I Have Come to Call Sinners (3)
"......"
A cold wind, winter breathing its last, brushed the tip of the nose. What the hand held was a single blade — a famed sword, hammered only on nights when the full moon rose, and refined across a long, long span of time.
The flesh that had received the god's descent was no mean material either. Had that body been a sword, and could it have been judged by the same measure, it would have stood far above the blade now in hand. One would expect as much of a monster once named a leading candidate for an Apostolic Seat.
Nor was the deity dwelling within some paltry stray spirit. Hachiman Daibosatsu — a god of war who had taken victory in battle from the very womb.
And yet, for all of that, the thread of tension would not loosen. The one standing before his eyes was an opponent against whom even this much preparation could not promise a win.
Among those who knew, it was a known golden maxim.
A Holy Knight in name, she did not scruple to use the arts of other faiths. If a thing served her purpose, she gave not the slightest thought to means. With no regard for principle and no reverence for tradition, she tore every school of combat apart and stitched it back together to her own taste. Add the authority of an Apostle and the out-of-spec miracle of resurrection, and the human being called Han Seoyeon was complete.
There was no winning against her. She prepared with ruthless thoroughness until victory was certain, and if it was not, she simply would not fight — as if she had pawned off every last scrap of shame. Set such a woman, who sat down only at a table where she was already winning, against an opponent who had even surrendered the advantage of when and where the fight would happen, and of course that opponent could not win.
This time, at least, he had taken her by surprise, and could face a Bartholomew who was not properly armed.
...She is unarmed, isn't she?
She had been in the middle of conducting a rite, so the shroud of holy relic she wore could be set aside. Even so, a moment ago she had been holding a rifle, and now she was drawing a knife from the fold of her clothes. The irony — that one could still call even this unarmed — was honestly rather funny.
Circumstances being what they were, he had a chance. Hachiman raised the sword, lifting the blade above his shoulder until it hovered near his temple, the point leveled at Han Seoyeon. In the language of the European sword, the stance called Ochs — the ox. Or, borrowing the words of this land, kasumi no kamae, the mist guard.
More than a dozen meters still lay between them, but through Mika Eru's memories he understood that, as distance, it meant nothing at all. Bartholomew had been all-capable down the generations, and yet, being human, there were fields in which she excelled above the rest. Hachiman watched the knife she had raised. Its pitch-black point aimed at him, unnervingly still. The instant he showed a gap, she would come in. His opponent was the Guillotine — one who closed and took the head the moment an enemy bared even the slightest flaw.
In that tension, the two regarded each other without a word. Into an air drawn so tight it seemed ready to snap, he slowly let out a breath—
"......!"
Han Seoyeon, having crossed the gap in a single bound, cut with the knife. The horizontal path of the blade came for his throat. Hachiman arched his waist back and slipped the strike by a hair, and across the skin the edge had grazed, a thin red line bloomed. She had chosen the moment he was most certain she would not attack. Had he not already known her methods, his neck would have been half-severed with ease.
There was no room to feel relieved. Han Seoyeon would hardly have failed to consider that, since he had read her technique, he might also be able to dodge. As if she had expected exactly that, she drew a pistol from the folds of the shroud and leveled it at Mika Eru's lower abdomen. Bent back to avoid the knife, he could neither evade nor guard. The trigger was pulled, and a gunshot swallowed by the suppressor cracked out.
"......"
"......"
A brief stillness. Han Seoyeon lowered her eyes and looked at the hand that had appeared, as though grown, from Mika Eru's stomach. When it opened its grip, a bullet crumpled into a wrinkled lump dropped toward the ground — and in the same instant the lead slug struck the earth and bounced, Hachiman moved. The point that had been aimed at her from above his shoulder drew an arc, circled once behind his back, and rose to cut upward from the front.
Han Seoyeon caught that edge on the side of the pistol and twisted it away. By rights it was a blow that should have sheared the barrel clean off, but this was no ordinary gun. The shroud she wore was, by classification, a first-class holy relic — a walking cathedral in all but name, a sacred object that raised whatever it touched to the standing of a third-class relic by contact alone. The pistol drawn from within it was already a weapon that had stepped, however slightly, outside the laws of physics. Having deflected the rising cut, it spat fire again.
Before the shot could land, another hand appeared from empty air and snatched Seoyeon's wrist. The bullet punched into the ground and kicked up grit. Then, with no telling who had moved first, blades were swung. The stubby knife met the long sword and threw sparks, and in that same breath Han Seoyeon shook off the hand on her wrist and brought the pistol to bear once more.
"Kh—?!"
At the sound of air being split from the flank, she wrenched the muzzle around and, on reflex, pulled the trigger, answering whatever was flying in with a bullet. With a sickening noise the object's path warped, and it pinwheeled through the empty air. It did not take long to see that it was an arrow.
The bow from a moment ago...?!
When she turned her eyes, unthinking, toward where it had come from, she found hands drifting in the air, bows trained on her. He had used the thing at the outset to issue the challenge and cast it aside at once, and for a while it had been wiped entirely from her mind. The opening that followed lasted only a fraction of an instant — but in a close fight of this caliber, that alone was fatal.
Two hands erupted from the ground and clamped both of Han Seoyeon's ankles. Her feet were bound completely. She caught the incoming Japanese sword on the knife once more, but her stance was bad, and so was everything else; the knife sprang from her grip. A chain of follow-up strikes came at once. She might, somehow, have blocked them with the pistol. The problem was that the bow aimed at her was drawing its string again. She could not answer both.
No. I have to.
There was a way. Fire the gun, knock the blade's path aside with the bullet, and at the same time receive the arrow on the pistol. It was a feat possible only in theory, but it was the only move left. If it came to it, she would gamble, prepared to give up an arm—
"......?"
"Huh...?"
The two locked in combat noticed it at the same moment. Blank-faced, they rolled their eyes toward somewhere else. The ground was shaking — a tremor that felt somehow unconvincing to dismiss as one of Japan's frequent earthquakes.
Kenri Jinson Gamgan—
Azure Flame, Verdant Hide, Ash Wolf, White Horse, Crimson Dragon, Violet Wing...!
"?!"
Ninomae Hitomi?!
Hachiman could not help but be aghast. He had sent her to the rear because it was dangerous, and now she had burst out of nowhere — how was he not to be shocked? All the more when she was astride a winged horse, running at a speed one saw only now and then even on a circuit, let alone a highway, a lance from who knew where wrapped in lightning and flame as she committed to a lance charge.
Even so, if I abandon the attack, it's a speed I can just barely dodge... What— wait. The distance is closing faster than she's actually moving—
He could hardly strike back at a civilian, so he tried to evade. But that knight was charging while, quite literally, omitting stretches of space, and so her true closing speed outran what the eye could see. The collision would arrive sooner than any attempt to get clear. By the time he understood as much, the moment had already passed. That brief hesitation stole even the chance to set aside the fact that she was an ordinary person and try a counterstroke.
"No, wai—"
That day, upon the artificial island of Fukuoka, a mushroom cloud bloomed—.
...And immediately afterward, as if time itself were rewinding, the explosion gathered in a flash back into a single point.
"E-eh...?"
What remained there was Han Seoyeon, having torn free of the grips on her ankles, and Mika Eru, hunched against the impact — and with them Ninomae Hitomi and her horse, at last shedding speed and coming to a stop.
"...This has grown noisier than I expected."
—And one woman, gauntlets fitted over both hands.
"I have come to mediate the dispute. For now."
"You're..."
Deadpan, she glanced about, then brought both hands together before her chest.
"At any rate, this too is my duty as an Apostle."
The Pioneer. The Crown of Thorns, Kiira Korhonen Barbara. Having said as much, Apostle Matthew nodded — to no one but herself.