Book 9: Chapter 5 |
Part 1
Night had fallen.
I heard soft footsteps descending the stairs. It was Erika, my Vampire big sister.
But my sexy sister wearing only a sheer pink negligee (!?) tilted her head as soon as she entered the living room.
“Oh?”
She was apparently puzzled by the smell of food before since she had not started doing the cooking herself.
Without any power, none of the lights were working.
But keeping my phone’s light on all the time would be a waste of its battery, so I had created a simple light by placing a flashlight shining into a clear bowl flipped upside down. I had based the idea on those lights in night construction zones that resembled the paper lanterns at the Hinamatsuri.
We had cooked the food using a portable stove sitting on the table. The water supply had been stopped too, so we had used bottled water for that. After flavoring it with the curry Erika had made for us yesterday, we had added some vegetables like potatoes and corn that kept well at room temperature.
The end result was a fantastic curry bowl, but while I keep saying “we”, I didn’t make it.
“Erika-chan? I know this is your home, but do you have to walk around dressed like that?”
The glasses woman tending to the earthenware pot spoke in a gentle but chiding manner.
Needless to say, it was the wife next door, Shoumi-san.
“You made this?”
“Sorry for using your kitchen without asking, but it looked like you had some things that needed to be used before they went bad.”
“I’m only borrowing the kitchen from our mom anyway. And I’m sure she would be comfortable with you taking over in her stead. But…hm. I see you leave the potato skins on.”
They looked amiable enough.
They mentioned a bunch of stuff about nutrition that went over Ayumi and my heads, like it’s best not to wash them too much and that cooking them destroys the vitamins.
To be honest, we had barely managed it this time. It had of course helped that Itou-san could physically prevent Umikaze Speechia from doing anything and that the Scylla herself had told us how to solve the snow problem.
But in the end, it came down to emotions.
The most logical of explanations may not have been enough to convince Shoumi-san. She might have decided it was still “safest” to kill the girl and eliminate all possibility of trouble.
She had temporarily pushed past her normal limits due to her extreme tension, so once she managed to calm down, things would revert to neutral.
But even that was only an optimistic theory. Whether or not our neighbor would ever truly be the same again was a gamble.
Still, I hadn’t given up on her.
Because I believed she was worthy of forgiveness.
I had waited this long because I wanted to include my Vampire sister as part of our fighting force. And because I had wanted to give Maxwell time to gather and analyze data.
Since the ordinary household power was out, none of the streetlights were on outside. The living room TV was dead too.
Ayumi was holding a small emergency TV (with a hand crank generator) that our mom had probably bought off an informercial and immediately shoved in a closet. The Class Rep and Itou-san were shoulder-to-shoulder with her to see the screen. And damn those three were cute altogether like that.
“No further news has come in regarding the Noble Ingot cargo ship fire. The flames continue to burn. The coast guard’s firefighting boats continue to battle the blaze, but experts say this fire includes flammable plastic materials instead of just fuel, so some are saying the only option is to wait for it to burn itself out.”
I could hear the female broadcaster from here.
The news was the same as it had been yesterday and the day before.
They weren’t accidentally reading yesterday’s script without noticing the wrong date at the top, were they?
Yes.
“Come to think of it, it never did make sense.”
Not even those firefighting experts could put out the ship fire with their fire extinguishing foam. Because even when the foam covered the deck, the fire could send the microplastics into the air if the density was right.
But…
“If they continue spraying ordinary water, they should be able to knock all the snow out of the air.”
If we wanted them to put out the fire, we only had to get accurate information to them.
That might sound reasonable enough, but those magic words of 20/20 hindsight could be applied to most any situation. If we had realized this from the beginning, we could have done this much sooner.
But we still had a chance to fix this.
“Maxwell, I’m about ready to hear what data you’ve gathered. Or do you need more time?”
“Questioning my abilities as a machine before asking a question will not improve my performance. (´Д` ) Hmph.”
It sure seems to make a difference with you, but does that mean I’m ignorantly anthropomorphizing you too much?
“The cargo ship burning out at sea was a toy prepared by JB from the beginning,” I said. “It’s burning now to provide the monster needed for the Scylla to operate within the city they’ve intentionally isolated. So let’s check over things one at a time. …What’s the coast guard doing? Umikaze made it sound like they’re honestly trying to put out the fire but failing.”
“Sure. They are mostly the firefighting division arrived from the next city over. The two cities have an agreement to assist each other if an industrial complex fire or something similar makes the local harbor facilities unusable.”
“The next city over.”
They wouldn’t have an infinite supply of that chemical fire extinguishing foam. If they were reloading at the harbor there, then going there to speak with them could have been an option, but…
“Then going to them directly isn’t an option, is it?”
“Sure.”
“Then what about sending them a transmission? You and me are communicating right now.”
“Their firefighting boats use a special band for their ship radios, so reaching them with an ordinary phone or over the internet would be very difficult. Leaked videos are common nowadays, so they apparently have their private phones gathered up and stored in a safe before they head out on a job.”
“Are you saying their boats don’t use GPS?”
“Excuse me. All of their industrial communication devices require a special data key for emergency workers. Breaking into that on such short notice is not realistic.”
Which meant…
“Maxwell, I want to use a drone. I can use a speaker to get my voice directly to the firefighting boats out at sea. That way we can tell them to use seawater instead of that foam.”
“Will they really listen to some anonymous advice? They will follow standard procedure by always looking up to their commanding officer to see what to do. There is no room for adlibbing there.”
“They’ll be desperate for anything that might work right now. Once they find out the water works, they’ll know what to do.”
Drones came in a number of varieties, but I had heard helicopters and planes couldn’t fly in this snow.
But the drones I used weren’t the multicopter ones that looked like crane flies. I used balloon drones made by attaching a rubber balloon to the top of a spray can.
However, they did use a small propeller for changing direction and the microplastics would probably wreak havoc on the motor and gears.
I didn’t want to send one flying too far.
“Let’s get as close to the ocean as we can, launch a drone from there, and try to get this info to the coast guard so they’ll start using ordinary water.”
“That makes sense, but there are still risks.”
“Do you think JB has more than just Umikaze here?”
We all glanced over at the wicked blonde girl, but the Scylla seated on the floor shook her head.
“My connections to the rest of JB aren’t that strong. I don’t know any details on the cargo ship set up as Charybdis or on their defenses here.”
“…”
“Wait, keep that scary woman away from me!! I-I really don’t know anything!!”
I was beginning to see how to keep her compliant.
If she was being difficult, I could let Itou-san the Archenemy or Shoumi-san the Class Rep mom handle it. She was a much less dangerous villain than the Valkyrie widow(!?) named Karen.
I still didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly JB was. Only that several criminals seemed to be cooperating via a network. In other words, they were all linked by the Freischutz simulator. We had bigger issues right now, but once the snow problem was dealt with, I had to get her to tell me more about that.
“Even if there is no further JB presence here, there are still other threats,” said Maxwell. “Kukyou City has been pushed to the limit, so it is at high risk for severe moral hazards. You are talking about visiting the harbor at night. Anything could happen there.”
Was the idea of the benevolent citizen only an illusion?
I would die just the same no matter who stabbed me, so I had to be careful.
“Fugu. But aren’t the coast guard experts? Why can’t they figure out for themselves that they can put out the fire by switching methods?”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to break through their professionalism and the preconception that they need to put out this fire as quickly as possible, Idiot #1?” asked Maxwell. “And did a musclebound meathead like you neglect any brain training to the point you failed to realize that there are several legal barriers in the way of what you suggest, and that Japan’s public agencies tend to have their freedom restricted to a considerable degree, you simpleton? Now, if you don’t feel like being actually useful, how about you go over and start counting the wood grain on the floor.”
Ayumi bit her lip and started trembling in place, so I went over and hugged her. It felt like that was my duty as a big brother right then.
But anyway…
“If we can get the Noble Ingot extinguished, this will all be over.”
Firing an anti-ship missile that skimmed just off the ocean’s surface would probably be able to sink the cargo ship, but the world didn’t give us such a convenient option.
And…
“We need to gather data on the ship. If someone’s still onboard, we need to make sure the coast guard focuses on rescuing them.”
Umikaze shook her long blonde hair side to side as she looked around with obvious caution.
“Even if they’re one of JB’s cast members?”
“Even then. Try to understand my stance here. And the fact that I’m actually speaking with you here right now should show I actually mean it.”
Cast member, huh?
There are so many other terms they could use: staff member, agent, soldier, employee, teammate, brother/sister, comrade, pawn, ally, etc.
How did they refer to Freischutz? That is the name of an opera, I suppose.
“So the harbor at night, huh?”
How many drones did I have ready to go?
There were so many possible barriers in my way: a JB ambush, the city’s desperate people, and the microplastic snow to name a few. It would be best to not assume the very first drone would work.
“Normal water works better against that snow than chemical fire extinguishing foam. We need to contact the coast guard’s firefighters and get them to finally extinguish that cargo ship fire.”
Part 2
Things had changed.
Rain was pounding on the roof.
“It’s pouring.” Ayumi looked out the living room window. “If only this would put out the cargo ship fire.”
“We wouldn’t be that lucky.”
It might help some since it would take the microplastics out of the air, but you never heard of firefighters leaving a burning building because it was raining and that would take care of things for them. We still needed the help of the coast guard.
Once the microplastics around the city soaked up the rainwater, the risk of a large fire reduced considerably, so we did still need to view this rain as a blessing.
“Anyway, Ayumi, are you ready to go?”
“Fugu.”
That was not a clear yes or no (and she was the type to wait till the last second to do her summer homework), so I helped her check through her backpack which had a single shoulder strap…and just as I suspected, she wasn’t ready at all.
Zombies needed a lot of special care, like needle, thread, disinfectant, and preservatives. Especially when it was raining and that rain would be tangled with microplastics. Really, she probably shouldn’t have been going outside at all.
“If you want to lose the title of ‘idiot’ then you need to start looking after your own bag.”
“It’s all of you who call me that for no good reason!”
I helped my tearful little sister get her things in order while thinking about what we had to do.
Ultimately, we had to get the Noble Ingot fire put out.
That required letting the coast guard firefighters know their current efforts were a waste of time and they should use ordinary water instead.
It might be difficult to get a drone out in this snow, so to reduce the risk of it crashing, we were going to the harbor to launch it from the shortest possible distance.
That would solve the microplastic snow problem plaguing Kukyou City.
The group walking to the harbor was me, Ayumi, Erika, Itou Helen, and Umikaze Speechia.
“Okay, the idiot’s ready now, so let’s get going.”
Shoumi-san took a break from efficiently using the limited water to wash the dishes and poked her head out into the living room.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? Shouldn’t you go to the police instead?”
“They’ll start functioning again once we’re done. We can leave the rest with them then, so don’t worry.”
“…”
She wanted to find a reason to stop us, but she knew full well the police would be no help here. That was why she had taken matters into her own hands when it came to protecting her daughter.
Meanwhile, the Class Rep gave me a complicated look since she had not been chosen to join our group, but I wasn’t going to change my mind on this. Mostly because bringing her into danger would in turn put Shoumi-san on edge. The extreme actions she had taken only worked on a limited basis, so she could not rely on that monstrous strength forever.
And one other thing.
“C’mon, let’s go, Umikaze.”
“Ugh, you’re really making me betray JB, aren’t you?”
After seeing that other JB “cast member” shot to death in a police holding cell, I understood why she wasn’t thrilled by the idea.
But on the other hand…
“(Would you prefer to stay here with Shoumi-san?)”
I whispered the magic words in an ear with blonde hair falling over it and the Scylla froze in place.
I didn’t trust her not to cause trouble, but that was exactly why I couldn’t leave her behind with the Class Rep and her mom. I didn’t want her plotting revenge and she could end up being torn limb from limb if Shoumi-san started having doubts again. The woman was smiling now, but that was only because we were providing some guarantee of safety.
She would do anything for her daughter.
In that sense, she was a perfectly “normal” person.
Erika called to us from the entrance.
“I have the umbrellas ready. We appear to have more than enough for everyone.”
“Why does a family of five have so many umbrellas?”
The rain was unexpected, but we couldn’t change our plan now.
Kukyou City was at its limit.
Umikaze of JB had been agitating people today, but who could say what tomorrow would hold. Conflict could be sparked by all sorts of things that didn’t even need to be connected to a villain’s plans or Freischutz’s calculations. What scared me most was for widespread rioting to envelop the city after developing naturally, outside of any conspiracy or plotting. With no clear cause, you couldn’t find a way to prevent it.
So before that happened, we had to break Kukyou City’s bonds and set it free.
“Okay, Class Rep, Shoumi-san. We’ll be going.”
“Take care. And I mean that.”
The Class Rep sounded worried as we stepped out into the night with various colors of umbrella.
The rain sounded awfully heavy on our umbrellas, but was that due to the microplastics in the air? I could see some dark gray sludge on the surface of the umbrellas.
Hopefully the drone would be okay.
I doubted the rain could knock it from the air, but it could lead to some unexpected malfunction.
“The snow feels different underfoot now, Senpai.”
Itou-san tilted her head while trudging through the snow and carrying an umbrella too large for her short stature.
We didn’t want the snow to take in enough air to become flammable, but it caused a different problem when it grew wet and flat.
It became heavy and hard.
Maybe it was like a down blanket that had soaked up a bunch of water. I could hear some creaking sounds and looked around to see a thick tree in a nearby yard close to breaking from the weight of the snow.
“I hope this won’t be too much weight for the roofs,” said Erika who was using a bat umbrella.
I didn’t want to tell her, but I was pretty sure this would damage the roofs.
My feet slid on the snow instead of sinking into it. My footing was as unstable as walking on a surface fully coated with wet leaves. Hopefully cars and motorcycles wouldn’t slip on this.
This was yet another reason why Kukyou City couldn’t wait much longer.
The city would cease to be a city if it was left at the mercy of the microplastic snow.
Our destination was the coast, but not the beach in the shopping district. We were interested in the concrete industrial area. The container yard where Maxwell was stored was there.
I asked Umikaze some more questions on the way.
“So the water filter misinformation related to Huge Camera was you too?”
“That was meant to create an external enemy and provide a demonstration that would help me take over at the school. They needed some close-to-home concern or they wouldn’t think to stay in the school and find weapons, right?”
I couldn’t believe it.
While we had been risking our lives to protect the city, we had been helping JB gather data for manipulating people.
Erika twirled her black bat umbrella while asking a cautious question.
“Then are there more JB people in Kukyou City?”
“Don’t ask me. We’re connected through Freischutz’s network, but I’ve never actually met them. If I knew where any of them were, I would have gone to them first.”
I doubted she was lying about that.
Not only had she not gone to anyone for help after being poisoned by Itou-san, she had worked on her own to take over the school. If she had someone else she could work with, I bet they could have found a way to take over the school without revealing who they were. With an accomplice, they could create whatever alibis they needed.
JB.
It seemed like a huge organization, but I had a poor picture of what exactly it was. Or rather, it was hard to figure out what had brought its members together. Absolute Noah had used the very obvious bait of surviving the destruction of the world, but what interests and beliefs bound these people together?
“A jailbreak.”
“What kind of jailbreak?”
I had to ask that question since I was a huge electronics geek.
To jailbreak a phone was to break free of the protections put in place by the manufacturer’s settings and customize it however you liked. That violated the warranty, so everything you did from there was your own responsibility and what you thought was a convenient piece of free software could turn out to be a virus.
“We want to break free of this boring world,” said Umikaze. “Amatsu-kun, have you ever questioned the fact that the world runs on the decimal system?”
“Why would I?”
“1 day is 24 hours, 1 hour is 60 minutes, and 1 minute is 60 seconds. You can look at the units of weeks, months, and years too if you like. Do you see the number 10 anywhere in all of that?” The wicked blonde girl laughed. “Why is a kilogram a kilogram? Why is a meter defined the way it is? There are of course plausible reasons and stories for each and every one of those things, but those are all excuses, aren’t they? The dollar is the standard global currency because someone benefits from it. Same with English being the lingua franca. Don’t you find it odd that the Japanese write programs with English characters? Chinese and Indian programmers do the same. Because that’s ‘the way it’s done’. The meter and the gram are no different. That was made ‘the way it’s done’ because someone found it easier that way.”
This reminded me of the twisted way the former Bright Cross chose to have humans manage Archenemies because it was “easier” that way. Except this was on a much wider scale.
“So we in JB are casting a stone of doubt on our worldview and on all the definitions we accept as normal. We will tear down all presuppositions, renew everything, and construct a liberated world not bound to anyone’s vested interests. That is our idea of a jailbreak. To break free of the unseen rule of all the things everyone just accepts without bothering to question them.”
“So you’re looking up from the bottom of the pyramid?”
“In that sense, we’re the opposite of Absolute Noah that gathered the most privileged around the world to survive a great disaster together. In JB, we hate nothing more than those people who look down on the rest of us and force their rules onto us.”
Of course, these were the words of an enemy within JB, so I didn’t know how much of this I could believe. It would be best not to accept any of it until I had some more objective evidence.
In the worst case, it was even possible this was a sales talk that Freischutz had constructed to efficiently lure people into their group.
But who did they think was responsible for the “rule” they were trying to break free of?
Were they blaming humans or Archenemies?
Or did they blame the mysterious gods like Valkyrie Karen?
“I don’t know if it’s all of you or Freischutz who’s really in control there, but what you see here is what JB is actually doing.”
“…”
“Jailbreaking a phone will force the risk of viruses and hacked accounts onto unsuspecting ordinary users. Because you’re opening a hole in the safe network and that allows malware in. …Isn’t that essentially what you’re doing? If people learn their safety is being threatened for some stranger’s ‘freedom’, most people aren’t just going to accept it. Maybe the way things work now is designed to prop up someone’s vested interests, but what you’re forcing onto them is a heavy burden too.”
Maybe she didn’t have an answer to that.
Anyway, we walked through the rainy city to reach the ocean.
Itou-san gulped below her umbrella.
“It’s finally time, Senpai.”
“Yes. It’s almost 9. I don’t know when your curfew is, but I want to get you back home before you’re in too much trouble.”
“Could you not bring up that very realistic problem right now!? Ah, ahh! How am I ever supposed to explain this!?”
I was the one that had gotten their precious daughter involved in this mess, so if her parents were going to get after anyone, it should be me. But I decided not to mention that.
I could go apologize to them in secret and let them punch me while that cute underclassman was none the wiser.
And…
“Ohhhh, we’re really at the harbor at night.”
Ayumi excitedly waved her smallish plastic umbrella around, but I doubted she had started watching industrial tour videos for fun. So had she been watching police dramas or gang movies?
The harbor itself was not operational.
The entire bay had been blocked off for the firefighting and no ships were allowed in or out.
But there were still valuables in the containers and warehouses.
Even with the power out and the streetlights off – no, because of those things – they would still have night guards on duty. Otherwise, Maxwell’s container would have been crushed by the snow here. The guards’ presence was not appreciated at the moment, but I couldn’t forget to be thankful in general.
And I found what I was looking for.
There was a tear in the tall fence surrounding the harbor. I had heard a forklift had run into the fence and it never got fixed.
“This way.”
“Ugh, we’ll have to fold up our umbrellas to get through there,” said Ayumi. “And in this thick rain.”
I knew my way around the place since Maxwell was located here. Under normal circumstances, I would have gone and said hi to the guy at the gate.
Once through the hole in the fence, we weaved our way through the large warehouses and large piles of containers and trudged through the heavy, waterlogged snow to reach the wharf.
We wanted the shortest distance possible.
That meant leaving the area where Maxwell was and walking to the ferry loading zone that had a large space for loading and unloading cars.
The snow was piled up and a bunch of rain-wet cars were lined up there.
Boats were moored there, but I saw no sign of any people around.
“Fugu. This doesn’t look like a car company left an incoming shipment of new cars here.”
“It might be the opposite. People drove here hoping to leave the city, but the boats weren’t running and they were stuck.”
It was really dark with the streetlights out, but the ocean was unnaturally bright. A sunset-orange light was flickering there. It was a lot closer than I had expected. It was in front of the horizon, so…less than 3km probably. That was like the distance from one train station to another in a big city.
The Noble Ingot was still burning out there.
That was the Charybdis disaster gadget prepared for JB’s Scylla.
It was the cause of all this.
“Okay, let’s get started.”
Part 3
The reason the Noble Ingot fire had yet to be put out was the poor compatibility between the microplastic snow and the chemical fire extinguishing foam the coast guard was using. They could cover the ship in foam, but that wouldn’t fully stop the fire from sending the microplastics into the air. They could put out the fire if they set aside their special equipment and used seawater. The water would tangle with the snow in the air and cause it to fall.
But the rain wasn’t enough.
We did need the help of those professionals.
We had to send a drone from here to inform the firefighting boats out at sea.
“So how exactly do we do that?” asked Ayumi.
It seemed a bit late to be asking that, but maybe it was a sign of her trust in me that she had come all this way without knowing what we were doing.
“No, wait. She’s just so stupid it sounds like there’s some deeper meaning there, but there really isn’t.”
“Just answer my question!!”
I showed tearful Ayumi what I had brought with me.
“Here, Satori-kun.”
“Thanks.”
Erika placed her bat umbrella over me while I worked, but all I was doing was hitting the switch of a hairspray-sized metal can to inflate a balloon.
It was the same basic principle as the trick we had used at school.
The balloon was shaped like a meter-long rugby ball.
Balloons did not require much energy, but they weren’t fast. However, letting it float out there for too long would increase the risk of a malfunction. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I had customized it into something like a blimp this time.
I could control it with my phone, so no special controller was necessary.
It could move forward, back, up, and down with its two small motors and by letting gas in or out.
I let go to see how it floated.
“Ohh, that’s really cool, Senpai.”
It was a shame the phone controller required both hands. Otherwise, I would have given Itou-san such a headpatting while she leaned forward with eyes sparkling.
Anyway.
I had wanted to take some time to practice since this was my first time doing this, but the microplastic snow and heavy rain meant a risk of the motors malfunctioning. It would probably be best to get right to it.
I sent the blimp-like drone out over the dark ocean while keeping it high enough to pass right over a truck. It had a camera, but for some reason, I watched it leaving instead of watching that footage.
I had no idea how willing the coast guard’s firefighters would be to listen to us, but this had to be far better than doing nothing at all.
Reach them.
Please reach them safely.
But those wishes were interrupted by static from my phone.
“Fugu? It’s falling, Onii-chan!!”
Ayumi sounded panicked, but failures weren’t all that unusual. The question was why it had failed. If we didn’t find an answer, we would only end up wasting all the spare drones. I analyzed the camera footage as best as I could.
And…
“It was shot down? Be careful everyone!! Hide behind a car and stay down on the-”
“Interesting. I didn’t expect you to directly interfere with the cargo ship.”
I heard a voice followed by the din of twisting metal from the side. A lot of twisting metal. Something had shot through the roofs of all the cars neatly lined up like at a soccer field’s parking lot. The entire line of cars was crushed and the large holes appearing in them were moving toward us!?
“Satori-kun!!”
Erika tugged on my arm and we rolled across the filthy ground together.
Her bat umbrella flew through the air and was shredded before it reached the ground.
The noise around us seemed distorted as the crushed and flipped-over scraps exploded. If not for the rain soaking the microplastic snow, who knows how far the fire would have spread.
We couldn’t just use the cars as shields. We were up against something that saw the cars as explosives instead of metal barriers. We’d just get blown up along with them.
But on that note, what was even happening here? Had a stealth fighter equipped with a Gatling gun made a strafing run or something!?
“This is fascinating even for JB, but…oh, I get it now.”
“Ugh.”
Umikaze Speechia’s butt trembled while she crawled along the ground a short distance away. No, she may have been trying to make a run for it during the confusion.
“One of our own leaked info to you,” said the voice. “That explains why the game pieces surpassed our expectations.”
The voice came from the side deck of one of the abandoned ferries moored here.
And I recognized the person looking down at us.
It was a girl with a red ponytail and skin tanned a light brown. She wore a baggy tank top and shorts, much like a basketball player.
“The girl from Huge Camera?”
She was the one that had been instigating a riot there.
Which meant she would be on JB’s side.
“Then again, capturing a traitor and convincing her to betray us is in itself beyond what Freischutz predicted. Amatsu Satori, you really are the final hurdle standing in JB’s way.”
What had happened to the others?
Where were Ayumi and Itou-san?
I couldn’t let her notice me looking for them, but I felt like anything I did here would work against me.
“So however it happened, I am glad you came here.”
The redheaded basketball girl gestured as if grabbing at empty air.
No, that wasn’t it.
“I came all this way to kill you, so I need to deliver on that.”
The microplastic snow would burn under the right conditions. It could also harden like a guillotine blade. I thought I fully understood that.
However.
I never imagined it could be shaped to be launched in a straight line like a bottle rocket!
“I-I’m part of JB too!? Are you really willing to blow me up along with him, Hotaruzawa Kezuri!?”
“I’m sorry to say your priority is ranked very low. Not that I know where my priority ranking falls within JB as a whole.”
Something flew toward me with the force of an artillery shell.
Part 4
To be honest, I was completely useless since all I could do was roll.
Our opponent could fire shells on the level of tank guns with the rapid-fire speed of a machinegun. And she would have plenty of materials with all this microplastic snow around.
“Kh.”
Erika grabbed me and rolled to the side just before the snow and the concrete below it were torn up in the spot we vacated. The cars here only looked like giant bombs to me now.
There were so many explosions and so much smoke you could forget it was raining.
“(Satori-kun, our top priority has to be the Circe Witch.)”
“Itou-san?”
“(Umikaze Speechia is only behaving because of the threat that girl poses to her. This Hotaruzawa girl is bad enough, so we really don’t want Umikaze rejoining the fight against us too.)”
Right. That was right.
Umikaze was a formidable Archenemy and she hadn’t had a change of heart and joined our side or anything like that. She would return to JB if she had the chance. That Hotaruzawa Kezuri girl made it sound like JB had given up on her, but who could say how Umikaze would respond to that.
Would she side with us since we were opposed to JB?
Would she attack us in the hopes of getting back in their good graces?
Would either option scare her enough that she chose to flee into the ocean or something?
Or would she return to the Class Rep’s house to have her revenge?
“I can’t predict what she’ll do. Dammit, but I know we can’t just ignore her!”
“Oh? You have guts ignoring me, Amatsu Satori-kun.”
I heard a voice from an impossible direction: directly above.
Had Hotaruzawa jumped from the ferry’s side deck!? Did she use the explosive force of the microplastic!?
Worse, there was a glittering blade in her hand. And I’m not just talking about a butcher’s knife or fruit knife. This was a full double-edged sword longer than she was tall.
“Satori-kun!!”
Erika shoved me aside while still collapsed on the ground. She rolled in the opposite direction herself.
A meteor crashed down between us.
“Kah!?”
I had avoided a direct hit, but I still had the breath knocked out of me. Had the impact blown away the waterlogged snow, slamming it into me with the force of a shotgun!?
“Hm. Convenient, but it could stand to be sturdier.”
The sword blade had entirely shattered, so Hotaruzawa spun the grip around like a baton. Even though it still had to be more dangerous than a broken beer bottle.
“But I’m willing to use whatever’s available to me.” The redheaded basketball girl turned to face me. “If I manage to kill you with a pen, that’s still a win for JB, Amatsu Satori-kun.”
“Ahhhhh!!”
I heard a shout from behind Hotaruzawa Kezuri as Erika performed a tackle toward her hips from behind with strength 20 times that of a human.
That was enough destructive force to launch her airborne if it hit, but the basketball girl did not even look back.
She spun the remaining grip of the sword behind her, stabbed it into the Vampire’s shoulder, and then used that like a handle to swing Erika around. She tossed her away along with the grip.
I heard a great crash as Erika slammed into the side of a nearby truck. The impact dented the stainless steel box of the cargo space and the tires slide to the side.
But.
What the hell was that!?
I had managed to crush her with the crowd so easily back in front of Huge Camera, but was she really capable of this when given enough room to move freely!?
“Erika!?”
“I am only interested in you.”
The basketball girl casually walked toward me.
She got so close that our lips would have touched had I moved my face even slightly.
“So let me make this clear: do not try anything here. You will only lose more people if you do.”
“…!!”
I couldn’t restrict myself.
I couldn’t narrow down my options.
Preventing me from acting by filling me with guilt and negative premonitions was a common technique for stage magicians. You were supposedly free to choose whichever of the 5 cards you wanted, but the next thing you knew, you were doing exactly what the magician wanted. I could never win this if I let that happen to me.
JB had a military-grade simulator called Freischutz.
I couldn’t imagine what all it could do since the military would be interested in a lot: tomorrow’s weather, the actions of enemies and allies alike, weapon designs, the economic influence of war, and even the propaganda effect of movies and dramas. So I had to assume there was more to Hotaruzawa’s threat.
This was odd.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what, but something seemed odd about this if she really was the person who had been trying to trigger a riot near Huge Camera. So I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I couldn’t give up!!
“Amatsu Satori-kun.”
She was so close.
This close, I couldn’t even guess what she was going to do!
“You can give up or you can continue to struggle, but this will end the same either way.”
I heard a sparking sound as if from a bug zapper.
Oh, right. Plastic was used in the capacitors that store electricity, wasn’t it!?
“I hope you will choose wisely.”
It was like a point-blank lightning strike.
Instead of shaking my eardrums, the boom seemed to grab and shake all of my bones.
I couldn’t breathe.
Dammit, fire, arrows, swords, and lightning? Was she using the microplastic as RPG magic!?
But…I was alive?
“Senpai!!”
It was my cute underclassman Itou Helen who had yanked me away, not the high-voltage current. That allowed me to just barely avoid it. The lightning flew through empty space and stabbed into a car. The car’s paint was discolored either by electrolysis or by the heat.
But.
Hotaruzawa Kezuri did not seem remotely troubled.
“I see. So she will be the additional sacrifice.”
“!?”
“No, Senpai! Don’t fall for it!!”
My breathing was rapid and the back of my mind felt numb. Dammit, was I starting to hyperventilate from the pressure?
“Who…what are you? I already know JB has a Scylla.”
“You mean what species I am?”
She laughed and stuck her hand in the duffel bag she carried over her shoulder.
She pulled out a softball-sized mass.
If that was a bunch of microplastic filled with air, then would it explode too!?
“I am only human.”
She threw an explosive much larger than a grenade.
Part 5
The explosions and shockwaves continued for a while after that.
“Don’t worry.”
While I rolled through the dark smoke and thick rain, Itou-san pulled me behind a van and spoke to me.
“These indiscriminate attacks aren’t that dangerous. It looks like your older sister managed to escape too, so she won’t be taken hostage!”
“What about Ayumi?”
“Some guards were coming this way, so she went to deal with them. Um, but she seemed to be ‘dealing with them’ in a fairly violent way.”
Was she karate chopping them on the back of the head or something? Well, ordinary guards wouldn’t have guns. And letting other people show up here would only give Hotaruzawa more targets.
Anyway, that meant the real threat was the Scylla, Umikaze Speechia. Itou-san was busy dealing with me, so she was free to act.
How much had Freischutz predicted here? Hotaruzawa had seemed surprised we were here at all.
“This is strange.”
“Senpai?”
“I’ve seen Hotaruzawa before. She was trying to instigate a riot in the city. But if she had this kind of power, she would have been able to fight back against me. In fact, she wouldn’t have even needed the riot. She could have destroyed the city herself.”
“Um, maybe she wanted to hide her Archenemy power. I mean, if I broke into a safe with my Circe Witch power, I might as well be telling everyone it was me who did it.”
Hotaruzawa had said she was human, but Itou-san was apparently not willing to take her at her word there. It was admittedly silly to accept everything your enemy said.
But…
“Even if you ran into some unexpected trouble? Maybe she can resist grasping at straws when she starts to drown, but wouldn’t her real identity slip out when she was on the verge of passing out?”
The dull explosions continued.
Was Hotaruzawa blowing away obstacles at random, or was one of my sisters running around?
“She’s definitely a threat, but I bet her power is limited in some way.”
“Um?”
“Maybe it takes a while to set up or maybe it only works at a specific time or place. Whatever the case, she couldn’t do it in that shopping district, but she can use it here in this ferry loading zone!”
I had to think back and remember when and where Hotaruzawa Kezuri of JB had first attacked and what it was she had attacked.
“Could that ferry itself be her secret base?” asked Itou-san.
“Not a bad idea, but it would have been abandoned here once the ocean was blocked off. That would be hard to work into a larger plan.”
But that guess had to be in the right direction.
I poked my head out from behind the toppled van to take a look. The booming and rumbling was pretty bad, but I couldn’t tell where Hotaruzawa was. Hopefully that meant she couldn’t see me either.
“Maxwell.”
“Sure.”
“I want to get to the ocean. Use the noise from these explosions to find a course for me that keeps me hidden behind the scraps, flames, smoke, rain, or whatever else. Display it on my screen if you can.”
“Why the ocean, Senpai?”
“The answer is probably there.”
I snuck out from behind the van when I heard an especially loud explosion. I stayed low to the ground as I moved behind another vehicle.
Then I repeated the process.
Past the ferry, an orange light shined out on the dark, dark sea. The cargo ship was still burning out there.
“The first thing she attacked was the drone I sent out.”
“And? JB doesn’t want us getting word to the coast guard so they can put out the fire.”
“I don’t like trusting everything Hotaruzawa says, but the cargo ship fire and microplastic snow probably are only the means to an end. Their goal is to kill me. …So why wouldn’t she just target me with that first surprise attack? I was staring down at my phone, so she could’ve easily killed me then.”
“Huh, that is weird.”
“That means she didn’t choose the drone as one of several possible targets. The drone was the only thing she could see at the time.”
It also made no sense for her to be out in this thick rain waiting for an attacker who might not be coming.
Showing herself here must have been an unplanned move.
That meant it wasn’t Hotaruzawa on the side deck who first spotted the drone. Something else had seen it and informed her while she was inside the ferry.
So.
Where was that “something else”?
“There are no lights on with the power out. The burning cargo ship really stands out in the dark, so we would’ve been hidden by the shadows while up on the wharf. That’s why they didn’t see us.”
I launched one of my spare drones while explaining. But I didn’t need to inflate rugby ball balloon with a spray can this time. In fact, I just tore off the communicator and camera since that was all I needed.
“Which can only mean one thing.”
If Hotaruzawa Kezuri really was human, then someone else had to be lending her this supernatural power. Like an Archenemy, or maybe a god. That Voodoo Bokor had manipulated a god to extract her power and the queen of that spaceship had been created by modifying a god. I didn’t know how it worked his time, but there had to be a source to those powers.
Naturally, I couldn’t let Hotaruzawa know what I was up to.
“They’re on the ocean. If they’re on a small motorboat or something with no lights on, they’d be nearly invisible in this darkness. Unless you were right up on top of them!!”
That explained why Hotaruzawa Kezuri hadn’t done anything supernatural near Huge Camera. She had needed to be by the ocean.
The cargo ship and firefighting boats kept anyone from moving out to sea, but you could still have a boat out in the bay. It’s just that no one bothered because it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The boat would only be hidden in the darkness during the night, so they may have kept it moored up somewhere during the day.
After thinking she could handle herself without this trump card and failing in the city, Hotaruzawa may have decided to stay here by the ocean.
Whatever the case, I chucked the rolled-up camera and communicator out to sea like a baseball.
Immediately…
“There you are, Amatsu Satori-kun.”
“Run, Itou-san!!”
I had no idea what had exploded, but a nearby car flipped over and the thick rope holding the giant ferry in place was torn through.
My cute underclassman’s hand slipped away.
“Senpai!”
Itou-san had jumped the nearly three-story height to the ferry’s side deck in a single bound, but I didn’t go with her. And that was fine with me as long as she was safe. I rolled behind some burning scraps instead.
“Maxwell, analyze the footage,” I said into my phone. “Did you find anything on the ocean!?”
“More than simply find something, someone grabbed the camera out of the air.”
Hm?
I couldn’t have done that on purpose, but it didn’t seem like a simple coincidence. Had they moved their boat into place? I checked the screen in confusion and saw a close-up shot of a woman’s face.
But…what was this?
It was a slender woman wrapped in a loose cloth outfit, but she wasn’t alone? No, it looked like three women standing back to back, but that wasn’t it. This really was just one person. It was like a female version of an Asura statue.
She took in a quick breath, so I assumed she was going to say something.
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech!!!!!!
Instead, I was hit by a splitting headache and the scraps I was using as a shield made scraping noises as they…slid to the side?
“Ah, kah, kwah, ahh!?”
“Warning: I have cut the audio. Are you okay, user!?”
Maxwell seemed to think whatever that was came through my phone, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t.
I had no real logic to back it up, but I could just tell it was true. Had…I moved those scraps? With psychic powers or something!?
“I do not know who this is, but can you hear me? Hello?”
“Magzvell!?”
“Oh, dear, I do apologize. You are a gentleman, aren’t you? If you happened to be a woman, that would have granted you my magic.”
Granted me her magic???
What was she talking about? And hadn’t the audio been cut? Was this not coming from my phone!?
“I am Hecate, known to the Greeks as the power source for all witches. I had been working with Hotaruzawa Kezuri for my own reasons, but now you have discovered the Achilles’ heel that is my location. It is a shame, but it seems JB is not all they claimed to be.”
“Pleez find sum uther way uf speeking to mwee!?”
The headache vanished.
Hotaruzawa Kezuri had made it sound like our presence here was a surprise despite their use of the Freischutz military simulator. She had lost sight of us when we simply hid behind a car.
Was this why?
Had this place been distorted by the presence of some much greater monster!?
I checked my phone and saw Hecate holding something out toward the camera. It was soaking wet, but was that a sketchbook? She had written out some Japanese text on it.
“It is the conveyance of my will that matters, not my voice. The headache will remain no matter how I communicate.”
“Dus she wunt me to kill her!?”
I felt dizzy and rolled along the ground.
I couldn’t just hide behind the scraps. JB’s Hotaruzawa Kezuri would not leave me be. I was too dizzy to get up, but I did manage to roll underneath a surviving four-wheel drive vehicle.
The headache remained.
It was like my skull was going to shatter from internal pressure!!
“What…are you? Agh, why are you helping…Hotaruzawa?”
“I am that which grants power to all witches. But since I guide people toward their awakening as a witch when I merely contact them, I am not free to interact with human society as I wish.”
“…”
“Why must I be bound like this? Because those around me are weak. If JB’s jailbreak will change the rules of the world, I thought maybe I could achieve my objective as well.”
What was this?
She was way too strong.
This was worse than the giant shark Leviathan who had been so full of his own power he went on a rampage. Hecate was powerful because the world was made wrong and she was fighting to see how she could strip away her own power to gain more freedom.
How could you control something like that?
Hotaruzawa Kezuri, and JB as a whole, couldn’t hope to handle a monster like this.
“Now may be the time to leave,” said Hecate.
“Urp, then get lost. My family and my underclassman’s lives are at stake here.”
“Attachments are a hard thing to break. You know it cannot last, but you still keep going, thinking ‘just a little longer, just a little longer’. Very well, one who was not chosen by Hecate. If you wish for me to leave sooner rather than later, then present me with an event capable of severing my attachments here.”
What?
My look of skepticism was answered by a message sent through my phone.
“Umikaze Speechia, was it? Let me meet that Scylla. That will bring this bit of fun to an end.”
That was all.
The video footage cut out and the headache clouding my mind entirely vanished.
“What do you think, Maxwell!?”
“The information comes from a walkthrough site for a demon slaying action game, but there appear to be a few different stories about the Scylla’s origin. In addition to the one where a powerless girl is transformed by the Circe Witch’s potion, there are stories where she was the child of two different monsters.”
“…”
“One says she is the child of Typhon and Echidna and another says she is the child of Phorcys and Hecate. Yet another story says she carries the blood of Crataeis. Of course, I doubt there is a direct blood relation between that Hecate and this Scylla, but it may be enough to draw her interest.”
The Scylla.
After all this, the focus was back on Umikaze.
Where had she gone!? If she was going to be important, I kind of hoped she had passed out somewhere around here!!
“If you cannot find Umikaze Speechia, she may be willing to accept Miss Itou Helen instead,” said Maxwell. “Because Circe is sometimes said to be Hecate’s sister or daughter.”
“Don’t let anyone know that. What if Hecate gains an interest in my cute underclassman and spirits her away to some alternate dimension?”
The giant four-wheel-drive vehicle above me was blown away like it was peeled from the ground.
I felt like a bug discovered beneath a stone.
“There you are, Amatsu Satori-kun.”
It was Hotaruzawa Kezuri.
Had she simply directed a microplastic explosion in a single direction? That was the same principle as an anti-tank rocket, but I doubted I could figure out how it worked even if I had Maxwell calculate it out for me.
She had awoken.
She was one of Hecate’s witches.
I had thought her use of the microplastic as both fire and lightning was way too convenient!!
“The goddess contacted you, didn’t she?” she said.
“I’m willing to bet she sounded a lot different when speaking to you.”
I slowly moved back.
I felt like letting out a careless cough would mean coughing up blood.
I had touched her Achilles’ heel, so she was not going to let me get away.
Silently, she raised a palm more frightening than a handgun and directed it toward the center of my chest.
“And I’m sorry to say that you’re not the main attraction here,” I said. “Where did Umikaze go? I have business with her.”
I heard a dull sound.
“Don’t underestimate me. I slowly placed a stranglehold on Kukyou City in order to put you under enough psychological pressure that I could control you without needing to kill you. I could have killed you in less than a second if I had used my full power against you!!”
“Well, a second’s already passed, but I’m alive and well.”
She didn’t say a word more.
She bit her lip hard and seemed to focus her mind on her outstretched hand. What was going to fly from there? A microplastic explosion? A microplastic shell? It was possible I would be killed before I even managed to identify what did it.
However…
“Fuuuguuu…”
I had heard a grinding sound for a bit now, but it was not coming from her back teeth.
“…uuuuuu!!”
The car parked next to her started to move with its engine still off.
This was the work of strength ten times that of a human.
If you gathered ten humans, you could move a car with brute force alone. Of course, you would generally want to remove the hand brake before you tried it. It helped here that the tires slid on the fine microplastic snow.
“What?”
This unexpected attack came from her blind spot.
The bumper slammed into the redheaded ponytail girl’s hip and she was pushed up onto the hood.
But it did not end there.
“Heave-ho,” said a casual voice.
It came from my gentle older sister, but while a Zombie had 10 times a human’s strength, a Vampire had 20 times the strength. With 20 humans, you could lift a 4-door station wagon like a palanquin.
So she only needed her two hands to raise it up like a giant piece of plywood.
The two cars created a brutal sandwich.
“E-Erika. And Ayumi too.”
“We didn’t kill her. There is plenty of space inside the hood for a kitten to hide in, so she’s probably just trapped within the crushed metal.”
“Fugu. But this only buys us some time. After everything she managed with the snow, she’s sure to break free given enough time.”
We needed to use that time to eliminate the source of her power.
That meant convincing Hecate to leave.
“I have an idea, so come with me, everyone. Let’s finally end this.”
Part 6
We left the ferry loading zone.
Even in the rain, it helped that the place was coated with microplastic snow. They were faint, but the footprints remained.
“Fugu. Looks like she climbed up on the embankment,” said a soaking wet Ayumi.
That was pretty high up, so I suggested lifting them up, but the girls all fidgeted in response.
“U-um, Senpai? Sorry, but, um, I’m wearing a skirt.”
“Y-yeah, me too.”
“Show some tact, Onii-chan.”
“Why are you worried about me seeing your underwear, idiot? You’re wearing shorts.”
“Shut up, that’s not a perfect solution! Like, um, you could see up the leg hole, or…mumble mumble. Anyway, you go up first, Onii-chan!!”
This hardly seemed fair, but I did as I was told and climbed up the embankment.
There were only concrete blocks and the dark sea past this point.
“The Scylla is an ocean Archenemy, right?” asked Itou-san. “Wh-what if she jumped in like a Mermaid?”
“Unlikely,” I said. “The footprints keep going.”
We pursued her.
We gave chase.
Finally, I heard a rattling sound. We were closer to the public beach than we were to the industrial area now. Some jet skis were moored to the embankment and floating in the sea. They had probably been stopped here to avoid paying the pricey harbor fees.
And there I saw someone swinging down a large rock she had picked up from somewhere.
“You can’t just hotwire it to get the motor started, Umikaze Speechia.”
“!?”
“This is over. Hotaruzawa Kezuri is out of the fight and the cargo ship fire will be out soon. That means no more microplastic snow, so your special power is gone.”
She spoke quietly with her long blonde hair hanging heavy from the filthy rain.
“You have that Circe Witch with you and JB’s Hotaruzawa is borrowing Hecate’s power, so whichever group won, they would be here to harm me. But if I knew they were coming, I thought I could prepare a little surprise for them.”
An unpleasant odor reached my nose.
Wait, is that what she’s doing!?
“By the way, you said I couldn’t start this thing’s motor, didn’t you? Exactly – this isn’t an engine. And with a few of them side by side here, I could easily help myself to their large batteries, couldn’t I?”
“Oh, no!! Everyone, jump into the water!!”
The most I could manage was pushing Erika in since Vampires were weak to running water, be it a river or the ocean.
Kaboom!!
A powerful explosion and flash of light rushed in from the side.
The instant my vision started to spin, the concrete blocks stacked up as a breakwater fell toward my back.
Had she set this up in a gap somewhere!?
“Ah…gah!?”
Batteries would explode if handled incorrectly. That could be a problem with phones and laptops, but it was truly dangerous with vehicles. Because those batteries were so much larger.
“Amatsu-kun.”
Umikaze walked over.
Her long hair, which was braided together at only a few spots down its length, swayed with dirty droplets scattering from the golden-shining end.
She was still holding that conveniently-sized rock she had been using to break the lock.
Had Ayumi and Itou-san fallen into the ocean? They were probably busy keeping Erika from drowning, so they wouldn’t be able to help me out right away.
So was I screwed?
I wanted to resist, but the excruciating pain in my spine kept my arms or legs from moving. It was like a crucial gear inside my body had slipped out of place.
“Lucky for me, you’re not all that smart,” she said.
“…!?”
With a smile, she raised the softball-sized rock. Was this really how I was going to go? Not to Hecate or a witch, but to this!?
Shortly thereafter, I heard a dull thud.
I had not shut my eyes, so I saw what had happened.
That was not the sound of the rock. Umikaze had not moved. Instead, she swayed side to side and then collapsed limply to the ground.
And behind her, I saw who had hit her on the back of the head.
“C-Class Rep?”
“Maxwell gave me your GPS signal.”
I had no idea where she had found it, but she was holding a metal spike with a loop at the head. It was probably meant to for holding a rope in place.
She rested its side on her shoulder and breathed from her nose.
“I knew I couldn’t just let you go on your own. You’ve always been hopeless without me, Satori-kun.”
[Crawler Search] Online News [The Words You Need!]
The fire burning on the Noble Ingot cargo ship has been confirmed extinguished.
The fine microplastics, referred to as snow, leaking from the ship appear to be clearing up as well. Kukyou City and the neighboring municipality have announced they will work together to clean it all up, so the travel infrastructure and more should recover before long.
Response to this case was delayed because opinions were split on whether it qualified as a natural disaster or an accident, but volunteers from all over the country have announced they will be arriving to help.
The popular rock band Cannon Slinger announced on social media they will be holding a concert in Kukyou City and the response has been… (Read more)
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