Are You Really Doing This? (3)
Are You Really Doing This? (3)
The thick hatch slowly opened.
A ferocious gust of wind from outside swept through the airship's interior.
Bracing against the violent vibrations, I gripped the safety line tightly.
I carefully leaned out and peered down below.
Beyond the airship, the vast horizon and the scenery of Neon City, enclosed by its shielding barrier, stretched out before me.
I didn't have acrophobia.
But even so, keeping my wits about me at this altitude was a struggle.
What was I doing here?
I gazed blankly at the view.
Through the howling wind, Catherine's voice reached me.
"...Ready?!"
I didn't answer out loud.
Instead, I raised my trembling hand and formed a circle with my thumb and index finger, making the 'okay' sign.
I was afraid my voice would tremble and give me away if I opened my mouth now.
I regretted my own foolishness for not having realized this sooner.
To think that a detail like this was lurking in Natasha's plan, which I'd only listened to with one ear and let slide.
I briefly recalled the plan Natasha had laid out.
She had said:
[Using this window, infiltrating from the air, seizing the airship, landing at the designated external garbage landfill, and finally transporting the target to the safehouse—that's the prepared plan.]
That was it.
I should have asked questions back then.
About how we would infiltrate from the air.
About what method we'd use to seize the airship.
It wasn't until just before we boarded the airship that I finally understood.
At the time, I'd been racking my brain for any excuse just to survive.
"Do we absolutely have to jump from the airship without parachutes? Couldn't we use, like, tactical jetpacks or a small aircraft—"
Infiltrating the airship that way would be too slow.
We'd be intercepted by nearby tactical drones. It was out of the question.
"What if we just crash the airship the Vice Chairman is riding in—"
It might not be Smile Zone. The plan's purpose was kidnapping, not murder, so crashing was out of the question.
"Let's just not do it."
I even said that at the end.
But Catherine grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me onto the airship, so I had no choice.
Entering or leaving Neon City was strictly, thoroughly controlled, and launching an airship was prohibited under city law.
But somehow, even those obstacles were resolved far too easily.
Too many capable people were involved.
And so, that's how we ended up: Catherine and I, skydiving from the airship without parachutes.
I wished I could have thrown Drex and Andrea into the same situation.
Unfortunately, their gear was unsuitable for assault missions, so they were on standby at a designated ground point.
I wished I could have been excluded, too.
But in this parachute-free operation, my role was the most crucial.
Even for Catherine, the game's protagonist.
Falling from this height without any gear would be extremely dangerous.
"...Haa."
Why did I even learn magic?
Today I resented my teacher (the video channel) more than ever.
《Jump exactly 15 seconds from now. I'll count.》
《Communication will likely be impossible once you enter the airship due to jamming, so if you have anything to say, say it now.》
Now that we'd come this far, I had nothing more to say.
I took a deep breath.
The wind, fiercer than before, lashed my masked face from side to side.
As a result, only I could hear my own breathing.
《10.》
Natasha started counting.
The count raced to 5 in an instant, giving me no time to mentally prepare.
5, 4, 3, 2—
And then.
《1.》
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"Let's go!"
Catherine flung herself out of the hatch with me.
If some cyberpunk god exists, please just leave me the hell alone.
12. Are We Really Doing This? (3)
Falling from the sky.
It was more romantic than I'd imagined.
At least, it was before I came to this world.
Plenty of people paid good money to enjoy skydiving.
The cool wind, the sense of liberation.
It was an extreme sport enjoyed with guaranteed safety.
Of course, things were a little different in the cyberpunk world I now lived in.
I didn't know about other cities.
But Neon City was encased in a massive shielding barrier that enveloped the entire city.
Entry and exit were strictly forbidden, save for a few access points.
How Natasha managed to breach that and launch an airship remained a mystery to me.
The reason for the barrier?
I'd mentioned it before: the climate anomalies in this world were too severe.
A prime example: typhoons carrying toxic gas.
In a world where storms laced with radiation or toxins frequently raged, very few could afford to leisurely skydive outside the city.
In that sense, I tried to think positively.
Even though I hadn't wanted this.
I was savoring a skydive most people couldn't enjoy.
Aside from the minor issue of having no parachute, I had no complaints.
As I fell, lost in idle thoughts, Catherine reached out and grabbed my hand.
Our fingers intertwined.
While I was escaping reality and avoiding the moment, Catherine was enjoying the fall with a bright smile.
She hadn't put on her mask yet, so her expression was clearly visible.
Her blonde hair, shining bright in the sunlight, fluttered wildly in the wind's currents.
Was it because of that sight?
I felt my heart's tension ease alongside hers.
......Yeah.
Well, I suppose falling from the sky without a parachute is the kind of thing you get to experience if you live long enough.
Then Catherine yelled something.
The wind roaring past my ears drowned it out.
Noticing I couldn't hear, Catherine tugged our joined hands and drew closer to me.
Her flushed face filled my vision.
"Si-un!!"
"Yeah!"
I answered.
It was definitely just my imagination.
But it felt like Catherine's breath, reaching my ear, pierced through the raging wind and brushed against me.
With my back to the earth, I faced Catherine while looking up at the sky.
Her sharp nose and golden eyes were striking.
What on earth did she want to say, striking up a conversation in this situation?
Maybe it was something important—
"Look behind you!!"
"Huh?"
It didn't sound particularly important.
Come to think of it, we'd been falling for quite a while.
Which meant it was time to prepare for the landing.
I calmed my racing heart, which had started pounding hard for no reason when Catherine came near.
I turned my whole body around to face the ground.
Far in the distance, a large airship came into view.
It was still far, but its silhouette matched the Vice Chairman's private ship Natasha had shown me in holograms.
Its size was truly immense.
No worry about just passing it by.
And then.
A flash of light sparkled from the ground.
The missile launched in a curve, spewing smoke behind it.
......But that thing.
Isn't it a bit too big?
The missile was bigger than I expected, so large I wondered if they'd fired it with the intent of crashing it.
But my worries were short-lived.
Streams of light erupted from beneath the Vice Chairman's airship.
The spreading beams blazed, setting the sky on fire.
───■■!!
A massive explosion, hard to express in words, followed.
The blast sound was short.
The explosion was long.
From the shockwave, several tactical drones flying near the airship plummeted into the garbage dump.
I was watching and appreciating the explosion, but Catherine grabbed me and started a rapid descent downward.
We fell in a vertical line toward the ground, a posture minimizing air resistance.
I glanced back and saw Catherine had already covered her face with her mask.
A holographic image appeared over it.
"Confirmed flares and chaff; the radar should be blind right now. That means we've bypassed the defense system."
She continued speaking.
"...But the launch speed was faster than my calculations. I don't know if there's some other problem."
She mentioned a problem, but she didn't slow our descent.
That was natural—we only had one option anyway.
I prepared to use magic.
There were only two spells I would use.
One was the wind magic I used back when I blew those back-alley thugs into the air.
It would change our falling direction by riding the wind, aiming for the area the Vice Chairman was likely to be, which I'd calculated from the blueprints I'd studied beforehand.
The other spell was the main reason I was drafted into this operation.
It was the spell I'd used when ambushed by Smile Zone's henchman, and when an anti-vehicle weapon hit the unmanned taxi I was riding in.
Through the hands gripping me, I enveloped both Catherine and myself in magic.
It wasn't like armor.
If it were, something would have broken when I was thrown from the taxi.
A barrier, a shield.
Magic that blocked impact itself.
Simply put, it absorbed shock.
The airship drew closer, faster.
Meaning, even this impossible operation had just become sufficiently possible.
- Kwaang!
"Wh-what?! What is it now!"
As soon as we fell onto the airship, Catherine broke through its interior.
As expected.
Exactly according to the blueprints.
We, who had suddenly intruded into the airship, were stared at by 'Kozaka William' with bewildered eyes.
Ding, delivery has arrived.
......But still, something about the scene was a little strange.
Inside the airship, there weren't just Kozaka William and his subordinates.
There were also masked people aiming guns at him.
My first thought was Smile Zone's men.
But the masks were different from those of his subordinates.
"......."
Us, who had suddenly burst through the ceiling.
The unknown people aiming guns at the Vice Chairman.
And the Vice Chairman and his subordinates.
Just then, a light flashed on the radio attached to my pouch.
I saw the same light on Catherine's radio—it had to be a transmission from Natasha.
"...Uh, hold on a sec."
I asked for a moment of understanding from the people present.
Maybe because they were flustered, no one stopped me.
People confronted with an unexpected situation often can't act at all.
Natasha's voice came through the radio.
《A problem came up. There are guys who fired missiles first, even though we didn't shoot.》
Hmm.
《No wonder the security channels were so easy to breach when I was drafting the plan..., it means there were guys who had already breached them.》
Hmm.
《Still, according to my calculations, they shouldn't have reached the airship yet, so first come back down to the ground and assess the situation─.》
Then the radio cut off.
It seemed the jamming inside the airship that Natasha had mentioned had resumed.
.......
This.
Even if other guys had interfered, I couldn't help but think the sequence of events was a bit strange.
Seeing armed people here meant they'd already secretly infiltrated the airship.
And that meant their comrades had fired missiles at them.
We, on the other hand, fired missiles and then entered the airship because infiltration itself was our goal, you see.
That meant these bastards' objective was anything but gentle.
Definitely not something like kidnapping.
A brief silence ensued in the unexpected three-way standoff.
Amid the silent battle of wits, Kozaka William spoke.
"...By any chance, did you come to rescue me?"
We came to kidnap you, actually.
I stifled a sigh.
Things just went to shit.