Chapter 12: The Demands (2)
"Something's off."
Iris said, looking up at the people above us.
"Normally they'd evacuate everyone in the surrounding buildings first..."
"There are cases where they don't?"
"When the building's too big and too many people are inside, or it's a government facility with essential staff... usually there's a logical reason."
Iris furrowed her brow.
"But it's almost never a simple oversight. One or two people, maybe. Not a crowd that size."
"Hm."
I looked up at them too.
"Doesn't look like professional broadcasting crew to me."
Seeing as what they clutched in their hands were smartphones.
The world had changed a great deal over the past five years. Now that Earth had encountered the Federation, rejecting its technology outright was never going to fly.
Importing all of it at once would have thrown society into chaos, so short of formally joining the Federation, nations were absorbing its technical prowess in stages — mostly under the banner of "technology transfer."
That was also why relations between Noir Corporation and the government weren't as bad as you might expect.
But even wielding every last scrap of that alien engineering, there were domains ruled absolutely by the laws of physics where it fell short.
Take, for instance, "bigger electronics perform better."
Or "a bigger lens reflects and refracts more light."
A smartphone's image sensor is far smaller than a broadcast camera's, and the lens mounted on it is no different. However many times it could zoom optically, the plain truth was that it couldn't match real broadcast equipment.
If these were professionals, they'd have been holding something better than a smartphone.
"Or maybe it's supposed to look that way."
Rose said.
"The Federation, the government, Noir Corporation — maybe they all want to sway public opinion without jumping in themselves?"
"I don't see how footage of us smashing kaijin in the police's place would help much."
If anything, wouldn't it just backfire?
So far the police hadn't managed to catch the kaijin, let alone us.
Even by alien standards, kaijin were supposedly beyond all projections — but magical girl attacks did work on them, so if anyone genuinely set out to kill one, I didn't see why they couldn't.
Noir Corporation was already "domesticating" kaijin in its own way, after all.
"Anything coming to mind?"
When I asked James, the drone that had been floating there in silence all this while drifted back toward me.
"Well, I do have thoughts."
"And?"
"For now, they remain in the realm of speculation."
James's voice was flat. He didn't appear particularly frightened by the situation.
Hm.
I lowered my gaze again.
In the corner of my eye, I caught the pink-haired girl.
She'd been staring holes through my face for a while now — she really did seem interested in me. Well, if she weren't, she wouldn't have asked to come bathe with me in the first place.
Maybe I should strike up a conversation.
I'd just thought it when I remembered that I knew nothing about the situation we were in.
How many minutes had passed? I hadn't thought to check the time when the loudspeaker warning went up, so I couldn't say for certain.
It felt like ten minutes, give or take.
Just as boredom was starting to set in—
a deep roar rolled in from far away.
It wasn't the sound of anything exploding. More like—
"A helicopter?"
Rose murmured.
But it wasn't quite a helicopter. I'd seen helicopters before.
It sounded like more than a single set of rotors.
I turned toward the noise, rose from my seat, and gripped my hammer's handle. Something was flying in from the distance, headed straight for us.
Long from nose to tail, with four propellers. At a glance, it looked like an enormous drone.
But unlike the other drones, it wasn't carrying only a camera. Between its two pairs of rotors hung a container.
I heard the police stirring.
And then—
THUD!
The drone came all the way to where we stood and, without ceremony, dropped the container.
We could have dodged, but it hadn't been dropped close enough to flatten us, so no one bothered to run. The other magical girls, myself included, stayed put.
"Hm."
James murmured.
His voice carried the tone of a man who had a fair idea what was inside.
There was no need to ask. The container opened at once.
Instead of a door swinging open on one side like an ordinary shipping crate, the walls on all four sides split apart and folded outward.
CLANG!
The container unfolded like an exploded diagram of a cube, ringing like struck metal.
And inside it was—
"...Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped me before I could help it.
What stood there was a giant robot.
No — something that "at least resembled" a robot.
With a kaijin sealed inside.
The massive machine, shaped vaguely like a bear, wore heavy white armor with a surface so smoothly finished it might have been ceramic.
So that was it, then: the government and the Federation meant to choose something other than us.
Put into words, something like "we do not negotiate with terrorists," perhaps.
I lifted my head and looked again at the humans filming us.
Smartphones in hand, perched fairly high up. They could zoom in far enough to capture us, but anything we shouted from down here would never carry.
And even if we climbed up there to speak our piece, they'd only have to cut the transmission midway.
"I see."
Not that they could write us off entirely. The generator was a critical matter, after all.
The Federation was developing a generator built on Hope Circuits, but it had no magical girls to run it. And that unfinished generator wouldn't even turn over without hope in the first place.
As for the generator the Company had used — I'd stolen it.
I had no way of knowing how much money and time went into building one, but if there was someone "absolutely indispensable" to producing equipment that advanced — or if parts of the core technology were known to no one but the Former Chairman—
The Chairman was missing, and James, who had presumably designed the thing, was here with me.
So perhaps a "warning" had been in order.
That pointless resistance would accomplish nothing—
Vmmm—
The sound came from near the robot.
A sound made because of me.
This robot looked different from the last batch. I'd seen plenty of robots before, too — the kaijin inside them were living creatures, not machine parts, so their appearances varied wildly, but at least the "same models" had been similar enough to pass.
What set this one apart was that it carried two circuits.
Light pulsed from the circuits on both shoulders. At a glance the glow seemed as bright as a magical girl's circuit, but the border around it was a black that looked ready to swallow anything — the color of that "blackest black paint" I'd once seen on the internet.
Had they installed LEDs or something? If so, the brightness seemed a little lacking.
Kiiik.
Light kindled in the robot's eyes, and its bear-like head tilted upward.
Then, moving with a faintly unnatural tremor, it turned to face the kaijin.
I understood, once again, why the cameras had been kept at a distance. Had they been any closer, people would have noticed the robot was operating strangely.
...I was starting to get it now.
"So it's a controlled situation, in reality."
Iris said.
Right.
To us, it looked like they were shoving cameras brazenly in our faces — but to anyone watching only the broadcast, it likely wouldn't look that way at all.
The side a camera points at isn't the side doing the filming.
All they'd have to claim was that they'd been filming in secret.
And if the robot went berserk or broke down midway and became unusable, they could simply cut the footage then and there. All they'd have to say was that they'd "been found out at that point."
Meaning: whatever choice we made here, they could cherry-pick the outcome after the fact.
"Ridiculous."
"Tell me about it."
Seeing Hayun answer, I finally turned my head toward her.
Hayun was — very rarely for her — wearing an angry expression.
Probably because of the very idea of using kaijin.
Kaijin were... strictly speaking, nothing more than suffering people. Neutralizing them properly and sending them back to space did force violent means on our side too, but at bottom, they were victims.
And that was exactly what made subduing them so much harder.
"We should have shown the situation exactly as it was, back when we broadcast."
"Well, we were rather busy at the time. Nothing to be done about it now."
James answered my murmur.
"You don't seem particularly worried?"
"As you can see, that thing only functions properly with you present."
"..."
"Why else would it only arrive after you did? If it could have been activated from the start to bring down the kaijin, they'd have done so long ago."
"Then what nerve are they flexing, pulling this?"
"Well, it means they do have some willingness to negotiate, in the end. If both parties stand to gain, a deal can be struck, can it not?"
When I glared at the drone, it wavered slightly from side to side.
"I'm aware you have no desire to trade. Still — people waver once they've been shown enormous terms. Do they not?"
"And why did they decide I'd be the type?"
"Because you are someone who became a combatant for money."
That was... something I couldn't argue with.
Even if I'd poured every won of it into the orphanage, that money was the reason I could live far more comfortably. The allowance I kept for myself was enough to enjoy my hobbies and eat out once in a while.
"...So what am I supposed to do now?"
"Fight the kaijin and you will look desperate — as though you're racing the robot to bring it down first, to prove your own worth. Turn on the robot instead, and that, in its own right, is an act of terrorism. Extracting the contents would be pointless, too. They'd cut the feed before you managed it."
"So your counsel is to just stand here and watch?"
"If neither path profits us, then watching on in the hope that the robot loses is, I suppose, also an option."
"Hah..."
I looked at Hayun.
Even in the middle of all this, she was still glaring at the robot with that same angry face.
Kiiik, kiiik.
The robot slowly squared itself against the kaijin.
Kaijin can't communicate. What they do have is an instinct to destroy whatever stands before them.
Some, like that flat-faced, fish-like kaijin over there, moved with caution — but plenty simply flew into a rampage without warning.
So how would that "robot" — frozen solid around a kaijin brimming with destructive instinct — respond?
Set its "direction" correctly, and it would fight whatever stood in front of it, kaijin or not.
"Urooooo!"
The robot roared.
The sound was less a cry from a living creature's throat than something warped by electronics. Well, if word got out that they were using kaijin, that would be its own scandal.
Whether it judged the roar an "attack" or not, the other kaijin began to move as well.
Fast.
For an instant, it was almost nothing but a gray afterimage.
CRACK!
But the robot wasn't losing easily, either.
"..."
Back in that corridor, every one of the kaijin-powered robots had come straight for us.
I thought I understood why now. It had all been too chaotic at the time to read the situation properly, but the robots' movements had been far more unnatural than I'd realized.
They'd probably stalled out whenever they tried to attack one of their own. Ordinarily, merely suppressing the kaijin's power was enough to grind the devices down bit by bit — but feed them my energy, and that was another story entirely.
The exchange was blistering. Whether it had judged the white robot the greater threat, the kaijin whipped around it in fast circles, striking.
And whether the robot had likewise judged the kaijin its greatest threat, it kept its focus there too.
It was almost purely defensive, but that didn't mean it never attacked. When the hand tipped with sharp artificial claws snapped out, only that part left an afterimage.
Hup.
I rose from my seat.
Then, scooping up my hammer in one hand, I walked over to Hayun.
"So. What's it going to be?"
At my words, Hayun turned to look at me.
A very faint bewilderment had settled on her face.
If Hayun... were still a magical girl, she'd probably have hurled herself at the pair of them without a word of discussion.
Whatever anyone else thought of her, for Hayun the situation in front of her would always come first.
The only reason she was holding back was that I was beside her — afraid that because of her, my situation might be misread.
"I'll move however you choose."
I looked up again.
However we moved, every motion of ours would be spun in their favor.
No matter how baseless a claim, human thinking stalls the moment it first accepts it. Even hearing the truth afterward, people can't easily take it in — all the more if they've said things of their own in the meantime.
So now that I'd been accepted as a "terrorist," anything we did might simply end up proving the label.
Even though I'd broadcast and turned people's attention back around. Even though magical girls who'd been beloved right up until then had chosen to stay at my side.
"I'm not sure that's wise."
James piped up with an ill-timed remark at my side, but I nudged the drone away with the end of my hammer.
"You decide."
Hayun and I hadn't fully made up yet.
Moving together the way we used to might be difficult from here on. Our relationship might stay changed, just as it was now.
But even so.
Hayun was the protagonist, wasn't she?
Maybe not of some classic magical girl tale — maybe just the protagonist of a manga that had thrown everything it had into subverting magical girl clichés.
But Hayun, at least, was a magical girl.
One who truly shouted for love, justice, and peace.
At the very least, I still believed that.
So thinking rationally, this situation called for the protagonist's choice — not an extra like me, whose every move sent the story careening somewhere strange.
"Still... are you sure?"
Hayun asked.
There was a quiet expectation threaded through her voice, and it made my chest feel heavy.
"...If we're taking a vote, it's easier to just go along with whatever you do."
In the end, that was how I dodged the moment.
"...Okay."
But at my words, Hayun smiled instead.
"Alright. Then let's fight. Both of them... we've got to send them off this Earth."
Saying so, Hayun looked at me and the other magical girls.
Every one of them wore a strong, steady smile.
The kind of expression I couldn't manage.
Why was that?
Even back when they ran on the same energy I did, those girls had gone looking for hope wearing faces like that. A single thread of hope — an imperfect solution, granted, but always better than the worst.
And even here, even now, they weren't losing it. Their spinning circuits proved it. Their magical girl outfits proved it.
Those girls were holding on to hope even in this moment.
And somehow, that didn't sit well with me.
I didn't like it — and yet, maybe because of that, I felt relieved.
After all, the one I liked least of all in my own heart was me.
"Let's go."
The instant Hayun said it, she shot forward.
We followed.
Last time, every kaijin had been raining attacks down on me from the very start, so I'd felt it less — but wedging myself into the space between two kaijin locked in combat pressed down on me harder than I'd expected.
Like forcing your body between rapidly striking press plates, maybe. The space between them was nothing but white and gray afterimages unless you kept your focus, and the thought of entering it made me balk.
So I chose the least pressured approach.
Not pushing my way in — ambushing instead.
Clack.
The rear half of the hammer swung wide open. The moment I pushed the boosters to maximum output, my body launched skyward.
Then, tracing an arc, I came down on the white robot's head, hammer first.
BAM!
The robot snapped its hands up and caught my hammer.
Kiiik.
Its head turned toward me. All that showed on the surface was the camera set into its eyes, but surely human eyes lay within.
The eyes of someone who had, for whatever reason, gone mad.
I opened the hammer's forward boosters.
"Krooooo!"
The robot shoved out with both arms — but my hammer's output was brutal. A small auxiliary thrust fired from the front, true, but it was nothing beside the maximum output roaring from the rear. It had only ever been a minor propulsion feature added for braking and steering.
Still, it came in handy at times like this.
A small flamethrower — no, call it a very hot gas stove. With that blazing away, you bring the rocket mounted on the back right up against them.
The robot's arms glowed red-hot.
Alloy, not ceramic, then?
Just as the thought crossed my mind—
BAM!
Something slammed into the white robot's body.
The gray kaijin.
Right — those two were still mid-fight.
But perhaps neither had accounted for a moment like this: the robot was knocked backward, and the kaijin, twisting away from my hammer as it plunged down with terrifying weight, dragged its body along the ground.
Naturally the hammer drove downward once the thing bracing it was gone.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
I hammered away at the kaijin sprawled across the ground.
I trimmed the rear thrust, then fired the forward boosters in short, hard bursts. Layered over my own arm strength, it made for a punishing rhythm.
But the kaijin had no intention of simply taking it. It rolled sideways and shot away—
—no. It tried to.
Hayun's shoulder cut it off. Not the clang of metal — the vicious, meaty sound of two bodies colliding.
Unbothered, Hayun immediately traced the kaijin's movement with her blade. She couldn't cut it, but it seemed to keep it in check — the kaijin could neither close in nor break away easily.
BAM!
The sound cracked out beside me.
Rose had caught the robot's arm as it lunged toward me.
CLANG! CLANG!
Iris's concentrated fire hammered into the robot's head. With every hit, some part of its control systems seemed to short out — the white armor powdered away in bursts, exposing the machinery beneath.
So they meant to cut the feed as fast as they could.
Now that they'd decided to use it, it would never be allowed to serve us.
...
We were coordinating better than I'd expected.
Or were they simply adjusting to me?
I didn't care for it at the moment, but well — now that we'd already moved, there was nothing to be done.
First, deal with what was in front of us. Then think about the rest.
...Should I seriously just go rob a convenience store and be done with it?