086. Bunny Girl (4)
086. Bunny Girl (4)
※ This chapter contains illustrations with somewhat explicit content. Please be advised before reading.
The ventilation shaft we carefully entered opened onto a staggering sight.
Namely, Alicia's staggeringly large, plump rear in her bunny suit, right in front of me.
'...Should I tell her to come out so we can switch positions?'
I considered it, but as expected, it was impossible.
Like I said earlier, there was a good chance a guard was stationed at the other end of this passage too.
To snipe that guard, Alicia had no choice but to take the lead.
Even if that weren't the case, we couldn't rule out the possibility of traps inside the ventilation shaft.
So.
We really had no choice but to maintain this formation.
I wasn't the only one who knew that. Alicia knew it too.
And because she knew, she didn't bother saying anything.
Saying, 'It's embarrassing being seen from this angle,' wouldn't solve anything. It would only make her more embarrassed.
So, like ignoring the elephant in the room, we continued without saying a word about the enormous rear in front of me—
"...I will advance."
"Y-yeah. I'll follow."
We moved forward.
Onward.
Following Alicia, following Alicia's rear.
...There was no way to avoid looking at it.
The ventilation shaft was so narrow that only one person could barely crawl through at a time, so the moment I lifted my head, all I could see was Alicia's rear.
But moving while staring only at the floor was... too dangerous. Some sections suddenly narrowed or became sharply inclined, and above all, the shaft had been finished extremely roughly.
If I pushed forward without looking properly and smashed my forehead into a pipeline with a blade-like edge, the operation would be over.
Above all—
'If the timing goes wrong, I'll end up burying my face in that staggeringly large rear.'
Alicia, too, only knew the general direction, and she had to navigate obstacles on the fly.
We couldn't move at a constant speed. It was an irregular cycle: a few steps forward, a pause, then a few more steps and another pause.
In that situation, if I didn't watch ahead carefully, I'd end up planting my nose squarely in Alicia's rear whenever she stopped.
In that case, Alicia's Phase Resonance Rate would drop by at least 30%.
Worst case, Alicia might accept blowing the operation and scream while kicking me away.
So if we were going to keep moving like this, I had no choice but to devote my full attention to Alicia's rear.
There were moments of crisis along the way.
For instance, sections going upward.
On the upward sections, we had to use climbing grips and rely mostly on our arms. That made our movement unstable, and her rear would literally come within an inch of my nose before pulling away again.
The downward sections were even worse.
I tried to keep as much distance as possible, but... sometimes the angle made that impossible, and I had no choice but to brace myself by grabbing Alicia's thighs.
Despite all that, a nose-planting catastrophe did not occur.
At least, not until we passed the final upward slope.
That was when we reached the area right in front of the exit.
Without warning, Alicia backed up several dozen centimeters.
I couldn't react properly. There was no angle for me to back away.
The result was that I ended up completely buried in Alicia's rear.
If I had to describe it... it was heavier and firmer than I expected.
From a step behind, it had looked so soft and jiggly that I'd almost wondered whether a few artificial muscles were missing.
But once my face was actually buried in it, it felt as though everything beneath roughly two centimeters of artificial skin was solid muscle.
It was probably because she was a sniper model. Snipers tended to have somewhat overdeveloped core and lower-body muscles to hold a firing posture.
The melon-and-vanilla scent was probably just Alicia's personal preference.
Or perhaps the manufacturer had blended her body-scent compounds to match her hair and eye color.
...Anyway.
This wasn't the time to savor, dissect, and analyze the structure of someone else's rear.
"Alicia, what are you—"
"Shh."
Alicia let out a breathy sound, then activated her PDA and held it out behind her.
—There is one security biodroid ahead. I will prepare to fire.
So that was why she had backed up.
Separate from that, she really did seem embarrassed. I could tell because Alicia's ears, visible through her platinum-blonde hair, were as red as Rudolph's nose.
I reached forward toward Alicia and gave her my order.
—Aim for the core. Even with nonlethal rounds, it would be cruel to damage the brain.
Most security biodroids working this far underground were either deserters or units originally produced for military supply and later smuggled out.
I didn't particularly want to kill them.
—Confirmed.
Alicia stretched her arm behind her back and answered with a hand signal.
Immediately after, Alicia lay flat on her stomach against the floor of the ventilation shaft.
It was the coveted 'prone firing position.'
I'd never seen Alicia take that position before.
She normally preferred firing from a seated position.
Biodroids could fire stably enough without going prone, after all. A prone position sacrificed mobility, so for them it often had more disadvantages than benefits.
Because of that, going prone was regarded less as a practical posture and more as an expression of trust in one's Commander—or even a kind of sex symbol.
With that association, she must have wanted to avoid showing it even more.
Conversely, that was exactly why I wanted to see it even more.
...Like I said last time, it wasn't because I was leering at Alicia's body.
It was about her feelings. I wanted proof that she trusted me.
In that sense, even if necessity forced her into this posture, couldn't I take it as a sign that Alicia trusted me a little more?
With that self-serving interpretation, I freely admired Alicia's back.
She was beautiful, as expected.
With a view like this, I felt I could stay up all night for days just admiring it, exaggerating only slightly.
But that aside.
'...Why is she dawdling so much?'
Even though her firing position had been set ages ago, Alicia was only staring down her sights instead of pulling the trigger.
Was it because she couldn't use her sniper skills?
...No, that didn't make sense.
Sniper skills only reduced the decrease in phase energy occurring over distance; they weren't really related to aiming ability.
In fact, during training, Alicia had shown no hesitation whatsoever in firing.
Then the interpretation that it was because she couldn't use Telescope's focusing function... was also odd.
That function was related to the shot itself, of course, but Alicia's marksmanship was more than excellent even without it.
According to the metrics identified during training, she could switch her field of vision between targets within 0.01 seconds, and once she acquired a target, she could hit it within a single breath.
Yet, for two or three minutes now, Alicia had been unable to find the timing to fire.
No, more than that.
'...She's trembling.'
Alicia's toes, stretched straight back toward me, were visibly trembling.
So-called leg shaking.
It was behavior unthinkable for a skilled sniper— no, for anyone who even knew the basics of sniping.
Tilting the muzzle by even a single degree causes an error of dozens of meters at the impact point, so why would she be shaking her body?
Despite that, Alicia was losing control of her body.
And clearly, she was growing impatient.
The evidence was the warning messages that began flooding my PDA.
[※Warning: Biodroid 'Alicia' core is in a state of over-activation.]
[※Warning: Biodroid 'Alicia' internal phase circulation is in a state of over-activation.]
[※Warning: Biodroid 'Alicia' metabolic circulation rate has exceeded safe range.]
Why was she acting like this?
I wondered for only a moment.
'...Come to think of it.'
This one.
Wasn't this the first time she had actually shot at someone since the accident?
She had done countless training exercises, firing at Legion dummies thousands of times in the process.
But all of that happened inside simulations, not reality.
She had absolutely no experience shooting at anything truly alive, and strictly speaking, had never even pulled the trigger outside of simulation in the real world.
The shot she was preparing for right now was her first real shot in five years.
And this place, awaiting that first shot, was no training ground.
Alicia intended to shoot a living being, not even a Legion but a biodroid.
A person in the shape of a girl, with the heart of a girl, merely having replaced her body with machinery.
That situation, how to put it, was for Alicia.
"PTSD, perhaps?"
"...Please don't speak out loud."
Alicia answered after a brief pause.
But I asked again.
"I said, did PTSD hit you?"
I wasn't pestering her aloud with any intention of ruining the operation.
In the first place, a little noise wasn't going to give us away here.
The enemy guard was at the end of the opposite corridor, about 100 meters away. There was no way my voice would carry that far.
So if this operation somehow failed, it would be because of Alicia's mistake, not mine.
Like missing the shot due to her current state.
Or we might be discovered before she even got a proper shot off. There was a nonzero chance that the bored guard might start counting the ventilation-grille slats and notice us.
So pointing out the problem directly was actually more useful for solving it.
Perhaps she realized that fact.
Instead of arguing further, Alicia answered quietly.
"I am perfectly fine. I merely needed a moment to prepare."
"Say that after you do something about your shaking legs. Your rear is shaking with them. It's embarrassing to look at."
Instead of stopping her trembling, Alicia suddenly kicked backward, trying to hit me in the face.
Even that kick failed to land.
That convinced me, and I started moving forward.
What I mean is—
"...What are you doing?"
Like this, creeping up over Alicia's rear.
"Hng—what are you suddenly...!"
I climbed on top of Alicia and lay down over her.
Then I whispered into Alicia's ear.
"It's a bit cramped."
"You call this a bit cramped?"
"Then it's very cramped."
It was very cramped.
"See. The shaking stopped."
"That's because you're pressing down on me so I can't tremble, Master."
"If you really set your mind to shaking, you could easily ignore my body weight."
It wasn't an exaggeration.
She was a biodroid, after all.
And based on her last measurement, a biodroid with A+ rank strength.
If she genuinely wanted to tremble, she could shake away regardless of whether an adult man was on top of her pressing down.
Yet the fact that Alicia's trembling had stopped meant—
"That means you feel a little safer, right? Because your dear Commander is pressed this close to you?"
"No. The discomfort simply drove the distracting thoughts from my mind."
"Either way, my presence helped your anxiety disappear."
"...Then would you like me to thank you for reassuring me?"
Well.
"It's still too early."
As I said that, I reached my arm forward.
Alicia's left hand—the hand on the trigger.
I laid my hand over hers.
"What are you doing?"
"Passing the responsibility to me."
"...Passing the responsibility to you?"
"I'm saying I'll pull the trigger."
Meaning, if she missed, it was my responsibility.
If she injured the target more than necessary, that would be my responsibility too.
Of course, we would still have to deal with the aftermath together, including escaping.
"Either way, that solves the anxiety you're feeling right now, doesn't it?"
What Alicia feared was a repeat of the previous incident.
She feared being saddled with excessive responsibility because of a mistake in judgment.
To solve that, I would become the one who decided when to pull the trigger.
In short, I would take responsibility.
I thought I had said something pretty cool.
Alicia immediately pointed out one problem.
"...Aren't you terrible at shooting?"
Uhm.
I was.
But that had nothing to do with this situation.
"I said I'd pull the trigger. I didn't specifically say I'd aim."
"What on earth do you mean by that?"
"You aim, and I'll pull the trigger."
I said that, then added slyly.
"More precisely, you still pull the trigger itself. That way your phase-power correction activates and you can subdue the enemy biodroid."
I would only decide the firing moment by pulling on the finger I'd placed over Alicia's.
You could call it indirect firing, I suppose.
"...Can we really hit anything like that?"
"We'll find out by doing our best."
"What..."
Alicia looked dumbfounded.
I ignored that and kept my hand over Alicia's. If anything, I urged her on by lightly tickling and stroking her fingertips.
Maybe she wanted me to stop touching her. Alicia let out a long sigh and settled into position.
She put her left eye to the scope—the Telescope made by modifying my own eyeball—and aimed.
In that situation, Alicia subtly asked.
"...But does this really pass the responsibility onto you, Master?"
"How so?"
"The reason you had to take over the firing timing is that I was trembling and unable to shoot on my own, was it not? If we trace responsibility properly, the result of the shot ultimately stems from my lack of ability."
Indeed.
So that was her logic.
But it was wrong.
"The problem you experienced is fundamentally my fault."
"...How is that?"
"Because I failed to properly grasp your state."
If I had thought about it, I could easily have guessed that Alicia might have trauma around shooting people in actual combat.
And yet I had never considered it.
I had brought Alicia into the field without ever giving her live-fire practice against people, and I had made her suffer for it.
At least 99% of it was my fault.
Therefore.
I whispered into Alicia's ear.
"You don't need to worry. Whatever happens is the responsibility of the Commander right here."
Right after I told her that, something changed.
Alicia's body, pinned beneath me, relaxed.
It was almost as if she were softly embracing me.
Her back was still turned to me, but I could tell anyway.
Alicia's body had accepted mine.
It began at her fingertips.
Then our arms.
Her back and my chest.
Our legs.
Finally, even the tension of each muscle and the timing of our breathing.
We intertwined as one, like two branches grown together.
"...."
"...."
At some moment.
Without hesitation, I bent Alicia's finger.
Alicia's finger pulled the trigger without the slightest hint of resistance.
—Bang.
The gunshot cracked inside the suppressor.
The recoil traveled through Alicia's body into mine.
The result of the shot?
"...It actually worked."
"It did."
A clean hit.