68. The End of Peace
68. The End of Peace
John would be appearing in Magical Girl Magical Mari.
Thanks to the event Allen ran during the school trip, people everywhere were waiting for the Magical Mari live broadcast.
There was no information on when or how he would appear.
But with the vague hope that he'd show up if they just kept it on, they locked in the channel.
Then, in time, the day arrived.
===========
Even after Dina became a magical(?) girl, her daily life repeated itself.
She rose with the morning sun, ate breakfast, and told her older brother’s photograph, “I’m off,” before boarding a carriage for the academy.
While she reviewed the trading company’s documents in the carriage as usual, something extraordinary suddenly intruded on her routine.
By the time she registered the sound of a rocket closing in, the carriage was already capsizing in a massive explosion.
Coughing through the acrid smoke as she escaped the carriage, Dina checked on the driver's condition.
Fortunately, he was still breathing.
After confirming the driver's state, she looked toward where the rocket had come from.
On the second floor of a commercial building, beyond a shattered window, stood a masked man holding a rocket launcher.
A skull mask stamped with the Council's seal, and a military uniform.
'The one who retook Ignos...!'
It was the very man the escort train had described over the radio.
The nameless Skeleton Knight's eyes met Dina's.
Dina promptly drew her magic wand and assembled it into a gun.
When she aimed the wand, now a sniper rifle, at the building and pulled the trigger, the Skeleton Knight took cover.
And when he reappeared at the window, he was aiming a sniper rifle right back at her.
This time Dina took cover behind the carriage.
The sudden firefight turned the street into chaos, and people abandoned their vehicles and fled.
Meanwhile, the Skeleton Knight leaped from the second floor and took cover behind another car.
After several exchanges of sniper fire on the now-empty road, both switched to rifles.
Pouring bullets at each other and steadily closing the distance, they next switched to shotguns.
Alternating between taking cover and shooting, the two fought a close battle, but the balance abruptly shattered.
The difference between Dina and the Skeleton Knight.
Dina could only use one gun at a time, but the Skeleton Knight could use multiple.
When the moment came for both to reload, instead of reloading, the Skeleton Knight drew a pistol and shot Dina in the wrist.
"Urgh!"
She returned fire with her remaining hand, but unable to control the recoil, her bullets only cut through empty air.
Ignoring the wild shots, the Skeleton Knight drew closer to Dina’s hiding place.
"Dina!"
At that desperate moment, Mari dropped from the sky and crashed down where the knight had stood.
The Skeleton Knight twisted his body to dodge Mari's attack and immediately leveled his gun at her.
Mari kicked the gun aside, and a close-quarters fight began.
After a few exchanges of punches and kicks, when the Skeleton Knight's focus was locked on Mari, Isis appeared from behind, aiming for his back.
And that attempt was blocked in a completely unexpected way.
Clang!
His right arm suddenly bent at an impossible angle and blocked the blade.
Then Isis's attack tore his sleeve, revealing the iron arm beneath.
"Huh?"
As Isis made a dumbfounded noise, the iron arm whirred, moved in a way no human limb could, and seized her by the collar.
Then, using only the strength of his right arm, he threw her over his shoulder and slammed her into the ground.
While Isis gasped in pain from the impact, his right arm once more whirred mechanically and 'cocked' its fist.
THUD!
Isis snapped back to her senses and rolled away from the cocked fist.
With a jackhammer-like crash, a huge crack split the ground.
Isis returned to Mari’s side, and the two faced him together.
And the two-on-one close-quarters battle began.
At first, the Skeleton Knight faced them head-on and drove them back.
His combat prowess—blocking every attack and relentlessly targeting their vitals—was astonishing.
But once the pair split front and rear and began their coordinated assault, the Skeleton Knight started losing momentum.
When he looked at Mari, Isis attacked; when he looked at Isis, Mari struck. Pummeled from all sides, he ultimately had no choice but to fall to his knees.
Then both girls drove uppercuts into him.
The Skeleton Knight’s neck snapped back as he spun through the air.
Even in midair, he broke his fall, regained his stance, and glared at the girls.
Through the cracked mask, his eyes were visible.
Empty and inorganic, those eyes instantly evoked the word machine—a machine built to carry out missions.
While the girls faltered at those unsettling eyes, he kicked a pistol up from the ground, caught it in midair, and aimed at them.
But he didn't pull the trigger.
Instead, his gaze lingered on Dina's pendant, lying on the street.
The open pendant held a photograph of Dina standing beside her older brother.
All at once, he clutched his head in agony.
His eyes darted chaotically between the tattoo on his left hand and the pendant.
As his left hand fought to stop his right from pulling the trigger and his entire body convulsed, a thin beam skimmed past Mari and Isis’s shoulders and cut through the knight’s right arm.
It was a sniper shot from Dina, who had converted her magic wand into a beam cannon.
As the Skeleton Knight stared in shock at his right arm, now severed below the elbow, Dina pulled the trigger once more.
KABOOM!
This time it wasn’t a precision shot. A massive beam that seemed intended to erase him without a trace detonated at his feet.
The knight was hurled by the blast, and his skull mask tumbled across the ground.
He pressed his one remaining left arm against the earth and pushed himself up, glaring at Dina.
When their eyes met, Dina’s face filled with horror.
"Big Brother Riv?"
Dina murmured blankly.
But the man called Riv simply glanced at her, then at his right arm, and without a word, detonated a smoke bomb at his feet.
As Riv vanished into the smoke, Dina screamed hysterically and plunged into the haze.
"Big Brother Riv!"
When the smoke cleared, Riv was gone. In his place, what remained of his right arm lay charred black.
With trembling hands, Dina picked it up.
Inside it, she found something that looked like human bone.
"I... I did that to... my brother..."
She lost consciousness and collapsed.
*
The scene shifted to a damp, gloomy basement untouched by sunlight.
Inside, suspicious wizards draped in robes muttered something, adjusting a magic circle. In the center of that room, Riv sat in a chair.
A wizard on his right removed the damaged prosthetic and fitted a replacement.
And just as the replacement was complete, about to enter the test operation phase—
- Big Brother!
A strangely familiar woman's voice echoed in his head, and he went berserk.
He snapped the neck of the suspicious wizard who'd replaced his arm and reduced the one trying to adjust something to a lump of meat, unleashing a massacre inside the underground chamber.
After he had rampaged for some time, someone entered the basement.
He wore the same robe as the others, but the Heart Gem hanging at his neck hinted at his identity.
Beyond the shadowed robe, a councilor's hoarse voice flowed out.
"What's the situation?"
One wizard who had managed to survive by staying far from Riv answered.
"He’s been like this ever since returning from the mission."
"The cause?"
"We do not know. We replaced his right arm and were about to check the neural connection when he suddenly complained of a headache and became like this."
"I understand the situation. I'll handle it."
"Yes, sir."
The councilor approached Riv.
The moment Riv saw him, instead of attacking, he immediately dropped to his knees.
"What is it, child?"
"...I hear a strange voice."
"Is it a girl's voice, perhaps?"
"Yes."
"I have told you time and again. Your sister was killed by corrupt nobles. You are changing the world so no one else will ever become a victim like her."
"That girl's voice too..."
A faint glimmer of life returned to Riv's hollow eyes.
Hearing Riv's answer, the councilor turned toward the exit without a backward glance.
Then he ordered the other wizards,
"Reinforce the suggestion."
As he departed, the remaining wizards immediately bound Riv to the chair and poured ominous magical energy into him.
As the energy flowed in, black veins rose across Riv's entire body, and he ground his teeth, groaning.
While Riv writhed in pain, eight wizards encircled him, reciting a sequence of meaningless words in turn.
<Snowstorm Hill>, <Stolen Spring>, <Indifference and Prejudice>, , <Ten Years of Solitude>, <Adventure>, <Wandering Knight>, <House of Puppets>, <Sin and Revenge>
When the eighth word was spoken, his thrashing ceased, and the flow of ominous energy stopped as well.
Now calm, one of the wizards asked him:
"Have you come to your senses?"
"Boot... sequence... complete..."
Riv answered, struggling to breathe.
His hair drenched in sweat, strands hanging limp, the eyes he turned toward the wizards were empty once more.
Confirming his state, they nodded in satisfaction and summoned skeletons.
Riv followed the skeletons, trudging toward a solitary cell.
In that tiny cell, barely large enough for one person to lie down, Riv clutched a single blanket to his chest and tried to sleep against the cold floor.
And the screen split in two, the other side showing Dina's room.
On her bed, a girl clung preciously to something charred black, sobbing.
Across the split screen, Dina desperately clutched the burned arm toward Riv’s side while Riv held the blanket close toward hers.
"Big Brother Riv..."
"Dina..."
As their voices grew ever more distant, the night deepened.