Chapter 7. In the Same Boat (8)
The hatch was thick.
The steel plating used across the antenna as a whole was fairly thin, but this one spot alone was immensely thick, as if something important lay nearby. Naturally, my blade wasn't sinking in easily either.
"P-push it in harder!"
And, grating on my nerves to no end, James — hanging off my shoulder with practiced ease — shouted exactly that. Did he take me for some piece of heavy machinery that ran on voice commands?
Appearance-wise he was a hamster, and there really was something about him you could find endearing. Fidgeting with him by hand, he felt soft and squishy, like a glutinous rice cake. If he'd truly been a hamster I kept as a pet, I might even have wanted to touch him every day.
But no matter how adorable the packaging, rudeness naturally earns nothing but resentment. That was me, right now. What irritated me more, though, was that I couldn't think of a single other way to crack this thing open.
"Hyaah! Why is it that you don't have a single one of the weapons the other magical girls carry!? If you're going to transform, at least do it properly!"
......
No, by that logic, you never properly studied my transformation either, did you?
Come to think of it, it had always been like this. Back in my combatant days, they never handed over the full picture, always citing the need to keep secrets from leaking. Sometimes there hadn't even been anything to give, because they didn't know it themselves. And in the end, it was the combatants who went out and took the beating.
Worse, the so-called executives would pointlessly storm onto the field, rampaging about under the banner of commanding, which meant we were the ones who had to physically stop the magical girls charging in. There were plenty of fights we picked not because we could win them, but literally for the sake of picking a fight.
......
Now that I thought about it, it pissed me off. Was he really yelling that hard without a clue as to who was actually busting their ass right now?
The moment I thought it, the blade turned a shade blacker. It even jutted out further.
"Yes! That's it, that's it!"
Your praise doesn't make me happy in the slightest. It hasn't since my days working at the Company. If I had to put a fine point on it, we'd only joined hands out of desperation. Her and me alike — neither of us had the slightest intention of truly trusting the other.
I took hold of the right-hand blade with my left.
"—What in the—"
And before James could finish whatever he was saying, I snapped that blade clean off with my hand.
......
Why?
It wasn't as if this wasn't a force created from energy coming out of my own body. And judging by how it sheared through things, the laws of physics clearly applied to it too. Magic really was a marvel of convenience. Depending on what the wielder believed, the way it worked changed completely — how wonderful.
Gripping that blade tight in both hands—
Bang! I brought it crashing down with everything I had.
Was this what the primitives of the Stone Age felt like, swinging their hand axes? With the blade's sharp tip pointed earthward, I hammered down again and again against the hatch's locking mechanism.
Clang! Clang!
That hopelessly brutish noise rang out over and over, until—
Ting!
—with a strangely deflating little sound, the blade slid deep inside, and a metallic twang followed. I hadn't smashed the hatch outright so much as somehow broken one of the vital components within, after all those repeated shocks.
When I pulled the blade back out and tossed it carelessly aside, its color slowly faded. Energy that drifted far from my body seemed to dissipate, little by little. Without drawing a fresh blade from my right arm, I worked my hand into the hole in the hatch and forced it open. A monstrously thick steel door — the kind you only ever saw in movies — swung wide, revealing a cavity inside barely large enough for a single fist.
"Ooh!"
James, who had held his tongue the whole time I'd been venting my stress — piled clear to the crown of my head — against the hatch, let out a whoop at the sight of what lay within.
"Is this it?"
"That's the one!"
"Can I touch it with my bare hands?"
"The energy circulating within the device is magical energy, so it will do your body no harm. Especially not yours."
I reached out, careful. Contrary to my expectations, no current ran through it. It wasn't hot. It didn't even feel like anything remarkable was operating in there. Something rather intricately built — too mechanical to pass for ornamentation, too silent to pass for a machine.
But the moment I drew it out and turned it over, I knew exactly what it was.
"...A generator?"
"How on earth do you know that?"
At my murmur, James demanded an answer on the spot, his gaze thick with suspicion.
"...Because I've seen a generator before."
I improvised, quick. Right. I had seen one. A slightly different shape from this, and far bigger. Truth be told, the thing I'd seen was a bit of a stretch to even call a sphere — with so many cables running in and out of it, a casual glance would have taken it for a pillar. But such personal quibbles were neither here nor there. James would never know unless he became me. At the very least, the fact that it had been recorded on my helmet was the truth.
That's right. I had seen this thing before, back during a raid on a Galaxy Federation facility. If only Blossom hadn't been standing right beside it, that might have gone down as my first successfully completed mission. Then again, a place like that without a magical girl would have been stranger still, so the hypothetical was pointless from the start.
"Sharp eye, I must say. Correct. Generators share the same underlying principles, so they resemble one another. But this is a far more advanced model. Far more than anything the Federation possesses. Their energy is vastly greater, which makes controlling it in this fashion all but impossible."
The energy each individual magical girl produced was far less efficient than what the Company's combatants wrung out of themselves. And that was precisely where the problem lay. The more delicate an electronic device, the greater the risk of it breaking down the moment some load hit it. Of course, if the device mattered, you'd bolt on every safety measure imaginable before letting it fail — but with magical girls, even that wasn't enough. Their output was simply too enormous, and the generators had no choice but to grow with it.
This one, on the other hand, was different. Its minimum and its maximum were both minuscule. They'd had the time to study their circuits starting from tiny trickles of energy and build upward, slowly. And they'd begun harnessing that energy a very long time ago, too.
"This is a shining achievement of the Company's technology. Our circuit engineering can't quite claim to outclass the Federation's, but in generator technology alone, we are ahead — by at least half a step, at most a few full strides."
That's a pretty vague margin of superiority, isn't it?
"So as long as we don't hand this over to them, we can freeze that gap right where it stands. And while we're at it, let's put it to lavish use! How does building weapons with this sound?"
Don't start playing mad scientist now — not five minutes after whining about me having no weapons. No, wait — is it precisely because he's a mad scientist that he talks like this? Whatever.
In short, this thing was about to become a very important possession indeed. If I carried it out, both the Company and the Federation would tear after me in a frenzy — not that they weren't already doing exactly that.
It was the very moment I gathered it up and rose from where I stood.
"Look over there!"
Someone below shouted. It wasn't aimed at me. My lifted eyes just happened to land on that spot precisely.
No — in truth, it couldn't have been otherwise. That place was deafening with the crack of something exploding and the chatter of gunfire. The din drifted down from far above, well away from the combatants hunting me, and I knew at once: the magical girls had finally made it inside the building.
And from there, I saw a person falling.
In less time than it takes to even worry, Blossom flung herself at that person. Cupping both hands, she seized the person's arms with every last ounce of strength she had. The fall stopped. But it was by no means a situation that allowed for relief.
For some reason, Blossom couldn't rocket skyward the way she always did. Instead, she kept sinking lower. Even that much would have been fine. Either way, that person wouldn't be hitting the ground headfirst at full weight.
I need to get away before the magical girls reach me.
I had no idea how. Retracing my route was something I'd never once considered. To escape, I'd have to either punch straight up through the levels above or conjure another black hole.
My eyes met Hayun's.
It was probably coincidence. Hayun raised her head as if to survey her surroundings, and I simply happened to be sitting in the middle of her line of sight. Then again, the only thing up here worth looking at was this colossal antenna. I, at its very center, must have stood out glaringly in her field of view.
And then, the two of them plummeted.
"Huh?"
The sound slipped out of me before I knew it. And after that, my body, too, was moving before I knew it.
"Squeak!? Wait!?"
By the time James cried out in horror beside me, I had already hurled myself off the antenna.
"Ah."
Looks like I can't fly after all.
But, strange as it sounds, I couldn't feel the buoyancy unique to the sensation of falling. None of those chills crawling up my spine, either. Instead, my vision was aimed at the sky. Had I flown? No. That wasn't it.
Instead—
Bang!
The sound came from behind me. People screaming, too. "Look out!" — probably something like that. I had no room to turn my head, but it sounded like something was collapsing back there as well.
Keeei—
That sound came from my hand.
"Th-the generator...!?"
I could even hear James shrieking in disbelief. But my gaze stayed nailed to the sky.
Even as she fell, Hayun refused to let go of the man's hands. She was screwing up her face as if trying to rise back into the sky. Her face was white. Right. She wouldn't have dropped him on purpose. There had to be a reason.
But the instant Hayun saw me, fear crashed over her all over again. This whole situation was throwing the magical girls into confusion. The reason they'd come here must have been to take this generator from my hand — James had probably let that information slip long ago. So I'd thought we might end up fighting the moment we crossed paths.
I didn't want that. I didn't want Hayun's body hurt. That wasn't what I wanted.
...No. That's probably not true.
I thought this while trying to smother the emotion seeping up from somewhere deep in my skull. You wanted to win. You'd wanted it ever since you learned Hayun was the protagonist. You watched yourself fail to catch up even though you'd started moving a full year before her, and the jealousy kept you up at night. And all the while you sneered, 'and she has everything.'
I couldn't deny it. But even so, it was equally true that I didn't want her hurt. The two warring feelings were slamming into each other, over and over.
I stretched my hand out in front of me.
Hayun still looked at me, her face drained of all color. A face frozen stiff with fear. Because she was falling? Because none of this was easy to take in? Or because she was afraid of me? I couldn't tell. There was no time to talk. Even after all these years of knowing her, I still couldn't tell. Her feelings. My own thoughts.
Just a tiny bit, I felt a thrill of elation in this moment. For this instant alone, I was above Hayun. I — the one who was always getting pummeled — was hurling myself to save her.
But that thought evaporated without a trace mere seconds later.
...How? When I didn't even know the first thing about it.
"...Ah."
Right. I'd shot upward with everything I had, but I hadn't given a single thought to the landing. And the place I'd launched from was already high up to begin with. Only now did the situation come into focus: since I'd leapt with all my strength toward a point far above that spot, I was, in effect, falling from a much greater height than a simple drop.
The buoyancy I hadn't felt until moments ago — the kind you get on an amusement park drop ride — crashed over my body. Goosebumps erupted across every inch of me. I flailed. But alas, I couldn't hang in the air the way I could when transformed.
Beside me, the rat was squeaking like a creature possessed. Was it pouring out screams even its translator couldn't render? Hayun, and that nameless combatant, were no different. From below, shrieks and shouts kept rising.
"Squeak!?"
I grabbed James. And hurled him skyward. James shot straight up, wailing a sound that never became words.
Then I reached out and caught Hayun's hand. And pulled her in toward me. Thankfully, the circuit was running normally and the power was flowing; reeling in two people at once was within its limits.
"Jieun...!"
When Hayun called my name, the whir of the circuit swelled louder. With my one remaining arm, I hugged the generator tight to my chest. Then I concentrated my strength — trying, if I could manage it, to pool the energy toward my back. Not that I had any idea how one was supposed to actually do that.
How much did I have left? I couldn't rightly say. I strained my ears to their limit. Between Hayun's voice calling my name, I could hear the crowd below clamoring. I ransacked my memory. From what height could a combatant survive a fall?
......
Around five meters seemed to be survivable. The suits always looked fine afterward, at least. Trusting my senses alone, I kicked both of them upward in a single motion the instant we drew closest to the ground.
"Jieun!?"
Hayun, mid-cry of my name, soared upward. Perhaps her circuit wasn't running properly either, because the moment I tore my hand free, she couldn't hold on to the end. The two of them rose. Their falling speed meant they didn't rise very far — thank goodness. Even so, their plunge had been stopped.
And I—
Thud.
The impact nearly knocked my senses loose, and the breath burst out of me. Still, it was bearable. Nothing in my body had shattered; magic had shielded it. Besides, there was no time to lie there. I scrambled up and, without even managing a proper stance, leapt back into the sky.
Behind me came the sounds of Hayun and the combatant striking the ground, but they were groaning, so neither was dead. Even if they were hurt, the magical girls would patch them up at their treatment center. The same went for the combatant. A quick glance down showed people gathering that way.
"Squeak!"
I twisted around toward James, who was still falling. Thank goodness I'd thrown him straight up; I'd been able to time the catch just right.
"I-I'm gonna die! I'm dying...!"
James was wailing that with both hands clamped over his eyes. He didn't even seem to notice I'd caught him.
Bang!
Once again, I came down hard. This time, I managed to land standing on both legs instead of flat on my back.
"......Haaah."
After barely riding out the pain, I let out a long, slow breath. ...We made it. All of us.
"What—what was that!? Why on earth would you do such a thing!? Did you actually set out to die!?"
He had belatedly realized I'd saved his life, but the first words to come flying at me were not words of thanks. Well, this time the fault was mine. Flinging him into the sky was a bit much. It was something I'd done without thinking straight, and I'd nearly failed to make the catch. James had come within a hair of ending up, quite literally, like roadkill — a rat squashed under a car tire.
Only after catching my breath could I take a proper look around. ...The antenna was listing to one side. It hadn't collapsed completely, but it looked like it soon would. Even if that thing came down, the building itself wouldn't — it had surely been engineered with that in mind, which probably explained why the antenna's outer shell was so oddly soft. But even if the toppling antenna only bent and crumpled against the wall, no one caught between them was walking away from being crushed beneath it.
I turned my gaze. Above, the magical girls were descending in a hurry, shouting something down toward the cluster of combatants. The people beneath them scattered in blind terror. Sparks were crackling across the floor. It was happening because water had been splashed over the line I'd severed. Idiots. So fixated on the one thing in front of them that they forgot everything else. In a combat suit you wouldn't die — probably. Couldn't rule it out, though.
Keee—
The generator still cradled against my chest was whirring at full tilt. ...And it seemed to be feeding that power straight into me. My leaps alone were enough to make the whole antenna buckle.
Fine. Then let this double as a warning. I drew out a blade. Then I hacked roughly into the nearby concrete, carved out one hefty slab, and dragged it along in one hand like hauling luggage. I leapt up with everything I had and slammed the slab down over one of the sparking puddles.
Wham!
With that tremendous crash, one of the sparks went dead — though all it really meant was that one fucking enormous chunk of concrete was now covering it from above. And the noise pulled every eye in my direction.
......
For the record, James was trembling violently, gripping my shoulder in a death grip. His fur was still damp, but he didn't appear to be shivering from the cold.
"Everyone, run!" I shouted. "That thing's about to come down. If you're still inside here, you're probably dead."
I hoisted the generator up.
"It's already over. You've failed. Don't stake your lives on a job that's already lost. Go."
The eyes of the magical girls supporting Hayun swung toward me.
...Ugh. Hayun, at least, didn't look outright terrified, but the moment the others laid eyes on me, a faint dread flickered across their faces. We'd crossed blades any number of times before, and there were times a strange stubborn defiance had welled up in me — but, well, I could somehow hold my own in a fight, and if this got taken from me, it would all be for nothing.
The combatants stumbled back a step, then broke into a run. It didn't even seem to occur to them to shoot at me. A wise choice. Getting out before the antenna collapsed was the smartest move.
Rose turned toward me. At the sight, my heart slammed against my ribs. James squeaked and clamped down hard on my shoulder. The generator's powerful whir rose again—
—and behind me, once more, I felt the wind begin to blow. A wind that sucked me in.
Ah. So this is what it feels like.
Feeling that same sensation of being swallowed up as before, I thought once more. When I desperately wished to run away. When I feared something down to my very bones. It seemed this power awakened each and every time.
...Ha. It's the exact opposite of the magical girls' power.
The last thing I saw was Hayun, staring after me with a face drained white.