Your Gentle Despair (2)
"Hmm..."
Just a moment ago, somewhere, there had been an incredibly delicious smell.
Well, it was probably just my imagination.
Grrr—
"'Shall I catch you some humans?' you ask? No, humans aren't really my type."
I shuddered at the Sweet Monster's sickly-sweet remark.
Even so, cannibalism was a hard no. Cannibalism.
Eating humans looking like this would look so trashy.
"Well then—"
Zzzt, zzzt, zzzzt—
"You're really running wild as you please."
Time to deal with that guy.
The crackling speaker spat out the voice of the squinty-eyed doctor.
I knew it would come to this.
People with perfectly respectable jobs like "doctor" who also happen to have squinty eyes are, without exception, masterminds behind the curtain.
This time was no different.
"When I issued a polite invitation, you refused. Yet suddenly you've had a change of heart?"
"I just came to play. I was invited, after all."
I gave the monster standing beside me a couple of light pats on the leg. It snorted a jet of hot breath, as if it would have split the squinty-eyed bastard's skull open if he had been standing right there in front of it.
"Thanks to you, a considerable portion of my plans has gone awry. How do you intend to take responsibility?"
"Do I even need to take responsibility for anything? In the first place, the one who dragged me here was a monster you created."
"..."
"It's pretty funny hearing someone who can't even control a single monster of their own making talk about 'plans' and whatever."
I scraped at Squinty Eyes's pride with a perfectly flat tone, as if this entire laboratory—and everything in it—meant absolutely nothing to me.
Well, in truth it really hadn't been much of anything.
"...Fine. Very well. I'll count this round as my loss."
"You talk as if there's going to be a next time."
"There will be. Of course there will. The Underground Lab is merely a modest little device I prepared to achieve my true purpose."
Modest? This? That was a little surprising.
I had no idea what kind of human he had been before, but anyone who could call a facility of this scale a "modest little device" had to be fairly capable.
Or else he was just blustering after I had thoroughly gotten under his skin.
Like the kind of person who insists, with a completely straight face, that they aren't angry while someone is actively teasing them for being angry?
"We were clearly in a mutual cooperative relationship, and yet you stab me in the back like this..."
"A mutual cooperative relationship? Between you and me?"
"To be precise, with your creator. It isn't widely known, but those who are aware of her call her this—
—Dr. Apocalypse of the End."
Huh?
I tilted my head at the completely out-of-nowhere remark.
So... that person I know—the monster—is the right one, right?
Dr. Apocalypse of the End? Who? The Doctor?
"Aha. Ahahahahahaha!!!"
"..."
"Heh... heh-haat... Really, that was the most entertaining story I've heard in a long time."
She stuck her own nickname onto her creation? For real?
Pulling a stunt that even a second-year middle-schooler would be embarrassed to try—just imagining it made laughter burst out of me.
Ah, right. The moment I saw her run away without taking any responsibility, I should have realized it immediately.
That the Doctor was a being far closer to immature than mature.
"More importantly, are you the only one who knows that fact?"
"There's no way anyone besides me could have figured it out. Especially if you continue to choose the path of operating so quietly from the shadows."
Operating from the shadows? Me? Since when?
Whether it was because he overestimated the Doctor so much, or because anything her creation did looked suspicious to him, every single one of my actions apparently registered as shady.
...Why, though?
"Hmm. So that means if only you disappear, every human who knows my true identity will be gone?"
"..."
"I'm on my way to see you now."
I didn't know exactly where he was, but he was definitely somewhere inside this Underground Lab.
With monsters packed wall-to-wall throughout the research facility, there was no way he could slip out quietly either.
Honestly, I had only wanted to mess with him a little; I hadn't been planning to erase him completely.
But if he knows my true identity is a monster, then erasing him is the better option.
Obviously.
I still had a long life of sticking right next to Emerald and Tamako, happily sucking down despair, that I intended to enjoy.
That time comes to mind.
A blade of hope energy cleaved a monster's body cleanly in two.
Her output was lower than it had been in the previous world, yet with fewer accumulated wounds on her body, her movements felt far lighter.
Dodge, cut. Dodge, cut—
To the magical girl Ruby, monsters were no different from paper laid out in front of a pair of scissors.
"Ru-Ruby...! There are too m-many monsters! At this rate we're going to get overrun...!"
"You really haven't changed at all."
Ruby shook her head as she looked at her partner—Chromi—who was speaking while trembling all over.
This kid had always been like that.
No matter how strong Ruby became, stronger, and stronger still, Chromi had always been drowning in anxiety.
Ruby had at least expected a little encouragement in those final moments.
"Ruby, don't get hurt... okay? If a monster you can't handle appears, you run. You're fast, after all..."
The memory of Chromi crumbling weakly made the hope-energy blade flicker for a moment.
Even if their personalities had been complete opposites, Chromi had been her one and only partner.
The death—no, the annihilation—of that partner could not help but deal a massive blow to her hope.
"Apocalypse..."
Even so, rising again was what a magical girl did.
She stood atop despair and stretched her hand toward a brighter hope.
What had rekindled Ruby, reduced to ash after losing her partner, had been the very moment she reached for that.
The hope that if she simply brought down Apocalypse, everything would be over.
That hope was what had brought her here, to this moment.
"B-Behind you!"
"I know!"
Wherever the monsters swarmed, Apocalypse was always there.
Or rather, it was more accurate to say that the monsters trailed after Apocalypse every time she took a step.
Curse...
The monster who bore the name of a curse.
The one who had been the head of the monsters wore a human-like body in a suit, with a pure-white lab coat draped over it.
"I am merely a researcher. Nothing more than an insignificant speck studying how far our god will go."
Apocalypse herself had been bad enough, but the most horrifying one had been that creature.
Apocalypse alone had been capable of facing the entire force of magical girls, and with something dragging packs of monsters around at her side, no one had dared to make a move.
The moment the dangerous, beast-like monsters began acting as a group and displaying intelligence had been after Curse appeared.
"Th-This is weird, Ruby! The monsters keep spawning. No—they're coming up...!!"
"...Coming up?"
Ruby's expression twisted at Chromi's words.
This city had soft ground; tunneling underground was supposed to be impossible.
Recalling the intelligence she had gathered beforehand, Ruby faintly furrowed her brow.
It didn't add up.
"Chromi, this is just a wild guess, but..."
"...A m-massive amount of despair energy is being generated underground! It's weird that no one noticed until now!"
Right. Back to the beginning.
The scene before her eyes was familiar—far too familiar.
Monsters pouring out in numbers she had never seen even once in her life. And the underground.
The place she had first encountered that thing—Curse—had also been underground.
But the timing is way too early. Curse isn't supposed to appear until several years from now...
Landing nearby, Ruby stared down the long stretch of asphalt road and sank into thought.
It might not be Curse.
It might not be, but the only way to shake off this sense of déjà vu was to confirm it with her own eyes.
"I'm going underground, Chromi."
"I-It's too dangerous! And more than anything, you don't even know the way!"
"I do know the way. They're showing me, right over there."
Ruby crooked one corner of her mouth upward and pointed at the monsters slithering out of a building.
If you didn't know the path, you simply followed the ones who did back to where they came from.
It was dangerous, yes—but it was also the simplest and most reliable method.
"No! Absolutely not! I can't just watch Ruby walk into certain death!"
Chromi fluttered over and clung tightly to Ruby's arm.
No, absolutely not! She would not allow something so reckless!
She thrashed and did everything she could to stop Ruby from heading underground, but with that tiny body there was no way she could hold her back.
"I just have to come back in one piece, right? In one piece."
"You always say that and then you've never once come back in one piece, you idiot Ruby!"
"True enough..."
"Wh-What do you mean, 'true enough'?!"
So at this age I really had been that kind of charge-in-headfirst idiot.
Yeah... I guess I had.
That single simple fact made Ruby feel, once again, that she had truly returned to the past. She tightened her grip on the hilt of her blade.
Now that she was back, she absolutely refused to fail.
"Then how about a bet, Chromi?"
"A-A bet?"
"If I come back to the surface without a single scratch, you grant me one wish."
A body close to its prime, before the wounds had piled up, plus all the experience she had accumulated in the previous world.
With both of those in her hands right now, the word "impossible" simply did not exist for Ruby.