +
“I have no proof, but that fits the situation better. Ayumi, did you see any bloodstains on the way here?”
  +
  +
“Of course not!”
  +
  +
“Neither did I. …That means it wasn’t a blade. Did she catch her off guard and wallop her with a dryer or something? If the house has power, she could have even electrocuted Umikaze.”
  +
  +
“Fugu? Wasn’t the intercom working?”
  +
  +
“That runs on a battery. Just like the smoke detectors on the ceiling.”
  +
  +
But that aside…
  +
  +
“Even if she did catch the Scylla by surprise and knock her out, I doubt she’s killed her yet. Then there would be a corpse inside here.”
  +
  +
Ayumi started to breath a sigh of relief, but then she noticed what I had said.
  +
  +
“Yet?”
  +
  +
“Why do you think they’re all gone? Kill her in the house, and they’d be the top suspects.”
  +
  +
The police were not functioning at the moment.
  +
  +
No matter how it looked, we had no idea how peaceful things were below the surface. The endless downpour of microplastic snow would cover up a lot of evidence and signs.
  +
  +
“B-but! I find it hard to believe she would attack someone like that. We’re talking about someone who crosses to the other side of the street when a dog barks at her while she’s taking a walk!!”
  +
  +
I walked through the house again while listening to Ayumi. I had my eyes on the floor. Everything looked nice and clean, but that was what struck me as odd. It was ''too'' clean. There was no keeping all the microplastic snow out when you opened and closed the door and that would make the floor all crunchy, but there was no trace of anyone having being in here other than us.
  +
  +
Had someone cleaned it all up very recently?
  +
  +
I crouched down on the dining room floor.
  +
  +
“This isn’t alcohol. It’s faint, but there’s a distinct chlorine scent.”
  +
  +
“Check the storage closet,” said Maxwell. “Do they have any industrial Perfect Wash?”
  +
  +
“Fugu?”
  +
  +
“That was originally a bleach used to get tough stains off of dress shirt collars and whatnot,” I explained. “But when used undiluted, I’ve heard it can fully break down DNA – that is, blood and saliva stains. That’s become famous enough that you sometimes see it used as online slang.”
  +
  +
Ayumi was dumbfounded.
  +
  +
But that didn’t sound like something a housewife would know offhand. I grabbed the recipe-searching tablet affixed to the fridge. You couldn’t trust fingerprint locks. Those same fingerprints were already all over the screen’s protective sheet.
  +
  +
Once past the lock screen, I performed a few operations and found this: “Bloodstains, how to eliminate”
  +
  +
“Even when you erase your local device’s search history, it’ll still be somewhere, either at a local base station or on the company server. And that you can’t erase without some very special software.”
  +
  +
I took a slow breath.
  +
  +
And I turned toward Ayumi who had gone pale.
  +
  +
“She must have been really mad that someone was not just attacking her daughter but doing it just to ‘use’ her. I don’t know if she plans to dump the unconscious Scylla in a river or bury her in microplastic snow and set it alight, though.”
  +
  +
“She would…she would go that far? Fugu, but all she wants to do is save that Class Rep! Hit the Scylla to knock her out and she’s done!!”
  +
  +
“Ayumi, the police aren’t functioning right now.”
  +
  +
“Which is why she protected that Class Rep herself!!”
  +
  +
“And what does she do with the unconscious Scylla afterwards? She can’t hand her over to the police. And if she just dumps her somewhere, that girl will be back for revenge soon enough. Leaving her here would be even worse. You never know when she’ll come attack you in your sleep. Tying her up won’t work either because an Archenemy might be able to cut the bonds with sharp claws or by twisting her joints at inhuman angles. So how is she supposed to protect her daughter?”
  +
  +
This wasn’t about greed and she didn’t even particularly hate the Scylla.
  +
  +
But.
  +
  +
She would do whatever it took to protect her daughter.
  +
  +
“This tracks with her past logic. She’s the one that always sheltered me back when my home was like a warzone. The neighbor kid should have been like a total stranger and she would have known she was only bringing a lot of trouble onto herself, but she did it anyway.”
  +
  +
“…”
  +
  +
“So how far would she go for her own daughter? This isn’t about being human or Archenemy or being a professional or amateur. Umikaze seems to have overlooked this, but everyone in Kukyou City has the agency to make their own decisions. So once someone decides to do something, they’ll do it. No matter what.”
  +
  +
She would protect her daughter.
  +
  +
But she would not have her daughter branded the daughter of a murderer.
  +
  +
So she would see this through.
  +
  +
It was her kindness that motivated her to go to such lengths to protect.
  +
  +
And to do that, she couldn’t smash open the Scylla’s skull in her own home, splattering evidence everywhere, and she couldn’t hide a corpse in her home since it would rot more by the day, making its presence harder and harder to overlook.
  +
  +
So if she was going to kill the girl, she would do it outside.
  +
  +
Instead of hiding the corpse, she would dump it.
  +
  +
And in a way that would lead no one back to her. But not to defend herself. It was all to keep any dark shadows from falling on her daughter’s future. Wasn’t that why she was seeing this through to the very end?
  +
  +
The police were not functioning and order had collapsed, so if Umikaze was killed and dumped outside, anyone could have done it. And if she was soaked in water while she rotted or burned until she carbonized and then a long enough time passed between her death and the investigation, the information from the cadaver would be much less specific, leaving the police in the dark once they finally arrived.
  +
  +
To be honest, that probably wouldn’t work all that well to throw off a real forensic investigation, but that isn’t what mattered here. It only mattered that the Class Rep’s mom thought it would. An when people felt cornered, they apparently had a tendency to either grow paranoid of everything around them or to start baselessly assuming everything would work out in their favor.
  +
  +
“That has to be it. She knocked woozy Umikaze out by catching her off guard, cleaned up the blood, and then carried her from the house. And she went through the back garden so we wouldn’t notice from out front.”
  +
  +
“Then where’s that Class Rep!?”
  +
  +
“Her mom is trying to kill someone in order to protect her. She’s obviously trying to stop it.”
  +
  +
She could have shouted to let us know something was wrong, but maybe she had feared doing that would cause her mom to panic and kill the Scylla right then and there. Or maybe she had thought calling for help would be socially devastating for her mother.
  +
  +
A lot of people would keep quiet about cases of bullying or abuse because they felt they could not call the police. Not because they wanted to protect the abuser but because they wanted to protect the victim.
  +
  +
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree with that mother and daughter.
  +
  +
They thought they could solve it on their own and they felt they had to do it themselves. Because otherwise their attempt to save someone they cared for would actually harm them.
  +
  +
Sometimes those thoughts could lead you in the wrong direction.
  +
  +
“Maxwell, run a search.”
  +
  +
“Sure. For what?”
  +
  +
“She plans to dispose of the Scylla’s body, but a fire would be too conspicuous in a residential district even during the day. She’ll probably use water. So she’ll want a nearby river, waterway, or ditch. She didn’t take her car, so she can’t have gone too far. She must be within 100 or 200 meters of here! Just locate any dirty body of water large enough to submerge someone and let them rot!”
  +
  +
Ayumi looked entirely lost, but what we needed to do had been obvious from the beginning.
  +
  +
I just had to point out one thing.
  +
  +
“Remember that SOS?”
  +
  +
“Fugu?”
  +
  +
“The Class Rep was biting her lip because she couldn’t ask anyone for help with this, but she still left us a hint by changing her phone’s voicemail setting. Small as it might be, she still left a mark for us to find. She thinks fighting on her own here is best and she’s doing her best to convince herself of that, but she did it anyway. The Class Rep and her mother might keep secrets, but they’re not bad people deep down. She only wanted to protect her family and their ordinary life from a home invader while she can’t call the police. …What’s so wrong about that? We’ve gotta go save her before she goes too far!!”
   
 
===Part 7===
  
===Part 7===

Revision as of 04:36, 15 June 2020

Status: Incomplete

6/10 parts completed

   

Chapter 4

Part 1

I heard a roar like from the stands after a homerun.

“Where are the other criminals!!”

“Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!!”

We were in the home ec room, but outside the broken window, everyone was boiling over in the schoolyard which was colored white by microplastic snow.

“S-Senpai.”

Itou Helen held my uniform to stay close to me. She was a Circe Witch – an Archenemy – but her timid side stood out now, presumably because the sinister calls for blood reminded her of the Colosseum.

I stared at the grip of the proffered knife for a while.

“What’s wrong? Hurry up.”

The boy holding it did not sound impatient or like was trying to rush me.

Nor did the other students restraining Okiai Yuuko the Dryad out in the hall.

They contained no doubt whatsoever.

Their eyes were actually shining bright.

But that’s what made it so scary. Their tone would probably remain the same even if I tried to calm them down. Getting them to cool down or provoking them further would not change that they felt the culprits deserved death. If they were going to explode either way, I couldn’t find any course of action other than doing my best not to provoke them!

Once they thought I was one of the “criminals” disturbing order, I was done for.

So I had to take the knife here. I couldn’t afford to have them doubt me because I hesitated. But what was I suppose to do after I took it? Weren’t we being taken past the point of no return here?

The knife boy spoke clearly.

“Can’t you hear everyone? They’re all waiting. So let’s drag these two out there and line all the criminals up in a row. That’ll be more effective than doing each of them separately.”

“M-more effective?”

“That’s right. More effective at preserving peace. We need to show everyone what happens if they don’t follow the rules. Having to do this over and over would just be meaningless loss of life. And wouldn’t you feel kind of bad even for the criminals if they died in vain?”

What world had I wandered into?

Preserving peace? Died in vain? None of this sounded real to me. It made me feel like I was playing through a quest in an online game.

Why did we have to preserve peace?

Did we really have to bloody our hands for that, especially when the deaths could be in vain?

Once the disaster was over, the police and media would arrive like normal. Could he really say all this in front of a camera? Could he no longer imagine that basing everything on his own made-up rules would make him a laughingstock?

Going along with this would only lead to murder.

But fighting it would place me on the side getting killed.

“(Wh-what are we supposed to do, Senpai?)”

My pale-faced underclassman whispered in my ear while still clinging to me. She must not have had it in her to ask for a full-blown strategy meeting right now. I could feel her trembling through my uniform.

But we couldn’t openly speak in front of that guy whose eyes were sparkling with justice. Instead, I let her see my phone’s screen.

The following message log was displayed there:

“Maxwell, check their registration. Are any of them Archenemies?”

“No. However, I failed to detect when you mistook the Dryad and Sea Bishop for each other, so perhaps you should not fully trust me on this.”

“I don’t need a machine getting all self-deprecating. So that’s three humans and they’re armed. But no projectiles. Still, they do have blades and I don’t want to just rely on Itou-san.”

“If you get Okiai Yuuko and Jinno Serina on your side, you will outnumber them four against two. And your side will be mostly Archenemies.”

“I’m not sure that will work so well. We just got done fighting those two.”

“This is a fluid situation and the rioting students have already switched sides once. With their lives at risk, those Archenemies will have no choice but to lend you a hand.”

I was a little afraid Itou-san wouldn’t have enough of a poker face, but I had to let her know what the plan was. After all, our lives weren’t the only ones at risk here.

Okiai Yuuko and Jinno Serina were down, but they hadn’t broken any bones and they hadn’t been cleanly knocked out with a blow to the head or gut.

So why were they so weak right now?

Why had those two come to the home ec room in the first place?

The large boy pressed me further.

“Hurry it up. Everyone’s waiting.”

“You’re right.”

I slowly let out a breath while wrapping my fingers around the knife’s grip.

And I kicked the large bag at my feet as hard as I could.

“Here! You wanted salt, right!?”

I started with the hallway.

Jinno Serina had been hit by a gas explosion, but Okiai Yuuko the Dryad had only been weakened by exposure to fresh water. Her power would return if salt was dumped into the soaked hallway.

A roar burst out almost like an explosion.

It looked like a chocolate-colored tornado erupted from the collapsed girl, but were those branches or roots?

“What!?”

The athletic boy in front of me could only shout because I had taken the knife he was offering me…meaning he no long had it.

As big a guy as he was, he was unarmed now.

All I had to do was raise my voice.

“Itou-san, take care of this!!”

I heard the sound of a test tube of liquid being swallowed and then I heard the wet roar of several transparent whips tearing through the air. Those were jellyfish tentacles covered with venomous barbs. A single slap from one of those would not be a pleasant experience. The boy was now collapsed on the ground and trembling with his back bent to an unnatural extent.

I heard a viselike sound as Okiai Yuuko grabbed at the doorframe with strength she had fully lacked just a moment ago and peered into the home ec room with a monstrous look on her face.

“Serina-chan!!”

“Okay, we won’t touch her! We never planned to take you two hostage, so let’s keep this peaceful. Itou-san, you don’t touch her either!!”

Also, that girl still cared about the other one this much even after the Sea Bishop stepped on her earlier? Maybe you could call it eternal friendship, but this felt like something more twisted.

But we had bigger issues now.

The executioner with the bright eyes was down. His actions qualified as “justice” here and we had defied him, which could only mean one thing.

“We’ve finally made an enemy of the entire school.”

I had to go over what we knew.

Simply getting upset wouldn’t solve anything.

“Most of the students are gathered in the schoolyard. They plan to publicly execute that plain Treasurer and the three Archenemies who were passed out in the A/V room. We can’t let that happen, so we have to let them escape somehow.”

Okiai Yuuko knew immediately what she was going to do.

“I’m running away with Serina-chan,” she said while lifting Jinno Serina’s limp form up in both arms.

“Are you? Then make sure to bring a lot of salt.”

“…”

A searching pause followed.

Surely she wasn’t actually hoping I would stop her, right?

“Look, I’m not going into battle alongside someone who might still be an enemy, so I’d prefer if you left. But if you get caught again as you try to run off, I’m not saving you again. We’re not heroes in full-body tights, so we can’t arrive in the nick of time every time someone’s in trouble.”

“Senpai,” called Itou-san.

This sounded like more than just wanting to drag me away from Okiai and Jinno. She was over by the broken window.

“Isn’t that person a friend of yours!?”

“Hm?”

I wasn’t comfortable with taking my eyes off those other two, but that question was enough to grab my attention. When I looked out the window again, I saw well over 100 people gathered in the schoolyard. With that many, it wouldn’t be surprising for a classmate to be among them.

“No, in the center. The girl in glasses standing in the very center of them.”

“Class Rep!?”

The row of seated “criminals” were not the only ones at the center of attention.

The forehead glasses Class Rep stood there looking unsure what to do while holding a snow shovel that could probably crack open someone’s skull if swung hard enough. I could tell she had been pushed into the center of attention and she did not know how to get back out again.

There were even tears in the corners of her eyes.

At this rate…

At this rate, was she going to be forced to bloody her hands as an executioner!? And the more she refused, the more anger would be directed her way!! She had no way out, dammit!!

That was when I heard a phone ring.

But it wasn’t mine.

Itou-san shook her head too.

The Dryad used a whip-like tree root to toss something my way while holding her unconscious friend close.

I caught it in one hand to find it was the smart flip phone that had been in the collapsed boy’s pocket.

It was receiving a call and I groaned at the registered name displayed for the number.

There had been hints.

…How had the students learned about the five Archenemies when they would only have heard the Treasurer’s announcement?

…Why was the Class Rep in trouble when she should have escaped much earlier? Who was it she had supposedly escaped with?

Would I answer the call or ignore it?

I wasn’t sure, but if this was a scheduled check, then not answering it would also let them know something was wrong. And I wanted as much info as I could get.

I took a deep breath and then answered it.

“Umikaze Speechia.”

“Oh, how brave of you. It didn’t occur to you to try to mimic his voice and claim nothing was amiss?”

Yes.

She could have done it.

She had heard my progress reports when I was getting that Treasurer to talk with the firehose. She would have known those popular kids were behind the plain Treasurer’s actions.

And I couldn’t overlook that she had left with the Class Rep. That meant she could have caught the Class Rep by surprise and taken her hostage.

Why?

Don’t ask me, but she was the only one in a position to have done it. The only other possibilities I could think of were someone who could turn invisible or someone who was bugging the place, so which option would you bet on?

“You know, I’m impressed you managed to take the throne as queen like this. I mean, as pretty as you are, you’re a new transfer student, making you practically an outsider.”

“It’s the same as insider trading. If you know what’s going to happen ahead of time, you can play your cards just right. This was a controlled chaos. I just had to insist to the others that there was someone else behind that announcement. They thought I was crazy at first, but once it turned out to be true…well, just look at me now. I made a bet in the currency of trust and it paid out splendidly.”

Everyone would naturally be more cautious during a disaster, but they would also more strongly want the relief of being part of a solid group.

So if something managed to break through their heart’s defenses, it would reach that reliance hidden behind the caution.

The transfer student had become a mysterious but pure leader who had appeared out of nowhere one day.

“So what, you’re Joan of Arc now?”

“You didn’t know, did you?”

She kept talking.

Did she want to remain in control of the conversation no matter what?

She continued her talkative ways even though that meant revealing cards she could have kept hidden.

“The Archenemy Scylla is an immortal from Greek mythology that attacked the heroes’ boat and killed six of the crew. But was it great strength or an alluring song? You didn’t know how the Scylla actually killed them, did you? After all, the Scylla has nothing itself.”

“…”

“The Charybdis. There was another immortal in that part of the ocean. Three times a day, that enormous monster would swallow up tons of seawater and spit it back out to disturb the ocean and the ships on it. The Scylla simply used that opportunity to board the storm-rocked ship.”

A giant monster.

An Archenemy that took advantage of chaos.

“So you’re an immortal that sides with the very panic that fills people aboard a ship that could sink at any moment?”

“Jay Bee.”

She dragged out the pair of letters, but my heart skipped a beat when I heard them. Itou-san, on the other hand, may have been confused as she listened in by pressing her cheek up to mine.

But I recognized it.

Hadn’t Maxwell warned from the beginning that the microplastic snow was likely an intentional attack and that the transfer student had said some suspicious things?

JB.

I knew that did not just refer to an individual. The previous JB had been killed inside a holding cell at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the footage had been uploaded to a video site.

They had Freischutz, a true military simulator.

This wasn’t just a collection of junk like the Voodoo Bokor’s group had prepared. This one was the real deal. Although they seemed to care more about the machine at the center than the people it ordered around.

Had she really spoken that name?

This wasn’t just Maxwell’s worst-case scenario – she had said it herself!!

“I am Umikaze Speechia of JB. I have business with you and I have just finished setting the stage for that. …This girl is important to you, isn’t she? If you won’t do the execution yourself, it will be up to her. And if you let enough time pass, the furious students will tear your adorable Class Rep limb from limb. I don’t even have to tell them to do it. That’s just how it will turn out all on its own. Because this little world here has been rewritten that way.”

Damn her.

Damn her!!

“If you want to raise a battle cry and come running to save her all on your own, be my guest. I do love feasting on ‘heroes’ after all. But there are no hiding spots in the open schoolyard, so I really don’t see how you can take on more than 100 blood-starved boys and girls who have lost their moral compass. Even an Archenemy would have to fear the violence of numbers presented by the humans here.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Oh, how adorable. Are you done bluffing now that that failed? But how much can you accomplish with that phone of yours? This open schoolyard is a mass of primitive violence. It’s such an analog place, so digital means aren’t going to get you very far, don’t you think?”

It ended there.

She hung up on me.

“JB.”

“Sure,” said Maxwell. “I warned you of this from the beginning.”

“But what about Umikaze’s social media presence? If all of that was camouflage, then how do you explain her friends from her old school?”

“Maybe she managed to hide her identity at her previous school and the one before that, or maybe all of those supposed friends are actually working for JB in some way. Online friends are not always what they appear to be.”

“…”

She had not given me a specific time limit. If I didn’t act now, the Class Rep might be deemed a traitor and placed on the chopping block ahead of the “criminals”. That was bound to happen given how confident Umikaze had sounded.

“Damn her. I’ll make her regret being so flippant about that!!”

“Wait, Senpai. Rushing in there blindly won’t solve anything!!”

That wasn’t my plan.

We couldn’t call the police right now. If I acted rashly, who would be left to save the Class Rep? I understood that, goddammit!

“Maxwell, gather some information from home construction sites.”

“No. I will not tell you how to build a handmade weapon. Such a plan is unrealistic.”

Why did that simulator think I wanted to do something so stupid? Did everyone have dreams of rushing in and singlehandedly tearing through a crowd of enemies or something!?

It was true I had to remove the students from the schoolyard…because that would also remove the giant Charybdis monster created from the panic. And I had to do it now. But I didn’t have to do it via violence.

“What I want to build is a balloon or a blimp. I’m short on time, so make it a simple one. And since the microplastic snow is flammable when it’s taken in plenty of air, the less fire used the better.”

“Do you plant to escape via the sky? You will need a very large balloon indeed if you expect it to carry people.”

“Why would I want to escape? The point is to rescue the Class Rep! It just has to float, that’s all.”

“It depends on the weight you wish it to carry and how long you wish it to remain airborne, but the simplest balloons only require a trash bag, duct tape, and a spray can filled with nonflammable gas.”

“As long as it won’t fall out of the sky too easily, anything’s fine. We need to stimulate their greed.”

Okiai Yuuko looked me in the eye when I mentioned escaping, but I ignored her. Besides, they couldn’t do much with their weird charisma stripped from them. And once that was gone, it was gone.

This was about a monster.

The Charybdis had swallowed up this disaster environment and the Scylla was holding its leash.

“We have no time. Help me build this, Itou-san.”

“O-okay!”

Part 2

We needed a trash bag and some duct tape.

That and a permanent marker to mark it up with.

Scissors would probably be better than a utility knife. We also borrowed some other things from the faculty room, but…

“Maxwell, which gases are nonflammable.”

“Photograph the ingredients listed on the back of the spray can.”

“Can we really believe what the manufacturer says? I mean, they say the fish at cheap sushi places is actually deep sea fish a lot of the time.”

“The disposal warning differs depending on the flammability. But just to be sure, I will run an online search of the product name to double check.”

Itou-san looked curious what my phone was saying but also didn’t feel right taking a peek without permission. It was really cute. And I didn’t care if she saw this, so I tilted the phone so she could see.

Maxwell was explaining the general idea we were going for.

“With balloon aircraft, most people think of hot-air balloons that heat the air to stay afloat, but blimps generally secure buoyancy using a lighter-than-air gas.”

The explanation felt more for Itou-san than for me. That was unusual for Maxwell who tended to focus on whoever had user privileges.

“All you need is a bag to contain a lighter-than-air gas. The principle alone is much simpler than an airplane or helicopter.”

“But just the principle,” I added. “If you use a flammable gas, then static electricity could trigger an explosion, so you need to be careful.”

We had found most of the tools we needed in the faculty room. Girls weren’t the only ones who brought spray deodorant to school.

“Okay, let’s head up to the roof.”

“Um, Senpai? I get that we’re making a balloon, but how is that supposed to save your Class Rep?”

“It’s true the Scylla is unbeatable right now. We don’t stand a chance as long as she’s taming that giant monster atop the ship she’s made out of this school.”

A Zombie like Ayumi had 10 times human strength and a Vampire like Erika had 20 times, but that also meant brute force was not an option for them when up against more than 100 people. And just because they were highly infectious as Archenemies did not mean they would want to bite people at random. The Charybdis grew larger as it drove people mad with fear and panic, so it had to be the last kind of enemy they would want to deal with.

But.

“Umikaze’s monster is supported by a lie.”

“?”

“It’s all based on the illusion that they’ll drown if they don’t secure a spot aboard this ship. That’s the source of their fear. So we only have to wake them from that dream and tell them it’s safe to get off that ship.”

The balloon would have to be pretty big to be effective and it would be inefficient to cram it out a window or door after inflating, so I chose to work on the roof.

It was fortunate we could open the door from within. The roof was flat, meaning the snow could accumulate there more easily. And even a few centimeters could block an outward-swinging door.

“Let’s get started. I’ll use the marker to draw out the lines on the bag, so can you cut along them, Itou-san? Then can you help me use the duct tape to attach the same symbols together? Y’know, circle to circle, triangle to triangle, and so on.”

“Make sure to leave as little a gap as possible,” added Maxwell.

All the while, the Class Rep was being worn down psychologically while standing in front of all those people. Who knows how long the mental scars would last, but I wanted to free her from that ASAP.

We cut up some 50L plastic bags with scissors to create flat pieces reminiscent of a geometry net. Then we used the duct tape to connect that together based on Maxwell’s instructions to create a single large bag out of it.

In the end, we had what looked like a rugby ball large enough to fit a van inside.

I narrowed down the opening, stuck the end of the spray can inside, and pushed down with my finger.

It noisily began to inflate little by little. And once it was full…

“Wow, we haven’t done anything and it’s leaving the roof, Senpai. It’s already floating!”

However, we couldn’t actually load anything onto that balloon. It was too poorly balanced to carry a person and we had no way of accurately dropping bricks or stones on a desired location. Making something float and piloting it where you wanted to go were two very different things.

But this was enough.

We only needed to release this empty balloon into the sky and let the wind carry it away.

Once the plastic bag had enough lift, I pulled the spray can out and tied up the opening. Just the one didn’t feel like enough, so we made a second and third one as well. We duct taped the completed one to the roof in the meantime. It was a lot like a dog’s leash or a ship’s rope. But tying it to the railing on the edge would have made it visible during the preparatory phase, so we had to avoid that.

“Okay, is that good enough, Senpai?”

“It’s perfect.”

Itou-san looked pretty happy about that. I couldn’t have asked for a better assistant.

Once we had done it once, the others went faster. Who knows if this would come in handy in the rest of my life, but I always loved a task I could lose myself in.

“Maxwell, the internet is still up around here, right? Then create a few anonymous accounts and attack the school’s social media. Attack in waves to get a certain text trending.”

“What message would you like?”

That I already knew.

Archenemy Scylla. Umikaze Speechia of JB. If you’re using information as a weapon to create the giant Charybdis monster, then you can’t complain if I strike back using information too.

“Have the accounts say they’ve discovered a safe way out. Say the trains and roads might be down, but you can still escape the city via air.”

Once the message was sent, I used the scissors to cut the duct tape holding one of the balloons in place and let the plastic blimp fly high.

It couldn’t actually accomplish anything since it was at the mercy of the wind. In fact, it couldn’t even carry someone.

But no one had gotten a close look at it.

“Attention is growing rapidly,” said Maxwell. “More and more photos of the balloon are being uploaded.”

“Add a celebratory post that sounds like it’s from someone onboard. And make sure to mention that there are only so many and it’s first come first serve.”

I stuck just my phone up from the roof and snapped a photo of everyone aiming their phones up. It was a simple trick, but seeing themselves photographed from that overhead angle would make them feel left behind on the ground.

They would feel like the pathetic losers still stuck down there.

It all resulted in a low rumbling.

Countless feet were running from the white schoolyard to the school building.

“Senpai, um, how does this help!?”

“They see the school like a ship they need to survive, but what if a rescue helicopter descends from the sky? The captain of the ship can yell and yell, but the crew and passengers won’t listen. They’re bound to rush toward the heliport.”

Maybe Umikaze was trying to stop them all. Both with her voice and with online messages. But it was too late. Once she lost control, her precious Charybdis fell apart.

We released the rest of our balloons and then gathered up our tools.

“We’ll be caught in the crowd if we stay up here, Itou-san, so let’s head down. A path that doesn’t run into them would be best.”

“O-of course!”

Fortunately, the school had more than one stairway. Even with the blood rushing to their heads, the students would all take the shortest route, like they were rushing to get the last of a product on a good sale. We chose the stairway on the other side of the school, so we didn’t run into any of them.

We could hear their thundering feet from across the school.

Itou-san trembled.

If we had used the other stairs, it would’ve been worse than getting caught in a landslide.

But on the other hand…

“They just left the Class Rep and the ‘criminals’ out in the schoolyard. There’s no moat or castle walls formed from angry people, so I won’t let that Scylla have her way.”

We descended to the first floor and grabbed our shoes at the entranceway. But maybe it would have been easier to walk around outside in our slippers.

Umikaze was in that wide-open schoolyard, so walking out the front entrance would be too dangerous. She would be panicking with her fortress collapsed and guilty people tended to do the same thing when they felt trapped.

In other words…

“S-Senpai, isn’t that bad?”

“…”

“Umikaze-san is using the others as shields! She’s using them as hostages!!”

I knew that.

The Class Rep had been given a snow shovel and pressured to kill the “criminals”. The garbage that had given the command would never have been unarmed herself. That would introduce the risk of the Class Rep using the shovel against her.

This was really the Scylla’s only option after losing the crowd. But that didn’t mean I had to go along with it. I mean, she wasn’t going to hand over the Class Rep if I did what she said and the students rushing to the roof would realize they’d been had sooner or later. I had to end this before they came back down.

We couldn’t stay in the entranceway forever.

This would get a lot worse once we were found.

We moved back into the hallway, snuck into the nearby infirmary, and then checked out the window while crouched down low.

I spied out like I was a periscope.

“Looks like the ‘criminals’ have their hands tied behind their backs, but the Class Rep only has her arms grabbed. Umikaze’s weapon is a fruit knife. I don’t know how much strength she has as an Archenemy, but it isn’t like she has a machinegun.”

That might sound like a ridiculous possibility to even consider, but keep in mind that she was with JB. Those were the people who had flooded Tokyo and created a UFO so large it seemed to cover up the sky.

“B-but…” Itou-san hesitantly spoke up next to me. “I should be able to defeat her, if that’s all we want to do. The Scylla Archenemy was supposedly created from one of Circe’s potions after all. …But that’s not the same thing as saving your Class Rep. And now that she has her guard up, won’t it be a lot harder to sneak up on her?”

“Not necessarily.”

My cute underclassman looked puzzled by my immediate answer.

“Maxwell, Umikaze has a fruit knife. Do you think St. Elmo’s fire will work?”

“Sure. The wind speed is 2m/s and visibility is 5km. This density should be fine. It will be lacking in reliability and lethality, but that plan is more realistic than heading to the shop room and modifying a nail gun into a sniper unit.”

“That isn’t the only metal thing out there. For example, there’s the Class Rep’s glasses frames and her skirt’s zipper. Could it affect those too?”

“It is possible, but highly unlikely. In fact, St. Elmo’s fire does not require the object be metal. It was originally seen on sail masts made of wood and cloth.”

“The Class Rep is holding a shovel.”

“If you refuse to trust me, I can always provide you a detailed list of all my calculations.”

I knew it was dangerous and it could even start a fire like the one we tried to prevent yesterday.

Itou-san asked a question while looking more and more troubled.

“Um, Senpai? Who is St. Elmo? Is that some other Archenemy friend of yours?”

“Not in this case, no.”

I listed up the necessary conditions in my mind as I spoke.

Having working infrastructure here was nice, but standard household power wasn’t enough. If I was going to amplify the power, an electric heater would probably be best. I didn’t want it to be too flashy, so it needed to be a gradual glow more than a full-on corona discharge. Picturing something like an electrical ground might be the best way of looking at it.

“The microplastic snow is like a plastic mat. Rub against it too much and it gathers static. That’s what started a fire yesterday.”

“Oh?”

My underclassman tilted her head with a curious look while I messed with the cable to an electric heater that had grown discolored in the sun and that someone had apparently pulled out in this off season.

“But that also means it’ll gather up any electricity we give it. Like a capacitor or a thundercloud.”

Doing that on the ground would be difficult because the ground would absorb all the electricity.

But microplastics too fine to see were dancing around in the air as the wind blew.

I didn’t even need to open the window. I stuck the end of the cable against the aluminum frame of an outward-facing window to send the electricity out through that.

I couldn’t calculate out the time.

But I had guessed it wouldn’t take long.

“St. Elmo’s fire is similar to a will-o’-the-wisp. People used to believe it was an occult phenomenon, but it’s really a simple scientific one.”

“Scientific?”

“And the Scylla, Umikaze Speechia, is holding a pointed fruit knife. You can see she still is.”

Having that cute underclassman around had a way of getting me to talk a lot.

Maybe this was why eccentric professors whose social lives and relationships were in tatters still liked to keep a puppy-like assistant around.

“The discharge affects pointed objects like that.”

The ship’s mast would act like a lightning rod to gather the electricity from the electrified fog or air and that would produce a glow.

In other words…

“It’s the same logic used in electrical induction.”

After a loud “zap!!”, lightning light appeared in the surrounding air and very obviously shot toward the tip of the fruit knife.

It was like dripping one last drop of water into a cup filled to the absolute limit.

Except we did it to the air and the microplastic snow there.

They had gathered up energy like a natural(?) capacitor, but once they crossed a certain threshold, all that electricity bared it fangs and naturally gathered around the best nearby conductor.

“Ghhh!!”

It used the fruit knife in the Scylla’s hand as a lightning rod.

The blonde girl did not let go of the metal blade. No, her shocked fingers may not have been able to move.

But all I needed was for her to flinch a little bit.

I just had to make sure she could not stab the Class Rep right away.

“Maxwell!!”

“Warning: amplifying the electricity with the heater’s circuits only provides around 800 volts. That is not enough to be lethal, so be prepared for resistance.”

That might not sound like much when you could buy million-volt stun guns online, but it was more powerful than the electric eels that killed people in the water. Erika and Ayumi would probably be upset to hear me say it, but I would’ve been too afraid to do this against anyone who wasn’t an Archenemy.

I threw open the infirmary window and scrambled out into the schoolyard.

I was a few dozen meters away from the Class Rep and Scylla. The instant I was out, I felt a tingling pain run along my cheeks, but I had to be imagining that. If I had been shocked, I would have fallen down with my arms and legs convulsing.

I was an indoorsy type and not particularly athletic and the microplastic snow was not helping matters. It caught at my feet like the sand on the beach.

Umikaze was going to recover from this.

Could I run over and take the knife from her before then?

The Class Rep’s life depended on it.

I couldn’t leave this up to a gamble.

So…

“Get down, Class Rep!!”

I meant that as a warning to help the Class Rep escape the still-standing Scylla’s arms, but it was also meant to draw the Scylla’s attention to me.

The microplastic snow flew up into the air.

She was not in a position to grab the Class Rep and use her as a human shield within a single second, so she had only one way of ensuring her safety. She had to kill me since I could be carrying a projectile weapon and she couldn’t predict my actions.

She flipped the fruit knife around in her hand, and…

“Shh!!”

She let out a sharp breath and threw the knife toward me with the force of a crossbow.

We had no idea if the hospital was even operating right now, but I was honestly willing to let that blade stab deep into the arms crossed in front of my face if that’s what it took.

Because it meant I had gotten that blade away from where it could harm the Class Rep.

“Senpai.”

But that isn’t what happened.

Something like a transparent whip moved in from the side and safely snatched the fruit knife from the air.

It was a jellyfish tentacle.

Those things could grab at fish swimming freely through the ocean, so an object flying in a straight line was a piece of cake for it.

My underclassman puffed out her cheeks while running alongside me.

“If you keep trying to be such a badass, I really will be mad at you.”

A white explosion erupted at her feet and I toppled over just from being nearby.

Itou Helen had kicked off the ground to run along the snow toward Umikaze.

“You!?”

“Hello, fellow Archenemy. But your position as an Archenemy is exactly why I will not hold back against you. The privileges of the minority can go straight to hell.”

That was all this really was, but Umikaze must have had a hard time grasping what had happened.

What had bowled me over had really only been a side effect?

“Did you think you could defeat a powerless human barehanded? Is that why you felt safe giving up your knife to keep us back?”

I heard a few more explosive sounds.

The two slender blonde girls had begun to fight.

The Archenemy Scylla was a sea predator with six giant dog heads growing from her hips. She was powerful enough to kill six human heroes at once.

Just as I was wondering what kind of monster she was, her lower body suddenly exploded. The stomach of her blazer and blouse were pushed up to reveal six animal heads each larger than her own. Skinny animal legs extended down from below their jaws like long beards. There were more than 10 of those legs in all an they kicked at the snow below like they had a mind of their own, but not in a human way.

The change did not end there.

The two legs that had extended below her skirt had transformed into a single beautiful fish tail. She would swim through the ocean with that mermaid tail, but once atop a ship, she would move swiftly around with those many legs and feast upon her prey with the giant jaws. The dog aspect had seemed weird for an ocean monster, but apparently that was to make her amphibious.

However.

I had no way of predicting where the first attack would come from.

With a human opponent, you could focus on where their arms or eyeline were directed, but I couldn’t decide what I needed to focus on with a Scylla.

Would she kick at me with those many legs stronger than a horse’s, or would she decapitate me with slap from that giant fish tail? Of course, the most frightening possibility was being torn apart by the dog heads that had slaughtered a party of heroes. But I didn’t even know if she would start off with some major attack or if she would use a series of smaller attacks to ensure she finished off her prey.

And yet…

“…”

Itou Helen did not hesitate to step forward.

She used her momentum to rush right up to the Scylla and violence immediately broke out.

“Really!?”

The Scylla naturally took action at having her threat ignored.

Her many legs were apparently only used to move around on land. She used her mermaid tail to kick up the snow from the ground to blind her opponent and then she sent out the giant animal heads without even waiting for Itou-san to flinch.

But.

“Is that all you can do, Scylla?”

Itou-san shrugged it off.

She moved her small body to dodge as much of it as possible.

And when that was not enough to avoid one of the heads or the fish tail, she would block it with a jellyfish tentacle, a scorpion tail, or snake fangs.

But the one who let out a grunt of pain each time was Umikaze, the supposed attacker.

Itou-san was defending with various venomous needles.

“Then you can hardly complain if I use an even greater power against you. A trained martial artist’s fist can be used as a deadly weapon and an Archenemy’s physical strength is little different.”

She seemed so different from the nervous little animal she became in front of a crowd of humans.

She made it look like she could stand up to even the most powerful opponent as long they were alone.

That sounded logical enough, but it wasn’t quite right.

Wasn’t she basically saying she could take on a lion as long as it was alone?

“What’s with that underclassman? Does she think she’s a honey badger?”

But I realized something from this.

The group malice of the Charybdis was gone and we didn’t have to worry about the hostages.

It really was one-on-one.

That meant the Circe Witch was in control.

The Scylla was a violent Archenemy, but one story said she had gained that form from a potion made by the Circe Witch. And there was no story about her later taking revenge on the witch using that power. So didn’t that establish a power balance where Itou-san could easily overpower her?

Plus, hadn’t she been named the new Queen of the Colosseum after defeating every Archenemy that crazy bunny girl sent at her and ultimately taking on Ayumi and Erika one-against-two?

“Grarakbwah!”

The Scylla shouted something, but I couldn’t make it out. She couldn’t even speak properly anymore. Her lack of any projectile weapons was devastating for her. Every time she attacked, she was pricked with several different kinds of venomous needles, allowing plant and animal toxins to reach her bloodstream.

For a split second, I saw her look my way from below eyelids too swollen to be the result of a simple fist to the face. But…

“Keep your eyes on me.”

A jellyfish tentacle thicker than a human arm caught Umikaze straight on the face. It was a horizontal blow that sent her rolling back along the ground, sending white snow flying.

But it was Itou-san who looked puzzled by this result.

“Oh, no. I think she intentionally let me knock her away.”

This didn’t sound like something from a real fight.

When I looked again, I saw Umikaze had broken through the metal fence surrounding the school grounds. She got up from the snowy pavement and ran off without trying to fight any longer.

Itou Helen let her shockingly brutal trump cards retract into her hips and back while she commented in a somehow dry way.

“But that blow was just for good measure. I only needed to make contact with her, so that should make more than 200 venomous needles I got in her. Senpai, there’s nothing to worry about. She will collapse all on her own after some time has passed.”

“…”

“Um, Senpai?”

My silence drew out her nervous side again.

She may have thought she scared me by overdoing that fight.

But I honestly felt the opposite.

For how many options a Circe Witch would have, she had honestly gone way too easy on her. Maybe she just didn’t have the cruelty inside her.

“Just to be sure, you didn’t use fast-acting poisons, right? I don’t know how long it’ll last, but she can still move for a bit, right?”

“Y-yes. Since she’s a similar type of Archenemy, the venoms won’t work as well on her, but more than that, I couldn’t give her too much of the paralyzing neurotoxins because that could kill her. But sooner or later, she will reach her limit. She’s already been defeated – it just has to catch up to her.”

That wasn’t good enough.

Not for this.

We weren’t in a defined arena like at the Colosseum, so we couldn’t give our opponent the luxury of time.

“Itou-san, can you use your phone? It didn’t break during the fighting?”

“Um, yes. What about it?”

“What are your parents, siblings, or other family members doing right now? Are they at home, are they out working, or are they safely outside of Kukyou City? You need to check on them all! Now!!”

I waved my arms to call the Class Rep over too.

My parents were outside the city, so I could assume they were safe unless Umikaze had someone she could call up and order to attack them. That left my sisters, the Zombie and Vampire. Ayumi was at the fairly heavily fortified rich girl’s school, so the real threat was to Erika who spent her daytime hours closed within her coffin back home.

Meanwhile, my underclassman was having trouble keeping up.

“Um, uh, what are you talking about? What more is there?”

“Umikaze Speechia is feeling cornered. She lost her fortress here at the school and the Charybdis she had set up has collapsed. She knows now she can’t beat you in a straight fight and the venom in her veins gives her a time limit. She’s backed into a corner and has to act now, so she’ll want some way of turning this around before she passes out.”

“Don’t worry. No matter what that weakened Scylla tries, I’ll protect you, Senpai.”

Nothing could have been more reassuring than seeing her clench her fists in front of her meager chest and let out a determined snort, but that wasn’t the point right now.

Yes.

This wouldn’t be a problem if Umikaze tried to attack us.

“She was briefly queen of the school, so she would have been able to access any room in the school and access anything stored there.”

“What does that matter?”

“What if she used a faculty room computer to access all the student data? What if she has our home addresses?”

“…”

“She could have used the principal’s office or the headmaster’s office just as well.”

She seemed to finally get what I was saying. The previous courage drained from her face and she paled just like she had when faced with that hopelessly cruel human malice that turned people against you for doing the right thing and stripped away everything you had.

I recalled that her brother had been part of the former Bright Cross, but that didn’t mean he would always be fully equipped for combat and he was still only human. And what about her parents? If they were ordinary people and still in the city, then they were in grave danger.

Yes.

In that final moment, Umikaze had glanced over at me on the ground instead of at the powerful foe right in front of her.

She had the makings of a real piece of shit who would rely on tactics like this whenever things didn’t go her way.

“It’s obvious enough what she’ll try to do to turn things around. …She’ll take a hostage close to either me or you. And since she can’t use our friends at school, she’ll go straight for our families. So we need to end this before she can do that!”

Part 3

Our daily routine was broken even further.

It was the afternoon but still not late enough for school to be out, yet we left the school grounds and entered the city.

“…”

The Class Rep was still shaky from shock, but that was exactly why I didn’t want to leave her back at the school. Yeah, I’ll admit it. It was half my fear of the moral hazard there, but half my own selfishness. So I took her hand and had her come with me.

Even though I normally wouldn’t physically be capable of that or even able to work up the courage to try.

“Maxwell.”

“Sure. I am still in contact.”

However, there was no way of reaching Erika since she was asleep. I instead called Ayumi while searching around the area, but there was no sign of Umikaze anywhere.

“The microplastic snow is still falling and will have covered up any footprints, but this is more than that,” said Maxwell. “As a Scylla, Umikaze Speechia can use those special legs and a fish tail. That means she can distribute her weight to not leave footprints and maybe even swim through a river or through the sewer down a manhole. Using a 2D map app to look for possible escape routes will not be enough to track her down.”

A silent missile had already been launched.

Our job was to get ahead of it and shoot it down before it hit.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know who exactly Umikaze was going to attack.

“Wh-what do we do? What can we do?”

After we left the school grounds, Itou Helen’s previous courage seemed to vanish. She looked about ready to gnaw on her thumbnail if left to her own devices.

But this situation left us with no choice.

“Itou-san, we need to split up.”

“Eh?”

“We don’t know where the ‘missile’ is going to hit, so staying together will only slow us down. You go ensure your own family is safe.”

It might look like I was abandoning her, but this was actually the right thing to do. She could defeat the Scylla on her own without a scratch. The Class Rep and I would only weigh her down and having to check on a stranger’s family or my sisters would be too much of a burden when her own family was at risk.

“But if Umikaze got there first and took your family hostage, make sure to contact us. We’ll sneak in and save you. No matter what she threatens to do, do not get rid of your phone.”

“B-but what if she’s gone after one of your families!? You’re human, so you can’t protect them!”

“I’ve contacted Ayumi and she’s an Archenemy, so things will change once I meet up with her. Doing it like this is the only way that makes sense.”

“…”

“And if we split up, it’s impossible for her to wipe us all out at once. If Umikaze shows up at our place, I’ll contact you. I’d really appreciate it if you came to rescue me.”

“Don’t do anything rash before I get there.”

She looked terribly conflicted.

But she had to be worried about her family.

“I mean it, Senpai.”

She probably wasn’t going to leave me herself, so I raised a hand to say goodbye and made my way down a separate street.

The Class Rep was with me.

While we naturally took the same route, that childhood friend spoke to me.

“Hey, Satori-kun. I’m sure that girl noticed what you were doing.”

“I know she did.”

Umikaze Speechia was a villain.

But she was also a coward, so she was more aware of the hierarchy of power than anyone. She would never choose the option that would force a battle with someone she couldn’t beat.

If she could choose between a human and an Archenemy, she was bound to aim for the human who she could beat.

And if she knew enough about my family, she would know the only presence in my house during the day was my Vampire sister who couldn’t leave her coffin.

But.

“To be honest, I’ve had her do too much already. She fought a few times before saving you, Class Rep. She was even crushed beneath a collapsed ceiling.”

I had no guarantee of success.

Itou-san had bailed me out every step of the way. I had failed miserably already, so I couldn’t continue relying on her. If I kept going to her since she was an Archenemy, how could I ever make up for it if something happened to her?

“But that underclassman might not appreciate this, you know?”

“…”

“Then again, it might be how you actually worry about these things that leads so many Archenemies to open up to you.”

This was the usual route home, but my feet felt so heavy. The weight in my gut seemed to grow with every step I took.

And.

“Fugu?”

I heard a familiar voice once we arrived in front of my house.

Ayumi was impatiently hopping up and down on the road in front of the small gate next to the newspaper box.

“I ran all the way home since you said to hurry back, so why did you leave me waiting here?”

…?

Ayumi’s question suggested she had not found any trouble yet.

“Where’s Umikaze? Do you mean nothing happened after all???”

“Don’t ask me.”

Umikaze Speechia was an Archenemy.

A Scylla was an ocean monster, so she would have a different range of movement than humans like us. Had she not been after a hostage after all and instead dived into the ocean to swim away from Kukyou City while all ordinary transportation routes were sealed off?

“I wonder what’s happening with, um, that girl?”

“Her name is Itou-san.”

I called my cute underclassman just to be safe.

“No, there’s no trouble here,” she said. “Well, other than the trouble I’m in with my mom for returning from school so early.”

Based on the normal routine, that made sense.

Our school had partially devolved into a fight for our lives, but none of it would sound real to anyone outside the school. Social media was so full of misinformation that no one would be taking anything there seriously.

So.

“Um, Senpai, what are we going to do now?”

“Hm?”

Umikaze hadn’t shown up.

But we had to qualify that with the word “yet”. Since we didn’t know where she was, we would have to stay on our guard. Taking a hostage was the simplest and most effective method for Umikaze, so things might be peaceful now, but that could change in the very near future.

Which meant…

“Any home or workplace she could have looked up in the school’s database is too risky. We’ll have to move our entire families elsewhere until we settle things with her.”

“Um, but how?”

“We’ll have to find a room for them, so maybe a weekly apartment or a business hotel. And if all of those are full up…given the state of the city, sleeping in a car would be too dangerous. In the worst case, we might have to use a manga café or spa.”

“No, um, I don’t mean that.”

My underclassman wasn’t sure what to say, but I finally realized what she meant.

She hadn’t asked where we would go.

She had asked how.

“Umikaze-san is your classmate and she hasn’t actually broken into anyone’s house yet.”

“Are you for real?”

The Class Rep and I exchanged a glance.

Reality had suddenly rushed in at us.

Her family was not going to act until a crime had actually been committed.

This felt like dealing with a cop who only did the bare minimum to continue taking home a paycheck.

“H-how am I supposed to convince my parents? Asking them to leave home and live outside with the microplastic snow falling isn’t going to go over well. I feel like they might just get mad without really hearing me out.”

Part 4

If this were a movie or a drama and we knew a great enemy or disaster was approaching our home, we could throw a bag full of clothes to our family and shout “Get in the car, now!”

But what were you supposed to do in reality?

“Fuguu.”

On that front, I was fairly lucky.

My parents were stuck outside the city and thus relatively safe, so I didn’t have to convince them. That left Erika and Ayumi, but neither of them was normal. They were weirdly used to this sort of thing, so that “now!” would actually work with them.

This would be more of a problem for…

“Oh, no. Is that Class Rep having to argue with her mom? It’s been half an hour since she went in, but she still hasn’t contacted us.”

My little sister was as impatient as ever.

“Here, Ayumi, you’ve got snow on your head.”

“Fugu. That’s microplastic, so it won’t come off if you brush at it with your hand.”

I had thought the Class Rep would be out soon, but snow had accumulated on our heads out here. We should have brought an umbrella.

We hadn’t solved the Umikaze Speechia problem.

Itou-san had pumped her full of venom, so she was as good as defeated already and she would pass out sooner or later. But at the same time, the Circe Witch and the Scylla were related Archenemies, so that venom wouldn’t work as well against her.

So there was no guarantee.

Even if she was barely clinging to life, if Umikaze refused to give up and managed to attack someone in their sleep, that was that. We couldn’t abandon our families until we were 100% certain of their safety.

Everything outside was covered in the microplastic snow.

Its flammability had already been proven yesterday. Some malicious person could start a great conflagration like a single spark starting a wildfire.

“What do we do if that Class Rep comes crying to us?” asked Ayumi.

“We’ll have to go convince her mom ourselves.”

“But how do we do that???”

Ayumi had been like this the whole time.

I doubt she had any real problem with the Class Rep’s mom, so it felt more like she had seen a ghost and was wondering how to avoid being sent to a mental hospital after trying to explain what she saw to someone who stubbornly denied the existence of ghosts.

To be clear, the Class Rep’s mom was a normal person.

She was not a special or rare sort of person like my biological mom Magatsu Taori who had modified her own body for use against Archenemies or like my stepmom Amatsu Yurina who was in fact the ancient Demon Lord Lilith.

She was an adult woman who was fairly pretty for her age. Unlike my mom, she was a fulltime housewife. She did not have a part-time job or job she worked from home. Despite having glasses in common with the Class Rep, she had a gentleness to her that her daughter lacked, but she was also not some weak-willed person who would let her child tell her what to do. She had enough sense to not just accept the things said on talk shows and in tabloids, but she could be convinced to purchase the latest fad health foods or diet products advertised on midday infomercials. If I remembered correctly, she had a weakness for ads that emphasized time saving and efficiency.

Yes.

For better or for worse, she was an ordinary person.

Before Ayumi and the others became a part of my life, back when my original parents had turned my home into warzone where things could get bad at the drop of a hat, that normalcy had looked so bright when I saw it through the window.

“Fugu, I think you would have the best chance of convincing her, Onii-chan.”

“Don’t be silly. She isn’t some naïve person who will believe anything I say.”

I had taken shelter at the neighbor’s during that “war”, so she knew my tastes in food and what kind of pillow and toothbrush I liked. She had done so much more for me than she had to for a simple neighbor, so I was forever thankful. In that sense, she was like a third mother to me after both Magatsu Taori and Amatsu Yurina. Man, a chart of my relationships would be a real mess, wouldn’t it?

“Maxwell, create a conversational flowchart.”

“Will something like a phone scam guide work? Although I doubt it will be very effective.”

I had to offer the Class Rep some help before long.

I felt like it would break my spirit to ask something so seemingly absurd while looking the woman in the eye, so I decided to call her instead. I could tell I was getting cold feet before even starting, but that was because Maxwell had likened this to a scam. That made me feel like maybe this would work even with an adult.

So I called up the Class Rep’s phone.

I made an actual phone call instead of sending an email or leaving a message.

But…

“She isn’t answering. Is she being lectured right now or something?”

“Really? It’s going that bad?”

Her mom had never seemed like the type to just give an angry lecture like that, though. She had been the type to cut off all escape with a merciless barrage of super reasonable arguments and to do it all in the gentlest tone of voice possible.

It rang a few times before the connection died.

…?

“What’s wrong, Onii-chan?”

“Maybe nothing…”

I tilted my head while staring at my phone that had returned to the home screen.

Didn’t her phone connect to the voicemail service after a bit? Why had she switched that off now of all times???

This was different from being unable to touch her phone while her mom lectured her or being told to power it off until afterwards.

So what was this?

“Ayumi, just to be absolutely certain, you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when you arrived ahead of us?”

“Fugu. I checked all around inside the house, but nothing was out of place. There was no sign of anyone hiding in there and I could hear Onee-chan breathing inside the drawer she uses as a coffin. Although I didn’t actually open it since it’s still daytime. Besides, you’re the only one with a key to that queen size bed. Even she can only open it using the internal lock within the drawer below the bed.”

“Then what about the neighbors?”

Ayumi did not answer.

And her face gradually grew pale.

Yes.

During the ordinary routine, you could not just enter the neighbor’s house to search around. She would only have looked at the exterior and noted that none of the windows or locks were broken.

Umikaze had to have done something, but she had not been at my house or Itou-san’s house.

And hadn’t I mentioned that she was a coward and thus more aware of the hierarchy of power than anyone? She would focus her attack on humans instead of Archenemies. She would go for the weakest target first.

Which meant…

What if this was an SOS from the Class Rep? What if she was in too pressing a situation to send an email or message? What if all she could do was hold her phone behind her back and change this one little setting, hoping I would notice?

Archenemy Scylla.

She did not make the attack herself. She waited for the ship to cross the strait to reach her.

“Dammit, she’s in the Class Rep’s house! Is that where she laid her trap!?”

Part 5

Umikaze Speechia was waiting.

The Class Rep had sent an SOS from the silent neighbor’s house.

The most important point was to not allow the Scylla to realize we had realized the truth. Does that sound confusing? Basically, we didn’t want to provoke the hostage taker. We were already a step behind and things would only get worse if she grew more cautious.

“(Ayumi.)”

I started off by confirming the rules via the social network app on our phones.

Our real instructions would be passed through the phone and everything we said out loud would be fake.

“Ayumi, we should probably bring an umbrella after all.”

“Fugu. Do you think we need a brush too?”

I had my Zombie little sister head back into the house. Separating the human from the Archenemy was risky, but we had no choice here.

She had to be watching.

She would be holding her breath and peering out through the gap in the curtains to spy on every little thing we did out front.

So we had to use that to our advantage.

We would fix her gaze on one of us.

Ayumi had gone back inside, but I was still out on the street. That would leave Umikaze Speechia feeling uneasy. Especially since the phone in my hand could call in Itou Helen.

“…”

I would be messing with my phone regardless since I needed it to contact Ayumi, so why not use it to scare Umikaze at the same time? I was powerless to do anything myself, but I could at least scare the Scylla into watching me. Just like someone running an ego search despite fearing what they would find.

She had broken into someone’s house, prevented anyone from going in or out, and taken the residents hostage, but now she would be peeking out through the curtains in paranoia.

You’re nothing more than a criminal, Scylla.

This is just sad.

What happened to the Umikaze who was a mysterious transfer student, who behaved politely but always kept a position of superiority, who was beautiful, and who had an inimitable talent as an Archenemy?

A social media message arrived on my phone, but it was not from Maxwell.

“I’m inside the house. What do I do now, Onii-chan?”

“You’re free to move around because the Scylla’s eyes are on me. But you only have as long as it takes to grab an umbrella, so at most 3 minutes. Any longer and she’ll get suspicious.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

“Use the 2nd floor balcony to climb in through their window. Or if there’s snow blocking that up, jump over onto the roof.”

The 2nd floor jump between houses was scary, but a human like me had done it on occasion. Zombies had 10 times the strength of humans, so Ayumi wouldn’t have any trouble at all.

Umikaze may have thought she had tricked Itou Helen and me by staying a step ahead of us at every turn, but she had broken into my childhood friend’s house. I knew the layout like the back of my hand.

She had underestimated that decade of experience.

“Miss Ayumi appears to have jumped from one roof to the other,” said Maxwell.

“I can see that.”

“Are we going to continue waiting on the ground as a distraction?”

“Of course not. We need to get ready in case dumb Ayumi screws this up.”

“Fuguu! This is a group chat, so I can see everything you type, Onii-chan!!”

Ayumi used her phone’s camera to begin a video chat. She used the phone’s screen to display the social media chat while using the lens on the back to show us everything she was seeing. …Of course, that meant she was walking around while using her phone, so I was a little worried about how her vision and one of her hands were occupied.

That meant we were still communicating via text, but the messages now popped up at the top of the screen. The way the video wobbled a lot as she typed in her message made me feel a little queazy.

“There must be at least two hostages,” I said. “Locate them first.”

“I know that.”

Ayumi moved from the roof to the balcony.

She checked in the windows of a few rooms.

“Doesn’t look like they’re on the 2nd floor. They could be in a closet or under a bed, though.”

“The Scylla wouldn’t be able to see me out here from there, so we at least know she isn’t hiding there. Anyway, can you open the window? If you have to break it, have Maxwell search out a good method.”

“No, it opened. I can get in through here.”

With one of the windows open, she stepped inside with her outdoor shoes still on.

“This looks like a married couple’s bedroom.”

“Don’t spend too long looking around. We’re short on time.”

But…

Even if the curtains were blocking out the light and keeping it dark, it was hard to believe that footage was of the Class Rep’s house that had seemed like such a safe space.

The rooms hadn’t been ransacked and there was no rust-smelling liquid splattered on the floor or walls, but I could still sense something sinister even through the camera.

Almost like Ayumi was exploring an old, abandoned building.

How lived-in the place looked, the cute stuffed animals, and the smiling mascots looked creepy because they felt almost out of place.

“Umikaze Speechia might not have a blade at the Class Rep and her mom’s throats. She might have placed a portable gas cylinder in their hands and then bound them with duct tape to do it more remotely.”

Ayumi made sure to check under the bed, below the dresser, in the closet, and anywhere else someone might be hidden. Then she cut silently across the room and apparently stuck her head out into the hallway. The phone in her hand was not held quite as high as her eyeline, so I could not see the hallway myself.

“Onii-chan, does that mean, in the worst case, securing the two hostages and the hostage taker will mean moving in on three points simultaneously?”

“If you need help, just ask. I can assist you from out here.”

“Then my top priority’s gotta be the Scylla.”

She put it dryly, but she was right.

It was natural to want to rescue the hostages first, but Ayumi would only be able to secure one of them at a time. So instead of playing her single card on just one of the hostages, it was safer to use that card to capture the single hostage taker. If the Scylla could not do anything, no one would get hurt.

“Nothing out of the ordinary on the 2nd floor. I’m heading down to the 1st.”

“Wait, Ayumi. There’s only one stairway. And unlike at school, walking on it will make noise someone below can hear. You can’t let her notice you.”

I knew the risks. It was scary, but it had to be done.

I did my best to act natural while I wandered up in front of the Class Rep’s house. That alone made it feel like I had run into a solid barrier of air. The Scylla was definitely watching. Instead of walking past their fence, I pressed the intercom button next to their mailbox.

“Class Reeep? Are you still not done? Hey, Miss Forehead Glasses!”

I decided to ring the intercom over and over.

I wanted that noise to distract Umikaze and cover up the sound of Ayumi descending the stairs.

The Scylla wanted to trap us, so she wouldn’t want me to realize I was being watched. What does that mean? It means she would want the Class Rep’s house to seem as normal as possible. This silence may have been her trying to decide whether or not to ignore the ringing intercom. But since she knew I knew the Class Rep was inside, she couldn’t just pretend like no one was home.

So what would she do?

Would she try to mimic the Class Rep’s voice over the intercom, or would she grab the Class Rep’s phone and send me a message saying she’s changing and can’t come out right now?

It didn’t matter to me.

What mattered was Ayumi’s view I could see through my phone. She was descending the stairs maddeningly slowly in her effort to be as silent as possible.

I was pretty sure the intercom monitor at the Class Rep’s house was on the dining room wall. If the Scylla was biting her thumb in front of that, my sister would not encounter her in the entranceway at the bottom of the stairs.

Right?

Hopefully the Scylla wasn’t pressed up against the front door using the analog peephole to look out.

My sister finally took the final step and her feet arrived on the 1st floor.

“Made it.”

“The dining room is highest risk. Check around before going there. See if you can find the Class Rep or her mother.”

“Class Reeep?” I called out loud again while moving from in front of the main entrance and circling around into the garage space. I came across the bath window before reaching the back garden.

The frosted glass window was closed, but I aimed my phone toward it regardless.

“Maxwell, analyze the polarization pattern and reconstruct the image.”

“There is no one inside.”

Frosted glass altered the image a lot less than a randomized digital mosaic. If you could send a laser from your phone to analyze how the light was scattered or analyzed the pattern of the reflected light, you could easily display the “original image”.

…This is for emergencies only. Do not abuse the ability, gentlemen.

I continued on around to the garden where the window had normal glass. Except there were white lace curtains in the way. The location meant this would be the living room. A simple cloth curtain was enough to prevent mathematical analysis from seeing through, but…

“Maxwell, switch on the night-vision camera option. Use IR to see inside.”

“Sure, sure. Why must I have a perverted user who only ever asks me to help him peep? (￣ー￣)”

It was well-known you could see through white swimsuits with IR, but you could do the same with thin dresses and curtains too.

“Nothing detected.”

“There are only so many places on the 1st floor you could stuff two people: the bathroom, the dressing room, and the dining room I’d already identified as a threat.”

Did Umikaze have the hostages lying at her feet? Even if their hands were tied behind their back, they could still resist. Keeping them there would take guts even if you were an Archenemy.

Or was she not thinking clearly due to the venom from Itou Helen?

That was no reason to relax. Just like with someone who had nothing left to lose, this would only make her a lot harder to predict.

“Be on your guard, Ayumi. The Scylla and the hostages might all be in the dining room.”

“But I’m in the dining room.”

“!?”

When that message popped up on the top of the screen, I just about had a heart attack.

I frantically moved aside the camera app I had filling up the small screen.

But.

Would Ayumi really have time to type out that message if she was facing Umikaze Speechia while a hostage or two were used as a human shield?

I brought back up the video that let me share my sister’s vision.

“…”

The stove and sink seemed lower than the ones in our kitchen. They must have been designed for the Class Rep’s mother’s height. I wasn’t as familiar with the price of kitchen stuff as I was with computers and phones, but it looked like each item had been chosen based on what suited her best instead of trying to keep a consistent aesthetic.

Ayumi opened up all the spaces that could be hiding someone: the fridge by the wall, the oven, the storage closet, and even the under-the-floor storage for spice bottles and an emergency supply of cup noodles.

“There’s no one here.”

“They must be somewhere else then.”

“I’ve checked the bathroom and dressing room. I even checked inside the diagonal drum of the washing machine. There’s no one in the house.”

“How is that possible, dammit!?”

I didn’t have it in me to continue acting.

I swore loudly and entered the living room from the garden. The dead silent room filled me with an awkward feeling, partially fueled by how I was standing inside with my outdoor shoes on. This was the awkwardness of entering someone’s house when they were out.

Ayumi poked her head out from the dining room.

She had apparently completed a circuit of the 1st floor.

That twin butter roll sister shook her head.

“Maxwell, what about the door to the underground shelter?”

“No. Only the one for your high school was opened. I doubt it is possible Umikaze Speechia could have used that to get in or out.”

“Even though you say she was probably in that facility back when it was running?”

“That only puts her at the same level as Miss Ayumi.”

Just to be sure, I peeked down the stairs to that door, but I could tell just from shining my phone’s light down there. I didn’t see anyone in front of that door which looked like it led to a bank vault.

I came to a stop in the foyer.

They weren’t here.

No one was here.

The Class Rep, her mom, and even Umikaze had vanished like a ghost ship out at sea.

Where had they gone?

What had the Scylla done and were those two all right!?

Part 6

“…”

I needed to calm down and focus.

I had to throw out all speculation and think about what had actually happened.

The first thing I knew for sure was that the Class Rep had entered her house alone.

I knew her phone’s settings had been changed.

And I knew she had vanished from that house.

Everything else was speculation.

She had definitely disappeared, but the changed setting might not have been an SOS. It was even possible Umikaze Speechia had never been here.

But what would that mean?

Could the Class Rep have chosen to flee through the back garden of her own volition while we were waiting out on the street? Or could her mom (who we didn’t actually know had been at home) threatened her and taken her somewhere?

“It’s no use. I can’t figure anything out.”

“Fugu.”

Throwing out my assumptions was turning into an obsession that was in turn keeping me from thinking. I was avoiding the most straightforward possibility.

I had to think through this honestly.

I had to stop forcing myself to look for more-unlikely possibilities and I had to gather up what hints I had. But what conclusion would that lead me to?

“The Class Rep’s house would have been the best target for Umikaze.”

There must have been some kind of attack.

But the house had not looked ransacked and none of the windows or locks had looked broken.

It wasn’t impossible they had run afoul of some random robber or home invader, but that idea didn’t sit right with me.

The most likely option was Umikaze.

The living room window I had climbed in through had not been locked.

The Class Rep’s mom would have been surprised to see someone show up through there, but what if that person was wearing the uniform of her daughter’s school and said she was her daughter’s classmate? And what if that girl, who held a finger to her lips to ask for silence, had looked sickly pale from all the venom in her bloodstream?

That woman would have realized things were dangerous outside the home.

But.

That was exactly why she might have invited in the haggard girl, especially if she claimed to be her daughter’s friend. The girl wouldn’t be a stranger, so she couldn’t just throw her back into the danger outside.

On the other hand, Umikaze would not strictly need to deceive the woman.

If it didn’t work, she could break the window and use the woman as a human shield. Her trap would no longer function then, but she would still end up with the upper hand.

However…

“If Umikaze left along with her hostages, what actual options remain for her?”

Whether or not she was aware of it, the venom in her bloodstream would knock her out sooner or later.

So…

“Fugu. Come to think of it, she couldn’t win by taking a hostage and holing up in a single location. I mean, a long-term battle is bad for her, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but running around with a hostage isn’t much better for her. Time is on our side, so we would only need to surround her from a distance and tell her to give up and come on out. We wouldn’t even need to locate her and capture her.”

That’s why I had assumed she would go for a short-term trap. I had assumed I was meant to notice something was amiss with the Class Rep and go investigate next door where the Scylla would be waiting to strike.

But she was gone.

She had run away.

Why would she draw this out like that?

“No, that is not an adequate explanation.”

“Maxwell?”

“If we assume Umikaze Speechia the Scylla has run away, how do we explain the disappearance of the two hostages?”

“Because she wanted them as human shields in case we tried to chase after her, right?”

“One hostage would be sufficient to stop you, user. I do not know how much stronger a Scylla is than a human, but taking two possible enemies with you while woozy from venom is highly illogical.”

“Fuguu. I really don’t want to hear the answer, but what if she brought them with her so they couldn’t give us any hint where she was going?”

“No. Then she could have simply killed the mother or the daughter and left them here. What reason would she have not to at this point?”

My heart felt like an invisible thread was squeezing it tight.

“I cannot see what the Scylla is trying to do. User, if you had an unknown venom in your veins, what would you want to do first?”

“I’d want an antidote, I guess.”

“Sure. Before choosing whether or not to defeat your enemy and whether or not to preserve your position, you would want to eliminate that venom. Yet Umikaze Speechia came here first instead of visiting a medical specialist. Why is that?”

“Fugu? But didn’t Onii-chan say it’s an Archenemy poison? A normal hospital can’t help you with that.”

Itou-san was a Circe Witch, so she used animal transformation potions.

A serum or antidote for the original animal’s venom might be able to save her, but those clear tentacles were a rare thing. Japanese hospitals wouldn’t be able to heal the venom from an Australian jellyfish.

Which meant…

“Even if she went somewhere else first, her ultimate goal would be Itou-san. She would demand an antidote for the venom.”

That meant she would want a hostage to get Itou-san to do as she said, so she would want to capture someone close to Itou-san.

And yet…

“No.”

Maxwell’s message felt like an attack.

“The forehead glasses Class Rep’s mother is like a friend of a friend for Itou Helen, so they have likely never even met. She would be unable to abandon the woman for moral reasons, but would seeing the woman in danger really make her feel like her heart was tearing in two?”

“…”

“Umikaze Speechia cannot defeat Itou Helen. The Circe Witch is the Colosseum Queen and she is also ranked above the Scylla. With that power balance in place, Umikaze cannot leave any room open for resistance. This will all be a waste if the antidote she is given turns out to be an even more powerful venom. So coming here seems like too much of a detour.”

“Fugu. So is she first using those hostages to get Onii-chan to obey and then using him to get that Circe girl to obey?”

“No. Like I said, that is too much of a detour. The Scylla cannot determine how long until she passes out, so she would want a solution as quickly as possible.”

If she was simply after an antidote, she would have attacked Itou-san’s family, taken them hostage, and used them to negotiate despite the risk. She had to act now due to the venom, so was Maxwell saying she would ignore the realistic risks and take a gamble?

But that isn’t what had happened.

Then had Umikaze come here for some other reason? We couldn’t work out where the Scylla had gone until we figured out what that was.

“M-maybe she didn’t give it that much thought.” Ayumi sounded hesitant to say this. “Maybe she’s desperate and wanted to take someone else out with her.”

“No. I have nothing to fully reject the possibility of her acting on illogical emotion, but if it could have been anyone, she would not have specifically targeted this house. For example, she could have set fire to the microplastic snow around the school to burn down that former fortress of hers.”

That was a frightening thought, but Maxwell was right. Umikaze had some kind of goal in mind. Taking hostages with you had to be a lot more difficult than I could imagine. It wouldn’t be as simple as putting a cat in a carrier to bring it to the vet.

Umikaze had come here.

Why?

She had taken the Class Rep and her mom away instead of killing them here.

Why?

“My house and the Class Rep’s are next door, yet she chose this one.”

“Isn’t that because she wanted to attack the powerless humans?” asked Ayumi.

“Even though the only person at our house was Erika who has to sleep during the day? She couldn’t resist any more than a human.”

“Then why?”

“She would have been feeling woozy from the venom, so a coffin would be too heavy to carry around as a hostage. I mean, that coffin is the drawer below a queen size bed. But if she dragged Erika out, she would turn to ashes in the sun. She wouldn’t be much of a hostage if she died. Umikaze needed someone who could walk on their own two legs.”

“Isn’t that still too much of a detour for simply pressuring Miss Itou Helen into providing an antidote?” asked Maxwell.

“It could have been anyone.”

Look at it the other way around.

Someone really had disappeared, so Umikaze must have had a reason for choosing them.

“She stole our personal information from the school database and that would include information on Itou-san’s family. She would at least know that Itou-san is the only Archenemy in her family. And what would Itou-san do if she’s shown a hostage?”

“…”

Ayumi was a Zombie.

She had incredible strength and she could make more Zombies by biting people.

But having power did not mean you would just use it blindly. Archenemies could join the rest of us at school because of that element of trust.

“Archenemies aren’t feared because they have monstrous power. It’s only when they lose the conscience that guides that power that they get treated as monsters. So what Archenemies fear most is having people think they’ve lost that conscience. …Itou-san won’t be able to hold back in front of her family. Even if the hostage is a complete stranger, she can’t choose to not hand over the antidote.”

Plus, Itou-san was generally the nervous small animal type.

Her experience in the nationally-broadcast Colosseum probably played a role, but she did not like having attention focused on her.

She was afraid of betraying people’s expectations.

She was afraid of standing up on the stage in the spotlight. If her family or any of us pressured her to hand over the antidote, she would hesitate to attack the Scylla even when she could easily win. Because she was afraid of destroying her relationship with her family or school friends in the process. She did not want her family to look at her with fear in their eyes and think of her as a coward or a monster.

If she screwed that up, she would lose everything.

Because when one available option made her look like a saint, every other option looked barbaric by comparison.

The Scylla was an Archenemy that used location and situation to divide up a group and plunge them into panic so she could control them as she pleased.

“That would be a dangerous gamble for her,” said Maxwell.

“Take it up with Umikaze. She might not be thinking straight thanks to the venom. But we do know she went for option 2. She’s after us as friends of Itou-san instead of just grabbing some random passerby.”

Itou-san could not choose to abandon a stranger in front of her family, but just in case she would choose to attack anyway, Umikaze must have wanted me or the Class Rep.

“But that does not explain why she took both hostages,” said Maxwell. “The Class Rep alone would work for that plan.”

That…was a good point.

We were the ones that could not allow a single person to be lost. Umikaze wouldn’t care.

“…”

But wait.

If I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I thought about it, was I wrong about some fundamental aspect of it?

“Maxwell.”

“Sure.”

“How much time would Umikaze have had left once she arrived at this house?”

“I have very detailed data on Miss Itou Helen’s specs from when I was supporting her in the Colosseum. To be blunt, it is strange that Umikaze Speechia is even still conscious. That may be due to the commonality between a Circe Witch and a Scylla.”

“In that case…”

“Did you figure something out, Onii-chan?”

Archenemies without special powers weren’t the only ones influencing this situation.

Even without Maxwell’s assistance, a human could find something they could do.

So could it be?

“Umikaze would have been so woozy she could barely stay standing.”

“Fugu. And?”

“But that wouldn’t eliminate her malicious intent. In fact, being so close to her limit could mean any attempt at playing innocent failed. …But the Class Rep’s mom is human. I was admittedly a lot younger at the time, but she had enough of a heart to shelter a stranger like me when she didn’t have to. So she would probably do the same for someone else. But what if she learned the person who showed up at her home without warning was actually lying in wait to harm her daughter?”

“Ah!?”

“Do you think she would have just let it happen? Sure, she was up against an Archenemy, but Umikaze would have been barely staying on her feet and it’s not like she could just call the police. She probably would have felt pressured into doing something herself.”

What did that mean?

Everyone had vanished from the house.

But what if it hadn’t been the Scylla who wielded violence there?

“Y-you mean that Class Rep’s mom did it!?” asked Ayumi.

“I have no proof, but that fits the situation better. Ayumi, did you see any bloodstains on the way here?”

“Of course not!”

“Neither did I. …That means it wasn’t a blade. Did she catch her off guard and wallop her with a dryer or something? If the house has power, she could have even electrocuted Umikaze.”

“Fugu? Wasn’t the intercom working?”

“That runs on a battery. Just like the smoke detectors on the ceiling.”

But that aside…

“Even if she did catch the Scylla by surprise and knock her out, I doubt she’s killed her yet. Then there would be a corpse inside here.”

Ayumi started to breath a sigh of relief, but then she noticed what I had said.

“Yet?”

“Why do you think they’re all gone? Kill her in the house, and they’d be the top suspects.”

The police were not functioning at the moment.

No matter how it looked, we had no idea how peaceful things were below the surface. The endless downpour of microplastic snow would cover up a lot of evidence and signs.

“B-but! I find it hard to believe she would attack someone like that. We’re talking about someone who crosses to the other side of the street when a dog barks at her while she’s taking a walk!!”

I walked through the house again while listening to Ayumi. I had my eyes on the floor. Everything looked nice and clean, but that was what struck me as odd. It was too clean. There was no keeping all the microplastic snow out when you opened and closed the door and that would make the floor all crunchy, but there was no trace of anyone having being in here other than us.

Had someone cleaned it all up very recently?

I crouched down on the dining room floor.

“This isn’t alcohol. It’s faint, but there’s a distinct chlorine scent.”

“Check the storage closet,” said Maxwell. “Do they have any industrial Perfect Wash?”

“Fugu?”

“That was originally a bleach used to get tough stains off of dress shirt collars and whatnot,” I explained. “But when used undiluted, I’ve heard it can fully break down DNA – that is, blood and saliva stains. That’s become famous enough that you sometimes see it used as online slang.”

Ayumi was dumbfounded.

But that didn’t sound like something a housewife would know offhand. I grabbed the recipe-searching tablet affixed to the fridge. You couldn’t trust fingerprint locks. Those same fingerprints were already all over the screen’s protective sheet.

Once past the lock screen, I performed a few operations and found this: “Bloodstains, how to eliminate”

“Even when you erase your local device’s search history, it’ll still be somewhere, either at a local base station or on the company server. And that you can’t erase without some very special software.”

I took a slow breath.

And I turned toward Ayumi who had gone pale.

“She must have been really mad that someone was not just attacking her daughter but doing it just to ‘use’ her. I don’t know if she plans to dump the unconscious Scylla in a river or bury her in microplastic snow and set it alight, though.”

“She would…she would go that far? Fugu, but all she wants to do is save that Class Rep! Hit the Scylla to knock her out and she’s done!!”

“Ayumi, the police aren’t functioning right now.”

“Which is why she protected that Class Rep herself!!”

“And what does she do with the unconscious Scylla afterwards? She can’t hand her over to the police. And if she just dumps her somewhere, that girl will be back for revenge soon enough. Leaving her here would be even worse. You never know when she’ll come attack you in your sleep. Tying her up won’t work either because an Archenemy might be able to cut the bonds with sharp claws or by twisting her joints at inhuman angles. So how is she supposed to protect her daughter?”

This wasn’t about greed and she didn’t even particularly hate the Scylla.

But.

She would do whatever it took to protect her daughter.

“This tracks with her past logic. She’s the one that always sheltered me back when my home was like a warzone. The neighbor kid should have been like a total stranger and she would have known she was only bringing a lot of trouble onto herself, but she did it anyway.”

“…”

“So how far would she go for her own daughter? This isn’t about being human or Archenemy or being a professional or amateur. Umikaze seems to have overlooked this, but everyone in Kukyou City has the agency to make their own decisions. So once someone decides to do something, they’ll do it. No matter what.”

She would protect her daughter.

But she would not have her daughter branded the daughter of a murderer.

So she would see this through.

It was her kindness that motivated her to go to such lengths to protect.

And to do that, she couldn’t smash open the Scylla’s skull in her own home, splattering evidence everywhere, and she couldn’t hide a corpse in her home since it would rot more by the day, making its presence harder and harder to overlook.

So if she was going to kill the girl, she would do it outside.

Instead of hiding the corpse, she would dump it.

And in a way that would lead no one back to her. But not to defend herself. It was all to keep any dark shadows from falling on her daughter’s future. Wasn’t that why she was seeing this through to the very end?

The police were not functioning and order had collapsed, so if Umikaze was killed and dumped outside, anyone could have done it. And if she was soaked in water while she rotted or burned until she carbonized and then a long enough time passed between her death and the investigation, the information from the cadaver would be much less specific, leaving the police in the dark once they finally arrived.

To be honest, that probably wouldn’t work all that well to throw off a real forensic investigation, but that isn’t what mattered here. It only mattered that the Class Rep’s mom thought it would. An when people felt cornered, they apparently had a tendency to either grow paranoid of everything around them or to start baselessly assuming everything would work out in their favor.

“That has to be it. She knocked woozy Umikaze out by catching her off guard, cleaned up the blood, and then carried her from the house. And she went through the back garden so we wouldn’t notice from out front.”

“Then where’s that Class Rep!?”

“Her mom is trying to kill someone in order to protect her. She’s obviously trying to stop it.”

She could have shouted to let us know something was wrong, but maybe she had feared doing that would cause her mom to panic and kill the Scylla right then and there. Or maybe she had thought calling for help would be socially devastating for her mother.

A lot of people would keep quiet about cases of bullying or abuse because they felt they could not call the police. Not because they wanted to protect the abuser but because they wanted to protect the victim.

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree with that mother and daughter.

They thought they could solve it on their own and they felt they had to do it themselves. Because otherwise their attempt to save someone they cared for would actually harm them.

Sometimes those thoughts could lead you in the wrong direction.

“Maxwell, run a search.”

“Sure. For what?”

“She plans to dispose of the Scylla’s body, but a fire would be too conspicuous in a residential district even during the day. She’ll probably use water. So she’ll want a nearby river, waterway, or ditch. She didn’t take her car, so she can’t have gone too far. She must be within 100 or 200 meters of here! Just locate any dirty body of water large enough to submerge someone and let them rot!”

Ayumi looked entirely lost, but what we needed to do had been obvious from the beginning.

I just had to point out one thing.

“Remember that SOS?”

“Fugu?”

“The Class Rep was biting her lip because she couldn’t ask anyone for help with this, but she still left us a hint by changing her phone’s voicemail setting. Small as it might be, she still left a mark for us to find. She thinks fighting on her own here is best and she’s doing her best to convince herself of that, but she did it anyway. The Class Rep and her mother might keep secrets, but they’re not bad people deep down. She only wanted to protect her family and their ordinary life from a home invader while she can’t call the police. …What’s so wrong about that? We’ve gotta go save her before she goes too far!!”

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

[Crawler Search] Ocean Fire [The Words You Need!]

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