Chapter 4. Keeping in Check (5)
I was sick to death of it all.
School had been the same, crawling with worthless bastards, and so was the Company, which kept shoveling combatants into the fray knowing full well they'd lose every single time. I hated the magical girls, too, for popping up out of nowhere to sabotage things the moment anything looked like it might actually go well.
But the one I hated most was myself. I hated that I kept rationalizing everything while doing work I couldn't be proud of, and that I still couldn't bring myself to quit.
I wanted to throw it all away. To quit everything and run somewhere far, far away. Only I didn't even know how. The company I worked for was a megacorporation on a galactic scale, and it held the people around me as leverage.
And I was the one who had handed them that leverage.
"What the—"
"Iris, get back! It's dangerous!"
Rose shouted at the sight of me charging Iris. Iris hastily leveled her pistol and squeezed the trigger.
There was pain. But it was bearable. No—maybe that wasn't the accurate way to put it, either.
It felt like being struck inside a dream. A hazy sensation, as though the pain simply refused to register where it was supposed to.
Drunk on my own thoughts to the point I couldn't even feel pain—what on earth had happened to my brain?
Three percent.
When I shook my hand downward, whatever had been dripping off it hardened solid. I tried to force it into the shape of a blade, but it wouldn't cooperate.
Forging a blade felt like dialing the flame on a gas stove; this was more like trying to freeze, in real time, the water dripping off my body drop by drop. The freezing took care of itself. Shaping it was a separate problem entirely.
What ended up hanging from my arm, in the end, was nothing but a hardened lump.
"……!"
Iris recoiled at the sight of that lump swinging toward her face. My fist skimmed past her by a hair's breadth.
I went for her stomach with my right hand, but Iris didn't make it easy for me.
Crack!
She caught my fist on her rifle. A fine crack spidered across the surface of the weapon, which had held its form even while discharging Iris's beams. Iris didn't appear to notice.
I hooked my knee up into the rifle from below, and her hands bounced skyward.
Well, of course. Iris had never been the fighter Rose was.
Maybe meaning to roll backward, she flung her whole body toward the ground—but the flaring hem of her skirt landed in my hand.
I hauled her airborne body toward me and swung my fist in the same motion.
Bam!
Fist met rifle again, and the crack spread a little wider.
Wind split the air beside my ear; I yanked my outstretched fist back, but a beat too late, and my vision snapped sideways.
Had she hammered my temple? I thought through a haze. Ah. If this went wrong, I might actually black out.
Four percent.
The helmet was still shrieking warnings like it had worked itself into a neurosis. What exactly was supposed to be so dangerous? Then again, the circuit had been crackling for a while now—maybe that was the problem. The Company does get awfully touchy about its assets breaking.
A hair before I toppled sideways, I managed to roll my feet and steady myself. Falling, at least, I avoided.
Then I threw my own fist at the spot hers had flown in from.
Something went off like an explosion.
It couldn't have been the nameless thing clinging to my left wrist—I'd swung my right.
Oh. I see.
Rose was running on her Hope Circuit. She must have condensed that power and swung it straight at me.
The densest concentration of energy was my left wrist, where the circuit sat, but my suit was already saturated past capacity, leaking light from a dozen places. It seeped steadily from the spots her beams had torn and blown open earlier—almost like bleeding.
"……A Kaijin……?"
Rose murmured it.
Our hands were pressed palm to palm.
We had swung at the same instant, fist meeting fist. Opposing energies colliding—was that triggering some strange reaction?
The hope pouring out of Rose was bright light. The Galaxy Federation had called it energy like a beacon shining from somewhere far away—a light that could serve as a signpost.
But that was precisely why its absolute quantity ran so small. Powerful as it might be, hope was never something the world had lying around in plenty.
The energy smoldering up from my body now surged from me toward the sky in reverse, as though some strange vaporization were underway.
And within the darkness streaming from our fists, a single gleaming thread of light—it looked like the very image of a magical girl herself.
Like a portrait, right before my eyes, of the reckless cruelty of entrusting the world's progress to a mere five girls.
"……What the hell are you?"
Rose asked, her face blank with bewilderment.
Good question.
I couldn't make sense of what was happening either.
I clenched my left hand tight.
Then swung it at Iris's right arm.
As if to snuff the light of hope out from the side.
"Eek!?"
So even the brash ones scream like that, huh.
Compared to the crack that had spread across Iris's rifle, it hardly deserved the name—barely a scratch. But a crack had opened on Rose's gauntlet all the same. In exchange, the black mass I had hardened shattered completely.
Pop!
At the same instant, my left hand jerked off in a random direction. Part of the circuit had detonated, the recoil scattering my stance.
Fortunately, Rose had retreated clutching her right arm and was in no state to press an attack.
Three percent.
Two percent.
The circuit's readings were sinking slowly. The alarm kept boring into my ears, and now red lettering was flickering up in the corner of my HUD, line after line.
Every bit of it in alien script. Not one word legible.
Iris leveled her rifle at me. Her face was grave.
Clack.
A fuse longer than the ones she usually carried slid into the rifle,
and with no gap left for me to dodge, she pulled the trigger.
Bang!
But the thing that burst wasn't me—it was Iris's end.
The crack in the rifle hadn't been able to endure the energy. That weapon had never fully withstood Iris's output to begin with—that was why she ran it on fuses at all. With hairline fractures running through the body, failure was only natural.
White light fanned out sideways from her Hope Circuit. It was beautiful, honestly—like wings sprouting from her back. Iris didn't look remotely pleased about it.
If anything, a flicker of fear crossed her face.
The gun burst apart to the right, and the recoil staggered her the other way, though she wasn't badly hurt.
But in the blink of an eye, the weapon in her grip was gone.
It had never once happened to her before, so no wonder she panicked.
I didn't let the opening pass. I threw myself at Iris.
She fired her pistol. But as expected, even that slender thread of light couldn't punch through the light of despair streaming from my combat suit.
Come to think of it—maybe the suit tearing in just the right places had averted the worst outcome? At the very least, nothing had detonated all at once.
As I closed in, Iris swung her pistol to club me, but my left hand caught it.
The fear carved into her face came into even sharper focus.
A faint sheen of tears had pooled in her eyes. Her features were screwed up tight, her face drained a pallid blue.
Just as my usable energy dwindled the more hope I held, Iris's energy would surely waver the more hope she lost.
Thwack—!
I whipped my head forward and rammed my forehead into hers.
There was no time to check her expression. I set Iris down on the ground as she was, spun on my heel, and ran for all I was worth.
"Wait—hold on—!"
Rose stretched a hand toward me, bellowing in a voice thick with fury.
I was headed for the house. The place with two civilians in it.
Whether you could call a family hosting a Galaxy Federation research facility on their land—security systems installed to match—civilians, I honestly didn't know. But by magical girl standards, presumably they counted.
And yet, just short of reaching them, I stopped, scooped up Jigupa where he lay sprawled on the ground, and slung him over my shoulder.
Then I wheeled around with everything I had and ran straight back at Rose.
Fist clenched, I swung with my full strength at Rose as she closed the distance. Startled, she threw both arms up in front of her face.
But I never actually threw the punch.
Instead I kept running and scooped up the researcher I had set down in the middle of the fight.
Over my shoulder without missing a beat, and straight on, running flat out.
Naturally, every line of support had been cut. The cadre never came.
I had my suspicions about that, but better to raise them after the situation was over.
I sprinted full tilt and leapt from the rooftop.
"Mmph!?"
The researcher shrieked.
I hadn't jumped down—I had vaulted the gap and landed on the rooftop opposite.
The only reason that worked was pure luck. The circuit was still running like a madman. The gauge had fallen back to zero percent, but that was merely overflow—the number had blown past one hundred and wrapped around, that was all.
And it was luck, too, that the section supplying energy to my legs hadn't broken apart completely.
Ninety-nine percent.
A gauge that had read zero suddenly reading ninety-nine was its own kind of absurd.
Fzzt, fzzt-crack.
The instant I touched down on the rooftop, the circuit began making that sound again, as though it had finally reached its limit.
I tore off toward the parking lot.
Slam!
I wrenched open the door of a parked car as if to rip it clean off. The door stayed on its hinges, but the handle went flying. The repair bill was going to be enormous.
"Wh-what the!?"
James, who had been nodding off inside the car, jolted upright in alarm.
I all but threw Jigupa and the researcher into the vehicle and climbed in after them. It was a roomy van, so it wasn't much of a problem.
Then again, it was pretty absurd that this so-called cadre was sitting in the driver's seat. Was he actually just a nobody?
"Step on it."
"Pardon?"
"Step on it! I said step on it!"
When I yelled it, smacking the back of his head, James started the car with a jolt.
I had left the parking lot gate open in advance. If the magical girls were coming, it wouldn't matter whether that gate stood open or shut—they could simply fly in over it. If anything, leaving it open was more useful for a getaway.
Bang!
The circuit finally blew. Thankfully, it wasn't much of an explosion—though James's hands jerked, and the car nearly spun a full circle.
The battered door was still hanging open. With the lock broken, that much was only natural.
I clamped down on Jigupa and the researcher. With the circuit blown, my strength was draining away bit by bit. I braced with my legs however I could to keep us from being thrown out.
Flashes of light rained down from above. Apparently Iris had come to and was firing on us.
"Faster! Step on it harder!"
"I am already pressing it as far as it goes!"
For a neighborhood with this much money, why on earth were the roads such a disaster?
We forced our way down one winding alley after another before finally spilling out onto a main road.
The magical girls didn't pursue.
Iris's condition must have been worse than it looked. Otherwise they would have chased us to the Warp Point somehow.
Or maybe they simply decided that brawling in the middle of a public road wasn't a good look.
"……Haaah."
I let out a long breath and looked down at my left wrist.
The circuit sat there, trailing up thin ribbons of black smoke. Ah, yeah. Beyond saving.
……
For a while, none of us said a word.
James was the first to speak.
"So…… that is the researcher, I take it?"
"Yes."
The researcher was slumped over. The color of his trousers—specifically around the crotch—had shifted somewhat. I had shoved him as far from me as the bench seat allowed, then buckled him in. That way, even if the door rattled loose, nothing would fling him outside.
Not two minutes ago I had been screaming at him to step on it; now that my head had cleared, it registered that I'd been shouting casual orders at an executive.
Still, seeing as he wasn't ordering me out of the car this instant, he couldn't be terribly angry.
If anything, he seemed to find it all perfectly natural.
Leaving the researcher be for the moment, I checked Jigupa's condition.
He was out cold. There were a few cuts on his face, but nothing serious. A round of treatment at the Treatment Center would leave not even a scar.
Nothing seemed to be broken, either.
I heaved a deep sigh, sat back upright in my seat, and let the tension drain out of me.
……
……
Wait. No. Hold on.
I bolted upright in my seat, startled, and whipped my head toward the researcher.
The unconscious researcher was still slumped in his seat.
Right. The researcher.
I cast my mind back to the mission I had been given this time.
Extract the researcher.
Granted, I had come back leaving two of the three behind, but—
Huh. Hold on.
"……Wait. Did we actually succeed?"
The question slipped out of me before I knew it, aimed at James.
"……That—does appear to be the case. However…"
James answered all the same.
And we sank straight back into silence.
Success? We succeeded?
As in, the mission was complete?
The blood drained from my face.
Wasn't this a first?
Not once in any operation I had taken part in had things gone this well. There had been partial successes, sure—but never once the core objective.
This mission, too, had nominally been about extracting the researcher, but the real goal was probably to force the facility to be rebuilt from scratch somewhere else entirely.
Harassing them on a regular cycle like that was disruption enough for the Galaxy Federation.
Even so, this was the first time the core objective had actually been met.
The operation itself had been sloppy in plenty of places, and something about it smelled like an ulterior motive—but whatever the case, it was a success.
In the rearview mirror, James's face looked faintly bewildered.
……So what do I do now?
Still half in a daze, I ended up riding in the car James drove all the way back to the Company.
A handful of troops, none of them elite, committed to an operation under the command of a single cadre.
No matter how I turned it over, this was not a normal operation.
Either they had never expected it to succeed in the first place—or it had been designed to fail.
Call it an overinflated sense of self-importance, but on the ride over, the thought had briefly crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, it was because of me.
I had met with James alone a handful of times.
He seemed to regard me as an asset worth exploiting.
I had been working here for years now, and until recently I had been nothing more than a combatant—but only lately had he learned that I was connected to a magical girl.
Or perhaps he had known all along and simply never said a word.
Was that why he had tried to snap a leash around my neck, over the matter of striking civilians?
……
Normally I would have walked straight into James's office. Not today.
I just sat in the space outside that office, waiting blankly.
I had taken off my helmet and set it beside me. The combat suit I still hadn't changed out of.
An Earthling woman seated at the secretary's desk outside the office kept watching me with an expression that bordered on bewilderment.
Could she be an alien too, like James—merely disguised to look human?
I was still woolgathering over that when the phone on her desk rang.
"Ah—yes, Mr. James."
Calling him by name?
Then again, that did seem to be the norm for executives in magical girl shows and tokusatsu series.
The secretary set the receiver down carefully and looked at me.
"……He says you're to come in."
I rose from my seat, picked up my helmet, and went inside.
As I entered, James turned from the window he had been gazing out of.
A smile was spread across his entire face.
"Magnificent!"
The same man who, minutes ago, had been flustered by the very fact of our success now said it with a beaming grin.
It didn't even seem to be a lie, which somehow made it worse.
"This is a remarkable achievement! You led a pitched battle against magical girls to victory! You have accomplished what no one in Noir Corporation ever has!"
He came toward me, reaching to plant a hand on my shoulder; I stepped back out of reach.
With a slightly sheepish look, James withdrew his hand.
"There is one thing I would like to ask—"
I cut in quickly, before James could continue.
"That daughter who was there—did she deliberately hide the information?"
……
My words left James momentarily speechless.
"……That was unknown to us as well."
Perhaps my expression looked grave enough, because James hastily composed his features and went on.
"By all rights, she should have been in the hospital. I verified again after we returned, too. As of now, the girl is still officially listed as hospitalized."
That girl couldn't have been a fake.
Nor a twin. If she had been, we would have known on this end, naturally.
"So what you're telling me is, she lied about being in the hospital and went home instead?"
I said it with disbelief written all over my face, and James nodded.
"Otherwise, none of it adds up."
Hah.
I laughed, incredulous.
Even patients plotting insurance fraud have the decency to stay admitted while they wait—and she couldn't even manage that.
Well, it wasn't as if this were insurance fraud. The girl had probably just dug her heels in.
"……And so?"
I carved that thought into some deep corner of my mind and asked James again.
"I succeeded. Is there a reward?"
"Ah, as for that."
James answered quickly.
"I sincerely apologize, but yours is the only success on record. We are still calculating exactly how far our compensation ought to extend."
……
That's the Company for you.
"For now, this cycle's stipend will be at least double the last one."
James said.
"And there may even be a promotion in the offing, though I cannot promise it."
Was he planning to make me a squad leader or something?
I nodded.
"Then do let me know once your calculations are finished."
"Of course."
"……I know it's late to be asking, but may I head home soon?"
"Of course! Shall I have you driven? Or shall I cover taxi fare?"
"……I'll just take the bus."
I answered with a sigh caught in my voice.
Truthfully, I was reaching my limit, and a ride would have been welcome.
……But someone might have seen me along the way.