An Ordinary Phantom Thief, Found Anywhere
Hong Yumin looked out at the police ringing the distant city. It was the city where a Heavenly Punishment waited.
"We've arrived."
Captain Kid's eyes lit. Those ten minutes had felt like ten hours.
The moment they stepped out of the car, two officers came toward them.
"This area is off-limits from here. Please turn back at once."
Captain Kid drew his hero license from inside his coat.
"I am Captain Kid, a hero of the United States. I volunteered in person to apprehend the Heavenly Punishment."
At the sudden appearance of a figure so far above them, bewilderment washed over both officers' faces.
"P-please wait just a moment!"
One of them snatched up his radio.
"Miss Hong Yumin, please move with Pele. The Heavenly Punishment is most likely at your old home."
"We're not all going together?"
Pele brushed the phantom thief's collar.
"There will be a Heavenly Punishment at Miss Hong Yumin's house as well. Going as one group would be fine, but if one of them escapes while we are catching the other, we will be in trouble. It is right that we divide our people here."
Dan Miryu cut in at the phantom thief's words.
"So the three of us—myself, Kid, and Mr. Phantom—are going to capture the Heavenly Punishment in the city?"
"No. I will be the only one doing the catching."
Dan Miryu faltered.
"Is there truly any need to go that far?"
"That city. There will still be many we have not saved. Many who are hurt, as well."
Dan Miryu caught himself. He had fixed too narrowly on the Heavenly Punishment.
"I nearly overlooked what matters most. Understood. Kid and I will take it."
"We will subdue them with as little harm as possible. Just in case, please raise a barrier."
"Leave it to us."
The phantom thief looked at Hong Yumin.
"Go now. I will catch up shortly."
Pele pouted.
"Tch. And I wanted to catch both of them myself."
"Then finish quickly and come down."
"As if I didn't know that……."
Pele nudged Hong Yumin.
"Let's go. We need to hurry."
"……Yes."
Hong Yumin's feet would not quite leave the ground. The phantom thief as she had seen him in the car kept flickering before her eyes.
"What is the matter?"
Hong Yumin looked at him.
Something overlapped the phantom thief.
A warped, unrecognizable vastness. A grotesquerie worse than the phantom thief she had first laid eyes on. Something unknowable writhed. Merely looking at it raked her mind apart. Eyes set into that something blinked, and the eyes were without feeling—nothing more than fixtures attached to skin.
The phantom thief's shape and that other shape overlapped in succession, as though they had become one and two at once: a monstrosity that had failed to mix.
For reasons she could not name, Hong Yumin thought she must not leave him like that. Given the slightest cause, it seemed that something would swallow the phantom thief whole.
Carefully, she caught his sleeve.
"Miss Hong Yumin?"
The phantom thief tilted his head. Hong Yumin looked at him with desperate eyes.
"You needn't suffer. Nor need you do it all alone."
Halting, stumbling. Her lips went dry. She did not know what she was saying. She simply spat out, any which way, the feeling rising in her head.
"Not the mask—a phantom thief. You are a phantom thief. Is that not so?"
"Yes. I am a phantom thief."
"Yes. That's right. Judging by everything you have done, you were no phantom thief at all—but set that aside."
Hong Yumin steadied her breath. Something still flickered over the phantom thief. The eyes attached to that something rolled and rolled, and where there had been no feeling, interest began to gather.
"Before you are a phantom thief, what are you?"
"Even before I was a phantom thief, am I not a phantom thief?"
"No. You are……."
Hong Yumin fixed her gaze not on the eyes of the mask, but on the eyes behind them. Unlike that gloomy thing, they were bright and clear.
"Are you not a person? A person ought to be like a person. So please."
Do not cross the line.
Silence.
The phantom thief looked bewildered, and Pele's eyes opened with a sly gleam.
Hong Yumin found the awkward stretch of time unbearably shameful.
What did I just say!
Put like that, it sounded exactly as if she were begging the phantom thief!
Her face burned. She resented him. Making a person worry for no good reason!
"I have said my piece! Now get lost!"
"Aaah!"
With a solid thump, Hong Yumin kicked the phantom thief square in the rear. He rubbed his backside.
"I didn't know you would worry over me, Miss Hong Yumin."
"Worry? As if! I was merely uneasy that you might cause some disaster!"
"That is what we call worrying, though……."
When Hong Yumin swung a fist, the phantom thief slipped clear as if he were sliding away.
"I understand your concern perfectly. I'll do my best."
"Hmph! Don't you go off and play!"
Hong Yumin turned her back. Pele elbowed her, nudge after nudge.
"Well, well. Don't tell me this is……."
"Spare me the nonsense and hurry up."
"Yeah, yeah. So bad at being honest."
"Grr!"
Pele clutched her head and fled.
"Hehehe! Well, you did well anyway."
"……At what."
"Oh, you know. Overall."
Watching the phantom thief head into the city, Pele smiled, faint and sidelong.
"……Lucky, isn't he."
"……?"
"Come on. Time we went and put down a madman."
Pele set off, and Hong Yumin followed, leaving her question behind her.
And so one split into two.
How did it come to this?!
Tsushima Kana could not make sense of the situation before her.
"L-Lady... Kana..."
The shrine maiden of Tsukuyomi, who had held the vanguard, rolled across the ground with her limbs torn away.
"Your swordsmanship no longer pains me. Since I gain nothing from it, it is useless."
With a wet crunch, the Heavenly Punishment drew the sword buried in his belly and drove it toward the shrine maiden's head. The sacred maiden who served Tsukuyomi died upon her own blade. It was a wretchedly shabby death.
"You bastard!!!"
"Don't!"
Susanoo's shrine maiden flew into a rage. Kana reached out, but the woman had already launched her attack.
Mirrors that had multiplied into several dozen stood in a single line. Light fired from the rearmost mirror passed through those ahead and amplified, until at last it became a colossal beam and shot forth.
"Oh. Not bad."
Even as annihilation came on, extinguishing everything in its path, the Heavenly Punishment laughed with high spirits. He showed no intention of dodging.
Susanoo's shrine maiden ground her teeth. Let us see you stay so composed after taking this!
The beam pierced the Heavenly Punishment. Not content with that, it erased dozens of buildings.
"Hah! Hah!"
Susanoo's shrine maiden collapsed in a heap. She had poured out every last ounce of strength; her skin shriveled as if it had taken the headwind of the years themselves.
Kana clung to a fragile hope.
Even a Heavenly Punishment—surely this...
"That was quite painful. Had I been careless, I might have died."
"……What?"
When the aftermath of the beam cleared, the Heavenly Punishment stood revealed.
Kana stared at him with trembling eyes.
"How is he still alive……?"
His organs had burned away without a trace, and half his chest was open clear through to the back. His face was ruined down to the bare skull, and his left arm was gone.
And yet the Heavenly Punishment spoke, and walked on two feet.
"Hahaha! Surprised? A pity, but I cannot die until I die of true pain!"
The Heavenly Punishment set a hand on his hip and laughed wildly. With every word he spoke, his skin regenerated.
Vanished organs grew back. Blood vessels crawled upward to cover his face. The grotesquery was nothing short of a nightmare.
"Lady Kana……. Please, run……."
Susanoo's shrine maiden wrung out the last of her strength, but the Heavenly Punishment closed the distance in an instant, ripped her head off spine and all, and she collapsed where she stood.
"Mmm. So that really was your full power. Had it been an ordinary attack, it would have been more entertaining."
With a flick, like a soccer ball he was finished playing with, the Heavenly Punishment tossed the head down in front of Kana.
It rolled, and rolled, and a head that did not even know how it had died brushed the tip of Kana's foot.
"………Ugh."
Kana stepped back. Nothing like this had been in the plan. She had believed that even a Heavenly Punishment would fall before the power of three shrine maidens who served the gods.
The result was the opposite.
From start to finish, the Heavenly Punishment had toyed with the maidens. They had not even been opponents.
This is a Heavenly Punishment……?
Then were the other Heavenly Punishments all at least this strong?
No. That couldn't be.
This one had to be a Heavenly Punishment of considerably high standing.
"Which apostle are you?"
Kana barely managed to hide the tremor in her voice.
"Me? I'm not supposed to tell you that……."
The Heavenly Punishment considered it. The world knew well enough that there were twelve Heavenly Punishments, but which apostle was which remained unknown unless one of them chose to say so.
The only ones identified were the Fifth Apostle and the Ninth Apostle, active as they were. All the rest lay behind a veil.
Does it even matter?
The Heavenly Punishment did not much care. If a problem arose, the Seventh Apostle would settle it.
"I am the Eleventh Apostle."
"……The Eleventh Apostle?"
Eleventh of the twelve. Second from the bottom…….
Kana despaired.
At last she understood why the world feared them.
They were natural disasters. Something no human being could overcome.
"Huh? This isn't any fun."
The Eleventh Apostle sighed.
"Haa……. Nothing for it. I wanted to play a little longer."
"……Stay back."
She had to run.
Kana retreated, step by step.
"Stay back!!!"
"If Lady says not to come, pestering her is hardly proper, is it? Eleventh Apostle."
"Hm?!"
A voice cut in between them and turned both their gazes.
A masked man atop a streetlamp looked down at them.
"You are……?"
The Eleventh Apostle flinched. He had not noticed the man was there. That very fact, however, set him alight.
"Who are you?"
"I haven't introduced myself."
From atop the streetlamp, the man bent at the waist with theatrical extravagance.
"I am a phantom thief."
Merely passing by.
And above that ordinary phantom thief, the full moon hung low.