Chapter 12. Demands (4)
"What's on your mind?"
Rose asked, sounding a little worried.
Of course, given the situation we were in, this was hardly the moment for a leisurely chat. Our conversation could only come in short bursts, stitched together in the gaps between attacks.
I'd been trying to focus on smashing the restraints at the joints in a single blow, but they refused to break that easily. Perhaps because of what had happened last time — when all those kaijin, despite their numbers, were subdued by the magical girls in the end — the armor was far tougher this round. I managed to shatter the joint at the elbow, but the legs were sturdier still.
And honestly, that was the smarter design. Between moving your arms freely and moving your legs freely, if you asked which gave the wider range of action, the answer would obviously be the latter.
I slammed my hammer into the robot's right leg, rolled low under the strike that came swinging down right after, and hammered its back in return. Rose, beside me, slipped past the flurry aimed at her, rolled under its arm, and came up at my side.
"To show them they can't control us."
"Us? Or the kaijin?"
"Both."
I spat out the answer and thrust my hammer between the kaijin's legs. I laid the hammer head flat and horizontal, then opened the boosters on both ends to maximum.
"……!"
Naturally, the stronger thrust came from the rear. From the kaijin's perspective that was its right leg — and hit by a booster blast powerful enough to fling my whole body into the sky in an instant, the leg splayed wide in the opposite direction.
That wasn't what I'd been aiming for, though. I'd only been wondering whether the booster's heat might damage the device a little.
The other end would be burning all the same — but more than that, struck by the hammer that shot forward, the leg tore straight open in the opposite direction.
Squelch.
It was a sound that hurt just to hear, but apparently it wasn't the sound of the kaijin's leg breaking.
There were 'joints' at the waist, too. To keep the legs from moving freely, there naturally had to be control units running past the pelvis as well.
Fsshh.
As that control unit bent sideways, something seemed to go wrong in the channel carrying its energy, and black liquid spurted out like hydraulic fluid gushing from a ruptured line.
That was surely no mere oil. More likely pure energy produced by the circuit.
Though the leg had torn, the kaijin's own body was sturdy and the armor itself was solidly built, so neither leg came completely away from the torso. Instead, the kaijin toppled hard to the right and cracked its head against the ground.
CRASH!
"KUOOOH!!"
The kaijin wailed.
It twisted around and planted its hands on the ground, and — terrifyingly — both claws dug into the earth, carving deep furrows. If anyone had been standing there, even a magical girl wouldn't have come away unscathed. Honestly, it scared me a little too.
But that's what makes a magical girl a magical girl.
No matter how grotesque the enemy standing before them, a magical girl is a magical girl because she fights on with courage, never giving up.
Not me, though. Girls like Hayun.
Even as the two of us rolled away behind it, Hayun held firm in front of the kaijin. And the moment I knocked it over sideways, she charged.
"The shoulder! There's a control unit in the shoulder!"
At my shout, Hayun dove straight for it. The kaijin scrambled to rise, but before it could get fully up, Hayun's blade reached its left shoulder first.
Sometimes, passing a hardware store, I'd seen them cutting steel bars. The sight of metal grinding against metal, sparks spraying in every direction, had always struck me as fairly menacing — workers actually held face shields up in front of their faces while doing it.
Hayun's blade tip was like that.
It didn't quite sound like a saw biting through steel, but pink sparks flew — violently. They rained down over Hayun's body and face, too.
Even so, without so much as a blink, she drove the blade deeper.
I threw myself at the kaijin and brought my hammer down on its back without mercy. Then, leaving the hammer where it was, I fired my boosters at full power.
The arm the kaijin had been pushing itself up with seemed to lose a little strength. It quickly re-set its stance and tried to rise again, but a gap that brief was enough. It had bought Hayun's sword the time it needed to cut deeper.
Beyond the sparks, Hayun looked this way. When our eyes met across the kaijin's back, she gave me a knowing smile. I looked away.
The pink sparks gradually dulled, then turned black.
KRAK!
From somewhere inside came the sound of something slamming hard — like paper caught in a fan.
And then—
A tremendous explosion.
"……Hayun!"
Before I knew it I was shouting her name and running toward Hayun, who had been blown backward.
"Jieun?"
As I took her hand and pulled her up, Hayun looked at me with wide eyes.
Realizing I'd acted on pure impulse, I quickly let go. Still looking a little startled, Hayun stared down at the hand I'd held.
Call it a mercy — we had no spare moment to dwell on the fact that we'd touched for the first time in a while.
From behind us came a sound of absolutely monstrous rage.
Until now its cries had at least been something close to a bear's — this wasn't even that anymore.
Maybe even that much had been 'controlled.'
Honestly, at this point I had no choice but to admit it, whether I liked it or not. Whether it was humane or inhuman was for other people to judge, but the Company's technical prowess was beyond question. They really could weaponize a kaijin.
Well, by any common-sense standard, not a single person anywhere would approve of it.
Tang, tang.
Perhaps because one of the circuits mounted on its shoulders had burst — the kaijin's left shoulder blew apart. The arm didn't come away. It had simply taken a critical wound, bad enough that the bone of the shoulder showed through.
And since its body was covered in fur, the blood from the wound soaked in, smearing and matting every which way, making it look even worse than it was.
Parts lay scattered haphazardly around the mangled arm. Some of them, tangled in wires and other components, hadn't come fully loose — they just dangled.
That's…… a little dangerous.
Nothing had changed about my job of subduing the kaijin — but I couldn't let it die.
Even if the government and the Federation stood on the opposite side from us, the person who'd become that kaijin probably bore no real guilt at all.
No — if anything, from the moment the Company seized them and put them to use as a weapon, they might not be so different from me. If I hadn't escaped back then, if I'd been dragged off to some other hospital instead, my ending might have looked exactly like that.
Or would it have been worse? I might have ended up in a position something like the Generator's.
Once it was officially subdued and the administrative procedures ran their course, there'd be no denying that thing was a 'kaijin.' Though whatever documents those procedures produced would no doubt be classified.
And the police?
From what I could see, they seemed thoroughly rattled.
No corporation would send something like this without thinking it through. They must simply be confident they could seal every mouth even if they were found out.
Well, 'evidence' can be controlled, after all.
When I glanced up, the people who'd been watching us from above were already gone.
No helicopters circled the sky either. There were a few drones, but they bore the Noir Corporation logo.
"They really will stop at nothing, honestly."
Dull-witted, but strong in nothing but force — people who shoved through whatever they wanted without much thought. That was what I felt toward the ones who had sent this thing.
"It can be treated, right?"
"……It's healing, little by little, even now."
Delphinium had drawn near at some point and said this, her wand trained on the kaijin's shoulder.
Just as she said, flesh was slowly returning over the exposed bone — though rather than flesh growing over it, a black liquid was spreading across the wound.
"Looks like a self-repair function."
Iris said, loading fuses into her rifle.
"It won't truly heal the wound, but it should stop the bleeding. And it will serve to seal the areas where the armor was stripped away."
"……Absolutely shameless."
I heaved a deep sigh and took up my hammer again.
"Still, we've come this far — we're in trouble if we don't bring it down."
"Yeah."
Hayun answered me.
"Then let's finish this fast and go."
I said.
"Fighting here doesn't leave us anything anyway."
It wasn't as if we were getting paid for this fight. I'd have to wrap it up before my strength gave out.
Smoke began streaming from my hammer.
Like the exhaust of a launching rocket — smoke as if it were burning through fuel.
Well, maybe there was no real reason for it. This, too, might be nothing more than an effect born of the image in my head.
Even so, it seemed to work.
At the sight of the smoke, the police recoiled in alarm.
Good. The kaijin's about to run wild from here on, so keep your distance on your own. I'll do my best to hold it back, but I can't promise anything.
……If they intend to push this to the bitter end, then so will I. I'll make sure they never, ever want to send the police out here again.
Even if it makes me a public enemy — well. I'm already one anyway.
And judging by the fact that they called us in, even on their side there seem to be people who think we're necessary.
Right — there was never any hope to begin with. In a world like this, I've never once held anything like hope.
But that doesn't mean I'll be the only one left drowning in despair.
If that's the fight you want, then I'll drag every last one of you down into the pit of despair with me.
I heard the air split around my body.
From the front of the hammer — the section fitted with auxiliary thrusters — black smoke poured out in place of flame.
What began as smoke alone slowly thickened into something like liquid.
BAM!
Almost the instant it hardened, it struck the crown of the kaijin's head.
Krrk.
Whether it came from the armor on the kaijin's crown, or from the hardened mana I'd coated my hammer with —
something sounded like it was splitting.
And the broken shards stuck all over the kaijin's body.
"Kuoh?"
The kaijin lifted its head and looked at me.
My mana poured in through the shattered helmet.
"……!"
The kaijin clutched its own face in its hands.
Well — that's the idea.
When fighting alongside other magical girls, I can't just splatter sticky gunk all over the ground.
But pouring it onto a kaijin's body is another matter. It doesn't matter if it can't bind the whole body.
The mana that had forced its way into its eyes and ears was already doing its job well enough on its own.
The kaijin shrieked and flailed both arms in every direction. It was threatening — if anything, swinging wildly while blind made its attacks even harder to predict.
But at the same time, its blind spots multiplied too.
Not just its eyes — its ears were sealed as well.
And that wasn't all. The mana that had flowed into the helmet was slowly hardening solid inside it.
I couldn't say what was happening to its gaping mouth, but if the mana reached its nose, even breathing would become difficult.
Bam, bam, bam.
My hammer and Rose's gauntlets beat against the kaijin's body again and again. Blows came from front and back while its sight and hearing were smothered. Maybe some had gotten into its mouth and nose too, and it had tipped into full panic.
Even a rational being would panic in that situation — all the more for something running almost purely on instinct.
Iris, who had been relentlessly targeting its head, had at some point shifted to aiming for its arms and legs. She seemed to have realized I'd done something to its head.
Hayun came running too, and Dahlia rose into the sky, all but carpet-bombing the kaijin.
"……!"
The kaijin roared.
Black shards burst from the cracked part of the helmet.
For one instant, a shriek tore at my ears hard enough to split them.
In the moment I faltered, the kaijin's arm whipped out and knocked me sideways.
I barely kept myself from tumbling, planting my feet to brake — but the kaijin was already springing forward.
"Gyah!?"
The troops stationed in its path panicked. Some couldn't retreat properly because of the people behind them; others raised their shields, determined to hold the line somehow.
But there was no way suppression shields could properly stop a kaijin's charge. However much they'd been reinforced for this, there's a limit to the weight a human being can carry. You can't just make them thicker and thicker.
Gunfire poured into the kaijin, but that only inflamed its aggression further.
Wires flew at it, but the kaijin's absurdly powerful artificial claws tore through even those. Hauling them along by brute force and shredding them with swings of its arms, it broke through — the wires never fully held it. However many layers they stacked, the kaijin had the strength to drag the entire mass of wire forward with it.
Besides, it was moving so fast that the wires never even landed squarely on its head.
If anything, perhaps because of that, the blind kaijin seemed to have oriented itself toward the direction the attacks were coming from.
"Delphinium……!"
Hayun shouted.
Delphinium, who had already been preparing her spell, raised a thick wall in front of the kaijin.
It resembled the one we'd seen earlier — but this time it was so thick you could barely make out the far side.
"Kuoh!?"
The kaijin charged full force into the wall of mana—
"……!"
—and bolted away in the opposite direction in a panic.
That flattened kaijin earlier had panicked just from touching a wall thinner than this one. This wall was thick enough that there'd be no punching through it — of course it fled.
But Rose was already charging at the kaijin as it burst back out.
"HRAAH!"
Shouting with all her might, Rose leapt and drove a dropkick into the kaijin.
The size difference between the kaijin and Rose was nearly two and a half times — but Rose's strength was circuit-enhanced to the limit, too.
Both of Rose's feet slammed into the kaijin's leg, and it went bouncing away to the other side again.
Then it was my turn.
I flew in with my thrusters at maximum and rammed the hammer head into its abdomen.
Something like drool leaked from the corner of the kaijin's mouth.
The final blow to the kaijin — its abdomen jammed against the wall like a rocket — came from Hayun.
"I'm sorry."
Hayun said that, and drove her sword into the kaijin's arm.
The circuit on the other side — still intact, still running — dropped away almost pathetically at Hayun's blade.
Having just watched the earlier explosion, she had apparently handled the other arm a good deal more carefully.
"Excellent work."
James said, watching us from the sky the whole while.
"The more components we can pull from the circuits, the better. Let's take them along as they are."
"……"
I looked up at James.
"KUOOOH!"
The moment the circuits came free, the kaijin burst from the wall again as if awakening.
The energy the circuits used went into controlling it, after all.
BAM!
But the kaijin that burst out took another hammer to the body, slammed into the wall, then collapsed to the ground, shuddering.
……Beyond control, the circuits also supplemented its strength and reinforced its defenses. Having worn a combat suit myself, I already knew that much.
Once the kaijin was down, Delphinium swept her wand, and the wall melted away like mist. Sweat beaded on her face.
Did using magic drain stamina too? Well — nothing comes without a price.
"……"
Silence.
The police fell silent, staring at the kaijin sprawled on the ground.
No — were these really ordinary police? For all I knew they belonged to some other agency entirely. Ordinary patrol officers wouldn't have been the ones summoned here, anyway.
I raised my head again and surveyed our surroundings.
There wasn't a spot anywhere that had come through intact. The asphalt was shattered all over — some of it my doing, some the magic's.
Repairs would probably take a while.
Hm.
How should I put this.
In the end, we'd come all this way and gained nothing. Just worn ourselves out for nothing.
Maybe because it was two against six, no one had come away badly hurt, but……
Once I got back and reopened the cans, from then on I'd be living on almost nothing but plant food. We had beans, so maybe I could scrape together some protein somehow—
Just as Hayun opened her mouth, about to say something to me—
—the far end of the street stirred with commotion.
A girl was shouting at the top of her lungs. A voice that felt strangely familiar.
But her voice was swallowed up by the voices of the people behind her.
Apparently someone was trying to come this way, and the police were holding them back.
I ran toward them.
The owner of that voice was—
"—Jieun!"
Seeing me, Jihye shouted with everything she had.
That distinctive, enormous voice of hers reached my ears loud and clear.
The police had ringed her in.
When I dropped down beside her, they fell back.
Jihye was breathing hard, as though she'd sprinted the whole way here.
Her face was slick with sweat, her hair plastered to it.
"……Jihye."
Before I knew it, a dumbstruck sound had left my mouth.
Jihye looked at me and said nothing for a long moment. No — her expression said she didn't know what to say.
Looking at my wrecked hair, my clothes, my body, Jihye spoke in a trembling voice.
"A-are you… doing… okay?"
"……Yeah."
There was no way I could tell Jihye the truth, so for now I just nodded.
Well — it's not as if I can't get by. Even if I'm hovering a good two centimeters shy of the line for 'not okay,' I'm managing. For now.
"I-I see……"
Jihye's head dipped slightly.
She fidgeted for a moment, then abruptly thrust something out toward me.
A plastic bag.
"……What's this?"
"No, on my way here — just in case."
Jihye said.
"I bought… some things."
Had she stopped by a convenience store?
When I took it and opened it, inside were instant foods that looked like they'd been swept in in a hurry, along with underwear, socks, and the like, stuffed to the brim.
None of the items were particularly expensive on their own, but if she'd bought them out of her own allowance—
"And this?"
"T-take it."
Jihye said.
"You said you needed them."
"……Oh."
Had she… watched the broadcast?
"I—"
"It's… fine, so take it."
Jihye said that, and smiled at me.
"I'm doing fine, so don't worry too much. ……I came here just to tell you that. Because I knew you'd worry."
You're the one who's worried, though.
Thoughts crowded into my head.
Jihye had been hospitalized. Had her body recovered at all? Could there be lingering effects from that gas?
I opened my mouth—
"Jieun!"
Hayun's voice called from behind me.
At the same moment, a sound came from the sky.
Several more drones were closing in on us. Hanging beneath them were containers just like the ones before.
Could I handle all of those?
I'd only just barely managed the kaijin in its reinforced armor. I could probably catch them somehow, but given how much of my energy it would take, maybe it was better for me to be somewhere else entirely.
Hayun had probably called out for the same reason.
"……Go."
Jihye said.
"Jihye."
"……You have to go, don't you?"
"……"
Looking at Jihye's face, I couldn't say anything.
How much Jihye must have worried after I vanished.
If Hayun is someone I can't help but feel envy toward, then Jihye is one of the few people in my life I can truly relax around. We'd been inseparable since childhood — her absence feels stranger than her presence.
And Jihye had come all the way to a place like this to put this in my hands.
"Go! Hurry!"
"……Next time. Let's meet next time."
That was my answer to Jihye's words.
Jihye smiled at me.
I wanted to tell her to come with me.
But at the same time, I knew that if Jihye followed, she wouldn't see anything worth seeing. That place…… after all, didn't even have a proper toilet.
A black hole opened behind me.
Hope is so fleeting that even with it right before my eyes, what rises instead is the despair tugging at my ankles. What I reached, in the end, was a black and bottomless maw.
"Maybe somewhere else—"
"I came this far already — the moment I show up at school, they'll haul me in anyway."
Jihye said, without even hearing all of my suggestion.
She was right.
Unlike me, who could keep running forever, Jihye was just an ordinary kid.
She had school to attend, a life to carry on.
Unlike me.
If anything, being questioned right away might be better for her than letting her run off somewhere from here.
I pressed my lips tightly shut.
"Next time. Next time, let's meet."
And then Jihye said it again, as if urging me on.
Watching her wave, I managed to squeeze out a voice.
"Yeah. Next time."
"I'll be waiting."
……Still, at least I got to see Jihye's face.
She's awake again.
And in her school uniform, no less — she's really back at school properly, too.
I heard children come running this way.
Something fell from the sky.
Thud, thud.
Several heavy reports rang out one after another. There were popping sounds too, like the containers opening before.
Gritting my teeth, I took one step back.
The last thing I saw of Jihye was her forcing a smile.
Part of why she had stopped at the convenience store was the broadcast.
She had spotted people standing watch along the road and nearly charged straight in, but had just barely twisted aside and slipped into the convenience store instead.
The moment she was inside, she grabbed a basket near the entrance and swept everything from the instant-food aisle into it without discrimination.
Someone who looked like a part-timer stared at her in wide-eyed astonishment, but she barely noticed.
She threw in canned goods and even a few bags of snacks, and picked out underwear, stockings, and socks. She knew Jieun's sizes. They had always lived together — done the laundry together, too.
With the basket full, she went straight to the register and paid.
She didn't quite catch how much it came to, but thankfully there seemed to be money left on her check card.
Jihye ran, bag in hand.
People moved in as if to question her, but she swung the bag she was carrying. As they twisted out of its way, she ran.
Even so, there weren't all that many people between her and the place where the police had massed.
Her breath climbed all the way up her throat.
Had she ever run this hard in her life?
The broadcast seemed to have cut out midway — nothing came through the earphones in her ears. It was the same up ahead, too, despite all those police.
A few people had spotted Jihye.
She had somehow slipped past a couple of them earlier, but with this many coming at once, there was nothing she could do.
"Jieun!"
Jihye shouted with everything she had.
She was so out of breath. Her throat ached, her chest ached.
But still.
She wanted to deliver this, at least.
"Jieunnn!"
Around the time she was screaming herself hoarse, straining with everything she had, something crashed down with a thud.
The people around her fell back.
The girl standing before Jihye was Jieun.
Something black was smeared all over her body, and she was covered in scrapes, as though she'd been grazed somewhere. Her magical girl outfit — under normal circumstances, Jihye would have teased her about how well it suited her — was torn in so many places that even as a joke, she couldn't have said such a thing now.
She didn't even want to imagine what had happened.
Jihye had admired magical girls. They were righteous beings who stood against evil.
But she had never once wanted Jieun to take that place.
What they had said to each other, she couldn't remember well — her head had gone numb.
Still, she had managed to hand over the thing she'd been clutching.
She had confirmed that Jieun was, at least, alive.
In one numb corner of her mind, she thought she wanted to follow her.
……She'd probably just end up a burden.
Because a voice from the corner of her mind kept saying so, Jihye managed to hold back — that one thing, at least.
Jieun left Jihye nothing but a sad smile, and stepped back.
The rough wind that had been howling vanished the next instant.
As if it had never been there at all.
As if those few minutes of meeting had been a fabrication from the very start, her field of view stood empty.
"……"
But the feel of the plastic bag's handles biting into her fingers remained.
Jieun had taken what Jihye offered. Without refusing it.
……At least that much, she had been able to help.
That alone put her a little at ease, and Jihye let out a small breath.