Chaos (4)
Someday, we'll go back together.
Hayun still nurtured that hope.
Even though I was playing the role of a combatant in a company run by undisguised villains, even though I'd deceived her for so long, even though I'd been caught up in a terror attack — Hayun still intended to take me back to school with her.
Maybe that was the engine that kept her fighting.
But me? I had, in the end, committed crimes.
Guilty or not, I had resisted the people who came to take me away and escaped. Whether they were really taking me to another hospital, or dragging me off to some research facility, I still didn't know. One thing was certain, though: I had fled from people acting entirely within the law.
Several police officers had been hurt in the process. Not fatally, no lifelong damage — but hurt all the same.
I'd smashed plenty of police equipment, too, and I'd broken into a Company facility and stolen vital hardware.
Erasing all of those sins completely was probably impossible.
What I believed was right and whether it was legal or illegal — those two things rarely aligned.
And yet.
"……Shall we go in, then?"
It wasn't as if she didn't know all that.
How could Hayun smile at me like that?
Hayun, holding my hand, began to move slowly. I could have shaken her off at any moment, rooted to the spot as I was — it was a light grip, one that asked nothing of me.
But somehow, I didn't want to.
The hope flickering before my eyes was not something I wanted to lose.
In the end, pressing my lips tightly together, I let that feather-light pull of her hand carry me back.
Was Hayun planning to return me to school this way?
How?
I turned the question over and over on the way back, but no answer ever came.
Maybe that was just what hope was.
Even with no logic behind it, even while believing it almost certainly wouldn't work out — somehow, you end up trusting that it'll be there in the end anyway.
My circuit was still trembling faintly.
Last time, the ones who'd gone in were just me, Hayun, and Iris. James had come along, but counting actual front-line fighters, there were only three of us including myself. James was strictly there to provide support.
He wasn't entirely useless in a fight, but he couldn't exactly hold his own against a kaijin alone.
The target last time hadn't ranked very high, either in scale or importance, so that much force had seemed sufficient.
But this time was different.
How labyrinthine the lab's interior might be, I couldn't say. But whether the place was cramped or cavernous, too small a number was a disadvantage. Who knew how many kaijin there'd be — if they swarmed us mixed in with combatants, we'd be cornered in an instant.
So this time, we were all going together.
No one stayed behind. Even Cherry was coming with Hayun.
If one or two of us had stayed and the rest failed to return, they'd just be left waiting on nothing. And frankly, a handful of people couldn't scheme much for the future anyway.
Better that everyone share the same situation equally.
"Can't we appear from inside? They've got troops at the entrance, don't they?"
"It's not that simple,"
James said.
"We're still researching magical girl magic, but there's a reason all the large-scale warp point devices are installed on the outside. If you materialize somewhere you can't escape from, or merge with an object at your destination, that would be… problematic."
"……That actually happens?"
"No case has ever been documented. In fact, it can't happen. Every spell carries the imagination of the one casting it. And naturally, instinctive fear as well. That's why magic never harms its own user — at the very least, the one creating it can't be injured by their own magic."
Behind the hammer I swung, flames hot enough to melt steel roared to life.
And yet I, the one wielding it, had never once been burned. Part of it was surely the protective magic on my body — but according to James, even that was possible precisely because I took it for granted.
If I traced the cause back far enough, I supposed it came down to how loosely I thought about the whole concept of magic.
"So, hypothetically — someone who wanted to hurt themselves could do it?"
"As I said, there are no recorded cases. Whether those who imagined it simply transported themselves into the heart of the planet, leaving nothing behind to find — or whether even those who seek pain, or even long for their own death, cannot escape their deepest instincts — no one can say."
Fair enough. Even if it were possible, if someone teleported into the rock somewhere beneath the earth, they'd be unreachable. Unless someone deliberately dug them out tens of millions of years later to study the strata.
"It might be possible for someone with exceptionally thorough knowledge of the location. Though they'd have to remember every object at the destination — chairs, desks, everything — exactly where it stands. If something overlapped with where you tried to appear, the 'danger' condition might trigger and the spell simply wouldn't fire."
"……I've jumped straight into buildings before, though."
"Hmm. Your magic may simply differ somewhat from other magic. Warp points and black holes are… quite different things, at least on the surface. Or perhaps your mind has stabilized enough now. You don't want to take risks anymore, do you? Truthfully, a single individual opening a warp point unaided was nearly unheard of to begin with."
Wait. Hold on.
So back then, James had made that suggestion knowing full well I might have fused with a wall or something?
I narrowed my eyes and glared at him, but James had already retreated into his drone, his expression unreadable.
"Besides, consider the circumstances,"
James said, in a tone I found deeply aggravating.
"At the time, you were in a state of considerable panic upon seeing the… magical girls. Sometimes the desire to flee far away outweighs the desire to survive, doesn't it? Am I wrong?"
Watching James glance toward Hayun as he said the word magical girls made my blood boil. When I saw Hayun's face go a little pale, I decided to simply drop the conversation.
The more we talked, the more it only emphasized how wretched and cornered I'd been before I joined the magical girls.
"There doesn't seem to be much to worry about."
Whether she'd read my mind or simply decided my worries were unnecessary, Iris spoke up.
"At the very least, the way the police look at us seems friendly. Well — one can't assume everyone thinks alike, of course."
The radio intelligence bore that out.
We'd never directly attacked their own people, and we'd risked our lives to shield them from a bomb. Perhaps because of that, public sentiment toward us was favorable.
Even if another identical bomb sat inside the lab and another identical disaster occurred, this time people wouldn't swallow the government's and the media's story so easily.
"Alright, then."
I said.
"……We'd better pray those bastards left a decent decoy inside the lab. We need to storm in enough times that they start believing that's exactly what we're after."
The others nodded.
I drew in a deep breath.
I deliberately closed my eyes to avoid seeing Hayun's face.
At the very least, my circuit was running well enough to let me fight. And—
I could still create a black hole, too.
"……Let's go."
At my word, the others leapt one by one into the black hole.
Not a single one of them hesitated. If it were me, I'd have felt queasy every single time I jumped.
Was that what made them magical girls? Trust in their comrades?
Comrades… was I a comrade, too?
Or were we all just failing to be certain of it, each in our own way?
I didn't know.
Ever since I'd started being conscious of Hayun, I'd stopped knowing.
……Focus. For now, just focus.
I shut my eyes tight, thought that, and dove into the black hole.
On the other side stood an enormous building.
A plain, utilitarian structure, similar in feel to the Complex — smaller, though. But at least on the outside, the building itself looked considerably more solidly built.
Well, back in the world I used to live in, there'd been a department store over there. If you pictured something like that building, it made sense.
And at every entrance, people dressed in black had taken up positions.
Police buses lined the roads like walls.
This time, too, we floated in the air above the building.
The magical girls and I descended slowly. Naturally, there were police on the roof as well — not that many, though. Bored-looking officers stationed along the roof's edge had rifles slung across the wall, while those guarding the stairwell entrance gripped their weapons like sentries at a military post.
Just as Iris had said, no one fired at us as we came down.
They simply stared, eyes wide.
"……"
What should I do?
For the first time, I felt a flicker of worry.
Last time I'd put on a decent show, but my relationship with the police was hardly good. Just the price of the equipment I'd wrecked was not a sum I could ever hope to repay easily.
While I was deliberating, Hayun — who had alighted lightly beside me — approached the officers standing guard on the roof with easy, unhurried steps.
"Um, excuse me — could you possibly step aside for a moment?"
"I'm… sorry?"
The officer made a dumbfounded noise at Hayun's staggering demand.
"We didn't come here to fight the police, you see."
In a way, this might have been the first actual conversation we'd had with the police since escaping.
Until now, we'd only ever made one-sided demands of each other. Surrender and throw down your weapons. Bring us food. Things like that.
……
It was like a sit-in by occupying protesters… no, honestly, if I'm being frank, it was the kind of thing you'd expect from terrorists holding hostages.
Except there were no hostages, which was why negotiations had collapsed in the end, come to think of it.
"There's…… something we have to do, you see. We have to clear our names. People deserve to know the truth. Wasn't last time's broadcast not enough?"
The two officers standing before the stairwell exit exchanged a look.
"There's no need to worry, though,"
Hayun said.
"No one will ever know."
"……"
But the officers didn't step aside easily.
They had no desire to fight us — but maybe duty was duty.
"We apologize, but we have our own orders……"
The officer's gaze turned toward the bodycam mounted on his chest.
I see.
Evidence would remain. In fact, even just talking to Hayun might be an enormous liability for a police officer.
……Guess it's my turn.
When I strode forward, the officers flinched, shoulders jolting — a very different reaction than they'd had for Hayun.
"Move."
"We—"
Before the officer could answer, I slammed my hammer into the ground.
CRACK.
The concrete split. There was zero chance the building itself would collapse from this — but a building's walls holding didn't mean a human skeleton wouldn't fold just as easily.
"……"
Hayun gave a wry smile at my move.
Right. I had no intention of going soft from here on, either. Fighting the police would cost us, too — cost us time, and above all, getting shot hurt.
When I lunged toward them, the officers scrambled backward.
And there, before me, was the door.
I struck it with everything I had and sent it flying inward.
The two officers — and every officer on the roof — stared at me, mouths hanging open.
"That works, right?"
One of them hastily nodded.
I pushed into the stairwell and clomped down the steps.
"So considerate of you,"
Hayun said, laughing, as she followed me down.
"Considerate, my ass."
"You did it because you were worried they'd be punished if they stepped aside themselves, weren't you?"
"How would they get punished for that?"
I replied with a look of mild disgust.
We couldn't exactly stand there trading words all day. And besides, since they hadn't shot at us, any punishment they received was coming regardless.
No — wait, would it change anything if I said they were scared of me? I'd never heard that the police suffered some huge penalty for not shooting at kaijin.
Though frankly, being placed in the category of "kaijin" didn't sit well with me either.
If a genuinely friendly atmosphere around me had actually taken hold, the police wouldn't need to worry either way.
I'd handled everything on my own so far. Now I just hoped they'd handle it on their own, too.
And so, the lab we'd set our sights on — how was it?
"Ngh!"
Rose shouted, springing backward.
Her arm, which had blocked a kaijin's fist, trembled violently.
There they were, as expected.
This time it was an elephant-shaped figure walking on two legs. Whether it even counted as a "person" was debatable — but in this world, aliens were all "people," technically.
An elephant and a rhinoceros.
As real animals, a rhino wouldn't even come close to an elephant in size — but as kaijin, apparently that logic didn't quite hold.
"Knew they'd be here,"
I muttered.
"What's the call? Fight a bit and pull out? Or hand the kaijin over to the police?"
Rose asked it so naturally, but there was no time to weigh the options.
There were only two of them, but their armor was stronger than before.
The kaijin we'd met in front of the broadcast station that day had all come in wildly different sizes — which meant the difficulty of bringing them down varied too. Generally, the smaller ones were easier.
And I was starting to understand why.
Small ones tended to be quick, but that usually came at the cost of raw strength.
Which meant thinner armor to carry, and smaller resonance devices to house. Naturally easier to deal with.
An elephant, a rhinoceros, a bear, on the other hand — the armor thickness was monstrous. They could endure far more.
And their circuits were enormous, too.
CLANG!
I'd smashed my hammer into the rhino's head — and all it produced was that sound, before the beast roared, angrier than ever, and glared at me. Honestly, that gave me a moment's fright.
My circuit was spinning again now that I was fighting, but it still wasn't enough. And this opponent was strong to begin with.
"……Let's soften them up and pull out."
In the end, that was all I could answer.
"Got it, then——!"
Rose, back to back with me, hurled herself forward and slammed a blow into the elephant in front of her.
"Huh."
And then she said, with a note of admiration:
"Has their tech degraded a little? Between last time's circuits and this — could losing one engineer have really cost them that much?"
"……"
No.
It was probably because my total energy output had dropped.
Even while fighting two kaijin, James was calmly scanning the surroundings.
He'd declared there'd be nothing here, but apparently he figured finding something anyway would be a pleasant surprise.
BOOM!
"KUOOOOH!"
An explosion burst from the elephant kaijin's right arm, and it bellowed.
The blast itself wasn't all that big. Nothing like the explosion that had taken down a kaijin last time — this one didn't even blow the armor clean off.
That was thanks to Iris and Dahlia landing strike after strike on its shoulder in succession.
Less energy meant a thinner barrier, after all.
And seeing that, my own circuit steadied once more. And in answer, it rippled out to affect the kaijin's synchronized circuits as well.
"……"
The belief that we could win — it kept feeding into me.
As their circuits lost their strength, the kaijin — their suits' joints gone stiff, as if they'd been in storage — took hits they should have dodged, one after another—
SHINK.
When Hayun's blade shattered every last circuit, the kaijin collapsed face-first.
It twitched, trying to push itself up, but didn't seem to manage easily.
"The police…… will probably come in to confirm this, right?"
"We can move them somewhere visible before we leave. We've got strength to spare right now."
"……"
Watching the confident magical girls, I was swallowed by unease.
Was this it? Was this enough?
The circuit was still running, and the enemy was down. Was it all right to just leave it at that?
I knew this was a good situation. And at the same time, it was the first time I'd ever experienced one.
It had been far, far too long since I'd last encountered the word leeway.
Was this much really okay?
No — if it was, then did I never need to exist in the first—
"Jieun."
Hayun tapped my shoulder and called to me.
"You did well."
"……"
Had I, though?
I still didn't know.
"We have more breathing room than expected."
Iris's voice was still measured, but not as sharp as it was in combat.
"Shall we have a look around, then? We've cleared the area, but this was Noir Corporation's central research lab, after all."
With that, they all scattered.
I was the only one left standing there blankly, unsure what I should be doing.
"Jieun, come on."
Only when I heard Hayun call from a few steps ahead did I hurry to follow.