Public Enemy (8)
"S-stop right there! Nobody mo—AAAGH! Officer Park!"
"You son of a bitch! Felt good throwing your weight around all this time, didn't it?!"
The police who'd rushed to the scene charged in to suppress the people running amok, but they weren't much help. I snorted at the sight of a middle-aged cop, white with terror, getting the living daylights beaten out of him by the young officer he'd brought along.
"Y-you're okay, right...?"
Park Tae-joon, hiding beside me, had caught that laugh and was watching me with a startled look. I clicked my tongue and gave him a rough nod.
"How can you be this calm? My heart's about to explode..."
"Does what's happening out there really look that strange to you? I don't think so. You've just been living too comfortably until now."
I answered him like it was nothing. Granted, this was a bit much even by my standards—but the truth was that even without Mammut's power, there were plenty of places on Earth this dangerous. Places where if you stepped out of line, you'd catch a bullet or a fist for it, no questions asked.
"But that's just... barbaric."
"You're not wrong. But here's what you need to remember: humans can turn barbaric at any time."
He seemed fascinated by the way I looked at things—the Demon King's way, maybe. His eyes went wide, and he shut his mouth.
Meanwhile, the chief secretary who'd been guarding the door came back.
"For now, it seems best if we remain here."
The place had been used as a warehouse by a nearby shop. The door had happened to be open, so we'd slipped inside. He'd probably overheard what I'd been saying; I could feel a peculiar look even through his sunglasses. I just smiled sweetly at him.
"The cops keep turning on each other, too. How do we even contain this?"
"If this really has to do with Kaijin, then it's obvious, isn't it?"
Speak of the devil. The moment I muttered that, someone split the sky and appeared in the middle of the street.
A magical girl in a cute pink dress raised the staff in her hand and called down lightning on the people running wild. They took the thunderbolts and collapsed on the spot—knocked out, from the looks of it. They couldn't be dead. Magical girls couldn't kill the innocent.
"There's more than one! Look over there. That's Aria!"
Park Tae-joon pointed through the window at a building in the distance.
There she was. Magical girl Aria dropped from the rooftop of a six-story building and, with astonishing speed, drove a fist into each of the possessed victims. That martial technique really was something to marvel at.
Then why only knock them out? If you leave the evil spirits inside them, what's the point?
"Ah. They probably just don't have that kind of ability."
When I voiced the question that had occurred to me, Ren dangled from the windowsill, watching the scene, and answered.
...What?
I didn't get it for a second. Why couldn't they just peel off those pathetic little spirits?
"You'd need a special ability, or a psychic. Magical girl magic is focused entirely on fighting enemies."
I don't get it. They wield mana, and they don't even know what mana is?
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Ren's reaction was the same as always. I was a little exasperated that they could handle mana without knowing what it was—but thinking about Yggdrasil's methods for empowering magical girls, it made a certain amount of sense.
Yggdrasil hands them power equal to their potential in one shot. But that way, they can never surpass their own limits. They don't even know what the power they're using actually is. It's like pulling a trigger without knowing what a bullet is, or what gunpowder is.
"...What we want aren't transcendent powerhouses. We want talented fighters we can put on the field immediately."
I'd pointed out that a magical girl's power was only half a power, but Ren's attitude was basically, so what? I didn't particularly feel like picking a fight over it. Wasn't my problem.
"Looks like they're containing it just fine."
I said it out loud. And as I'd said, the streets were being cleaned up fast now that the magical girls had deployed.
"Shame."
"About what?"
"I was hoping Takilas might show up."
Just as I was starting to relax, Park Tae-joon's words hit me out of nowhere, and I flinched.
"...You're interested in Takilas?"
"Honestly, it'd be harder not to be interested these days."
I tried to keep my reaction calm, and Park Tae-joon answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He wasn't wrong. She'd been all over the news lately.
"They say she's supposed to be incredibly strong. If she showed up, wouldn't that help? Plus, it'd be one hell of a sight to—never mind."
"I don't know. If someone that strong just showed up here, I think things would get even more complicated."
I snorted. Aria, for one, would come charging at me on the spot.
"...Oh, no."
"This..."
And right then—just as the situation was nearly wrapped up thanks to the magical girls—I felt it. So did Ren. A demonic aura more intense and destructive than anything we had received until now. Its source was the middle of the street, far in the distance.
"Ma-Ma-Mammut...! He's finally here!"
Ren, pale even for a doll, screamed the words, his voice shaking.
"Ahh..."
"Kh— my body, I can't move..."
The street that had been in an uproar with possessed people and the magical girls suppressing them fell, in a single instant, into a silence so cold it stung.
The cause was nothing more than a man in a black suit, three meters tall, who had simply appeared and now stood motionless. He was extremely thin, his skin a stark, deathly white, and the only feature on his face was an enormous mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth.
"Disappointing, aren't they, the magical girls, of this land."
He flicked a long, enormous, blood-red tongue and grinned as he removed his fedora. The mere fact of his descent crushed the magical girls' spirits; they couldn't even move.
"Forget, a pleasant, scream. This won't even, make, a meal."
He clicked his teeth and shook his head.
His specialty was capturing magical girls, torturing them until they screamed, and in the end tearing into their still-writhing bodies and eating them alive. The magical girls he had eaten across the many worlds he had passed through numbered well over several dozen. The thick, cloying murderous intent and terror carved into that body were the worst possible matchup against magical girls.
"Not, all of, them?"
"Kh... Mammut!"
Even so, there were magical girls who forced their bodies to move. Aria was one of them. Biting down so hard her gums bled, she shattered the ground beneath her feet and shot forward like a cannonball, driving her clenched fist into his abdomen.
"Kyahahaha!"
A shockwave burst out, asphalt shattering and flying. Mammut stuck out his tongue and started laughing. Aria, meanwhile, was thrown off when her attack stopped against a translucent barrier—then took a tentacle strike to the stomach and went flying. She smashed through the wall of a commercial building and tumbled inside.
"Chaos, despair, terror! You stupid humans... you, too, will, take them, in."
While Aria was sent flying, Mammut moved his mana. Everyone who had been possessed by evil spirits and then suppressed by the magical girls twisted and rose to their feet.
"Shoot! Shoot him!"
Police forces who'd rushed over pulled their triggers at Mammut. But the barrier that had stopped even Aria's fist bounced every bullet.
"U-ugh! The people—!"
And when the possessed charged them outright, the police couldn't bring themselves to fire.
"N-no! Let go! Let—"
Magical girls neutralized, police in disarray. In that gap, Mammut wrapped a tentacle—his own finger, reshaped—around one of the magical girls who stood frozen, unable to move, and dragged her over.
"Cry, cry more."
"Hyaaaaah!"
Eyes wide, she poured tears, desperately clawing at the ground so she wouldn't be dragged. Her nails broke and blood ran freely, but in the end she was hoisted upside-down and delivered before Mammut.
"Ah... ahh... AAAH!!!"
Mammut bent her arms and legs the wrong way and shattered them all. To soften the body. Then that enormous mouth began to split open, wider than his own face, as if he meant to swallow her whole.
In the instant despair flooded the eyes of the magical girl who had sensed her death—
"Ghk."
Something ablaze came hurtling in, leaving a tail of flame in its wake, and slammed into Mammut. The captured magical girl dropped to the ground, and Mammut, struck, went flying and smashed into the asphalt.
"Heh, hehaha! Aria!"
"Don't you dare say my name, you disgusting bastard!"
Aria's fist, power drawn to the limit, slammed into Mammut's body once more. Dozens of strikes poured out in a split second. Mammut's barrier shattered, shockwaves bursting from his entire body.
"You... know how, to master, fear."
"I've seen something more horrible than you once, you son of a bitch."
At Mammut's words, Aria clenched her teeth, recalling the past—the terror and helplessness she had felt from the mana of the earth dragon Takilas had summoned. Drawing on that day's memory, Aria succeeded in overcoming the fear Mammut radiated.
"In that case, you'll, taste, exquisite."
"Ah..."
But that answer was exactly the one Mammut had been hoping for. Aria, mid-swing, looked down at her own legs in disbelief.
Mammut's tentacle had already pierced through her thigh.