We Already Dwell Within Your Hearts
When you fight alongside a comrade, what words make the heart pound hardest?
I've got your back?
Hey, don't you dare fall behind?
When this war is over, I'm going home to confess to her?
When this is done, let's grab a drink?
Well… a few of those do have an ominous ring to them. Still, there's a reason lines like that get used so often across so many stories. They're the kind of sentences that, in a desperate moment, make trust and camaraderie feel viscerally, painfully real.
If you dig a little deeper, you get things like: Don't you dare die. You're actually a decent guy, huh. I'm not doing this because I care about you—I'm just paying back a debt. Those exist too.
Anyway, stories like that have something in them that makes a person's heart race. Ah—I'm not a person, technically. But I was human once, so that should more or less count, right?
"Leave this to me and go catch that bastard, nyang!"
"Khhh…"
So the moment Nyangnyangbeam said that, a gasp of admiration slipped out of me before I could stop it. I mean, wouldn't anyone react that way?
Demon minions kept pouring in without end, and to human eyes the whole scene was grotesque enough to turn the stomach. Yegyeong and Suhyeon were clinging to each other, trembling—and there she was, a magical girl who refused to flinch. I'd written her off as a joke because she called herself a magical girl and talked with that nyang-nyang tic. I take it back. The Nyangnyangbeam standing there was no different from the sheriffs of that other world, who rode out with guns in hand even knowing they were putting themselves in danger.
A demon targets the weakest part of a human being. Even if it can't exert a direct physical influence, it prods at trauma. It picks off the people around you, one by one, until it breaks you and makes you its limb. That's why the sheriffs who rose to protect people—knowing their own end would not be a kind one—still stepped forward, a revolver in the holster, a long gun in the hand. When you see that brilliant spirit of sacrifice, that conviction, that unyielding will, you can't help but cheer.
Ah, but Miso Cheonsa did tell me to stay put. So I'll only help in ways that don't show. If I sweep the minions away myself, it'll be obvious. I'll just trip them up a little. When one of them lunges from Nyangnyangbeam's blind spot, a light shove is enough to throw its trajectory completely off. Nyangnyangbeam can think she just happened to twist out of the way, and then she finishes off whatever goes tumbling.
Whether that pink ray has as little physical force as Helena's pistol, or whether it was never meant to deal damage in the first place, the minions it hits only freeze for a beat. But the punches and kicks that follow—and the crowbar that appears from who-knows-where—smash their skulls without mercy. Those bodies had been reinforced by the demon, too. The fact that she drops them in a single blow means Nyangnyangbeam's physical strength is nothing to sneeze at.
Anyway, thanks to how carefully I was watching, Nyangnyangbeam never got overwhelmed by sheer numbers. She might have held on with everything she had even without my help. But I don't want her put in danger because of me. I can't shake the feeling that this demon followed the traces I left when I crossed dimensions. Like a hole in a piece of clothing that keeps tearing even after you stitch it. Maybe the demon thought, ah, this place is a weak point, and slipped right through.
So this is the compromise. I want to bury the demon with my own hands, but Helena and Nyangnyangbeam are the ones who chose to stand against it. I'll only help enough that Nyangnyangbeam doesn't get badly hurt.
Ah, of course that doesn't mean I can neglect Helena.
Whether she trusted Nyangnyangbeam, or whether she decided this would never end otherwise, Helena punched a path straight toward the demon and pressed the attack. When a massive minion swung a thick arm, she slid across the ground and slipped past it. Once she shot between its legs and took its rear, she put one clean shot through its skull before it could even turn its head back toward her. The thing with a bullet through its head crumpled to the earth and blocked the other minions' path.
In that brief lull in the assault from one direction, Helena kept driving forward. The smaller ones flung themselves at her with their bodies spread wide, trying to foul her movement—but a hole through the head stops them just the same. And so Helena, in that fragile human body, fought her way to the demon's very nose.
The demon tried its tricks on her again.
"You talk too much."
Helena didn't fall for the demon's sophistry. Golden heat rose from her. Even the minions could no longer approach; they burned away. At last countless black hands reached from the fog, seizing her ankles, grabbing at her thighs and arms to stop her—but Helena didn't even bother shaking them off. She calmly reloaded her revolver.
A click—the snap of her wrist flicked the cylinder open. The spent casings tumbled into the air and scattered as motes of light. Meanwhile her left hand gathered that light and pressed the bullets into the cylinder, one by one. Golden bullets with no physical force whatsoever. A tradition of the sheriffs, forged solely to stand against demons. That will, that conviction, loaded into the chamber with a click.
Helena's left hand slapped the revolver; the cylinder spun. It whirred, then caught on something and locked with a click. Watching that, the black fog split into a crescent of red light, as if it might tear—as if the demon were smiling.
A demon has no body. A demon is only a phenomenon. A kind of thought-form that feeds on wicked will and desire, wandering by nature in search of more of those things to fatten itself. Helena does not compromise with that. That's why she can load rounds concentrated with will into a revolver. That's why she can fire bullets that work only on demons.
That power had seeped into her other rounds as well, which was why the minions went down so easily—but the bullets she fired at the demon itself left neither gunshot nor golden trail. The instant the trigger was pulled, a hole simply punched through a patch of black fog, revealing the landscape beyond.
While Helena pulled the trigger again and again, the demon took the bullets without any particular resistance, shrinking as it did. The space smothered in black fog contracted, bit by bit. Soon even the minions vanished into the earth as if they had never existed.
Nyangnyangbeam, who had been brawling furiously with the minions for quite some time, only belatedly realized her opponents were all gone and started looking around. Yegyeong and Suhyeon collapsed where they stood, as if their legs had given out. Miso Cheonsa, who had done nothing but protect the two handlers the whole time, merely sent me a sly little smile.
But Miso Cheonsa's gaze didn't matter much. What mattered now was savoring my heroine's magnificent performance.
After she finished the demon, the golden heat faded, and her hair settled, calm. She evened out her ragged breathing and, out of habit, scanned her surroundings for remaining enemies. She reflexively tried to reload the empty cylinder, then, finding no bullets left, rummaged through her pockets for nothing.
The fog was gone, so the situation was more or less settled. There shouldn't have been any more demonic threat here. And yet, looking at her, I got the sense she hadn't dropped her guard at all. I was tilting my head at that when people gathered outside the fog's former range started shouting.
"Are you all right over there!"
"You're supposed to get prior authorization before opening a B-Grade gate or higher—did you forget that!"
"They probably just opened it because Miso Cheonsa was here. Still, you're going to have to write an incident report."
"The fuck, nyang! How was I supposed to know this was B-Grade, nyang! Didn't the Management Director give us the wrong mana stone, nyang!"
Nyangnyangbeam snapping in fury. I felt a little awkward, like we'd caused some kind of incident—but Miso Cheonsa never lost her smile, so it didn't seem like we'd done anything too wrong. Maybe because they already knew each other, more than anything.
Helena, too, kept only her wariness and lowered her muzzle. She was out of bullets anyway, and still trying to look threatening. It was almost painfully cute. But she'd been magnificent when she took down the demon, so that was enough, wasn't it?