Chapter 192: Beauty and the Beast — 2

Thick black hair swept back from a face cut in heavy, pronounced lines — a strong jaw, shoulders set wide as a wall, and a strength in the arms no ordinary man could hope to match. Nor was it only a matter of looks. He was a soldier who had met wild monsters on the front and won, more than once.

Marquis Gaston.

Gaston, who had hunted monsters with nothing but a few blades in hand, could not imagine any way he might defeat the girl standing before him.

Whatever that thing was, a dreadful sea lapped the ceiling. Touch it, and you were dragged upward, crushed down to a single point, and burst apart into nothing. Only a moment ago it had come down the way one cuts a cake — a square pillar of water that swallowed the guard at his side. The man had worn armor stout enough to take the blow of any common beast and remain whole, and still he had been kneaded into a lump of meat and iron, bobbing gently in the water.

How was anyone meant to win against that?

Gaston stood near enough to close the distance and cut her down inside of three seconds, yet he could not scrape together the courage to try. A square column hung swaying where it had descended from the ceiling, and the laws of the world seemed to have gone somewhere else entirely. Even if he drove mana through his body and threw himself in, could he truly win?

No. Before any of that — was a person even capable of a power that smothered the sky in water?

A considerable portion of the marquisate's army remained under his command, but even gathered all together, their odds of overcoming this were remote. And so, to walk away from this place alive, Gaston decided to sell his counterpart out without a moment's hesitation.

"Pride Industry, Rocketmobile Company, and Gun and LeFou Company. Those three firms told me that if I made the trifling incident in Berne City disappear — as if it had never happened — they would pay me a fortune. So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if you ask me why, I can say nothing except that I dealt with them."

He had been speaking boldly. The instant Victoria's eyes went sharp, he dropped his tail and pressed himself flat to the floor.

Pride Industry. A corporation that had begun by building the mainframes of clockwork machines, then swallowed the related heavy industry wholesale until its influence stretched across the world.

Rocketmobile Company. A global conglomerate holding all manner of clockwork enterprises as subsidiaries, Cogni Transport among them. Pride Industry made the goods; Rocketmobile carried them to the customer. In practice, the two were one body.

G&L Company. The firm in charge of clockwork programs — not only the software, but dedicated hardware as well, a monopoly whose components went into every place that ran an intelligent clockwork machine. Without that hardware the software would not function, and the reverse had been made equally impossible. They kept the lock turned from both sides, and so preserved their monopoly: a multinational.

Corporate ethics had yet to develop. It was an age in which monopolies and oligopolies clutched such vast capital that one began to wonder whether the corporation had not grown stronger than the state. In practice, even when the king ordered an investigation, they bought the noble placed in charge of it and bent the result whichever way they pleased.

And Victoria knew the three of them. She was studying to become a clockwork knight, and taken together they might as well have been the entire clockwork industry. It would have been stranger not to know them.

The clockwork rampage in Berne City. Having lived through it, she reasoned like this: the three companies meant to bury an incident that harmed them, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the man carrying out that burial stood right in front of her. Deal with the person before her eyes, and everything would be over. Whatever anyone plotted behind the curtain, the faction holding the most power in Berne City at this very moment was Marquis Gaston.

Detailed about machines, and poorly versed in politics and conspiracy, Victoria judged far too quickly. There was no one here who could tell her so.

"Oh? You — I thought I'd seen you somewhere. Victoria. Victoria Vett, right? The kid who lives in my city. Aha, I get it. Hey. You've got family in there, don't you? If that's what's worrying you, I'll lend you my strength. Look. I'm the master of Berne City, yeah? So clear this water away."

And so, in the very moment she concluded that restraining this man and laying his crimes before the royal house or the press would finish everything, Gaston made a fatal mistake.

He recognized Victoria. The crown had promoted the Harvesters so relentlessly that it was not strange he should know her face. If anything, he could hardly have failed to. But knowing who she was, and then letting a careless, condescending tone slip out — that was the error.

Say a thing like that now, and—

"No."

Gaston's words had been abject, but Victoria heard a threat in them.

The price of a slipped tongue was steep.

A pillar of water slammed down on Gaston and the other two in the room. It was not the width of a single body. It sank into the earth across the breadth of the chamber, and the three vanished without so much as a scream, leaving only small lumps behind.

Victoria rose straight up through the water. To her, who commanded it, the water of this place was no different from her own body. In the plainest terms, call it Victoria in full armor, and the picture comes easily enough. Armored like that, she moved toward Berne City.

The sea that had poured out inverted slowly vanished from the sky, drawing back like an ebb tide. Those trapped between ground and surface, already resigned to death, let out breaths of relief as they watched it drain away to the southeast. Seated on the wreckage the wave had left behind, they looked up at the stars and the moon and understood, at last, that the nightmarish night was over.

To the survivors, this had been neither a protest nor a natural disaster.

A ghost story.

No matter how one looked at it, this was not a reality a person was meant to endure.

And at the center of that village, a left arm — all that remained, down from the shoulder blade — twitched. Like a worm that happened to be an arm, it worked its fingers and crawled toward a half-cooked mass of meat, the back of the head and the back scorched a dark red and mashed together.

Then a faint crack ran through the world. Like a crack in a pane of glass, a fissure of the same shape from every angle spread outward in a spiderweb.

An instant later, the half-cooked meat and the arm crawling alone were gone. In their place stood two girls, white-skinned, with purple hair.

A vicious miracle does not disappear.

Hehe.

Warmth.

Oh, Victoria, I like you! I love you!

To think she would send me warmth in such quantity! And right now she is riding an enormous droplet straight for Berne City. If she keeps on like this, I can hardly wait to see just how many are going to die. She'll keep bringing me heaps of warmth from here on, too.

This is what a Harvester is!

Anyway. Setting that aside.

I hadn't known that so long as an arm remained, I wouldn't be ejected outside. When the light truly came flying in, I thought I was finished — but a soldier the Harvester had made wrapped around me and shoved, so one arm slipped outside the beam and never evaporated. That I could still move in that state was a little funny. Whether a human arm is allowed to do such a thing, or only a body that was made, I don't know yet. I'll have to be careful when I enter another world, or the next doll.

Anyway.

I see the world through Victoria's eyes as well, so the moment I watched her, furious, drawing the sea in, I stopped restoring my body to what it had been. I wanted to know how far she could go. And I was satisfied.

Better still — perhaps what she had already lived through at the very limit was a help — she doesn't hesitate when it comes to killing people. Splendid. It happens often enough. Swallowed by a power too large, a person's worth drops below an insect's. And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so, along with a great deal of warmth, memories came in as well.

From those a Harvester kills, warmth can be taken whole. Memory arrives partly broken. Even so, I learned a few things.

First, Marquis Gaston.

This one is truly something. Remarkable in what sense? In the sense that he apprehends reality entirely to suit himself.

Word must have reached them that screams were heard from the south, because an official notice went out ordering Gaston to investigate. Was anything unusual happening in Berne City, or had there been, south of the city, an incident in which a great many people died? Look into it, they said.

Gaston sent the investigation south of Berne City. What was happening in the city now, he decided, was an ordinary affair — nothing he was obliged to explain to the king — and he ignored it. The multinationals had sent their people and struck a secret compact faster than the king.

And so, because the profitable businesses of Berne City were turning over nicely, he concluded that nothing at all was wrong. He believed it himself. That is what makes it truly impressive.

Of course, the moment the protesters began scattering materials about what had happened in Berne City, it was Gaston who set about massacring them at once. Then, claiming a minor hitch had turned up in the course of business, he negotiated with the companies again and severed every network running between Berne City and the outside.

All of it, a trifling trouble that cropped up midway through business. Inside Gaston, at least, that is what it was.

Looking at this part, the royal house really does seem to have had nothing to do with it. If anything, I want to ask whether they are so soft they can even function properly as a state. Or else they poured too many people into dealing with the witch. Even so, the likelihood that they still could not have stopped Maleficent — that is what is truly astonishing.

Sorting my thoughts that way, I greeted Polaris, who had only just become a Harvester.

"How are you feeling?"

"You — how are you alive?"

"Turns out I don't die, even if only one arm is left."

Polaris grimaced at that, then turned her head and looked to the far sky. Watching the sea moving in the distance, she let out a long sigh.

"That. That's Victoria, isn't it?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"The day we first met. That kid used water. No — wait. She could do it all the way out there?"

Like a spider, leg after leg reached up out of the rivers and the sea, feeding without pause the ocean afloat overhead.

"I didn't know Victoria could do that, either."

Other people do. The more developed the world, and the more varied the knowledge a Harvester holds, the more the level changes even when they handle the same fire. An ability that looks like the same fire might, in truth, run on an entirely different principle — but the more knowledge a world has piled up, the further the one who uses it can take the application. Reason from that, and a superpower depends, comparatively, on human imagination. If you cannot picture a sight like that, you cannot make it. Not for lack of power. More likely, for lack of knowing.

And if one asks where she saw a sight like that — at the very beginning. She had nearly drowned in the place where she became a Harvester. Imagining it would have been easy.

Polaris only looks from me to Victoria and back, the face of someone who has ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lost the way, unable to get a word out. Her skin is white, which means those burns were never fatal enough to threaten her life. Polaris isn't only strong. Her body is tough, too. But watching her hesitate like this — a child is still a child.

"Victoria drowned the enemy."

"Yeah……. Then, Bell. What are you going to do now?"

"Follow Victoria. What about you, Polaris?"

She is the sort of person who, when lives may be in danger, does not take someone else as a shield, but sets herself up as one. Press her like this, and I know what choice she will make.

Polaris stayed quiet for a long while, then ducked her head.

"Let's go get Victoria. I need to find out what in the world this situation even is. We came all this way and ended up in this sorry shape — turn around now, and we're just losers. Let's go."

Humans, as ever, repeat their foolish choices.

That is the human I believe in.

"Yes. Let's do that, Polaris."