Black Bullet - Volume 2 - Chapter 2.4

4

“Master, will you give me more information about the Tendo Civil Security Agency?”

“What do you want to know?” The voice on the other end of the headset responded immediately after she asked.

Tina Sprout tilted her head, gazing at the half of the sun setting beyond the faraway building. The busy shopping district she just left had been filled with annoying oily smells and had a ton of vulgar people. It was hot enough during the day to make one sick, so she was quickly coming to hate Tokyo Area, but the setting sun was the only thing that was beautiful enough to touch her heart.

I do like the night, after all, thought Tina to herself as she waited for the light to turn at the scrambled intersection. “Master, I do not know much about Tokyo Area, but I think Tendo is the same as the last name of the Seitenshi’s aide, Kikunojo Tendo. Are they related in some way?”

“Yeah, the president, Kisara Tendo, is Kikunojo Tendo’s granddaughter. However, she is currently estranged from the Tendo family and is running the Tendo Civil Security Agency independently. Oh? Her personal background is pretty interesting—”

She suddenly felt eyes on her and looked back, seeing an elderly woman staring blatantly at what Tina was holding in her right hand. The woman was looking at a khaki-colored gun case. It was even thicker than the case she used for the huge antitank rifle she used last time, and even with her power released, it was still heavy enough to make her tired.

“—the president, Kisara Tendo, lost her parents when they were eaten by a Gastrea that strayed into the Tendo residence when she was a child, and she herself was so stressed from that time that she lost the function of her kidneys.”

“Her kidneys?”

“That’s right. On top of that, this incident appears to have been premeditated murder, and the culprit is said to be someone from the Tendo family. Obsessed with revenge, Kisara Tendo madly honed her swordsmanship and left the Tendo family. Even now, it is said that she is just waiting for the opportunity to kill everyone in the Tendo family.”

“That’s…” It was a very bloody story. On top of that, she was a master swordswoman, huh…?

“I don’t know if it’s because they have no money or if it’s because they value quality over quantity, but there is only one pair employed by the Tendo Civil Security Agency. These guys are the ones who got in our way the other day.”

Tina lifted her face in surprise. “What are their names?”

“The fact that their names don’t come up on the list means that their information is being protected by the government. Oh, but their names have been leaked onto the Internet.”

For some reason, Tina made a hard fist as she waited for his next words.

“The Initiator’s name is Enju Aihara, and the Promoter is—”

Just then, a truck cut in front of her blasting its exhaust loudly. Tina covered her other ear as she shouted, “Excuse me, Master, what did you say—?”

“Hey, how long are you planning on standing there? Will you please move?”

Tina turned, and the elderly woman from before was looking at her with an angry expression on her face. When she looked forward, the light at the scramble intersection had turned green, and everyone around her had started walking at once.

Tina made a hurried bow and lifted the case, cutting across the geometric pattern made by the white lines. Continuing on by turning into a few narrow alleys, she reached an area of drinking establishments. Probably because of the time of day, there were not many people around.

Following her master’s navigation, she soon saw a small building. It was a dingy four-story building. She twisted her neck to look at the height of the building. She had proposed sniping Kisara Tendo down beforehand, but her master rejected that idea promptly. She could see now that she would not have been able to secure a field of fire here. She had no choice but to barge in directly and shoot her down, after all.

The building in question was called Happy Building, and its tenants from the first floor up were listed as SPERRGEBIET, MA CHÉRIE, TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY, and KOFU FINANCE. Sperrgebiet meant “no trespassing zone” in German, and Ma Chérie meant “my love” in French. The sign did not say what kind of stores they were. Was Kofu Finance some sort of financial consulting company?

Tina dropped the gun case she held in her right hand to the ground with a heavy sound. She opened the case up left and right, and an enormous gun appeared. It was an M13 made by the General Electric Company. It was a Gatling gun that used the power of a battery pack to make a bundle of six barrels rotate, allowing for continuous fire.

She was not that good at using weapons other than sniper rifles, but as part of learning the conventions of killing, she had also learned how to use general weapons and explosives. Up until now, she had always sniped at her targets through an optical scope, so she was slightly nervous, but it was not enough to be a problem.

Tina put the bullet box feeder connected to the Gatling gun on her back. Passersby were giving her dubious looks as they passed, but because she was doing it so blatantly, no one screamed or called the police.

Tina was planning to ask her master for a vacation after the Seitenshi’s assassination was over. She was sure that her master would strongly oppose her staying in Tokyo Area after the assassination was completed, but she wanted to avoid leaving this place without saying anything to him.

Tina put her hand to her chest. It was strange. She had only seen him four times, yet she felt like she could do anything for him. Even though she had never done anything but kill people, she was amazed that her heart could still beat for someone else like this. Her heart was warm. She felt like she could do anything.

Tina closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Master, could I lose against Kisara Tendo?”

She heard a loud laugh on the other end of the phone. “There’s no way. No way. According to my calculations, there’s not even a one percent chance that you will lose against Kisara Tendo. According to the information, Kisara Tendo is alone in the office. Make sure you get rid of her.”

“Roger, Master. Ending call now.”

Tina quieted her footsteps and entered the building. Perhaps to save on maintenance fees, there was no elevator, so the only way to get to the upper floors was to take the stairs.

Sperrgebiet on the first floor was a bar. It looked like they weren’t open for business yet, and the lights were off and no one was around. Compared to the bar on the first floor, it was much easier to tell what kind of store Ma Chérie on the second floor was. There was wallpaper pink enough to make a flamingo feel nauseated and a disco ball. They were also not open yet, but it looked like some kind of sex establishment.

Tina silently climbed up to the third floor. In order to use the Gatling gun in an indoor battle, the barrels were shortened as much as possible to make it more compact, so it did not get in the way of her movements much.

Tina quietly pushed open the shabby door with a sign that said TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY hanging on it. At a large work desk facing front, a black-haired girl that she thought to be Kisara Tendo sat with her shoulders squared, writing something.

Seeming to sense someone coming in, the girl put down her fountain pen, crossed her arms in a huff, and looked the other way, as if saying, “I’m still mad, you know.” It seemed as if she had Tina confused with someone else. It was a chance Tina would not get again.

“You are…Kisara Tendo…?”

“Huh?”

Seeing the girl lift her face and open her eyes in surprise, Tina prepared for the gun’s recoil by firmly placing her feet onto the ground. “Prepare yourself.”

Pushing the trigger button, the body of the gun started spinning from the battery power, and immediately after, there was an ear-splitting explosion, and the Gatling gun spit fire.

In the blink of an eye, Kisara crouched down reflexively, but the work desk and walls were all covered with holes, and ricocheting bullets destroyed the glass on the pictures and the glass water pitcher, penetrating the sofa of the lounge set and scattering feathers everywhere. This was the true value of the massacre weapon, the Gatling gun, a high-speed rifle that could spit a hundred rounds a second. Compared to the menacing threat of this rapid-fire weapon that could turn their target to pieces, the shots of a normal machine gun were about the same level as a fly landing on something.

After getting knocked backward from the strong recoil from the five-second salvo, Tina released the trigger button and looked around the inside of the office. Riddled with bullet holes, the inside of the office looked like a tornado had passed through it.

There was a sharp smell of gun smoke as papers drifted through the air, and at her feet was a pile of empty cartridges the gun had spit out and a mountain of belt links. A heartbeat later, a Klimt reproduction fell, frame and all, to the ground with a small sound, and Tina could see powdered mortar floating in the air in the diagonal shaft of light shining in from the window.

She was sure that Kisara Tendo had left the world without knowing exactly what had happened. Tina could only pray that the other name for this gun, Painless, was the truth.

Thinking to check the corpse, Tina stepped into the room. Just then, as if waiting for that moment, Kisara rushed out from the side of the ebony table with her hand on the handle of her sword. The cold eyes peeking out from under the long, disheveled hair were like carnage.

Suddenly, Tina’s master’s voice replayed in her head. Obsessed with revenge, Kisara Tendo madly honed her swordsmanship—

Tina got chills and reflexively bent backward, and there was a high-pitched screeching sound as something scraped right next to Tina at high speed. A lock of Tina’s blond hair that lagged behind was cut diagonally, along with the barrels of the Gatling gun, and there was a loud roar like artillery shells crashing into one another as the whole building shook. Behind her, the wall was split in half vertically. Tina looked at the unbelievable spectacle in shock.

Was she within range of Kisara’s sword attack? Tina thought it was impossible, but the glint of Kisara’s sword had just sliced the wall and a number of Tina’s hairs, and it cut the steel body of the gun like butter. Tina cursed her master who gave Kisara Tendo the too-low rating of a less than 1 percent chance of winning. She felt chills up her spine. It wasn’t a joke. Her abilities were unmistakably at the upper limit of what a human could achieve.

However.

Tina jumped left and right like she was doing a triangle jump and kicked twice, sticking to the ceiling, and then while her vision was upside down, ran past on the ceiling. She saw Kisara glare as her sword-drawing technique started to go out of control. Right after, the two sword-drawing attacks she unleashed as quickly as meteors landed far behind Tina.

They were too slow. Tina, who was looking down at the inside of the office upside down, ran until she was right above Kisara Tendo and kicked the ceiling, falling inverted down on her.

Kisara’s face paled, and she slid backward, but that was all within Tina’s predictions. Tina brought down the Gatling gun that weighed a little over twenty kilograms. She wasn’t aiming at Kisara but at the floor. The blunt and heavy steel weapon that was brought down with the fierce power of an Initiator destroyed the flooring. Not only that, but it also easily shattered the concrete block with a 24-Newton force, shattering the fragments and making them explode into Kisara.

To Kisara, it was like being shot with a shotgun. Even though she quickly raised her arm to block, she was showered with blows to her stomach and chest, and dropped her sword, thrashing against the wall.

Without hesitating, Tina calmly calculated the most efficient way to destroy the swordswoman in front of her and used the superacceleration of an Initiator to ram against her shoulder. With a roar, the wall collapsed, and Kisara was drained of strength against the wall. It was still.

This was it.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Tina swiped the sweat from her brow. Then her eyes became as cold as ice, and she decided to do what she had to do. She took the body of the Gatling gun that had turned into a soldering iron from all the shots it fired and pushed it against the limp Kisara’s stomach, forcing her awake.

Kisara let out a painful groan and brushed back her hair. Grinding her teeth, trying to bear the pain, she opened her eyes in slits and looked at Tina. “Who…are you?”

“There is no need for you to know.”

“Why is a child like you…?” Kisara started.

Tina’s thoughts were troubled by the anxious look in Kisara’s eyes. Even though Kisara had suffered serious damage, why was she concerned about Tina?

Tina was deeply irritated at the incomprehensible girl and made a hard fist, putting her face close to Kisara’s. “You will die soon. That has nothing to do with you. You are about to die. You will disappear from the world without becoming anything; you will not leave anything behind. I will now kill you in such a way that even those who love you will not be able to tell that the pieces are you. Do you understand? You are going to die now!”

Kisara shook her head slowly with a tired look on her face. “You are afraid to kill people, aren’t you?”

Tina’s eyes opened wide, and before she knew it, she was strangling Kisara’s thin neck. Her fingers sank delightfully into the girl’s smooth, white skin, and Tina could almost hear the grating of her bones.

Kisara shook her head slowly left and right without a sound, a sad expression on her face, but soon her expression turned into a grimace. Her body started to convulse, and her consciousness clouded. She squeezed her voice out forcibly through lips that had turned purple. “Help…me…Satomi… No……”

Tina was so surprised that the force in her hands let up for a second. What? Who’s Satomi?

“Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 16—!” Suddenly, just as she heard a voice that could barely contain its anger come from the side, something rushed into her with the force of a bullet. “Inzen Kokutenfu!”

On instinct, she let the top half of her body spring backward, and immediately after, there was the sound of a roundhouse kick grazing her cheek. She jumped aside with a backflip.

Backup? Tina thought. She made sure to get enough distance between them and, with her hand still on the ground, lifted her face.

—And then, her world froze.

“No way…” Between the space between her cracked lips, a hoarse voice that didn’t sound like her own slipped out. “No way… No way, no way… No……… There’s no way…” Tina shook her head slowly and moved backward. The connections in her brain were shorting and getting ground down, and inside, her feelings were a stirred-up mess. Her legs shook, and feeling sobs about to leak from her throat, she hurriedly held them back.

Since he showed up at this time, she had no doubt that it meant that the enemy in front of her was the civsec officer employed at this agency who had interfered with her sniping. His compact and toned body was covered in a school uniform that looked like a black suit. Behind that brusque attitude was a stupidly honest person who was sincere and good at taking care of others. She had learned this from her short acquaintance with him.

She had liked him. She thought he was a good person. She had trusted him.

Tina ground her teeth in frustration as she held back her tears and screamed, “Why…! Why, Rentaro?!”

Rentaro was just as shocked.

The dark rage scorching his chest collided with the momentary charm and stopped Rentaro’s movements. “Why are you…?”

Tina looked down and shook her head, murmuring like she really did not want to say. “Because you will get in the way of my assassination.”

“I see, so you’re the……” Rentaro bit his lip hard and closed his eyes. And then he asked himself what he should do. He slowly opened his eyes.

Tina also looked like she was smiling and crying at the same time as she desperately put both hands on her chest. “But Rentaro, I……”

Rentaro used the Tendo step to close the gap between them and unleashed Homura Kasen, a straight punch with all his strength behind it. It scraped the shaken girl’s cheek. There was a short scream, and a sharp, cutting pain welled up in Rentaro’s chest.

However, Rentaro did not listen to Tina’s scream. He couldn’t listen to it. He thought he should take the Gatling gun she held and grabbed at it, but she resisted half-reflexively and pushed Rentaro away with the tremendous physical strength of an Initiator. The momentum pushed the trigger button, and the body of the Gatling gun pointed at the sky exploded. It took everything he had to suppress it.

In the midst of the sound of gunfire, Rentaro ground his teeth and screamed behind him. “Kisara! The floor… Cut it………!”

He could sense Kisara behind him suddenly leaping to action with the sword in her hand. “Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Third Style, Number 8—” Her deep exhalation made the air in the room tense in a second.

With all the noise from the gunfire, he shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but Rentaro was sure he could hear the clear sound of steel sliding out of the scabbard. “Unebiko Yuusei—Go swiftly, Yukikage!”

The calamity that occurred immediately afterward could scarcely be called a physical phenomenon. It felt like Rentaro’s field of vision was cut into a number of pieces, and along with the cracking sound of an icicle being cleft in two, all around the room were cuts carved in every direction.

Suddenly, the world tilted in a way that made it impossible for him to continue standing. The floor had been cut off. Along with the nauseating floating feeling was a destructive collapsing sound. Bodies pulled by gravity, Tina and Rentaro were being dragged down as they grasped each other.

Seeing that Tina seemed confused about what had just happened, Rentaro saw his chance and positioned himself above her, keeping her below him as the floor of the next floor down approached with tremendous speed, slapping her down on it.

“Guh…” The air was knocked out of Tina’s lungs, and Rentaro readied a fist in order to knock her unconscious.

But his enemy was not one to go down easily. Just as he saw her leg spring up, he felt a sharp pain in his lower jaw, and there was a ringing inside his head as his vision started to black out.

He stumbled for a few steps, but then shifted to step firmly. Not yet.

“Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 14—”

“Listen to me, Rentaro!”

“—Inzen Genmeika!”

He repeatedly aimed sharp kicks where he predicted she would move to avoid him. The kick that got a clean hit on the arm the girl put up to block blew the small girl away, and she broke past the window behind her and fell from the second floor.

Tears fell from Tina’s eyes, and they glittered, reflecting the glass of the window until they finally disappeared.

Rentaro drew the gun at his hip, not letting his guard down as he approached the side of the window. He looked down timidly but did not see any sign of her save the small dent on the hood of the car parked in front of the building.

She appeared to have run away.

“Satomi, did you win?”

Looking back, he saw Kisara in the midst of the thick dust, holding a handkerchief to her mouth as she climbed down to the second floor. Rentaro looked away from Kisara and looked once more past the broken window. A crowd had gathered nearby, and the police would probably show up soon.

“I didn’t win. She ran away from me…”

“I see…”

Kisara came to stand next to Rentaro and followed his gaze, then looked sideways at him anxiously.

“Did you know her?”

“Yeah…” Rentaro remembered Tina’s face when she was almost crushed by self-denial, and his chest tightened.

From the looks of it, she had not known who he was when she approached him. However, if she was the assassin after the Seitenshi, and if she was trying to take the life of the president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency that was trying to stop the assassination, then there was no room for discussion.

Assassin and bodyguard. Two absolutely incompatible positions. Despite that, Tina had obviously been trying to talk to him. And the one who had pushed away her outstretched arm and forced their parting was none other than himself. Rentaro gripped his XD with both hands and shut his eyes hard, holding it and praying.

How long did he stay like that? He tried to force himself to switch gears by surveying the damage inside, and then he scratched his head. “What are we going to do about this, Kisara?” Looking up, he saw a large hole providing nice ventilation between the second and third floors that couldn’t possibly be fixed. On top of the concrete dust irritating his throat, there was also the smell of paint thinner coming from somewhere in the building, which was starting to make his head hurt.

When Enju came back and saw that the office had turned into Swiss cheese, she would surely be surprised.

Fortunately, the cabaret on the second floor still had some time before they opened, so no one was around, but the proprietress would be coming in soon to get ready to open. Rentaro had no confidence that he would be able to explain the situation well. He shot Kisara a critical gaze that said, “You didn’t have to destroy everything so thoroughly.”

Kisara blushed, put her hand on her hip, and looked up at him through her lashes. “What? You’re the one that said to cut it, Satomi!”

“That’s true, but—”

“D-die, you scoundrel!” Suddenly, yakuza with long daggers in each hand rushed in shouting, nearly blowing Rentaro away.

When he looked carefully, Rentaro saw that they were the yakuza from the loan shark upstairs, Kofu Finance.

Looking left and right and seeing no sign of the enemy, they became restless and looked very strange. They must have been very confused, because some of them were using the lid of a pan as a shield, and some were even wearing the pot itself on their heads. All of them had shaking knees. The reason for their late appearance could be deduced somewhat by that attitude.

A representative came over to where Rentaro was, scratching his head in confusion. It was Abe, who had a surprisingly comical face when he took off his sunglasses.

“R-Rentaro, bro, Tendo, sis, what’s goin’ on here? It’s not a raid?”

Kisara took a step forward and spread her arms levelly. “This has nothing to do with you guys. I believe the police will come soon, so you should put away whatever you don’t want them to see. Come on, hurry on home now!” She clapped her hands, and the members of Kofu Finance reluctantly headed out the door, looking at one another.

Yakuza being pushed around by a high school girl. It was a strange sight.

“Satomi…” Saying that, Kisara, whose back was to Rentaro, suddenly leaned toward him as if about to fall.

He hurriedly caught her shoulder. It smelled sweet and felt too dainty and soft to be that of a master swordswoman. Rentaro felt his whole body heat up, and he was afraid Kisara would hear the too-fast beating of his heart. “H-hey, Kisara, this is no time to play aroun…”

Then, he suddenly realized.

While Rentaro had been rushing around, Kisara had been practically killed. Even though she was his boss, she was still a girl. After being met with such a dangerous situation, wouldn’t she want to cry on someone’s chest? With such sweet expectations, he held her and peeked at her face—and then the blood drained from his face.

Kisara’s handsome face was twisted in pain, and she held her lower abdomen as she bit her pale lips.

“Hey, Kisara? Kisara! Get ahold of yourself! Hey!”

Then a lightbulb flashed in his head, and he gritted his teeth. This wasn’t from the damage she sustained from fighting. It was her kidneys malfunctioning.