To Rage Trouble (3)

I tightened my grip on the hands holding mine and spoke.

"Dornald touched something he should never have touched. And I have a feeling that if I let this pass, a string of things will follow that will make me furious and sick to death of it. I don't intend to let it pass."

"If you do that, a great many innocent people will suffer.... Better, surely, to take only the leadership that devised this plan."

"There's no way this was Trumpet acting on his own. There had to be assent inside, or they couldn't have mobilized the G.S. Raid Team and pulled a stunt like this. And the ones who elected Trumpet president were American citizens, weren't they? I hear he won with a share of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠vote passing sixty percent of the entire public. So the price of putting that bastard in the presidency is one the American people ought to pay along with him."

I'd drawn the plan up on impulse, burning hot enough to turn my stomach, but if I let the matter slide with some half-hearted shrug, other countries would take me for an easy mark and start reaching for the people around me. Especially the family I love, and the women I love. They'd spin schemes to snatch them. If that repeated, and someone was kidnapped or killed, I didn't trust myself to stay rational. So rather than some measured threat, or a convoluted plot worked in the shadows to overturn America, it was simpler and better to use what I could actually do and snap the spine of the country called America, clean and sure. To throw a nation that size into shock, I needed a performance just as shocking, and just as certain. But I was no villain out of some brutality flick, and I was not the worst evildoer this world had to offer. At first I'd meant to make hundreds of high-tier subspecies and scatter them across America. Do that, though, and North America would become a land of death where humankind could no longer live. So I exercised a mercy the size of a grain of millet and cut the number to two—one for the East, one for the West.

"Which means America, unable to stop high-tier subspecies on a rampage, will have no choice but to come begging me for help again. And I'll take that as my pretext to fold that stiff spine of theirs."

"Yes.... If it's only two, and you make them somewhere a little removed from the cities, civilian evacuation and relocation will go forward, so deaths among ordinary people ought to fall. Then that much is settled. More than that—are you all right? A Phase Stone formed in your heart. Is there nothing wrong with your body?"

Hwayeon had heard me out. She could see in my face that I had no intention of calling the thing off, and she seemed to decide that the Phase Stone newly formed in my body mattered more than any talk of the retaliation I meant to carry out.

"I told you earlier. I looked my own body over with Spatial Perception, and I didn't find cancer, or any abnormality at the cellular level."

"I see. I'm not doubting your ability, Seoha, but wouldn't it be better to have a more professional examination as well?"

She couldn't quite let it go. Her hand slipped under my clothes and stroked my chest, and as that warm palm passed over the place where my heart lay, the cold, stifled feeling there seemed to warm, little by little. I drew the questioning Hwayeon in by the waist, pulled her against me, and said,

"Far from getting worse, I think I've gotten stronger—in the body, and in ability. You saw it, back in the command room. The reinforced-alloy table I kicked tore through a titanium-alloy hull, kept flying, and smashed the bow of the warship behind it. I did that without running physical enhancement through Mana Sieve."

"And how much power is that, exactly?"

Franc couldn't gauge it, so she put the question to Hwayeon, the specialist in physical reinforcement.

"The fragments of the table flew and broke the bow of an escort ship. That was power comparable to a fleet missile. Which is to say, I think we may treat the table as having carried roughly one gigajoule of physical energy. If I exerted my full strength, I could likely do something similar—but Seoha, you said you didn't use Mana Mode's acceleration, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Then if you use acceleration, that force will be squared."

Squared, not doubled? With Mana Mode acceleration running, I could put out strength on the level of a B-Class physical-reinforcement ability user. If that was what plain Mana Mode put out now....

Anyway. What mattered was that I'd gotten stronger. And the sooner I acted, the better.

"Hwayeon, you and Miho head back to Korea first. Franc and I will stop by America, drop the monsters, and come home."

"...All right."

I picked up Darky, who had been perched on my shoulder, and passed him over to Hwayeon as I spoke.

"Darky. While I'm gone, you listen to Hwayeon."

"Yessir."

Settled on Hwayeon's shoulder, Darky threw me a salute with his right hand, and Miho stared at the performance without blinking.

"Take care of yourself."

Before she left the cabin, Hwayeon came close and held me tight. Miho's eyes went round.

"Me too!"

She came running and burrowed into my arms. The rage—like my guts knotting, like something catching fire—seemed to bank down under my lovers' worry and their attention.

"I'll be back before you know it, so you listen to Hwayeon and Yeongeun too."

"Yessir~!"

Next to Darky's parade-ground salute it was a loose, sloppy thing, but cute enough that a breath of a laugh escaped me as I stroked Miho's head. I watched her back as she scrambled off after Hwayeon, who had already gone, then took Franc's hand and started walking.

"Let's go."

"Have you already thought of which aberrant you mean to release?"

"Hmm...."

The anger had settled, only a little, and with oxygen reaching my brain my head was starting—just barely—to turn. There were several things I'd need to be careful about. The first objective was, of course, revenge on that man Dornald. The second was to furnish an objective measure that could stand as a warning to countries other than America. For that, the thing couldn't be too strong, and it couldn't be too weak. For example....

"For a start, I'd like a physical-reinforcement type with low aggression. Ones that explode if you so much as brush them, or lose their minds and bulldoze everything just because an ability user walked past—those would make horrific damage, and that won't do. Fliers are no good either, or anything that gets around underground. And nothing with a special ability like infection or toxin."

I'd assumed Hwayeon and Miho would fly back by plane, but when Hwayeon asked, Miho changed into her fox form, seated Hwayeon on her back, and shot away as she was. Hawaii to Korea was roughly seventy-five hundred kilometers. At Miho's speed they'd arrive in four hours—faster than clearing procedures, waiting around, and departing.

"I need to look for something low on aggression and slow enough that citizens can have time to evacuate, with no special ability, and not difficult to clean up afterward. Preferably something big enough to add a visual threat."

Perhaps she had understood that I wasn't planning to overturn America with aberrants at random. Franc spoke with her face noticeably brighter.

"Then I'll search for an aberrant that meets the conditions you described."

"Yeah. I'm counting on you."

Now then. Hawaii to America was about fifty-five hundred kilometers. One Space Leap covered roughly six kilometers, and if I went as fast as I possibly could, three a second was doable. That would put me there in five minutes—but go that hard and my belongings wouldn't hold; they'd turn to dust. I didn't know the cause, but the way molecular bonds seemed to come apart unsettled me. All the more because my belongings included Franc's Soul Stone. Continuous Space Leaping of that sort was out. I'd tested it on the way back, holding the Blade Flyer: the minimum interval matter like belongings could endure was one leap every six seconds. Even at that pace I was far faster than kicking off Space Walls and running, so I could set foot on American soil in an hour and forty minutes.

....Though, with the Phase Stone formed as if overlapping my heart, my physical ability had risen, so my running speed had probably risen with it. Well. I could test that on the way.

I toyed with the Soul Stone necklace at my throat as I walked out of the airport, and Franc, who had been working her phone in search of data on aberrant traits, spoke again.

"The only things matching the conditions you named are tortoise and crustacean aberrants, and the bear and leopard lines."

A tortoise, given nothing but time, would keep growing, but many of them were gentle in temperament. A bear had a little aggression, but it was a creature that lived chiefly by territory; so long as the thing didn't turn into an accident, the search results judged that it could give people evacuation time enough.

"Leopard aberrants have an outstanding hunting instinct, but they're the quiet-hunter sort, ill-matched to brawling or rampage, so they wouldn't launch into large-scale destruction. Still, they are born hunters, and that part worries me. Crustaceans do handle water, and their movement is severely limited, but they bring exceptional strength to combat within a fixed range—so if you set one down far from a city, the nature of the thing matches the requirements you described."

Franc's judgment was that all four, so long as none of it turned into an accident, were targets that could secure civilians evacuation time enough.

"Not bad. Then shall we keep those four in mind?"

I nodded, and thought of how to secure them. In my Phase World, in the hills and forest near Mount Elephantros, there had been coconut crab and leopard cat aberrants, hadn't there?

"Hm. If two that look the same go on a rampage at once, people will get suspicious. I'll set a coconut crab down in the American West, and slip one leopard cat into the East."

"Let's do that. The high-tier subspecies your ability produces are high-tier in grade, but in ability they are Highest-Rank Variants. If it's the pressure a Highest-Rank Variant brings to bear, even two will be enough."

I looked down at Franc walking beside me, and she caught my gaze and looked up. I met those clear eyes, the color of jasper, and said,

"I thought you might try to stop me. You coming on this proactive is a little unexpected."

"I am a person as well, am I not? They were the ones who did wrong first, and that they meant to resort to the cowardly means of a hostage is something I truly cannot forgive. There is a limit to how far one may claim that merely thinking a thing, without carrying it out, is no crime. Above all, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠criminal plan once exposed is already a crime in itself."

So that was how she saw it. Franc's face was angry, indignant, as she looked east and went on.

"If you were an ordinary man here, and the one we faced an ordinary man, I too would have urged you to see him punished within the bounds of the law. But the one we face is the President of the United States, standing at the apex of power even in the world's greatest superpower. Appeal through the law in any ordinary way, and I believe there is better than an eighty percent chance that their schemes would paint us as the villains instead."

"Right. He's the sort of man who thinks in kidnapping and hostages. It's entirely possible."

"So I believe we have no choice but to exact justice ourselves. Look at what he did and let it pass, and as you said a moment ago, we would only be giving him the opening for something even uglier afterward."

Franc drew a small, deep breath and went on, watching the rain fall outside.

"...From the moment I resolved to exact that justice, I too stepped beyond the bounds of what is proper. So if we are going to take revenge anyway, I thought it best to do it thoroughly, and to help you shape the plan so that ordinary citizens come to no harm."

"Mm."

Franc continued in a cool voice.

"Of course, it isn't a decision I reached by thinking of retaliation alone. If you drop aberrants, then what they do—how well they respond—can be the thing that reduces the damage. If President Trumpet is a man of excellent command, he could isolate the aberrants in some remote reach without any great harm. If he is not, then America will suffer great losses in property. I liked that we could hand that binary choice to the parties themselves."

"That so?"

"You could rain Magic Bullets down across the whole of America—things like strategic nuclear ICBMs, with no contamination to worry about. But you chose not to. Wasn't it with that in mind that you chose to drop aberrants?"

"Honestly, I didn't think it through that far. A similar current of thought did cross my mind, though."

I'd just been pissed, and the plan was basically to scatter aberrants and let the bastards get fucked. If they handled it properly and cut the damage, I'd call that heaven's will and accept it. Franc, though, was thinking about it differently from me. Her version was more dignified and elegant than mine, so I decided I'd think of it her way. Under the gaze she held steady on me, I smiled a little bitterly and asked,

"Disappointed?"

"No. I was struck with admiration that you wouldn't try to solve everything by direct violence alone. It is human, once power is given, to refuse to think in complications—and you don't do that, do you? Besides, if one turns the idea around, this plan gives America the experience of facing a Highest-Rank Variant. Depending on how they act, it won't be a matter of nothing but loss."

And she smiled wryly.

"Of course, this is nothing more than an expedient notion, convenient to our side...."

I nodded, quiet, and Franc gazed at me a while before asking, in a voice a little smaller,

"Are you disappointed in me, like this?"

"Huh? What are you talking about, disappointed?"

"I wondered if you might be disappointed in this hypocritical side of me...."

"I don't even know what you mean by hypocritical. I just think, Franc has a mind of her own. You like people who are honest, and frank, and kind, and you hate cowardly behavior and lies. Isn't that right?"

At words that held my honest feeling, Franc smiled faintly and linked her arm through mine. She didn't say anything in particular, but the smile at the corner of her mouth suggested her mood had improved. The rain seemed to be thinning. We came out of the airport, and it wasn't a downpour like the middle of the North Pacific, but dark clouds still hung thick, and fat drops fell without pause from a dim sky.

No helping it. We were going to get soaked through.

"I'll be treading Space Walls, and Space Leaping once every six seconds. Keep up."

"Yes!"

Hearing Franc's hearty answer, I kicked off the earth and leapt up into the cloud-hung sky.

I checked my physical ability on the way to America, and it seemed Hwayeon had been right after all. My physical ability had risen nearly by its own square. At this level, my reflexes and strength surpassed B-Class at the very least. With senses gone keen, even three-dimensional evasive maneuvering by way of Space Walls had become possible, and my flesh had grown tough enough that I could take Franc's lightning raw and not suffer much harm.

But my actual combat abilities—Mana Bullet Mk2, Mana Cannon Mk2, Mana Riser Mk2, along with Spatial Perception, Space Leaping, and the Space Wall—were all specialized for evasion and fighting at range. Physical ability related to close combat getting stronger at this late date didn't particularly gladden me. After that I tried them out for the sake of testing—Mana Bullet, Mana Riser, Mana Cannon, the Magic Bullet series, even the Space Wall and the Spatial Barrier—but I couldn't feel that any of them had grown stronger. Only, should I say the efficiency of Phase Power consumption had improved? I seemed able to fire a bit more, but ever since I became C-Class I'd rarely felt the capacity running short to begin with.

Thinking it over for a moment, even getting stronger brought no great feeling. Only the sense that I could put the imugi down a little more comfortably. I hardly had enemies as it was, so what good was getting any stronger here....

I had money enough to overflow, and I'd taken the title of the strongest man in the world. On top of that I had three lovers, beautiful and kind as angels, who thought of no one but me and loved no one but me. Take away the one fact that I was half-human and half-demon, and it was a life with nothing left to envy.

....No. One thing did catch at me.

Franc was half-human, half-spirit, her flesh composed like a spirit's, so set her aside. But Hwayeon and Yeongeun had shared my bed for more than eight months, from April until now, and there was still no sign of pregnancy. The truth was, hoping they might conceive my child, I had been finishing inside them without a shred of restraint. If they gathered all the seed I had poured into their wombs, wouldn't it be enough that an ordinary woman would have conceived a thousand times over? And yet there wasn't a single signal from either of them.

On the chance they were taking something like contraceptives, I had gone through the house and every belonging of Hwayeon's and Yeongeun's, and only Yeongeun seemed to be on the pill. Honestly, I disliked her taking a thing like that, a little—but in Yeongeun's position right now, if she up and got pregnant, that would be a problem in its own right, so I understood....

Hwayeon didn't take anything of the sort, and still she wasn't pregnant, so I looked into whether an ability user needed some other condition in order to conceive. There was nothing of the kind. Pregnancy, it seemed, occurred under the same conditions whether one was an ability user or not. So this failure to conceive had to be my problem, didn't it? Because I wasn't human....

Ah. My mood had gone bad again.

"Seoha. Pwing-pwing."

"Huh?"

"Nnh. Pw—pwing-pwing...."

Why was Franc doing this? Was something hurting?

Unable to keep up with my speed, faster still, and with the Space Leaping, she had been clinging to my back—and then she suddenly pressed a balled fist to my cheek and nuzzled, going pwing-pwing. I worried she was in pain somewhere. I stopped and looked at her in concern, and her face went red as she hid it in both hands.

"Uuu. I-I'm so embarrassed...."

"Oh. You were acting cute. I was wondering what the pwing-pwing was."

"Eek! Please don't make me confirm it again~!"

"Sorry I didn't catch on?"

"I said not to~!"

She hid behind me again and put my neck in a choke, and the way she did it was so cute I laughed. She'd noticed my mood go sour, and tried to lift it by acting cute. Thanks to that, the sourness eased a little.

Well. Not being able to get them pregnant was something I could think about later. Hwayeon would live a long ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time, and Yeongeun too, and I would live just as long. Maybe it was a mercy that I couldn't get them pregnant. If a blue-skinned demon were ever born between me and my lovers.... honestly, I wasn't confident I could love that child.

I ran for an hour in the sunlight above the clouds, and the western desert of the North American continent spread out beneath my feet. I'd heard the American West was undergoing desertification, and seeing it in person, white and yellow desert ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠filled my eyes. Though wasteland might suit it better than desert.

"Even a coconut crab will need water, won't it? Shall I set it down near a lake?"

"They call it a desert, but there are lakes and rivers here and there. It shouldn't matter overmuch, should it?"

"Even so, wouldn't the urgency run higher if an aberrant appeared at a water source? For people to live, drinking water matters most."

"Mm. What you say is right. Let's do that."

I switched on the Certifier and checked the map. Setting aside the Great Lakes, where the country met Canada, the Great Salt Lake was the largest in the American West.

"Mm. Then I ought to fling it far out on the Great Salt Lake, the one near Salt Lake City."

"Let's do that."

"Good. Entering the Phase World to catch a leopard cat and a coconut crab.... Huh?"

Just as I was about to enter the Phase World, Spatial Perception picked up Phase Power, and when I looked, a Lowest-Rank squirrel Variant and a Lowest-Rank tortoise Variant came into view.

"...? Oh my."

Franc turned her gaze where I was looking down, and she must have found the aberrants too; her face went startled. This place was the Mojave Desert, so a desert tortoise and a desert squirrel.

"No need to enter the Phase World after all. Squirrels breed exceptionally well, so leave that one. Let's make this tortoise into a high-tier subspecies."

Two aberrants, in hundreds of kilometers of desert. I couldn't tell whether that was good luck or bad. As it happened, a hundred and fifty kilometers northeast lay Las Vegas, and to the southwest, Los Angeles. The distance was suitable, and with Interstate 15 and Interstate 40 nearby, they'd be discovered quickly enough.

Suitable. Franc and I dropped down in front of the sand-colored desert tortoise, Phase Power of 7, and the creature lifted its small head, stared blankly up at me, then ducked. What? It showed no sign of fleeing, or of fighting back. The desert tortoise aberrant, as if it had sensed my Phase Power, offered not a shred of resistance. It simply let its head droop to the ground and looked up at me with black eyes.

It had been sheltering from the stinging sun in the shade between holes in bright yellow-brown rock. Sand-colored all over, its camouflage was excellent; by ordinary means it would have been hard to spot. Its size, perhaps because it was a Lowest-Rank Variant, didn't even pass thirty centimeters. It just looked like an ordinary tortoise. I seemed to feel something like fear in it, or resignation. Would this one turn violent too, if I injected Phase Power?

Running Mana Sieve through my whole body, I reached out and took hold of the desert tortoise aberrant's head, and the creature simply closed its eyes.

I said it through Mana Voice. I had the sense the desert tortoise trembled, just slightly, but I ignored it and began to inject my TP, slowly.