O Star, Please Let Me Be a Righteous Thief Again Today
Klein had been raised by the Heavenly Mandate Cult from the time she was very small.
The Shrine Maiden sisters who had stood in a mother's place told her how it was. People were precious, so once she became a shrine maiden she was to approach them and draw them into the cult. Pretty women made shrine maidens, and shrine maidens could haul in still more people — so she was to study these sisters closely, then go out and find someone even prettier.
And so Klein's mission had been the same since childhood.
Someone anyone would have to concede was a beauty. Someone with a bosom generous enough to bury a face in. Someone with a waist slender enough to circle in a single arm. Someone with childbearing hips and a full, generous backside. And last of all, someone who knew how to wield aura.
Seek out a person who satisfied three or four of those conditions, and draw them into the cult.
In practice, Klein — small and cute beside the other shrine maidens — made a rather effective appeal to women who had reached marriageable age.
"Is this place decent enough that a little girl like this would stay here?"
"Making a girl do something so vile — I won't forgive it."
"You really are a pitiful child. Want to stay with your big sister for a while?"
"I'll be your mother, so leave the cult...."
And so, one by one, young and pretty swordswomen and young ladies found themselves led by Klein's hand, without even realizing it, into becoming shrine maidens of the cult. Most were people the world had cast out, wandering with nowhere left to belong — but even when they weren't, she recruited without being particularly picky.
There was exactly one sort of person a Klein like that must never touch.
An Apostle of the Calamity Star.
The shrine maiden sisters and the uncles of the Black Dragon Corps had warned her. Touch one of those, and the world turns upside down. The Heavenly Venerable respected Klein's free will, but the Calamity Star alone he had ordered her to flee the instant she met it — for that dreadful gaze, he said, would lead her to ruin.
After Lupin summoned a second flock of pigeons, quite some time passed with Klein staring blankly at nothing but the sky. Even then her hands moved on reflex, batting aside the birds that came diving in. She looked so thoroughly soulless that Lupin muttered under her breath.
"What's this. Too many of them, so you got scared?"
Then Lupin glanced up herself — and flinched. Didn't that wheeling mass of pigeons look like a brilliant, five-colored whirlwind? Even Lupin, long since used to the things, was genuinely startled. She had only called up a few hundred pigeons. How had it turned into this? The Prime Minister would have a fit when he woke, so she had better finish Klein off in a hurry.
"Well. Stand there dazed, and this gets easy for me."
The pigeons' attacks were neither systematic nor regular. Lupin's spirit affinity wasn't high enough to command the whole flock, and there were simply too many of them to begin with. Now that she was four-star, a single summon brought roughly a hundred and fifty by default — and she had called them twice, so something like three hundred were in the air. Uncontrollable, yes. In exchange, they could bury an opponent under tremendous pressure. It might look like nothing more than pigeons pecking, yet every beak struck with force comparable to a blade of sword-aura.
All Lupin had to do was aim for the tiny openings born inside a barrage coming from every direction.
She dropped her stance and watched the tail of the Snake-Belly Sword thrashing in a frenzy. It looked like a madwoman flailing, but the tail strictly prioritized only the lethal blows. After that, the midsection caught whatever remained along a second line of defense. And if even that failed, the head — the part nearest Klein's hands — moved.
Only minutes ago, Lupin had reached that very last stage. Two handspans from Klein's cheek. No more.
So this time—!
"Let's end this fight."
Her feet kicked off the ground, and her body shot forward like a bullet.
────Clang!
"Tch!"
Regrettably, the sword was stopped at the head section once again. Perhaps it had been a trap left open on purpose, waiting for Lupin to charge. Sure enough, the two lengths of the body, parted like lips, snapped shut as if they had been waiting all along. Lupin yanked the blade by force and jammed it vertically into the closing mouth.
Clack!
In the sliver of a gap as the lips parted, she twisted the sword and struck them aside, then retreated on the rebound and the lift of her winged garb. She spun once backward to land — and this time the tail came at her in a dead straight line. She turned the blade in a flash and knocked it away. The tail, fitted with a brain of its own, traced a crumpled circle and rushed in again.
Clang, clang, clang!
Only after batting aside a full ten strikes in midair did Lupin barely reach the ground. The tail couldn't chase her forever either. The pigeons were still pouring in.
"What was that. Feels like I just shot a whole highlight reel."
On the ground she would have dodged on her feet, but in the air she had had no choice but to block with the sword. Lupin, who had never so much as crossed blades once while sparring with her master, had for the first time received an opponent's technique with steel rather than with her feet. X-rank agility and dynamic vision worked overtime even through the sudden improvisation.
Klein, as expected. She really was the strongest Master Lupin had ever faced. A head-on clash wouldn't have killed her, but farming those precious treasure chests would have been delayed. The world didn't float exclamation marks over the map the way a game did, so she might never have met the Holy Ark at all. Events, by nature, only happened when coincidences stacked on coincidences....
A world without the Holy Ark.
She pictured it for a moment. That — was hell.
Which was why Lupin had to run, searching for a Holy Ark that might vanish at any moment.
She was lowering her stance to attack again when it happened.
Shwaaak!
Clatter-clatter-clatter.
The Snake-Belly Sword formed a huge cylinder, spun, and blew away most of the pigeons. In an instant the spirits' light guttered out, and darkness fell.
Had Klein's finishing-move window finally arrived?!
Fascinated, and lacking popcorn, Lupin picked at her nails and waited for the next play.
Pat. Pat.
Barefoot, Klein took a few steps across the rooftop and came to a stop. Immediately the Snake-Belly Sword lost its strength and collapsed to the floor in a rattling heap.
"Lupin. Klein was thinking, you know?"
The pigeon typhoon was slowly rebuilding itself and closing in on Klein, who had abandoned her defense, when —
"Klein really does need Lupin. So how about we stop here and make up?"
Lupin decided this was a fresh new variety of bullshit. Make up? Out of nowhere? Was she offering to hand over the Prime Minister now? But Lupin did not fall for tricks like this. If anything, she would run a trick in reverse and make a fool of the other party. When it came to obtaining a treasure chest, Lupin was a genius of the age.
"Make up? What wind just blew in? If you're surrendering, do it sooner. Aura types always get filthy and ugly about it, and only give up once their aura's all gone."
Even she hadn't expected Klein to suddenly slam her head to the ground. Flat on her face, Klein forced the words out.
"Yeah. Klein wants to surrender. Lupin's too strong. It's hard."
"...Huh? You're actually surrendering?"
Lupin was thrown, but Klein had her reasons. A different worry had seized her entirely.
This can't end like this.
The main objective had been the Holy Ark, but the provocation had been bait thrown to scoop Lupin up on the side. She had believed that if an enraged Lupin nursed a grudge against the cult and attacked its people, the Heavenly Venerable would come in person — and that the Heavenly Venerable, a Grand Master, would surely be able to win her over. But if Lupin was an Apostle of the Calamity Star, the story changed completely.
I can't send her to the Heavenly Venerable like this.
Meet him with a mountain of ill will toward the cult already piled up, and an enraged Lupin would certainly destroy it. However strong a Grand Master might be, they could not defeat an apostle who wielded the mysteries of the stars. That was the truth of the universe, and its law. The Heavenly Venerable himself had said so.
I have to set things back to neutral.... Only then will the cult... the sisters, the uncles....
As it happened, the star at Lupin's back was still a baby star. Her power had yet to reach its prime. They had traded this many blows — wasn't Lupin starting to run low as well? So she might let it slide, on the excuse of being tired. If Klein threw herself down and begged forgiveness with everything she had. At the very least, if Lupin found Klein cute——.
"Hey."
Lupin, who had closed to point-blank range before Klein noticed, folded her standing body clean in half. Pink hair spilled onto the floor in a soft rush, and through it appeared eyes burning with a violet light.
"It's a lie, isn't it? You're pretending to pull back for some wicked cult scheme, right? You didn't kneel just to build up momentum?"
"No. Klein is really surrendering. It's hard. I'm tired."
Hm.
Lupin jutted her lips, then tap, tap, scuffed the floor with the toe of her shoe.
"Yeah, well. I was getting sick of this too...."
What she kicked next, once she had straightened, was the stomach of the prostrate Klein.
"—is what I almost said."
Thwack!
"Gwehk!"
Shoved clear across the roof, Klein smashed through the great brick chimney and went flying.
Crash. Crunch.
Her small body caught, just barely, on the knee-high railing and stopped.
"Kek... kehk. Kuek.... kkeuk........"
It felt as if every organ in her belly had been knocked clean out. Had she not guarded with aura, the force would have punched a hole straight through her stomach. This was why they called the solar plexus a vital point.
Click. Click.
Lupin approached in her high heels and addressed Klein, curled up and shaking.
"Gotta hand it to aura Masters. They're sturdy. Nice, not having to worry they'll drop dead on the spot."
"Guhk... kkuk......"
"You? Surrender? I'd sooner believe a mosquito parked on my arm saying it isn't here to drink blood, its wings just hurt so it's taking a break. And I've decided not to trust you cult bastards. Smash the Holy Ark? Whose do you think that is!"
"W-won't... smash... it."
Lupin seized Klein's veil and a fistful of hair together and yanked.
"Enough. Get up. Guide me to where the Holy Ark is."
Lupin had no ability to put a number on her own life force, but she knew how many times she could use aura before she collapsed. Two of her three chances were already spent, and wasn't her body tired the way it got after hard exercise? A human whose life force had dropped suffered weakened reason, and naturally became an animal following instinct. That was Lupin now. She had reached the stage where even thinking about the complicated process — treat the Prime Minister, then open the Holy Ark according to procedure — had become a nuisance.
Ah, forget it. Get inside the Holy Ark first. Think after that. And here was Klein, who happened to know where it was. Why wouldn't she use her?
Soon Klein, twitching on the floor, muttered.
"My body... won't put any strength into it, so... if you'd hold me up——."
Bang!
Lupin's kick erased the railing Klein had been leaning on, and her body lurched backward.
"Ugh?!"
She nearly pitched over the edge of the roof, and only just didn't fall.
"Aah. Ah."
What was holding her up, however, was her own hair, and her scalp screamed as if it were about to tear free. With a jerk, Lupin hauled her head back up onto the rooftop.
"We're not exactly on piggyback terms, are we. Even if we're moving fast, this is way too fast, right? I didn't even break your legs. You look perfectly capable of walking. That's what this is, isn't it? A brand-new scam. The granny who gets you to carry her bags, then drags you off into a cult."
Klein, failing to understand a word of it, lay sprawled where she had landed, and an X of wrinkles carved itself between Lupin's brows.
"Why so quiet? Don't feel like talking? Want me to make you? Ha. Nothing for it. I wasn't planning to show you this much."
Look at Lupin's face, and the beautiful eyes and features were what caught you first. But ever since that light had begun to burn in them, the gaze went naturally to the pupils. And so it could be known. Not even the cult could handle Lupin's madness. A human must not draw near this madness.
"Ojousama? It's time to go to the Holy Ark."
She murmured it in a sickly-sweet voice, then abruptly began to sway.
"If you don't get up right this second, I'm going to dance a sword dance."
Both hands spun vertically before her chest while her hips bounced left and right, and at that incomprehensible motion Klein's mind went hazy. It was a higher-dimensional dance that had cured the insomnia of countless young ladies — and that even the modern people of Earth had yet to accept.
