novelOr Isolation Surpasses a Group - Engage_U.F.O (2)
| ← Ch.176 | Ch.178 → |
While standing in front of the cracked door, Luca grabbed the skull container attached to one of the belts she wore like a waitress's suspenders. She shook it, and removed the cap with just her fingertips. The cap was like those for fabric softener and she used it to measure out enough gunpowder for one shot. She poured the black powder into the musket's muzzle and compressed it with the thin stick held in the same scabbard as her cutlass.
She also slid a portion of the case shaped like an arm bone to pull out a round bullet like it was a mint tablet. She used the ramrod to push it down as well. From there, she held the gun just like in the movies. The highly varnished stock glistened with an amber light like an old violin as she pressed it against her shoulder, she pressed her cheek against the gun to peer through the sight, and she used her thumb to raise the flint hammer.
She focused on the imaginary line extending from the muzzle and whispered a warning in her college-aged body.
"You should cover your ears."
Kamijou and Fran moved to obey in the small closed space, but something interrupted.
A large explosion knocked them over.
And that was no exaggeration.
While she stuck her gun out from the cracked door, Luca was struck by the metal door as it swung inwards and she was knocked backwards. Kamijou and Fran were not directly hit by the door, but the explosive noise entering through the doorway echoed off the concrete blocks again and again. The pressure was so great they nearly fainted.
As Fran tearfully curled up on the spot like a turtle, she shouted at the adult pirate girl whose clothes were coming off in places.
"Luca!!"
"No! The timing was off! That explosion wasn't from the gas!"
The door had been torn from its hinges, so the scene outside was fully visible. The explosion had occurred at one of the single-story buildings further in, not on the ground just past the fence.
Luca lay sexily sprawled out on the ground after being hit by the blast and the musket in her hands was still loaded with the bullet and black powder.
"Nn."
Just as the pirate girl groaned and twisted her body, orange sparks burst from the muzzle with an earsplitting noise. The bullet bounced around the propane base like a pinball, but it was moving too fast to follow with the naked eye. This time, both Kamijou and Fran grabbed at the troublemaker of a pirate girl.
"Are you trying to kill us, you idiot!?"
"This is partly our fault for praising her too much, " said Fran."A bit of contempt might be the better course of action with her."
Meanwhile, more and more oddities arrived.
The unexplained explosions continued. A lot of the Useful Spider members were aiming upwards and firing their guns wildly. There was something in the sky, but Kamijou's group could not tell what while indoors. And with someone else gathering so much attention, they no longer needed the propane.
"Fran, Luca!"
Heading outside when the gunfire and explosions never seemed to end was more frightening than heading home from school in a downpour after lightning struck nearby. But this was their last train back. The situation was far from ideal, but they would not receive another chance.
The three of them made up their minds and headed outside while keeping low to the ground.
Something cut by overhead. They saw an unidentified flying object beyond the rustling tree branches.
"Maya..."
The rabbit-ear antennae girl spoke another girl's name.
"But why now?"
Kamijou did not know if it was true, but that girl claimed to be a ghost. She specialized in aerial surveillance and information warfare and she had caused them a lot of grief through the Spheres.
Had she identified Kamijou's group or was she simply destroying all of the buildings?
They did not have long to think about it.
A large mass fell on the propane base they had been hiding in, so the many gas tanks and their bomb of love both contributed to a massive explosion.
Kamijou was literally thrown three meters when the blast hit his back.
Part 7
They had been looking at it wrong.
Ellen, Maya, and the rest of the former Kamisato Faction had not put together a plan to specifically attack the meteorological observatory at the peak of that District 21 mountain.
They had simply attacked the individual Useful Spider bases around Academy City and pursued them into the mountain when they retreated.
For example, there was the girl cradling a bottle full of old 10 yen coins like it was a baby. She gave a report while smelling black smoke.
"I'm sure you're piggybacking off of the nearby Spheres, but being able to use radios sure is convenient. This is Elza. I went too far and destroyed them, so we aren't getting any hints from here. Sorry, but you'll have to check with someone else."
For example, there was a girl with countless thick squid or octopus tentacles covered in suckers growing from her back. Her bizarre beauty would drive anyone who saw her mad and she whispered her report.
"Milcah here. I have conquered the broadcast station in District 15. A few of the helicopters got away. You can use the direction in which they fled to work out the location of their headquarters."
For example, there was a young wife in a swimsuit and apron. She shook the kind of shaker used by bartenders while her flushed face slowly swayed back and forth.
"This is Machina the Elemental Spirits Internal Summoner. I have conquered Bee Hoon Street in District 4. I brought down the giant fan before they could lift it up into the air. Hic. But I didn't touch the unit that passed by overhead. It looked like they were flying west from District 11.... Myyyy circulation seems really good today. The salamander is running wild in my blood☆"
Fran had found the radiating pattern from the information uploaded through the Spheres, but these girls took a more direct route toward working out their enemy's lair.
And they did not spend a long time preparing before making their attack. As the "modern" weapons obsessed girl (in other words, she was never too fixated on any one thing and continued updating her repertoire as time passed) Aileen moved the pieces on the game board, everything moved to match.
First, Ghost Girl Maya, whose existence was supported by the Censer drones, and Cosplay Girl Olivia, who flew through the sky on a magic wand equipped with a jet engine, bombed the headquarters as the first wave. Next, Killer Patissier Berry and Athlete Soldier Lemon arrived close enough on the ground to throw sugar javelins and hammer throw hammers along parabolic arcs that rained down on the headquarters. The explosions and shockwaves hid Mary's wolf-like approach on all fours through the forest and Lime's approach on a giant mechanical lizard. Before Useful Spider could fight back, they had trampled the fence around the observatory's grounds and charged on in.
"Watch out for the Doppler radar. If they've cut the limiter and upped its output, it quickly becomes an anti-air electromagnetic weapon. It's like a weaker version of Fran's station, so focus on destroying it first."
No one knew if this was really the right thing to do. For one thing, what qualified as "the right thing to do" in a military operation differed from country to country. This was a collection of obsessed girls who had essentially taken only the most attractive bits of each country's standardized military. They were something like a theoretical "perfect fighter jet", so it was uncertain if they would be of any practical use. The only reason it had not all fallen apart by this point was due to the great strength of the strange powers and abilities of the former Kamisato Faction's 100 girls. Even if their commands did not quite match the situation before their eyes, they would each trample the enemy regardless.
Why had the former Kamisato Faction changed targets and started hunting down Useful Spider now?
"We want to use our information media to its fullest to hunt down Kamijou Touma, Karasuma Fran, and Toyama Luca who is something of a gray zone, but we can't exactly do that with the shelter Sphere's blown away, " whispered tall Maya as she circled through the sky along with her crane fly shaped drones."Plus, we can't rely on the Spheres when they were set up by Useful Spider to make the rulers feel like they had some power. I should have realized it sooner and cut it off at the source."
Kihara Yuiitsu had not directly given them this target, but that no longer mattered.
Useful Spider was interfering with their search for Kamijou and thus threatened Kamisato, so they were an enemy. They needed to be eliminated.
At this height and speed, it was unlikely her voice could reach anyone. Even if she had a radio, her head was entirely exposed, so the blowing of the wind would get in the way.
But the unlikely happened. A late-night anime heroine was flying alongside her too close to even call it acrobatic. However, Maya was fairly certain the real heroine had not used a handmade jet engine.
The violently live action version of Magical Powered Kanamin spoke.
"Keep an eye on things down below. They're going to recover from the shock soon, so it's time for the boss round with some monstrous Academy City weapon they've been hiding underground."
The ghost girl with bewitchingly exposed cleavage gave a derisive snort.
Without a physical body, she was not afraid of bullets. No one would feel any tension when playing a bullet hell game while using a cheat code to reduce their hitbox to zero pixels.
A dull explosion rose from the surface.
The dome-shaped radar facility had been successfully bombed. Now there was no risk of the will-o'-the-wisp-like drones being fried.
And so she uttered a single singsong word.
"Perfect."
Part 8
Kamijou had so much trouble breathing he could not even pass out.
He clung to a nearby tree trunk, wrinkled his brow, and forced his vision to recover as it flashed in and out like a dying fluorescent light. Pain passed from one temple to the other, but he could do nothing about it but clench his teeth.
When he somehow managed to gather strength in his legs and look around, he saw Pirate Girl Luca sprawled out on the ground and groaning. Due to the full backpack on her back, Fran had her butt sticking up toward heaven like someone who had been hit by a German suplex while upside down. She looked like the end result of a robot model designed with no thought given to the center of gravity.
"Hey, are you both alive... ? I'm only borrowing you, so don't die before I get you back to Kamisato. I don't want to be indebted to him."
That had a dramatic effect.
The name Kamisato was like brandy to someone lost in a snowy mountain, so the girls shook their woozy heads and forced their eyes open.
The explosions had not let up.
And the situation was no longer unilaterally moving in the former Kamisato Faction's favor. Those giant fans that resembled tunnel boring machines had appeared and large helicopters with heavy machineguns sticking out of the side cargo doors were pursuing the ghost and cosplayer in the sky.
Fran was kicking her feet wildly while upside down, so Kamijou helped her up and spat out an irritated comment.
"I'm not sure which side are the true monsters. Anyway, let's get out of here."
Needless to say, their goal had been to get the Useful Spider unit in District 11 to fall back to the headquarters so they could get to the A. A. A. inside the container yard. There was no point in continuing the fight against Useful Spider here. And there was no guarantee that the former Kamisato Faction would not find them here.
They could not lose sight of the situation. Neither side winning here would bring back Kamisato Kakeru. If they poured their energy into the wrong thing, they would lose their chance at success.
"Fortunately, the former Kamisato Faction and Useful Spider are so busy fighting that they haven't noticed us. And with this many explosions, the unit in District 11 is sure to be scrambled. Let's get back to the cart and head to the container yard. And then..."
But Kamijou Touma should have known better than to say "fortunately".
In case he had forgotten, misfortune was his constant companion.
"?"
Fran noticed something and looked to her feet. Kamijou and Luca followed her gaze.
Several strange cracks ran through the dirt.
"Wait..."
After an explosion large enough to shake the entire observatory, the ground below their feet seemed to reach its limit. It crumbled away and they were swallowed up.
"Owaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"
Yes, hadn't Fran and Luca mentioned that Useful Spider may have been storing their next-generation weapons in an underground facility covered in thick electromagnetic shielding?
Part 9
"Hmm?"
Tracer Ellen tilted her head while dragging her baggy lab coat behind her.
She crouched down and focused on the ground.
"Hmmm... ???"
"What are you doing?" asked "modern" weapons obsessed Aileen."Wasn't most of your inspection kit destroyed by Fran's heat wave?"
But Ellen's curiosity did not wane.
"It is true I specialize in gas chromatography and carbon dating using cutting-edge equipment. I'm well aware that my forensics skills don't work without the equipment."
She formed Ls with the thumb and forefinger of both hands and created something like a picture frame to focus on the ordinary-looking ground.
"But did you know that human senses are a type of inspection equipment? It can be a perfumer's nose or a convenience store bento researcher's tongue. When you create a system using senses more delicate than any machine, it's known as sensory analysis."
"What about it?"
"And I'm not just talking about perfect pitch. My senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are all perfect sensory analysis devices that provide readings I can express numerically. Although if I don't intentionally keep my mind in a lower gear, the world grows very boring very fast."
Someone had pulled that girl up out of that gray bog. He had shown her a color that she could not express numerically with any of her senses. She believed that was the color of love.
She would do anything for him. She would eliminate even the smallest risk to him.
"Maya, Olivia, and the rest of aerial group. Our radios might be jammed before we have further orders for you and any gestured commands might be spied on. Follow the timetable we set up in advance."
The hand in Ellen's baggy sleeve held a radio they had stolen from their enemy.
She based this on her digitized senses as a tracer.
"Fran will be there. That threat to Kamisato-han spends all year staring at the stars and chasing unidentified flying objects. You should assume she will detect your radio waves and the slightest flash of light. Also..."
Her lips continued to whisper.
She was not done yet.
"Something seemed off when I spoke with Fran before. I tried to suppress my doubts because I thought we were friends, but there's no more need for that. And now that I look back, there was a lot odd about her."
"?"
"For example, why could I detect the scent of aldosterone and cortisol in her sweat when she would speak with Kamisato-han? Why was she releasing stress-related adrenocorticotropic hormone? There is a massive bombshell hiding there. I'm not going to hold back, Fran."
Part 10
Everything had been a complete mess.
Ever since the former Kamisato Faction showed up, nothing they did felt like their own decision. They could only sit idly by while other people made their decisions for them.
Some things truly could not be helped.
Kamijou and the others had fallen into a space supported by countless steel beams like a school gym or an airport hangar. While lying on his back, Kamijou shuddered at the distance to the ceiling. He did not know what had cushioned his fall, but he was amazed he had survived.
"Fran, Luca..."
After shaking his head and getting up, he saw a few metal objects crushed by rubble. Some were the half-trucks with mechanical legs and treads, some were short and stout transport helicopters, and others were the giant fans. Each of them was enough of a threat, but a veritable parade of them was lined up here. The original lights may have been insufficient because he could not see all the way to the back.
And this was no time to stare all the way back there.
Men in work uniforms were giving them surprised looks from quite close by. When they realized it was not just inorganic rubble that had fallen, they quickly reached into their coats, but...
"!! It's gonna blow!!"
Kamijou raised his voice, placed his hands protectively over his head, and dove down onto the ground, so the men looked around in shock. The presence of the crushed and sparking helicopters increased the squeezing in their chests.
Then Luca ran out from behind a nearby pile of rubble. With the men focused elsewhere, she attacked them head-on with her cutlass and musket. She used them as blunt weapons instead of a blade and a gun. The sight was a sad history lesson in how, at close range, it was faster to just hit someone than to take the time to load the powder and bullet.
The first was caught completely off guard and knocked out in a single blow.
"Damn you!"
The rest drew long knives and attacked from multiple directions.
"Whoops."
"!?"
After her cheerful voice, the men were overcome with confusion.
They did not feel the flesh and blood they expected their knives to hit. In fact, their target had entirely vanished. But their confusion was natural. Luca could freely manipulate her subjective age, so she could change the apparent age of her body. She had instantly lowered her age from 15 to 10, so her limbs and body shrank and her enemy would need to adjust their aim.
After slipping below the storm of blades, the small body grew until the swimsuit nearly burst from within.
She used her long limbs and greater body weight to knock out the confused men with the back of her cutlass and the stock of her musket.
"Fear not. I used the back of my blade."
"Luca, I hate to interrupt your triumphant pose there, but your swimsuit bottom is slipping down. Hurry up and pull it up."
"Oops."
After eliminating the threat, Luca fixed her swimsuit, returned her body to normal, and spun the two long weapons around like she was juggling them.
"Nice job distracting them. You'd make a good pirate."
"I don't think that's a compliment."
Fran crouched down, took one of the unconscious men's guns, and held it awkwardly, but Kamijou put a stop to that. People pulled the trigger easily enough in movies, but that clearly was not something he could leave with a girl who was shutting one eye and attempting to peer down the barrel. He was afraid she would accidentally shoot him in the back.
"Anyway, where's the exit?"
They did not know where a stairway or elevator might be, the exit might have some kind of security lock, and it could have been blocked by the earlier collapse. They had no real reason to fight, so they wanted to leave as soon as possible, but the situation did not allow for it. Kamijou was always experiencing misfortune, but he was beginning to suspect Kamisato had something similar.
They did not know where someone could be hiding as they cut across a space as large as a schoolyard. They assumed an exit would be along the wall, so they moved to the wall and continued back from there.
It was generally the same as going on a rampage in a parking lot full of cars. They used the half-trucks and helicopters as shields, checked around and made sure no one dangerous was hiding behind cover, and then moved to the next shield.
Meanwhile, Kamijou and Luca heard a small sound as they moved out ahead. They looked back to find Rabbit-Ear Antennae Fran focused on her devices.
A voice came from the card-sized screen connected with a curling cord.
"Ksshhh! Fraaan, knowing you, you'll definitely pick up this signal I'm sending out on a random band."
(Ellen... ?)
The girl sounded confident that Kamijou's group was in the same area. If that tracer had detected their footprints or caught their scent, it would be a major problem.
Based on everything that had happened via the Spheres, it was obvious what the point of this conversation was.
"(Fran, turn it off! We don't gain anything from this and she's trying to provoke us into revealing our location. She might even pick up on the sound of your radio playing her voice!)"
Kamijou had no idea how much it would help, but he naturally started whispering. But Fran did not respond. She was fully focused on the small screen.
"I was oddly curious why you alone would respond differently. Luca's case isn't as odd if I view you as the source and her as a secondary infection. When you get down to it, I think our singularity is you, Karasuma Fran."
She did not want to know, but she felt the need to crush any hint of worry. It may have been the mindset that led people to type their own name into a search engine despite knowing it would lead to nothing good.
"Hey, Fran. Why weren't you captured by Kihara Yuiitsu's... no, Kamisato Kakeru's curse? It wasn't that someone talked you out of it. Your heart was never shaken in the first place. Once I started wondering about that, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Other things from the past started occurring to me."
"..."
"We know you spend all year chasing after UFOs. Whether that's true or not, you know more about astronomical bodies and electromagnetic waves than any of us. And the station you used to produce Academy City's heat wave is real... But that is a piece of external equipment, so you haven't really shown your own internal 'power', have you?"
No, it was not just the hoodie bikini rabbit-ear antennae girl.
Kamijou and Luca found themselves just as trapped by the sticky and invisible strings. Flipping over this card would accomplish nothing, it would only work against them, and it was a lot like digging up a landmine so it could blow up in their faces, but they could not stop the voice arriving over the device.
"Fraaan, " said the tracer."You're actually a magician, aren't you? And since you're oddly obsessed with a British mascot, you're probably with someone from there. So wouldn't it be reasonable to think you were only pretending to be a scientific UFO girl to monitor Kamisato Kakeru's actions, if not actually guiding him here to Academy City?"
Part 11
Those words were a heavy shock to the chest for Pirate Girl Luca as she listened in.
A spy.
Someone to monitor and control Kamisato Kakeru's actions.
But when she thought about it, it would be odd if no one had put together any kind of countermeasure against someone capable of slaughtering Magic Gods by the dozen. Kamisato himself claimed to be the kind of normal high school boy one could find anywhere, but the people around him would not have been able to see it that way.
And this raised a question about when Luca had been recruited here. Kamijou Touma would not have known who to pick from the former Kamisato Faction, so it would naturally have been Fran's decision.
Then how had a UFO girl from the science side been able to choose someone as ideal for the job as Luca? How had she known so much about Luca's magic?
Both questions could be answered if she was a magician too.
"UFOs, " muttered the pirate hat and eyepatch girl."Mysterious lights in the night sky were originally researched as unlucky stars that were seen as ill omens. The idea that they are vehicles piloted by aliens developed and took over in just a few decades, but the same things have been viewed for millennia."
"..."
"Fran, were you that kind of magician? Did you read the future from the stars, seal the twinkling light into talismans and amulets, and draw out that power when you saw fit? Are you from the Golden-style of magic that had its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century and has become a standard by this point!?"
The hoodie bikini rabbit-ear antennae girl did not respond.
There were things that caught Kamijou's attention too. When they had run into the pirate girl in the plaza, the hoodie bikini girl had suggested drawing out a code that only Index and Othinus could understand and then retreating. But what kind of code could "only" Index and Othinus understand? She had drawn a few circles with horizontal and vertical lines along the edges. They had looked like crop circles, but there may have been another way to look at it.
Those had been ancient runes or magic circles.
And the antennae sticking out from her backpack like a sea urchin or a chestnut burr seemed painfully obvious now. They were almost like ugly thorns meant to protect the delicious contents from an external enemy.
Ellen's words continued as if to tear into that soft flesh.
"In that case, we definitely can't leave this to you. Fran, you understand, don't you? If you were monitoring Kamisato-han's actions and influencing his decisions, then it's hard to say it was the natural course of events for him to arrive in Academy City and meet that cruel fate."
"..."
"Fran, your betrayal killed Kamisato-han. The presence of an outsider like you shattered our age of happiness. I don't know why you did what you did. It's possible you didn't intend to do any of it, but you brought destruction all the same. Whatever excuse you might make, you led Kamisato-han to take action on his fixation with the Magic Gods, you incited Sunny and Rain to action, you created the idea that Academy City was suspicious, and you led everything to this conclusion."
"......"
"We can't leave Kamisato-han's fate with someone as risky as you. No matter what you might think yourself, you may have been set up to sever this last remaining thread of hope."
".........................................................................................................................................................................................."
She had been called a traitor, but she did not argue back.
She looked tiny. The way she peered at the screen in her hand looked like she was hanging her head and she showed no sign of life for several minutes. She was a withered tree. A standing husk. Luca was dumbfounded by the truly unexpected shock, but this girl's downfall was a quiet one, like she was seeing the end she had known was coming someday.
Luca wondered what she would have done.
What if she had hidden something important from him and that came to light? Would she go on a desperate rampage? Would she make a desperate plea and try to repair the relationship? Would she give up all hope and take her own life? No, that was not it. She would not even find that negative sort of energy. She would surely stay standing, stop breathing, and simply cease to function as a living being.
"... Uuh..."
So it could not have been Karasuma Fran who stood up to those one-sided and disastrous words.
"Ah... hh."
"That's enough, Fran."
It was the spiky-haired outsider who interrupted.
The girls assumed he would meaninglessly tell her she did not need to listen to any more of those painful words and she should switch it off.
But that was not what he said.
"How long are you going to sit there sobbing? If there's something you want to say, then say it. Don't worry about whether they'll locate us from the signal. I'll make up for that. More importantly, do you not care that she can just say whatever she wants about you? Of course you care, right!?"
"... ?"
The withered tree in its hoodie and bikini looked unsure what he was telling her.
But the powerful light in the boy's eyes made it clear he would keep talking until it got through to her.
"Don't you have something to say!? If she's saying that betraying people is always wrong and that you can't trust someone who tries to be everyone's friend, then you can argue back, can't you!?"
"What... are you... ?"
"Think back, Fran! Think back on everything you've done!!"
"But... you don't know the truth. I kept a smile on my face all this time just so I could report back to the Anglican Church about Kamisato-chan..."
"That's not what I meant!! That's not what I meant at all!!!!!" cut in the boy."I'm not talking about what it says on paper or what your official duties were. It doesn't matter how it started! What did you think when you actually met Kamisato and how did you feel when smiling with Ellen and Salome!? Wasn't that the true Karasuma Fran that wasn't forced onto you by anyone else? Then! Don't just assume that your affiliation, your actions, and your secrets are who you really are!!"
He grabbed her slender shoulders, stared into her hollow eyes, and roared at her without giving up on her strength as a human being.
"From the very beginning to the very end, you were never thinking about anything but Kamisato Kakeru, right!? After risking your life for that so many times, just what part of Karasuma Fran has wavered and just who have you betrayed!? So tell her! Tell her you wanted to bring back Kamisato Kakeru more than anyone else in the world! Tell her you were prepared to fight all of your former friends on your own to do it! You have the right to say that after walking through the winter cold, getting hit by explosions, and yet clenching your teeth to make it this far, Fran!!!!!"
That was obvious.
It was not even worth discussing.
If Fran was truly nothing more than a spy sent in from an outside group and if she simply saw Kamisato Kakeru as a threat, why had she tried to bring him back after World Rejecter erased him? Shouldn't she have rejoiced that someone so dangerous was gone? Or if she could not ignore the right hand that could slaughter Magic Gods by the dozen even after Kamisato himself was gone, shouldn't she have joined Kihara Yuiitsu's group when the owner of the right hand became the ruler of the girls? But she had not done that. No matter who owned the right hand, she had continued to pursue Kamisato Kakeru. She did not know if it was even possible, but she had still bet her life on that thin, thin thread. The Anglican Church would never have ordered her to do that.
Opposing the girls of the former Kamisato Faction meant to oppose Kihara Yuiitsu. It was unclear how much the Anglican Church knew about World Rejecter, but they must have felt threatened to send Fran in. But she had expressed her desire to face that frightening power by saving Kamisato and she had proven that intent through her actions.
Didn't that settle it?
Whatever her official position or duties were, wasn't it obvious who Karasuma Fran's "true affiliation" was with deep inside her heart!?
"If you're not going to say it, I will."
Kamijou had made up his mind.
Even if their paths would not meet and even if he would never walk by that girl's side, he could still fight for Karasuma Fran. He had found something worth that.
"If you're fine with that, then stay silent. If you don't want that, then you'd better speak up. The result will be the same either way. Now, it's time for a real fight. I don't care who we're up against! You've decided to fight for Kamisato Kakeru and I'm with you!!"
The hoodie bikini girl did not move for a while.
No, she probably could not move.
There was no need to peek up at the face lowered toward the screen. The trembling in her shoulders faded and her groaning sobs were brought under control, so he only had to wait for her to speak for herself.
Finally, the girl raised her head.
And she spoke.
"Please don't mock me. I am perfectly capable of deciding my own destiny."
Her fingertips operated the screen, but Kamijou and Luca were taken aback.
She did not open a short-range line using the same radio signal Ellen had. She accessed the entire disaster information network that used the Spheres to cover a wide area.
She used the key station she had prepared for herself.
She had to know better than anyone that her accumulated influence would act as a weapon now.
"If I'm going to confess, I'm not going to half-ass it. It won't reach him and he definitely won't hear it, but I have to try my best to get this out to Kamisato-chan."
Fran smiled a little.
She had recovered enough to smile with her own strength.
"So let's make a show out of it."
Part 12
The confession would be meaningless to the people not privy to the internal situation. But the small, small key station still sent a message out to the entire network so that it could never be taken back.
"My name is Karasuma Fran."
Most of the people would have been confused by that.
She was not a resident of Academy City and a search through the database would not find any records on her.
"The heat wave that crippled Academy City was entirely my responsibility. I caused all of you so very, very much trouble. The hot environment weakened the Elements and restricted them enough to avoid truly catastrophic damage, but that does not excuse my actions. I must be punished."
But.
Even though no one told them to, large crowds gathered in front of the Spheres that were opened like lotus flowers. They seemed drawn in to the planetarium-like dome and could not leave the footage played there.
"Even so, please wait just a while longer."
It happened in the park where order was slowly returning even without a ruler.
"Please allow me just one more selfish act."
It happened in the Show Business shelter she had once opposed.
"I am in love with someone."
It happened in the overcrowded Hospital.
No matter how many complicated equations went into developing an advertisement, a few words from a complete amateur could fill the world instead.
Perhaps that was the power of the truth. This had a different attraction than the eerie one of Ellen's words.
"I was told he would never return. I was told he had gone somewhere so far away that I could never reach him no matter how hard I tried. But I still want to save him. I want to do whatever it takes."
Everyone understood.
They all thought about this girl they had never met.
"I know my feelings of love will never be fulfilled. Even if I do save him, I have carried a sin from the beginning and I can never claim that happiness for myself. But that's fine. I just want to see his smile one more time."
They listened.
No, perhaps it was best to say they were charmed by her.
"Once this is over, I will accept any punishment."
So no one stopped the girl from speaking.
None of the shelter rulers interfered to the very end.
All of the Spheres agreed to act as her broadcast network. They all became regional stations for her key station.
"So please."
And she spoke the final words.
She reached her conclusion.
"Please allow me this once-in-a-lifetime confession, so I can bring this love to an end."
Part 13
Fran cut the connection to the Sphere.
Kamijou slowly exhaled and spoke.
"... You're okay with that?"
"Yes."
"You're okay with that conclusion, Fran? Don't give me that! Like hell you are!!"
"If we're talking about what's right or wrong and kind or cruel, then it might be easier to go along with what you're saying." The girl gently narrowed her eyes and did not hesitate to respond."But this is between one boy and one girl. No one in the world can answer for me better than I can."
"??? Dammit!!"
He could not exactly argue with that.
He had protected the world from Fiamma of the Right of God's Right Seat when he had set the Star of Bethlehem in motion. He had spent a nearly infinite amount of time repeatedly challenging a true Magic God and ultimately returned to his original world. But Kamijou had no confidence when it came to his experience in matters of romance. This was a fight where what was right and what was kind were not enough to advance, and that was just too difficult.
"Fran."
As a pure member of the former Kamisato Faction, Pirate Girl Luca had to have been trying to judge what distance to keep from this, but she spoke to the hoodie bikini magician.
"... If you need to cry, I'll lend you my chest."
"I'll take you up on that later, believe me. But I have something else to do now."
She stuck her index finger from her baggy sleeve and silently pointed toward heaven.
And then Karasuma Fran awoke.
"Let's blow away all of these nuisances and leave this place."
Part 14
In the sky, Ghost Girl Maya covered her face with her hands with her tall body wrapped in burial clothing.
She had heard most of what had happened in the network of Spheres. But due to Useful Spider's attack, she had lost the Sphere she had directly controlled as a key station. She had only heard reports from the girls who had been sent elsewhere to assist her.
Yes, she had only been away for a short while.
She should have been able to graphically display her influence by linking to a search service that checked for the passwords and codes mixed into the messages. But it was gone. It was all dead. No, the entirety of Academy City had been dyed in another color altogether.
All Maya had left were the Spheres directly under the former Kamisato Faction's control. Those dots were more like a stain on the otherwise pure map.
"The Spheres are so busy talking about Karasuma Fran that all the other rumors have been drowned out! 'Do what you like. ', 'Well, I can't say no to a girl in love. Not to a girl in love!', and 'Let's go drinking once it's over!' That's all the shelter rulers who control the Spheres are saying!! What do we do? How do we turn this back around!?"
"No, our stuff has already grown 'outdated'. If we start forcing things back onto those old topics, they'll only grow suspicious. We can't stop the flow of information and we have to avoid standing out as much as a record scratch!!"
"What do we do? What do we do, Maya!?"
The words "shut up" nearly escaped through her clenched teeth.
It was over.
The bubble had popped.
The rumors she had nurtured and raised like the child she could never have had been destroyed so easily in the short time she had been absent.
"Fran..."
Her outline flickered unnaturally while they were supported by the will-o'-the-wisp-like Censers.
But she may have made a fundamental misunderstanding. This was a battle where the lives of the girls surrounding Kamisato Kakeru were at stake. So she had no time to lament the loss of her child. She should not have assumed that nothing Fran could do could reach her.
It started with a shining star in the heavens.
No, it was not actually a star.
It was a piece of fan art titled the Bunny Grey Messenger.
Needless to say, Karasuma Fran had created it. It was a high power microwave galactic communication station meant to speak to some unseen individual for 100 years.
Ghost Girl Maya with her long, swaying black hair had no physical body.
She only seemed to exist by using the Censers' low-frequency waves and faint aromas to destabilize the mental states of any surrounding life forms.
But what if the Censers themselves were destroyed?
"Karasuma Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!"
Immediately after that cry, a 360 meter hammer swung down toward Academy City and accurately landed on the meteorological observatory on a District 21 mountain peak. And everything in between was brought down with it.
The sweet dreams were no longer necessary.
Fran had stared into the starry sky and floated through the emptiness for so long, but now she placed her feet on the ground and cast off her identity as a UFO girl.
Between the Lines 3
They spent a long time circling the earth.
Breaking free of the atmosphere using the Windowless Building had been easy enough, but matching their trajectory and speed to Magic God Tezcatlipoca for a rendezvous had been difficult. That had forced Kamisato into a trip around the planet in satellite orbit.
The earth had become a white planet where massive numbers of white bugs whirled about instead of clouds. Kamisato had initially thought it was a typhoon or something, but he had belatedly realized it was a colossal roulette wheel. This may have been Nuada's latest obsession.
Kamisato knew everything would return to normal at the end of the day, but it was still a sight void of all hope. If this was what he had seen, what would the Soviet cosmonaut have said?
"Oh, there he is, there he is☆ Tezcatlipoca is way too relaxed."
Niang-Niang licked her lips, placed her hands on her hips, and pushed out her flat chest. She did not seem to care that the weightlessness was causing the bottom of her mini-China dress to rise quite a bit.
They were truly in outer space, but none of the things in the textbooks seemed to apply. Kamisato did not need a spacesuit, the words of the god next to him reached his ears like normal, and no concern was given to the heat and radiation that was no longer being blocked by the earth's atmosphere. The Magic Gods were insane in everything they did.
"But... Tezcatlipoca? What does defeating just one of them matter when the earth is like that?"
"We just have to start by repairing the global environment. The earth has quite a few problems right now, but the biggest would be Proserpina's artificial ice age. Spring will never come as long as she keeps at it, so we need to do something about that first."
"Like what exactly?"
"Okay, time for a hint. Tezcatlipoca is the god of a certain mythology that fought Quetzalcoatl for the throne of the gods and lost.... Although that big man you see floating over there is the Tezcatlipoca created to combat the Spanish guy who was mistaken for the original Quetzalcoatl."
"Niang-Niang, you're getting off track."
"Oh, my bad. I don't know if it's due to that or just how he originally was, but he's known as a god of death that has enough power to create the world but instead uses it all to slaughter mankind. Buuuut. Being a death god isn't his only symbol. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it myself earlier, so do you remember what it is?"
"A... sun god?"
"Right. Even if the earth has been covered in darkness, we have a spare sun right here! So it's simple!! Let's send a new light down toward that planet that's closed in darkness and lost all hope!! Tezcatlipoca-chaaaaaan!!!!!!"
Kamisato heard someone gasp.
Niang-Niang showed no mercy against the muscular man floating quite nearby. The man also had a strange prosthetic leg with a large circular mirror embedded in it.
She slapped him.
She remade her arm into a giant hammer and knocked that god straight down toward the surface of the earth.
A shooting star fell.
It fell somewhere on the earth and caused an explosion far larger than the previous ones. Instead of just one point, it was more like the entire planet emitted light like a giant lightbulb. Kamisato almost thought the planet was going to set on fire and be reborn as a star.
Niang-Niang placed her hands on her hips and grinned despite the weightless bottom of her dress.
"Yeah! Now the light of hope fills the world anew!!"
"I thought I was defying some malicious schemers, but was I just lashing out at some thoughtless idiots?"
"Oh, are you finally getting over your issues?" asked Nephthys."Give the boy a round of applause."
"We can celebrate after getting the planet back. Begin reentry!!"
After seeing the blue planet showing itself through the fusion of extreme cold and extreme heat, Niang-Niang reignited her hand boosters. She adjusted the angle of the rocket to fly back toward the atmosphere.
"How many more times do you plan on destroying the earth?"
"As many times as it takes. Or we'll keep doing it forever. We've been holding back for so long out of concern for everyone around us, you see. I doubt a century or even a millennium is going to be enough to work through all that pent up frustration. Now that something's set us off like this, we've got a never-ending war of endless explosions on our hands!"
"..."
"Oh, but we don't mind. This is an endless world of eternal war and a world where we can go all out. In a way, that's one form of paradise. For more information, you should probably just study up on Norse Mythology, but... oh, yeah. That eyepatch-wearing thief is living as a fairy in 'that world', isn't she?"
They did not have time to chat any longer.
Nephthys gently leaned up against Kamisato and her bandages came apart. No, they rewrapped themselves with Kamisato inside. They protected a god's body from internal and external deterioration and decay.
They landed a moment later.
The hit from the largest and fastest rocket tore apart and blew away the remains of Academy City. Kamisato's spine froze over when he realized the same thing was theoretically possible in "that world".
"Now, now, now."
With her feet finally back on the ground, Niang-Niang produced a creaking metal sound from her baggy sleeves.
How many Magic Gods were visible nearby?
"Chiiimeeeraaa. Now there's an annoying one."
"Who's that?"
Kamisato strained his eyes to see through the smoky scenery.
Then his vision exploded with psychedelic colors.
He covered his face and screamed before the goddesses gave him a belated warning.
"Oh, a human like you should avoid looking right at her. It's just like looking at the sun though a normal telescope and your very soul will burn away if you have poor morals."
"Honestly. That's supposed to be too beautiful to bear? I just don't understand humans."
Nephthys sounded as exasperated as a woman whose boyfriend started ogling another woman while they were on a date, but Kamisato was in no state to respond.
"Gh, bweh, boehh..."
"Are you trying to ask what that is? It's Chimera."
"There's a limit to the beauty you can produce by polishing the human body, so that narcissistic and self-destructive pervert started taking in elements and structures from other creatures. Even if it's a reaction like the renaissance was to formal religious art, it's still frightening. Oh, and hearing her voice or smelling her scent could drive you mad, so be careful."
Some things were unavoidable even after being warned.
Beyond his darkening vision, he heard an unstable and high-pitched sound like metal scraping together.
"Giin giin, gwan gwan, giin, gwin gwiin, giin giin, gwin, gwan, giin!!"
"Yes, yes. We can chat later! I know you might want to show off ever last inch of your naked body since you finally have someone to 'appreciate' it, but if you make Kamisato-chan go along with your perverted exhibitionism, he'll drown in his own brain juices!!"
Kamisato could feel tears pouring down his cheeks and his head was full of questions. Had that been a voice he had heard? Could the other Magic Gods hear it like normal? But when he tried to process it in his own mind, he was overcome by nausea like an extreme case of motion sickness. It was a dangerous sort of nausea, like he had been punched in the back of the head instead of just in the gut.
"Hey, Nephthys. The human's vision has been cut off as you can see, so it would be nice if you could let loose and really 'cry'."
"I don't think so. I'm not in the mood thanks to that pervert."
"But your legend about crying at a god's funeral means you can interfere with the other Magic Gods' emotions and focus! There are tears of joy, tears of anger, tears of sorrow, and tears of awe! You can do whatever you want, so just jam them!!"
"If you want me to cry, then you had better have a good emotional story ready."
"You always cry like a waterfall from cheap stories about things like kittens lost on a battlefield!!"
Kamisato could not see much of anything, but he started running when a slender feminine hand pulled on his. Once the psychedelic world faded and the normal world returned, he realized they were in a dark underground tunnel. Everything outside had been blown away, but the underground areas seemed to have survived.
He heard Niang-Niang's joking voice.
"Hey, you all right? Don't worry too much about popping a boner at that art-obsessed god's sculpture. I'll keep that one a secret."
"That was such a terrible thing to say that it dragged me right back into reality.... With that and Tezcatlipoca, just how many suns do you have?"
"What are you talking about? If that obscene night flower was held up in the middle of the solar system, the world would be pitch black."
The goddesses really did make him frown.
Seeing the beautiful bodies of those "proper goddesses" may have brought his standards of beauty back to normal. Niang-Niang and Nephthys were both Magic Gods overflowing with the scent of death, but they were far better than that Chimera. That had completely left the category of "human".
What had it looked like to their eyes? Kamisato's entire body was pierced by the mixture of fear and curiosity brought by contact with the forbidden, but they did not have time for him to get an answer.
Something was watching them from the darkness down the half-crumbled tunnel.
"If it's not one of them, it's another."
Niang-Niang's skirt floated up as she kicked something away in annoyance.
It had likely fallen down when the surface had collapsed. Kamisato recognized the junk.
"That's that golden retriever's... A. A. A. was it called?"
"Oh? The thing that killed High Priest and Zombie?"
Nephthys sounded curious with her bandages having come loose a bit and she glanced over at the mini-China dress girl, but that pale girl shrugged and shook her head.
"You want me to copy that thing? Wouldn't work. A Magic God's death can't be accepted inside a Magic God's body."
"What even is that thing anyway?"
That secret of Academy City had completely killed two Magic Gods without World Rejecter. Since Kamijou Touma's hand had not killed or eliminated Magic God Othinus, it was a true exception on the level of Kamisato himself.
"I doubt you would understand."
"Then don't bother."
"The real issue is that the A. A. A. itself is pretty much meaningless."
He had said not to bother, but she explained anyway.
She tried to act all impressive, but she may have been prone to loneliness.
"Human, have you ever played shooting games."
"I'm more surprised that a 4000-year-old Chinese god is familiar with them."
"In those, you generally have infinite ammo and can just keep shooting forever. It only really works in games, but how do you think you would go about forcing that onto reality?"
"... ?"
"The A. A. A. is the answer. That golden retriever named Kihara Noukan was the player controlling the ship, but the bullets weren't contained in the machine. They were transferred in from a remote location to always keep the spare ammo at max. You can think of it like that."
"So it's like a warp device?"
"I'm not sure I would call it that. Let's say you use solar power or heavy hydrogen to create electricity in satellite orbit and send it down to earth in the form of microwaves or a laser. Would you call that energy transfer a warp?"
Either way, this changed who was in control. Kihara Noukan was still extraordinary for heading out to the scene, accurately avoiding the downpour of fireworks-like blasts from a bullet hell game, and fighting the boss all the while, but it was someone else who had been supplying him his firepower from behind the scenes. In a way, one could say it was that person who had killed High Priest and Zombie.
"Well, when you've been closed up in your shell and deceiving the world while trying to take revenge against the Magic Gods, I guess it's a sensible evolution. Although it's a twisted one like the small crabs that get inside of clams."
"?"
He did not understand at all, but she seemed satisfied with the explanation.
Niang-Niang spun around to face him.
"Trying to grab something in your own hand instead of having someone give it to you is just that difficult. Especially for a normal person who's met nothing but setbacks like him."
"..."
"Have you recovered enough to give threatening looks? Oops."
The lighthearted mini-China dress girl stopped speaking, but not because she had been overwhelmed by the pressure from Kamisato.
Whatever was in the darkness of the tunnel had finally attacked.
Niang-Niang pulled countless blades from her baggy sleeves and swung them randomly... or so it seemed. But a moment alter, countless sparks flew through the dimly lit space like a swarm of locusts had charged right into a bug zapper. Kamisato could not even see what it was she had intercepted.
He only heard a scraping sound.
Nephthys's chest bandages had been torn, so the brown Magic God held her arm horizontally across her chest.
"Niang-Niang."
"Sorry, sorry." She did not seem to care much."So this time it's the Forgotten God. It's kind of sad. Lovecraft used him as reference material, but the fiction and nonfiction got mixed together so badly his original form was completely forgotten! Didn't people also decide there was a connection to Crowley, so they stopped all research into this Magic God's historicity? First that narcissistic pervert and now you. Is everyone here an exhibitionist that just wants to show off to someone!?"
"Niang-Niang, I don't think you have any right to say that after all the effort you're putting into this in front of this boy."
It was not that Kamisato could not see it due to a lack of light or due to great speed. He could not comprehend it no matter how much he stared at it. Once again, the human and the Magic Gods were likely perceiving it differently.
"Niang-Niang, " warned Nephthys.
"Yeah, I know. The others are starting to gather. We're surrounded and all on our own. Plus, this is a world of never-ending battle between gods, so it's not like a human will last long anyway."
"Kh."
"We have no real way of saving you, so you'll just have to pray you're pulled out of here by someone in 'that world'."
Niang-Niang used one hand to shoot down some things flying their way and she cheerfully looked back toward Kamisato.
"By the way, human. I'd like to ask something while I still can."
"What?"
She really did make it sound casual.
And she spoke in the middle of a battle a human could not even perceive.
"In the end, how was the right hand we made?"
Not long before, he might have felt that question was worthy of death. In fact, he would not have hesitated to blow her away even if she begged for her life through trembling lips.
But he slowly sighed.
And he answered.
"Did you give no thought to how much confusion it would cause me?"
"Yeah... sorry about that. But we didn't actually realize our desires were leaking out. We had no way of stopping it."
"Also, it's rare for that kind of power to dwell in a human, " explained Nephthys."It usually ends up in an object like a demon-slaying sword or a holy mirror. Who would have thought it would choose such a short-lived creature?"
Niang-Niang gently narrowed her eyes within repeated and intense sounds of clashing metal.
Her smile was no longer a mocking sneer.
"It's true we were selfish, but I also think this happened because it was meant to. World Rejecter is only compatible with someone that meets the conditions that match it. So there was no possibility of Kamijou Touma acquiring World Rejecter. You already knew that, right?"
"Yeah.... I'm not sure if that's a compliment, though."
"It is." She answered immediately."There must have been times when you wanted to cheer everyone on and times when you could not allow a dream to be lost as it was crushed by reality."
"But we think the desires that leaked away from us must have sought out someone who met those conditions. Just like Kamijou Touma, there was a reason you were chosen."
"What?"
"So it caught us completely by surprise when you suddenly attacked us. Of course, we're celebrating that now since it brought us to this place where we won't cause anyone any trouble. But even if that power had escaped from us, we never thought it would create enough of a grudge for someone to kill us, " said Niang-Niang."Hey, human. There's one phrase you really like to use: the kind of normal high school boy you can find anywhere."
"..."
No.
It can't be, thought Kamisato as alarm bells went off in his heart.
"But you knew better than anyone that 'the kind of normal high school boy you can find anywhere' is something you can't actually find anywhere, didn't you?"
Time came to a stop.
Or was it Kamisato's thoughts that came to a stop?
"I mean, your life was full of jealousy of others and, in your eyes, everyone else had something you didn't."
Something heavy seemed to stir up the air with a low rumbling.
Niang-Niang pulled two hands' full of weapons from her baggy sleeves. But even so, her slender body bent backwards with a deafening sound of collision. Kamisato could not see what had happened. No, he could not comprehend it. At the very least, he could tell this was different from the previous projectiles. The Forgotten God itself had likely charged in from further down the tunnel.
He finally saw something.
It looked nothing like beautiful Niang-Niang and Nephthys. But what even was it? It was extremely simplified yet incredibly eerie like a stick figure drawn by a small child awkwardly holding a black crayon.
But Niang-Niang continued in a singsong tone.
"But in that case, did other people really see you as someone who had nothing at all?"
"Niang-Niang, that's just cruel. It's like the smell of his own body. He probably isn't even aware of it."
"Even so."
More rumbling sounds continued and something slowly rose to the surface of Kamisato's mind.
For example, Imagine Breaker resided in another boy's right hand, but its presence could not be proven without a supernatural power to negate. If Kamijou Touma had never moved to Academy City and lived in a perfectly normal city, he would have lived out his entire life without knowing he had that power.
"Did it never cross your mind?"
This was the same.
Kamisato Kakeru had something. Something valuable enough to attract World Rejecter. But it was highly unique and only showed itself during highly irregular situations.
"What if terrorists attacked your school? What if you ran across a cute girl being harassed by delinquents in a back alley? What would you do then? But you're about the only one that can pull it off after only putting that much thought into it. Not many people can draw out accurate blueprints at that point."
That was why the power had chosen him.
It had seen the world he lived in as the best place to allow what he had already had to shine, so it had decided World Rejecter would be most useful there.
"How did you like it?"
Niang-Niang seemed to be honestly asking.
And as she did so, she spread out countless blades like fans to block the crayon's attack with a round shield.
"The thing about us is... well, we're gods. We're the ones that give, so it's hard for us to know what it feels like for the chosen ones like you. But we were a little worried that the gift born from us was too much for you to handle."
Kamisato fell silent for a while.
Finally, he spoke in the empty world.
"... That wasn't what I wanted."
"..."
"Even if I wanted something special, I only wanted something that let me brag a bit at school. I might have said it's meaningless if you don't win the gold medal, but anything would have been fine as long as it was enough of a conversation starter to fill in the silence at the karaoke box."
He could not hide anything in front of these gods.
So there was no real reason to open his mouth.
But he still said it.
He could not stop now.
"So why did it have to be a talent that only shines when you're fighting a real god? Why did it have to be something that only shows itself after things have gotten that bloody!? I mean... that's useless!! I can't share that with anyone! Who cares about winning the gold medal or being one-of-a-kind!? No matter how great an accomplishment it is, it's meaningless if you can't tell anyone about it!!"
The difference between a hero and a combat addict was paper thin.
In fact, it may have been the era that decided a combat addict was a hero that was craziest of all.
"I didn't want that!! Killing the Magic Gods didn't even feel real! So I tilted my head and kept trying until it did!! Every time Ellen, Claire, and the others praised me for it, it felt less and less like what I really wanted to do. It really hurt when my sister Salome pointed at me and accused me! I wanted to shout back and ask her why she was standing on Kamijou Touma's side!!"
He did not care how pitiful and pathetic he looked.
Sometimes facing that side of oneself held great meaning.
"That wasn't what I wanted Elza, Maya, and the rest to be smiling about. Couldn't it have just been about how good I was at making character bentos or how good I was at karaoke? When it comes to helping girls, couldn't it have just been helping them with their homework or struggling to discover their secret hobby? Why do several metal drums full of spilt blood have to come into the picture there? Someone like me can't shine in a place like that!!"
Niang-Niang deflected something to the side.
As soon as her hands were free, the little devil placed them on her hips and winked.
"If you're bothered by that, then you're still not a hero. That at least you don't have to worry about."
"It's no different!! I can't control myself! I'm not like Mass Murderer Salome who intentionally maintained her position as a criminal!! I never felt any guilt and I just kept swinging my arm all I wanted. It didn't matter if there was a special power in my right hand or not. I mean, I... !!"
He clenched his teeth and confessed the one thing he should have avoided.
"I killed all of you Magic Gods without feeling even a twinge of guilt!!"
"Yeah, " said a voice.
Niang-Niang nodded in a somehow satisfied way with her hands still on her hips.
"Well, hearing that makes it sound like it was worth being killed by you."
"..."
"From now on, your life still isn't going to shine. In fact, if you want to shine, the world has to end up like this."
Niang-Niang once more pulled a ton of swords and spears from her baggy sleeves. Without even looking back, she slashed behind herself countless times to intercept something that produced orange sparks.
"So what will you do? Stay in this bizarre world with the gods and continue to shine, or return to the human world and be forever buried?"
He had no words.
But he knew his own answer all too well.
So as the Magic Gods waited within the unreliable storm of slashes, the words escaped him.
"I know it'll end up being an empty life where all I do is envy others."
It was a hopeless complaint.
"I'm sure I'll keep living without understanding why it is everyone around me is so kind to me."
It was an almost servile self-rejection.
"But... even so..."
But he made a change there.
He seemed to be defying something.
"I want to keep trying. No matter how many times it takes, I want to work toward shining in that normal world!!"
The Magic God whistled.
He only had two options, but he had grasped for a nonexistent third option. A great roar burst out.
The mini-China dress goddess swung her arm wide to knock the crayon man away just as the ceiling crumbled and other Magic Gods looked down at them.
She had heard some hopelessly pathetic words.
But Niang-Niang and Nephthys both looked amused as they viewed the result. The mini-China dress girl slapped her own butt and the brown woman retightened the bandages wrapped around her body. And then the goddesses proclaimed.
"You really are an imperfect human. But now that we've taken what you really think to heart..."
"Yes. Now I can truly 'cry'."
Notes
1. ↑ "Baumkuchen" is a layered cake which looks like tree rings. The name is German and it translates to "tree cake". Wikipedia article.
| ← Ch. 176 | Ch. 178 → |