Chapter 8: Weapon (5)
Even with my weight adjusted on the way down from that rooftop, the shock I'd delivered to the kaijin couldn't have been light.
It was a building rooftop, after all. Even a steel ball the size of a fist can split a person's skull on the force of a simple fall alone.
It wasn't as if I'd leapt up that high.
But neither was it a height I could have managed on my own strength alone.
The propulsion device was, in every sense of the word, a propulsion device. Even James himself had been startled by the thing once he'd finished building it — but its propulsion function had worked, unmistakably.
I rose higher than any human could jump — no, higher than it should be possible for a single person to leap unaided — and hung for a moment in the open air.
I could feel the eyes on me. The police ringing the scene, watching the battle unfold from behind their cordon — and the kaijin standing in their midst.
And Jihye, held in its hand.
I fixed my attention on the kaijin. I wanted to kill it. I wanted to crush its skull to paste right now, this very second.
But I knew I couldn't — not yet. If Jihye ended up in danger over it, that would be unbearable. So first, I would move her somewhere safe. Then I could think.
The best way was to break its arm. The pincer was enormous, and the arm carrying it was reasonably long — presumably to swing that pincer around. But I didn't look only at the arm itself.
What if I went for the elbow and missed? The kaijin hardly seemed the type to stand still and take it. Of course it would move — doing everything it could to make use of the hostage in its grip.
In that case, it was better to smash the limb at its root and sever it outright.
And factoring in the way it would move, too... somewhere around the base of the neck, then.
All of that calculation took, at most, an instant. My hang time in the air was an instant, too.
Was my very thinking being affected by the magic? Whether I had accelerated or the world around me had slowed, everything looked a little sluggish from up here.
Suspended in the sky, I tipped my body slightly forward and slid my hand down the long handle from the hammer's head, pressing the blade edge flush against the top of my left hand.
Then I brought the hammer down.
With the propulsion device churning hard at my back, from the outside it must have looked like I was carving a full circle through the sky.
The moment the flat, hard face of the hammer head pointed earthward, I opened the energy release even wider. The blue flame behind the hammer blazed up fiercer than ever.
Leaving a long, straight streak of blue, the hammer fired.
I plummeted.
The air shrieked as it sliced past my ears. James seemed to be yelling something from my shoulder, but I couldn't make out a word. Impressive that he was still hanging on.
Whether it was because I was simply too fast, the kaijin moving below looked strangely slow.
It swung its arm exactly as I'd predicted, dragging Jihye back behind its body. Did it think that would make me stop?
If I could have stopped midway, I would never have chosen this method in the first place.
I gritted my teeth and focused. Steered the hammer's trajectory along that arm. Maybe it was desperation — but this time, the magic moved exactly as I willed it.
That instant passed.
Then came the sound of something hard striking something hard.
Or perhaps two sounds at once.
The heavy, dull thud of something massive landing — and the sharp crack of something thin and hard striking another hard surface.
Of the two, the harder one was, naturally, the one that made the dull sound.
Crack.
The carapace sheathing its shoulder shattered.
Blue fluid welled up through the fissures, and a moment later the center of the plate caved inward.
SLAM!
The propulsion-driven hammer didn't stop there. It drove straight on into the ground — another huge fissure split the pavement, its center bowing inward, and in between lay the carapace, crushed almost to powder.
“GYAAAAAAAH!”
The kaijin shrieked. It reeled backward, staggering away, and looked down at its own arm.
The left pincer wasn't the problem. The shoulder — or to be precise, the entire carapace from the point where it sat nearly flush against the body, right beside the head — had broken apart wholesale. Through the jagged cross-section, white flesh showed. ...The same color as the shellfish meat you'd see at a seafood restaurant.
Watching it stagger away from me, I turned my gaze back to Jihye.
Jihye was on the ground.
Her legs seemed to have given out; she couldn't get up properly.
No — she still couldn't breathe right, either. That enormous pincer was still clamped around her waist.
Pressing the hammer down with one hand, I started toward her—
SLAM!
The arm swung again and caught me full-on.
Perhaps because I was still gripping the propulsion-fired hammer, I went drifting casually up into the air.
I barely collected myself in time to catch the end of the handle.
Only after I dragged the hammer head back down level with the ground did my body finish its full spinning revolution.
Once my trajectory steadied, all that was left was to attack again. I had no idea how to shut the thing off, after all.
Until this fury in my chest settled even a little, fighting was all I could do. I angled the hammer and launched myself at the kaijin.
And the kaijin was advancing on Jihye again.
Whether the pincer's grip had finally given way, Jihye had just barely wriggled free and was crawling away. A few officers were running toward her. The kaijin was trailing after her. Its long, heavy strides radiated pure fury.
Maybe it wanted revenge on me badly enough to kill Jihye for it. I had taken its arm, after all.
Bullets streaked toward the creature. Several ricocheted off its thick carapace, but it seemed a few had bitten into the wound, because the kaijin staggered.
But it didn't go down.
Just as the radio had said earlier — was it true that ordinary bullets simply couldn't bring a kaijin down?
If anything, it only seemed angrier. It hoisted its arm with a shriek.
“Wha—!?”
The words burst out of me before I could stop them.
Something was boiling up between the kaijin's shattered plates.
It looked like flesh, bubbling upward.
Through the gaps in its carapace, that pale, washed-out flesh was growing back. The shape of it resembled the pincer I'd shattered moments before.
White and wobbly, with the texture of something about to slough off at any second.
It had to be regenerating because my attacks were working. That had to be it.
I immediately brought the hammer head upright.
I tried to bring it down hard once more—
SLAM!
This time the kaijin darted sideways, fast. Had it been expecting the strike?
...No.
There was no dodging that on prediction alone. If mere anticipation had been enough, it could have evaded me back when I shattered its carapace, too.
I looked at the carapace lying on the ground.
Thick.
Certainly thick enough to withstand the weight I'd come plunging down with from that rooftop. I couldn't say how its strength compared to real ores, but it could turn live rounds fired from the police counter-terror team's sniper rifles.
If it wasn't some special alloy, it must weigh a ton.
Something white flashed into my field of view. The flesh grown out from inside the carapace.
It came lashing at me like a whip, far nimbler and faster than before.
I twisted the hammer, forcing it up. When the white flesh touched the flame erupting from the open rear, the kaijin screamed —
—but I couldn't dodge what came after.
Fortunately, the impact was lighter than taking the hit on that thick carapace would have been. It still hurt enough to rattle my brain inside my skull.
I heard Jihye scream. I think she called my name, too. Still, the sound came from somewhere a little ways off.
I sprang sideways, cutting off the kaijin's path toward Jihye. Or rather, I swung the hammer sideways.
SKREECH!
My feet plowed through the asphalt as I stopped dead.
Right. A battle of speed.
I bared my teeth at the kaijin.
Until you were completely neutralized, Jihye would never be safe.
Clamping down on the hammer as it strained to launch forward, I glared the thing down and thought:
Where should I start breaking you—
But before the thought even finished, steel wire came sailing down over the kaijin and me alike.
Too late.
Only after arriving at the scene did the magical girls grasp how gravely things had turned.
The reason the girls — who had spent this whole stretch under what amounted to confinement — had been assembled was simple. A kaijin the police couldn't contain had appeared, and they were told to deal with it.
Hayun's mana had weakened sharply, but not to the point of being unable to fight at all. Her output had dropped below the other magical girls', yes — but she was hardly at risk of being slaughtered by a monster.
Besides, the other girls could still wield their own strength. Hayun's power wouldn't be backing them up, but holding down a single kaijin should have been well within their ability.
But arriving at that judgment took far too long. Right up to the very last moment, the Galaxy Federation had apparently agonized over whether to deploy them at all — over whether to deploy Hayun in particular.
Only after finally receiving permission did they take to the sky.
They couldn't have carried one more person, but Hayun could at least fly on her own.
One kaijin. And one hostage.
The police had concluded there was no way to subdue it. The kaijin's armor was a type they'd seen before. If a bullet ricocheted the wrong way, it could easily strike the hostage.
Wire was out of the question, too. The hostage wouldn't survive it.
Hayun clenched her teeth and flew toward the scene with everything she had.
The closer they drew, the more of them gathered, one by one.
They traded greetings with a glance, merged, and formed up into a squadron.
Once the kaijin was dealt with, they could finally sit down and really talk again, for the first time in ages.
That thought gave her a flicker of hope—
—until she saw the scene.
The moment they arrived, the first thing Hayun's eyes found was Jieun, pinned beneath the wire — right alongside the kaijin.
“Crazy bastards.”
In the end, I couldn't hold the curse back.
Seriously — terrorist or not, was this any way to treat a person? Dropping a net of thick steel wire over the head of the very person who'd freed your hostage minor not a minute ago — how did that add up?
Don't tell me they watched me smash the kaijin's arm to pieces and decided I'd swing it at Jihye next? Were they blind?
Though I suppose if they were blind, they couldn't have timed a net drop over my head this precisely.
“W-we're getting out of here!”
Judging by someone's shout, it wasn't going too well for them, either.
Think, people. With pincers that size, did they really believe a net would hold? You just tear the thing to ribbons.
Then again, given that Jihye's waist hadn't been sliced in half, the pincers apparently weren't all that sharp.
“You okay?”
I asked James.
Just before the wire hit, I'd bent my left arm and shielded my left shoulder with my hand. James ended up squashed flat beneath my fingers and palm — but at least he hadn't been pressed into paste by the wire.
Maybe it would have been fine even without my hand. Perhaps the magic draped over my body had intervened to keep things from turning quite that ugly.
Still, there was a real chance of red pulp smeared across my shoulder, so I couldn't exactly relax.
“I-I am quite all right.”
James said, sounding somewhat flustered.
“Good.”
I tried to straighten my bent back, but lifting this weight entirely was beyond me. I managed not to fall over, but I ended up stuck in an awkward stance, back hunched at an angle.
And that was with my other hand still holding the hammer.
Not to mention the circuit was still turning.
The situation wasn't good. I'd come to improve my image at least a little, and charging in first was apparently not such a great idea after all.
Not that I regretted it.
If I'd waited for the magical girls, Jihye would have been in genuine danger. Honestly, even by the time I arrived, things were already at their worst.
Vreeee—
Thinking about my current situation, I could feel the generator spinning up again.
Even under the wire, the components floating in the air still held their shape. A stretch of the wire was even hovering a little above the hammer's head.
Was there some kind of magnetic field at work?
Or maybe this, too, was a product of my half-baked scientific knowledge. Just as I'd saved someone last time with an act that defied the laws of physics, perhaps this was happening only because I believed it made sense — even though scientifically, it made no sense whatsoever.
But it did make sense, in its own way.
It was alien technology, after all, with a bit of everything else stirred in. James would be dumbfounded all over again if he heard me.
Gritting my teeth, I swung the hammer around.
Ssssss—
The output pouring from the hammer's rear began to melt the wire.
Where the blue flame touched it, the wire flushed red in an instant and started snapping apart, strand by strand. Someone was shouting again — I decided to ignore it.
Whatever I did, they were only going to get in my way. That was all this was.
Had something heavy been attached to the end of the wire net?
Spinning a full rotation as I cut through it, I managed to peel the net off my body with a single hand.
And the moment I did, my eyes met Hayun's, floating in the sky.
“......”
What was I even supposed to say?
At least I was grateful this wasn't one of those situations where we had to trade awkward greetings. Having someone to fight was a good thing. No need to think about this and that — you just did what needed doing.
...No. Even so, from the moment I laid eyes on Hayun, my heart had started pounding like crazy.
Our eyes didn't stay locked for long.
The white arm lashed out at Hayun. It seemed determined to snatch the magical girls out of the air and bring them down somehow.
That was a problem.
Honestly, I didn't feel any great urge to help the magical girls. They were the ones who'd beaten me half to death, after all.
But even so, I couldn't just stand by and watch Hayun.
I didn't want to talk to her. And yet, at the same time, I wanted to see her. Wanted to meet her.
I wanted to win. But I didn't want to fight.
Those two conflicting feelings led, in the end, to despair. Because at the end of wanting-but-not-wanting, what I always chose was to run.
And if today was going to be the same, there was nothing I could do about it.
“......”
In that case, I would simply turn that rage elsewhere.
I ran.
One step. Two. Three.
With every stride, I leapt higher. I'd done this enough times now to have picked up a knack for it.
Steps taken not to flee — but to stand and fight.
I hurled myself upward with everything I had and brought the hammer down again on its thrust.
SLAM!
But once again, it struck nothing but the ground.
As if the creature were evolving with every dodge, it read these obvious attacks with ease now.
But the very next instant, a beam that had been lying in wait for exactly that moment sheared off its left pincer — the very one that had regrown after I shattered it.
I turned — and my eyes met Iris's.
Iris looked away first. Her expression was somewhat uneasy.
“Well, well.”
James murmured, sounding intrigued.
Whatever. I paid it no mind and focused on the fight. I didn't want to think about it, either.
No matter what they thought of me, in the end they'd see me as an enemy to be fought. That much was inevitable.
...Come to think of it, why did their output seem even weaker than when they'd fought me?
Hayun was the same. She could still form her blade, but its light wavered, unsteady.
Hayun's blade — which had shifted between the feel of an Eastern treasured sword and the thick two-hander a hero might swing — was now barely producing a single thin beam.
CLANG!
But their instincts for battle hadn't dulled one bit.
Even with reduced output and diminished destructive power, experience remained. The magical girls had fought kaijin any number of times before.
There must have been kaijin far more specialized in speed than this one, so they'd know at least some countermeasures.
Rather than circling the ordinary way, Hayun kicked off her output and wheeled around the kaijin in a wide arc.
A weapon like mine — one that pulps its target by slamming into it — pairs well against hard things. Sure, if I could land a blow on that white flesh, I'd crush it flat, but even pushing my output to the limit, I was still the slower one.
Air resistance, maybe? But the magical girls never seemed bothered by anything of the sort when they flew. Which meant there was a magical solution.
And was that, too, something achieved by imagination alone?
While I was turning it over, the kaijin swung its attention back toward me.
It had apparently judged my hammer the greatest threat. Fair enough — I had shattered in one blow an armor that shrugged off bullets.
It knew that one clean hit would kill it without so much as a whimper.
But that didn't mean the other magical girls were letting the kaijin go.
I, who wasn't attacking them, ranked second on their list. The kaijin came first, apparently.
I didn't like them holding the initiative, but I'd set that aside for now.
Hayun charged in. Faced with her lightning-fast slash, the kaijin faltered slightly and met it with its right pincer — the one whose carapace was still intact.
Naturally. That was a beam of light. If it touched that raw white flesh, the arm would be sheared apart on the spot.
And while it was occupied, Iris opened fire to back her up.
“HYAH!”
Rose darted in and drove a straight punch into the kaijin.
WHAM!
The crack running through the kaijin's armor widened.
“GRAAAH!”
The kaijin bellowed in irritation and hammered the ground where Rose and Hayun stood, alternating between them. It was the armored right hand, but it was fast enough to drive both of them from their footing.
The instant the two cleared out, a mass of Dahlia's mana came flying at the kaijin.
The kaijin plunged its pincer into the mana mass and ripped it apart — but at the same time, the smell of seafood cooking drifted through the air. The light hadn't fully spared the white flesh of its exposed arm.
The kaijin seized its own arm with the pincer and cut it off.
Far off, Delphinium was readying her magic. I could see the police scattering back. One of them had taken hold of Jihye and was dragging her away — not quite by force; she just seemed to have gone blank with shock, beyond helping herself, so I let it slide for now.
I crouched slightly and loaded my legs, then kicked off with everything I had and shot forward. The hammer's output sent me swinging in a wide arc to the left.
But it was enough.
SLAM!
The hammer buried itself in the flank of the kaijin, which had been too busy regenerating its arm to watch its surroundings.
Something green — revolting, and yet oddly the color of marinated crab — spurted in a long stream from the kaijin's mouth. Mm. Honestly, I had no appetite for it.
“...!”
And of all moments, at that very instant, the kaijin's pincer was aimed at Hayun.
I gouged the hammer free of its flank and sent the kaijin flying, then surged forward again — but for one heartbeat, my eyes met Hayun's.
With a slightly dazed expression, Hayun stared blankly after the kaijin as it sailed away.
And then, without warning, the pink blade of Hayun's wand burst into flame.
...Why?