Blue Heaven (1)
Sunlight stabbed at my eyes.
It was the first sunlight to touch me since we'd escaped the Domain. After days spent living beneath moonlight alone, the warm sun felt impossibly foreign.
I stretched long and lazy in the light.
"Aaahh..."
Bones cracked and popped all over my body. I was starving, my body was a wreck — and yet, somehow, I felt alive.
Glancing sideways, I found Sapi walking ahead without a care in the world.
"Hey."
"...?"
"Food."
"Ah..."
"When do we eat?"
Sapi mulled it over for a moment.
"I can't be certain exactly where we are right now. So I'll have to find the way relying only on what's actually in my head — which means it could take longer than you'd like."
...
I tipped my head back and looked at the sky. However I turned it over in my mind, that mattered more than sword practice.
"You can find us real, proper food, right?"
"Yeah. Remember the meat we ate the first time we met?"
"Of course I do."
Sapi said it while looking straight at me.
"I'll make sure you eat that well again."
"Really?!"
"Course."
Watching him snort back a laugh made something strange stir in my chest.
"Sapi."
"What?"
"You suddenly seem really, really nice."
"I've always been nice."
After that, Sapi didn't answer. He only smiled a little — and before I knew it, a laugh was slipping out of me too.
We walked on, and the entrance to Blue Heaven rose up ahead — a subway entrance long since out of service, decayed well past the point of repair.
"Good thing my memory was right. This is Blue Heaven."
"Ooh... so that means we get to eat something good?"
"The smoked meat here is delicious."
"Hehe."
The way Lebetri laughed was endlessly entertaining. To think a girl who smiled so guilelessly was a being who could change fate itself. Honestly, watching nothing but that laugh, it was hard to believe.
So we passed through the entrance and started down the stairs.
...
The moment we stepped inside, armed corpses and bloodstains lay strewn across the floor.
"Um... I don't really know much about this stuff, but... this isn't normal, right, Sapi?"
I nodded in answer to Lebetri's question. Well, I had expected this — the future had shown me as much. But seeing it in the flesh was still a grim sight.
"Right. Whether they're hostile or not, they're dangerous. Get ready for a fight, Lebetri."
Squelch... squelch...
Stepping through pools of blood, we pressed forward. And there ahead, a pink-haired woman sat in a chair, waiting for us.
"Well, hello there. I'm Rekk."
"Likewise. Rekk."
A greeting like that was the opening move of a proposal — and she returned mine lightly. Not that I had any intention of accepting whatever she had to offer.
"Hand over Lebetri. Do that, and I'll let you live—"
Ha... Just as I'd seen in the future — an utterly ridiculous proposal.
BANG!!
"Eeeek!"
Rekk shrieked and toppled backward off her chair — and that, as it happened, was the only reason she dodged the bullet.
"Lebetri. It's a fight."
"Right."
Lebetri drew her beam saber and settled into a stance, but—
"Hahahaha!!!!!! Here I come!! My prey!!"
With that cheer of a battle cry, the shutters along the walls rolled open and people came pouring down.
"Are those people enemies too?"
"No..."
I hesitated for a moment. These people were civilians — not a scrap of ability among them. But knowing that would weigh on Lebetri mid-fight. Honestly, I wanted to lie and call them enemies. But someday, when she learned the truth and came to be disappointed in me... my plans would suffer for it. So I chose the truth.
"They're civilians. My guess is they're the only ones who made it out alive when Blue Heaven got torn apart."
"Yeah?"
"Correct!!!"
The owner of that voice from before stepped into view: a man whose skin was purple over every inch of his body.
"Baek has arrived!!!"
BANG!
Baek's body shot out like a bullet. Arm thrust forward, he flew at us as though his hand had become a spearhead.
"Die!!"
Too fast. Could Lebetri really dodge that?
"Ugh...!"
Her body slipped half a step aside — but not far enough. Her left prosthetic arm was smashed to pieces.
KRAK!!
Baek's fingertips hammered into the floor. The concrete burst outward like an explosion, shards flying in every direction.
"Lebetri, you alright?"
"Yeah. Thank god it hit the prosthetic — thank god. It auto-repairs with the nanotech."
"Well, sure."
"One more charge and I'm not dodging. I'll cut him down."
Apparently our little chat had gotten on his nerves, because Baek roared:
"Focus on the fight!!"
He snatched a civilian off the floor by the neck and hurled him at Lebetri. For an instant, her vision would vanish behind the body flying at her face.
There were ways around that, of course. Blowing the civilian apart with a shotgun to clear her sightline — not a solution Lebetri would ever forgive. And so, the moment she caught the man in her arms, her vision was swallowed whole.
That was the opening.
THUNK!!
"Hahaha!! A heart that soft deserves to die!!"
Baek's fist tore clean through Lebetri's abdomen. Blood and gore slicked his arm as her entrails spilled from her stomach.
"Haha! You I'll spare, old man — special treatment."
Ignoring the fallen Lebetri and me altogether, Baek walked toward Rekk.
Lebetri wasn't dead yet. I gripped her shoulder and poured divine power into her.
Yellow light. Warm light. The glow sank into her body, and the hole punched through her stomach began, little by little, to knit closed.
"Hrk—!"
Coughing up blood, Lebetri hauled herself upright.
"Lebetri, can you move?"
"Of course I can move. And fight too, Sapi."
Baek stared at the scene, dumbfounded. Then, before long, a smile spread across his face.
"Now this is great... finally, someone who's actually human!!"
Slowly, he raised his bloodstained hand — like a beast savoring a meal it had just tasted.
BANG!
Again the floor erupted, and Baek vanished.
Too fast. But in a Linear Leap, Lebetri was faster.
And yet she didn't use it — her own signature move. Lebetri said nothing. She simply raised her blade. The fastest choice; that was what her sword had always been. I could see the strength gathering in her grip.
Then she cut.
Baek's right arm dropped away, severed.
Lebetri's sword did not look like a blade forged to cut harder than anything else. It was a sword that shouldered her own pain and pressed forward anyway — a sword for keeping someone alive.
In that instant, Baek's smile buckled. His breathing turned ragged, as if he'd forgotten how to draw air.
"I... I hate humans like you..."
As if his skull were splitting, he clamped a hand over his eyes.
"And I... fragile humans... like you..."
The hand tightened.
"No!!!"
He screamed as he tore his own eyelids apart. Red blood ran down his cheeks.
And still Baek smiled — like a man who couldn't even feel the pain.
"I don't get scared... come at me, you rabbit bastard."
His eyes were fixed on Lebetri. But Lebetri's eyes were on the civilians behind her. A child, trembling. An old man, wounded. She had raised her sword for them — and the sight of it had Baek's smiling frame shaking.
"That look... that act... in the end, you won't save a single one of them!!"
BAM!!
Baek kicked his own severed right arm skidding across the floor — and it flew at Lebetri's eyes, the same trick as before. She sheared the arm out of the air with ease, but the instant he'd stolen was enough: Baek was on her in a blur.
And at what unfolded next, even I — the one who sees the future — went stiff with shock.
Divine power...?
Right before my eyes, my opponent was using divine power to mend his own severed arm.
A healing ability?
"Sapi. The power that guy is using... doesn't it feel a lot like yours?"
"...Yeah. Looks that way."
His expression gone stiff, Sapi kept his eyes locked on Baek.
"Lebetri. I'll take this purple fella."
"Huh?"
"You take the pink one over there. Rekk."
"Got it."
BANG!!
In a flash, she was rocketing toward Rekk.
"You... I've seen you somewhere before, haven't I?"
"Couldn't tell you."
I let the question slide, playing the innocent.
I had Baek's fighting style more or less worked out by now. But I had never once shown him how I fight. That was an information gap — which meant the answer was simple: strike first. And my opponent, evidently, had reached the same conclusion, because he came leaping at me.
BANG!!!
Baek's side burst open. Blood and viscera poured down like a waterfall.
Mind going hazy from the blood loss, he staggered — then buckled to his knees like a withered plant. Even on his knees he flung himself away, leaping to put as much distance between us as he could. He must have decided that, like this, there was no winning.
I walked slowly toward him.
"NOW'S my chance!!"
His healing finished, Baek wound up a punch.
"This time... TOUGH!!"
He hammered the fist down with everything he had. If it connected, it would be a mortal wound. Yes — if it connected.
I morphed my relic gun into its gatling form and leveled it at Baek. The moment he saw the barrels swarm, terror gripped him too, and he cut the swing short in a hurry.
KWA-GA-GA-GA!!
A storm of rounds chewed the distance to pulp. Even the civilians left in the line of fire were ground under — without so much as a scream. If Lebetri ever saw this, she'd have plenty to say. Tch.
I walked toward the spot where Baek had gone to ground.
Tap. Tap.
I stepped slowly into the store.
"Ran off, did you?"
Of course, there was no genuine question in it at all. It was the voice of a man who knew perfectly well where you were hiding — and meant to ignore you anyway.
"TOUGH!!"
The cement floor caved in, the terrain turning jagged and wild. Baek wrenched a length of rebar out of the shattered concrete and came flying at me.
"What the—?"
He was trying to mimic the principle behind Lebetri's sword. And his rebar, slicing much like her blade had, carved through my right arm. For one startled heartbeat, I let the strike land.
But it would never happen twice.
BANG!!
With a crack of gunpowder, I punched a hole through Baek, just shy of his heart.
"You bastard..."
"You did surprise me, I'll admit. I knew someone would come for this place eventually... but a monster like you? That I never saw coming."
"What?"
"A little more growth, and you might actually have been dangerous."
I watched Baek's lips begin to tremble.
"You... no way... you're..."
"That's right. I am ■■■■'s ■■."
"You son of a bitch!!!"
"So what? You're about to die anyway."
BANG!! BANG!! BANG!! BANG!!
I put four rounds into Baek's head. And just to be safe... the heart, too.
BANG!!
The moment the heart took its bullet, flies came swarming down onto him.
WHAM!
I kicked the corpse in the face and checked the kill once more. Not so much as a twitch.
...
Without a word, I simply started walking toward Lebetri.
Because this man was fated never to die by anything so simple as this.