Black Bullet - Volume 2 - Chapter 4

BLACK BULLET 2 

CHAPTER 04

AGAINST A PERFECT SNIPER

It was the night of the final showdown. In the hospital room that had fallen silent, Rentaro stared at the sleeping Enju in the bed. Like yesterday, Enju was breathing healthily in her sleep, and her sleeping face was peaceful. In the end, the faint hope he had that the anesthetic would wear off early and that she would wake up did not come true.

He had no choice but to imagine the fight she had against Tina and how she had been defeated, but based on the crime scene riddled with bullet holes, there was little doubt that she had received an antitank rifle bullet to the stomach. She must have been scared and frightened.

Rentaro looked at the full moon shining outside the window and patted Enju’s head. Enju, if you were conscious, would you have been opposed to this like Doc was?

But, he thought, raising his gaze, Tina Sprout was a victim of this twisted world. If I have the power to straighten out the world, then I think it’s worth risking my life, Enju.

Rentaro put his hand softly on the head of the sleeping Enju. Then, he left the hospital and took the last train out to the Outer District. Rentaro got off at District 39. He had brought Tina here once. When he hadn’t even dreamt that the two of them were mortal enemies.

As he went farther from the station, the surrounding sounds starting disappearing, and the sound of Rentaro’s steps and breathing seemed too loud. It was neither hot nor cold. The wind was strong, but he continued walking, knowing this would barely count as a handicap for that sniper.

Perhaps because of the lack of streetlights, it took his eyes a while to adjust to the darkness, but eventually, the ruins of the Outer District that had gone through death emerged in front of him.

Buildings covered in vines that had cracked the pavement, buildings that had been burned down. The fires were not the work of the Gastrea. In urban areas, after people leave, dried branches and fallen leaves would pile up with no one to gather them. When lightning struck, it is a simple matter for that to develop into a raging fire.

Man-made environments crumble quickly when humans stop taking care of them. Rusted vehicles were crashed into one another, and abandoned cars could be seen everywhere. Inside cars and cell phones, there were small amounts of rare metals like silver, palladium, and gold, so these were called “city veins” and were an important source of income for the Manhole Children.

Just as Rentaro stepped into the center of District 39, his cell phone suddenly vibrated. He had been planning to look here and there until he had covered all of the Outer District, but this was much faster than expected.

Of course, he had no doubt who the person on the other end of the phone was.

“There’s nothing here after all, huh? You got me,” she said.

Rentaro looked around him while holding his phone to his ear, but he could not see Tina anywhere. Still, it was likely that the young sniper could see him. Rentaro set his eyes on the group of dilapidated buildings standing tall in front of him.

“Is this your idea of preventing the sniping? I know the location of the unofficial conference. If I leave now, I can still make it in time to go after the Seitenshi when she leaves the meeting.”

“My job is to keep you from doing that,” said Rentaro.

“My job is to kill the Seitenshi,” said Tina.

“Why, Tina? Why do you kill?”

Tina hesitated slightly. “This is the only way left for me to prove I have a reason for existing.”

“That’s sad, Tina. You’re sad. Are you okay with that?”

Tina did not reply.

“If you’re saying that if I don’t fight, then you’re going to go kill the Lady Seitenshi, then I can’t let you go! The future of this country lies on the shoulders of that princess. If you want to kill her, then go after you kill me!” Rentaro rolled up the right arm and right leg of his uniform and stretched his arm straight out. After feeling some slight pain, there was a creaking sound, and fissures ran through his right arm and leg as the artificial skin warped and peeled off. His artificial limbs appeared to be black chrome, reflecting the light of the moon.

“I do not understand. The swordswoman, Kisara Tendo, was defeated. The ace, Enju Aihara, was defeated. You alone are left. You cannot defeat me.”

“I won’t know until I try, right?” At the same time, Rentaro unleashed the power of his artificial eye. The inside of his artificial left eye started spinning, and geometric patterns emerged on the iris.

A pungent smell hit his nose, and his body became hot. After unleashing his power, Rentaro lowered his hips and held his stance quietly. The Tendo Martial Arts Infinite Stance was a battle form filled with the meaning of the eternally limitless existence of the heavens and the earth.

“Now, let’s settle this, Tina!” Rentaro gazed at the darkness, still in his stance. He was attacked by a suffocating thirst for blood, and he gritted his teeth and gripped the dirt hard with the bottom of his boots.

The enemy used a Bit from the thought-drive interface, Shenfield, to scout his location. The second he was caught by the Bit, he was sure he would see a perfectly precise sniper bullet flying toward him.

The scene of the final showdown was the block of land where the dilapidated buildings were lined up. Of all the places in District 39, this was an urban area, but it was of course all ruined, so there was no fear of damaging the surrounding areas.

Rentaro had been given various secret plans by Miori. But there was no way Tina had come empty-handed, either.

Sharpening his five senses, he extinguished himself and became one with nature. The wind howled, caressing him from the back of his neck to his cheek. Rentaro didn’t move an inch, focusing all his concentration on his senses of touch and hearing.

There was a flicker, and for a second, he saw light coming from the roof of a tall skyscraper far away. There was a slight vibration in the air, and his sensitive skin, radarlike, felt a round object flying through the air.

Here it comes! thought Rentaro. “Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 3—” The sound of an explosion rang in the air, and the extractor that ran along Rentaro’s fake ulnar nerve on his artificial arm picked up empty golden shell casings and kicked them out as they rotated. “Rokuro Kabuto!”

His fist, sped up through cartridge propulsion, grasped the superfast antitank sniper rifle bullet. The explosive sound of impact rang throughout the ruins, and the shock wave blew away all the gravel around him. The fist he sent out twisting crashed into the sniper bullet, smashing it to smithereens. He had pulverized a .50-caliber armor-piercing bullet with a jacket made of tungsten carbide with over thirty times the kinetic energy and destructive power of a 9-mm handgun bullet.

He should not have been able to hear it, but Rentaro was sure he heard Tina gasp in astonishment.

Rentaro activated the range finder in his left eye and had it calculate the position of the shooter from the direction of the shot. The distance to Tina—1.5 kilometers directly in front of him. It was hard to believe how far away she had shot from.

He quickly took his smartphone out of his pocket and glared at the screen. There was a small golf-ball-size attachment installed on his phone. It was a supersmall sound sensor installed to use with a sniper detection application that Shiba Heavy Weapons had spent an enormous amount of money developing.

As if confirming Rentaro’s prediction, the cursor indicated a sniper bullet approaching from the front. There was no mistaking it.

Rentaro put both hands on the ground abruptly and raised his hips, taking a stance like that of a sprinter. He raised his eyes with a roar, glaring at the skyscraper soaring high above its surroundings in front of him.

Target, 1.5 kilometers ahead—Fire.

The next instant, the bottom of the cartridge hit the striker of the fake hidden nerve and exploded. An empty cartridge was ejected. The mobility thruster in his leg fired, accelerating him almost to the point of being blown away, and he sprinted forward.

He didn’t have time to worry about the sniper bullet that flew in at a great speed and gouged out the area Rentaro had just been. In the midst of such strong headwinds that he could hardly open his eyes, he barely evaded the large rocks and cars that were coming at him with terrifying speed, plunging into the crack in the stone wall, dashing into the dilapidated building with a whirlwind behind him.

The skyscraper grew steadily bigger in front of him.

There was a faint glimmer of light on the other side of the building, and Rentaro realized that a third shot had been fired. He gave himself another boost by firing off another cartridge in his leg. Immediately afterward, a sniper bullet gouged out the area behind him with a high-pitched screech.

Rentaro was shocked as he felt intense pain that seemed to rip his body apart. When he used his leg thrusters, he reached a top speed of a hundred and fifty kilometers and could barely even be seen.

Tina not only followed his movements, but she also predicted where he would be and shot after calculating enough lead time. Rentaro and Tina were both using techniques beyond the abilities of humans.

There were only six hundred meters left between him and Tina. Rentaro fired a third cartridge and rode it quickly into the skyscraper with violent momentum, but as he got closer, his heart beat hard, recalling a different type of worry.

When a sniper bullet was fired from a kilometer away, there was about a second between seeing the light of the muzzle fire and having the bullet approach him. He knew this because he had experienced this many times firsthand.

Up until now, he had always started taking evasive action after seeing the light, but the closer he got, the shorter the time would be between when he could see the muzzle fire and when the bullet came flying at him.

As if Tina could miss at this distance.

Just then, he saw another flicker of orange muzzle fire from the roof of the skyscraper and gasped in surprise.

Shoot, Rentaro thought as it hit his Super-Varanium right arm. He fell from his superaccelerated state and rolled once, getting chills. He was going to be smashed into the wall. Would he be crushed to death? No, he had to stand back up.

He changed the position of the thruster in his leg so that it stuck out to the side, and fired. Gritting his teeth, he forcefully twisted against the inertia, crossing his arms in front of his head and aiming to crash through the entrance of a nearby building headfirst.

With a loud crash, he smashed through the glass and rolled a few times on the floor of the entrance before forcing himself to stand up. There was damage to his inner ear that caused him to lose his sense of balance, and his legs danced like those of a groggy boxer. The joints in his body were in pain, and blood spread inside his mouth. Apparently, he had a cut somewhere in there.

It took some time before he was able to calm his ragged breathing and look around to survey his surroundings. Tilting his head, he could see that even though the building was dilapidated, the atrium that reached the ceiling looked pretty nice. It had probably been a state-of-the-art intelligent building before the Gastrea War. It wasn’t as tall as the building Tina was shooting from, but it was still pretty tall.

He couldn’t just stay here. She had the Shenfield.

Rentaro quietly slid under the decaying marble reception desk. Soon after, a fist-size round object turned silently into the entrance. There was no mistaking it; it was a Bit that Tina was controlling. It was his first time actually seeing it, but it must have been what had been observing Rentaro and his surroundings before. It barely made a sound as it flew, and was probably built for clandestine activities.

The Bit acted like a living thing and floated mysteriously as it scanned the area around it with lasers, investigating the topography. The Bit neared Rentaro slowly but surely.

As Rentaro carefully pulled his gun from his holster without making a sound, he pressed the safety to be ready to fire. Calming his wildly beating heart, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As he flew out from under the reception desk, he was caught by the Bit’s sights, and the Bit turned sharply to face him.

Rentaro fired without missing and shot out the Bit’s camera eye. In an instant, the Bit was flying around lopsidedly. Before long, he had thrown it to the floor, scattering sparks, and after some slight death throes, it ran out of power and was completely silent.

This was good. Rentaro smiled inwardly. This Bit was Tina’s eye. If he destroyed all three of the Bits Tina controlled with her neurochip, then he would be able to shut down her unparalleled precise shooting. If he destroyed the other two like this, hiding under the reception desk—

Just then, his breast pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone. He was dumbfounded when he saw that the caller was Miori Shiba. What was she thinking? She should have known full well that he was in the middle of a battle.

No, he reconsidered. She must have thought he hadn’t started yet and had something she just had to tell him. He pushed the button and picked up the phone.

“Satomi dear, are you alive? I have the results of the analysis of the machine gun!” said Miori’s familiar drawl.

He frowned, wondering what she was talking about, and then remembered the pieces of the heavy machine gun that were collected from the scene where Enju had been shot. If he remembered correctly, Inspector Tadashima had said that Enju had been shot from four different directions. He knew that one was a shot from Tina. But the remaining three—“Did Tina have help after all?”

“No! The machine guns retrieved had remote control modules installed. In other words—”

There was the faint buzzing of a machine operating, and Rentaro looked up with his phone still on his ear. He froze as he came face-to-face with another Bit looking down at him.

The second one? When did it get here? Rentaro muttered in shock, “This is bad, Miori… It’s found me…”

“Satomi dear, get out of the wayyyyyyy!” At Miori’s scream, he came back to himself and reflexively jumped forward diagonally to the right.

What happened afterward was beyond the bounds of common sense. The sound of gunshots came from all directions at superfast speeds and went past him, scattering debris from the walls that were hit, splintering them.

Rentaro turned sharply and aimed the muzzle of his gun at the Bit, but the Bit had already disappeared.

He calmed his ragged breathing. What was that just now? He immediately looked at the sniper sensor on his smartphone, but the cursor looked like it was confused and was pointing at six random places. No, were these really random?

“I just confirmed it with the Shiba Heavy Weapons satellite. There are five Barrett antitank rifles set up around you, Satomi dear!” The satellite was probably a man-made satellite owned by Shiba Heavy Weapons that could take night images by the gigapixel.

Antitank rifles set in five places, remote-control devices, Shenfield—

After being told this much, even Rentaro understood. Tina used her brain machine interface not just for the Shenfield, but also to remotely control the antitank rifles set up in five places.

Rentaro felt chills suddenly and rubbed his upper arms. That was absurd. Wasn’t ballistic sniping something that could only be done by experts, who could aim in the direction the enemy was heading and control the movement of their arms? Wasn’t it holy ground that only humans could inhabit that machines could not copy?

Why didn’t she use it until now? It was obvious. It was to draw Rentaro in so that he would be caught in her besiegement. Now that he had been seen by the Bit, .50-caliber armor-piercing bullets with terrifying penetrating power would come flying at him from five directions, plus a sixth direction where Tina was.

Though the building had been left at the mercy of time for ten years, just now, Tina’s bullet had penetrated the outer wall and flown right at Rentaro.

In his mind, he could see the vision of himself caught in a spiderweb, struggling. He shook his head gently in despair. It was this. This was what had gotten Enju Aihara.

Rentaro thought he had slipped past Tina’s sniper bullet to get close to her, but that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, she had drawn him deliberately in.

Tina Sprout, a transcendently perfect sniper.

It was a miracle that he had escaped the bullet just now. If another came at him—

Rentaro’s vision darkened in despair, and he shook his head hurriedly. Think, Rentaro Satomi. If you stop thinking now, next time, you really will be killed! Anyway, he couldn’t stop here. The Bit had already found him.

Even so, if he left this building with an unobstructed view and went outside, it would be suicide. After being spotted by the Bit, he would be full of holes.

Rentaro turned his head and looked at the atrium that reached the ceiling. His only option was to climb the building. And intercept all the Bits that infiltrated before they could enter his location coordinates.

The Bits were black. They were probably made of Varanium. If he aimed for their hard outer shells, the bullets would just be repelled, and he would not destroy them. His only choice was probably to aim for the camera eye, which was equipped with different sensors. He had succeeded earlier, but he wasn’t sure if he could manage the accuracy needed to hit a moving target so many times. He had no choice but to try, though.

Rentaro jumped out from under the reception desk and started climbing the stairs. As he climbed the sharply turning stairs, he stopped at every floor, hiding himself as he searched for the best floor to fight on.

From the second floor to the twentieth floor, there wasn’t really anywhere to hide himself. Things that could have been used had been stolen long ago, and the floors were mostly empty.

When he peeked into the twenty-fourth floor, he thought, This is it. The twenty-fourth floor had been a typical office floor. Furniture that was hard to carry out had unsurprisingly been left behind by the thieves. Rusted steel desks remained, mazelike, wires hung from the broken ceiling, and sand that had blown in through the smashed windows accumulated at his feet. Thankfully, however, it was not lacking in places to hide.

Rentaro stepped quietly and hid himself in the hollow of a wall. He could have hidden under a desk or in a locker, but he decided that places that were easy to hide in would be the first ones to be searched.

Rentaro quieted his breath, pressed his back right up against the wall, and succumbed to an endless stream of introspection. Was the twenty-fourth floor really a good place to hide? If he went to a higher floor, there might be a better structure for him to hide in. By choosing the twenty-fourth floor, he’d abandoned that possibility, hadn’t he?

The small bud of anxiety eventually grew large, and he started feeling like his worries were founded. Just when he’d made up his mind to move from this place immediately, there was the sound of a machine moving, quiet enough that he wasn’t even sure he was hearing it. The normal Rentaro would definitely have missed it.

Rentaro poked his face out from the hollow in the wall and then hurriedly pulled it back in.

A Bit had infiltrated through the crack of a broken window. As Rentaro calmed his pounding heart, he peeked into the room again to see what was going on. The Bit floated carefully as it scanned under the desk and in the locker. If he had hidden there, it would have been over in an instant. His instincts hadn’t been wrong, after all.

As he held his XD and tried to find the right timing to jump out, another Bit suddenly came from an unexpected direction and cut in front of the hollow in the wall. Surprised for the third time, he hid his body inside the wall. The other Bit had come up in a pincer attack, from the stairs Rentaro had climbed.

The Bits seemed to be whispering to one another as they communicated. They looked like they were asking one another, “How about it? Was he there?”

Rentaro wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and took a deep breath. It was all or nothing as he jumped out and fired continuous shots.

Before the Bit on the left could figure out what had happened, its camera eye had been destroyed by a .40-caliber bullet. However, the Bit on the right was hit on its shell and repelled the bullet. It bobbed as it lost its balance, but quickly righted itself and found Rentaro with its camera eye.

He didn’t even have time to regret his mistake, but jumped forward with all of his strength.

The next instant, there was a barrage of gunfire. Rentaro grimaced as a hot bullet grazed his side, but he wasn’t going to let it get away, and grabbed the Bit, rolling on the floor as he shot at it. There was a loud crash as he smashed it against the wall.

Then, the Shenfield was silent. A silence that hurt his ears returned to the dilapidated building.

As he sniffed the gunpowder smoke, Rentaro pressed his right side and stood up. He felt an upsettingly slippery substance, and when he looked at the palm of his right hand, there was dark red blood on it. Damn it. He was lucky to be alive, but if he’d had his way he would have preferred to avoid taking any damage that would hinder his movements before his final battle with Tina.

He injected a small vial of morphine into his stomach. He didn’t have the AGV test drug that regenerated his wounds this time, like he had when he fought the demon, Kagetane Hiruko. It had a side effect that made twenty percent of the test subjects into Gastrea, so when he told Sumire that he had used all that she had given him, she gave him a good scolding. Besides, this time, he and Sumire had parted with a fight, so either way, he couldn’t count on getting that drug.

He thought about what he should do next, but before he knew it, he had started walking upstairs for some reason. He wondered why, but since he had no plan at the moment, all he could do was rely on his instincts.

When he arrived at the iron door to the roof, he finally understood what he had been trying to do. First, he opened the door quietly with his back to the wall. After confirming that there was no sniper bullet being shot at him, he looked at the skyscraper standing tall before him.

There was no sign that she was going to snipe him. She might have lost his position after losing all the Bits. That would have been great for him.

Going through the door, he was hit by strong eddies of wind blowing around the building and had to hold down his hair. He walked over to the fence that came up to his hips to prevent falling and peeked down. The ground was dizzyingly far away, and it looked like it was opening its mouth wide like the bottom of Hades. The faraway building Tina was in was easily two hundred meters away.

Cold sweat ran down his cheek. Was he really going to do it? It was crazy. However, he was resolved to do this. In order to hold his own against someone with the superhigh ranking of 98, he had to take some risks.

Rentaro let go of the handrail and went to the handrail on the other side. There, he fixed his eyes straight on the skyscraper and started running. He started slowly, at a walking speed. Slowly approaching the edge of the building, he started running full strength, as if tripping, and kicked the ground, flying over the whole fence. There, he fired a cartridge in his leg. The cartridge fired with a Bam! and ejected. Immediately afterward, Rentaro’s body was flying toward the skyscraper through the sky so fast that he couldn’t even open his eyes. He fired off cartridges in his leg in rapid succession.

Tina had noticed. He thought he saw an orange flash of muzzle fire, and then a bullet whooshed toward him with a screech and grazed his side. This was her sniping without the Shenfield. However, her precision was as threatening as before.

Tina fired her antitank rifle repeatedly. From the short intervals between shots, Rentaro could tell that Tina was also flustered.

Each time Rentaro fired off a cartridge, he changed the angle of the thruster in his leg slightly to slip past the fatal sniper bullets one after another.

The skyscraper got bigger before his eyes.

Slipping past two more of Tina’s sniper bullets, Rentaro fired his last leg cartridge. “Goooooooooooooo!” he yelled.

The glass window approached with terrifying momentum, and Rentaro drew his gun and fired twice into the window as he plunged in. With a shrill sound, Rentaro broke through the glass and was thrown over ten meters as he rolled on the floor. Putting both hands on the ground, he forced his body up. As he did so, drool dripped onto the floor. His ears were ringing, he was nauseated, and he felt strange chills. He was blacking out after being exposed to extreme g-forces.

But—he had finally made it. He was probably about ten floors down from the roof where Tina was at that very moment.

Rentaro thought as he stood up. Looking behind him, he saw the roof he was just on far away. He still couldn’t believe he’d flown that distance to get here. However, if he hadn’t done so, he wouldn’t have been able to even get close to Tina.

Since Tina was a sniper, she probably would not like to be approached from underneath, where she could not shoot. There were undoubtedly plastic explosives and antipersonnel land mines on the first floor of the skyscraper, and there was no doubt that the minute Rentaro stepped inside, he would have been caught in a trap that could blow him to pieces.

However, Tina could not have predicted that a normal person like Rentaro would approach her in this way.

Rentaro looked at the ceiling. Round two was about to begin.

Rentaro took four cartridges from his artificial arm and used them to refill his artificial leg, which had heated up. He changed the magazine of his XD gun. He pulled the SureFire military flashlight from his waist and held his XD in his right hand and the flashlight in his left. Crossing his arms, he climbed the stairs with the backs of his hands together.

Of course, there was no electricity, so he could not use the elevator. Even if there was electricity, it was unthinkable to use something that would ding and report his arrival to his opponent. Climbing the stairs cautiously, he reviewed what he knew in his head.

Tina Sprout was an Initiator with the Owl Gastrea Factor. The majority of owls are nocturnal, but good night vision is not their only distinguishing characteristic. What was to be feared even more is their keen hearing that can pick out even the faintest sound from the movement of their prey. It was completely natural to imagine that Tina’s hearing was also very good. From here on out, he would have to do his utmost to not make a sound.

The moonlight shone on the bluish-white world, the air on his skin was chilly, and it became silent.

Being careful as he stepped, Rentaro muttered to himself that this was the first time he had fought this way, now that he thought about it. Both Kohina Hiruko and Enju Aihara were the straightforward martial artist types who didn’t use a lot of tricks. Compared to them, the person Rentaro was facing now, Tina Sprout, was a soldier type, like him. Someone who used guns to get around traps and was good at handling explosives. This was an enemy who would do any kind of sneak attack to win. If he let his guard down for a second, he would be killed.

He was carefully keeping his footsteps silent as he made his way to the roof, but when he got there, all he saw was an abandoned antitank rifle and empty magazines scattered around it. There was no sign of Tina. She must have hidden on one of the floors.

First, he would go one floor down to the floor he had just passed.

The floor was divided into three rooms. The instant he got to one of them, Rentaro sensed that something was off and stopped. It was dark. It was too dark. It wasn’t that his vision wasn’t working, but that there wasn’t even moonlight shining in. All the windows had probably been sealed. Why? It was obvious. His opponent had night vision and keen hearing. She could move perfectly fine even in the dark.

There were two shell casings lying on the ground at the entrance to the floor. Under normal circumstances, he would be convinced that Tina was concealed here. But Rentaro wasn’t sure after he saw them. Why would she leave shell casings on the floor on purpose? It was as if she was advertising her presence.

If that was the case, then he would have to work out a Plan B.

Rentaro fished around in the pouch around his waist and pulled out a bundle of something made of carbon. Rentaro pushed a button to make it return to its original shape, and what had been a folded frame instantly took on a ball shape, and a sensor inside it activated.

It was a pocket sensor package he had gotten from Miori. It had a thermal sensor and motion sensor, and if there was anything moving inside other than Rentaro, it was linked to Rentaro’s smartphone and would send an alert with the enemy’s position.

Rentaro threw the pocket sensor inside. He waited for a while, but there was no response. But with just that, he was still nervous about rushing in.

Rentaro pulled out a stun grenade and pulled the pin out with his teeth. Concealing his body against the wall, he waited for the sound and light of the explosion to pass and then went in. Using his flashlight to look around, Rentaro cursed involuntarily. It was spacious inside, and there were stone pillars in a few places, but like on the roof, Tina was not there.

It had been a decoy after all. With the explosion just now, Tina definitely knew which floor Rentaro was on. Rentaro started to feel like he was suffocating. With Tina’s specially evolved sight and hearing, a stun grenade, which spread sound, light, and pressure, would have been perfect to use against her. But he had just used it up.

Now that he thought about it, Rentaro realized that he had not seen Tina once since this battle started. Was Tina Sprout really in this building? The sudden horrifying thought clouded his mind, and he shook his head. No way, what was he thinking? His mind was filled with anxiety and fear and wasn’t thinking straight.

Amazed at how the darkness that prevented him from seeing was able to take away a person’s reason and presence of mind, Rentaro went down to the next floor. Its layout was exactly the same as the floor above, with the same forest of stone pillars in the sprawling space. Holding his gun ready, he hid himself behind the pillars, carefully examining the whole floor.

Just then, he was startled by the sound of an alert on his phone. Hurriedly pulling out his phone, he saw that the pocket sensor he had thrown earlier had picked something up upstairs. A chill went down his spine. It was impossible. Even as he tried to make himself believe that it had picked up a mouse or something else that just happened to pass through, the alert continued to ring noisily, as if screaming.

He was sure that Tina had not been in that room. Unless Tina was able to appear and disappear like a ghost?

Then, he saw the emergency exit out of the corner of his eye and suddenly understood. That should connect to the outer stairs. Of course, the outer stairs of a skyscraper would get a lot of wind, and in order to prevent falls, it would be strictly locked. It was probably never used by anyone other than the building manager and the janitors. However, what if Tina had unlocked it ahead of time? What if she had escaped out the emergency exit to the outer stairs when Rentaro threw the stun grenade inside, waiting for the opportunity to return?

Instantly, he pulled out his spare XD and held both guns, with his left hand pointed at the outer stairs, and his right hand pointed at the inner stairs he had just come down. His breathing got shallower and shorter, and he almost screamed in fear. The alert grating his nerves would not stop. It was as if it was saying, “Run away! Run away!”

Suddenly, the sound broke off, the sensor stopped ringing, and a heavy silence fell. The tension left his shoulders. It was some kind of animal after all, right?

Holding one of his guns with his teeth, he used the freed hand to pull out his smartphone and looked at the screen. He saw the words SENSOR CRASH in big letters across the screen and felt a chill down his spine like he had been put into a block of ice. The sensor had not stopped ringing, it had been destroyed. That meant that Tina was—

Just then, he heard a noise. He turned his head up quickly toward it, and a Rank 98 battle demon rained down with pieces of concrete. Rentaro looked at the scene in despair. It was unexpected revenge for the move Kisara had used to destroy the floor during the shooting incident at the Tendo Civil Security Agency.

Even as Rentaro paled, he put all his strength into his roundhouse kick that was aiming for Tina’s neck to use as a spring to escape. A terrifying faint buzz passed near his ear, and he started pouring cold sweat. He rolled forward like that a few times, pulling the triggers on the XD guns in both hands, firing as much as he could to shower Tina in bullets.

Tina held out a one-touch unfolding polycarbonate shield and took the whole barrage of twenty-four bullets.

Both of Rentaro’s XDs ran out of bullets at the same time. Tina must have decided that was a good time to throw away the cracked shield and plunged toward him with the speed of a bullet.

In the civsec officer combat manual, they were told to avoid a close-in fight with an Initiator at all costs. Rentaro abandoned his XDs and gritted his teeth. He dropped his hips to intercept Tina. His artificial eye gave off heat as it spun, calculating at superspeeds. The moment Rentaro saw the reflection of the moonlight on the dagger in the darkness, he pulled back his right arm. Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 5—At the same time, a cartridge spun and was spit out, and the smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils. “Kohaku Tensei!”

There was a screech. Tina’s flash like lightning and Rentaro’s superfast thrust clashed, and there was an explosion at the point of impact. The sand that had accumulated on the floor was blown away, and the shock wave shattered all the windows.

Both of them left skid marks on the ground as they were thrown back. Rentaro jumped for the XD that had fallen to the ground and reloaded it, pointing the muzzle at Tina, but that was when he gasped in surprise, realizing she had disappeared.

Rentaro cautiously held his gun ready as he stepped backward and hid behind a pillar. This was bad. The darkness was on her side. Her owl eyes could amplify the light and see into the darkness, and in the worst-case scenario, her owl ears could probably even pick out the sound of Rentaro’s breathing. How was he going to crush her advantage?

Just then, something bounced on the floor with a clang, and a round green object rolled before Rentaro’s eyes. All the hairs on Rentaro’s body stood on end—it was a fragmentation grenade. His mind went blank, and he kicked the hand grenade and then jumped to take cover.

There was an explosion. A number of fragments bit into his skin, tearing it away, and the intense pain burned into his brain. He had no time to writhe in agony. His brain was screaming that he should not be here.

Forcing all his muscles to move, he promptly rolled to the side, and the next instant, Tina’s kick fell right where Rentaro had just been, smashing the concrete road and all. Rentaro gave a roar and swung out to trip her. He got her, but Tina acrobatically put a hand on the ground and quickly backflipped to escape.

Tina reached her hand into the hem of her dress and threw out a round black object. After the faint activation sound, it floated with its single eye flashing and then headed toward Rentaro at full speed. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely a Shenfield Bit.

A fourth? Why would a scout approach him?

For some reason, he got terrible chills, and as he stood, he shot his gun a few times, but the Bit skillfully avoided all the bullets and closed in on him. Realizing that he was in trouble, Rentaro promptly pulled the pin of an incendiary grenade to ignite it, but the enemy was overwhelmingly faster. The single camera lens stared him in the eye, and the soulless machine seemed to smile creepily, narrowing its gaze.

Rentaro didn’t have time to be surprised before the Bit self-destructed at his chest. Thrown back by the large explosion that burned his skin, his body bounced on the floor before being thrown into a pillar, back first. He was in so much pain that he gritted his teeth until a molar splintered, and his vision started to go black.

Rentaro gave a sickening cough, and blood started to overflow from his mouth without stopping, the warm blood wetting his chest. Fluttering his heavy eyelids to look in front of him, he saw that Tina had two more Bits deployed around her, on guard against him.

Right between Rentaro and Tina was the incendiary grenade that Rentaro had pulled out. The ignition pin had been taken out, and the safety was off, but it didn’t explode no matter how much time passed. It was a dud. In the end, even luck had abandoned him. In any case, the range where the thermite reaction from the combustion of the incendiary grenade would have caused heat damage was too far away from Tina to do any good.

His clothes were scorched in the fumes of the explosion and gave off a terrible smell. Three large pieces of the Bit were stuck in his chest, like a grotesque art piece. He could not move another finger. Rentaro quietly shook his head left and right, and sighed shakily, enduring the pain in his injured lungs. She was too strong. Blood that wouldn’t stop flowing was dripping to the ground from different places of his body. Even though his skin was burned and blistered, because he was losing blood by the minute, his body started to feel frozen with cold.

Was he about to die? In a place like this? It didn’t make sense. His vision blurred, and his consciousness started to fade. In the back of his mind, memories of fun times flowed like a slideshow.

Suddenly, he remembered a movie he watched with Enju at a repertory cinema called Barry Lyndon. Apparently, it was made by a director named Kubrick, and after the movie was over, right before moving on to the credits, on a completely black screen, a written epilogue suddenly appeared.

GOOD OR BAD, HANDSOME OR UGLY, RICH OR POOR THEY ARE ALL EQUAL NOW, it had said. If that was the enlightenment reached by someone who lived many times what he lived, then it was too sad. It was too terrible a nihilism. He felt like he was getting sucked into the bottom of a dark hole.

It was cold. It was dark. Damn it.

Jeez, I’m dying.

“Rentaro.”

A familiar girl’s voice suddenly flowed into his slowly fading consciousness.

Just then, there was the sound of a sudden explosion. A thermite blaze shot up between them, and an inferno manifested. Rentaro was struck dumb. Was it the incendiary grenade?

Normally, it took only a few seconds between throwing the grenade at the target and the detonation.

If it were a very defective product, it could take dozens of seconds before it exploded. Something that didn’t explode after that was a complete dud. According to his body clock, it had been about a minute since he dropped the incendiary grenade. There was no way it would suddenly explode—

When he looked, he saw Tina with her arm raised covering her eyes. Doubts were raised in his head. Why? It was true that there was faint moonlight here, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t see anything. But looking at the struggling Tina covering her face, barely able to stand, let alone walk, it was as if she could not see anything at all.

Realization dawned on him. She actually could not see anything. Her owl night vision must have backfired, letting in too much light at once with its light amplification abilities, clouding her vision completely white.

Enju, was it you? Did you make this miracle happen?

This was a golden opportunity. His last chance. That’s right. He hadn’t lost yet.

I’m here bearing the hopes of Enju, Kisara, Sumire, Miori, and the Seitenshi.

There was a world he needed to return to.

There were people waiting for his return.

“It’s not over yet!!!!!”

He mustered the last of his strength. As blood streamed from his whole body, the puddle at his feet expanded rapidly. But, he didn’t care. He used the last of his strength to get into the Tendo Martial Arts Water and Sky Stance. He fired a leg cartridge and ignited the mobility thruster in his leg. Accelerating violently, he passed through the thermite blaze and jumped out in front of Tina. From Tina’s perspective, it looked as if Rentaro had jumped out of a curtain of hellfire at two thousand degrees Celsius.

“Raaaaaaagh!” he roared.

Going around the Shenfield that had come out to defend her, Rentaro stepped on Tina’s right leg with his boot and rammed into her with his shoulder.

Tendo Martial Arts Third Style, Number 9: Usarocho.

With a crack, Tina’s thin body was knocked away, and she let out a cry. When he rammed into her while stepping on her leg, it would be hard for her to absorb the shock, so if he got a good hit in, he could cause enough damage to turn her organs inside out.

Tina couldn’t help but totter a few steps forward.

Rentaro wasn’t one to pass up that chance.

“Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 15—”

With the sound of the explosion from a cartridge firing in his arm, he caught a fleeting glimpse of regret on Tina’s face.

“Oh n—,” she said.

“Unebi Koryuu!” The uppercut with intense destructive power broke the dagger Tina had drawn to defend herself and exploded. Tina’s body was blown back easily, and it smashed concrete as it made the ceiling cave in.

“Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 4—” Rentaro stretched his right leg straight out and kept it straight as he raised it overhead. Like a baseball pitcher’s special stance, his leg was at a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree angle with the bottom of his shoe facing the sky, and then became still.

Tina’s body became unstuck from the ceiling and fell down, powerlessly. Tina looked at him with weak eyes.

There were three consecutive blasts from his leg. The three empty golden shell casings spun as they were ejected, glittering as they reflected the swaying light of the flame.

The smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils.

In no time, all sound disappeared. The world was quiet and calm.

Rentaro closed his eyes.

“Inzen Jokahanameishi Burst!”

His heel came down in an axe kick like an iron hammer, hitting Tina cleanly. An extreme tremor shook the whole floor, and large parts of the floor caved in and fell through. The enormous energy of three shots of large-caliber cartridges blew Tina’s body away like sick leaves and then broke through the floor with a thunderous roar.

After a tremor so large it seemed like it would destroy the whole skyscraper, the noise finally stopped. Looking down, at the bottom of a hole that looked like a series of reflected mirrors, on a floor eight stories down, was Tina’s prone body. After going through eight floors, she had finally stopped, it seemed.

Tina was passed out at the center of the explosion, unable to continue fighting. The flames stretching up threw Rentaro’s long shadow on the floor. Rentaro let out a breath quietly and continued to be alert as he took the Infinite Stance. Then, his vision swayed, and before he knew it, Rentaro was also lying spread-eagle on his back. His head was pounding, and he was dizzy and nauseated. Even now, his body felt like it would disintegrate. I can’t believe I fought with this body, he thought in utter amazement as he stared at the ceiling.

He closed in on a sniper from 1.5 kilometers away and crushed her in close combat. Considering that the by-the-book tactic to deal with a sniper was called a counter-snipe, where you sniped the sniper, it made him realize just how crazy his strategy was.

Rentaro got up, slightly annoyed that he had to, and putting one knee on the ground he put a hand on his knee and forced himself to his feet. He let out shallow, short breaths like a wounded animal. His whole body felt like a bundle of pain nerves. Just breathing in made his lungs hurt. Saliva mixed with dark red blood dripped from his mouth, and he spit blood on the ground. He wiped his mouth. This was no time for strong emotions. Rentaro still had something he had to do.

Putting his hand on the wall, he went down eight flights of stairs, where Tina was lying. Rentaro aimed his gun between Tina’s brows as he approached her. Tina’s clothes were tattered, and she had a number of broken bones. She had gotten a good hit from a Super-Varanium axe kick, so her body probably wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do for a while.

Tina wheezed, tilting just her head toward him, opening her eyes slightly to look at Rentaro. “Ren…taro… Please…finish me…off…”

Rentaro didn’t say anything. His eyes met Tina’s. His strong feelings of victory disappeared, and he didn’t feel angry or sad, either. The only thing left was emptiness.

Tina continued her disconnected groans. “My…body…is a mass of…technology… I cannot live…and be caught…by another country…”

Kill her. If he did so, he would be able to completely remove the threat to the Seitenshi. Either way, if he handed her over to the police, he didn’t think an Initiator who attempted to assassinate a national ruler would be treated very well. Even more worrisome was what the man pulling her strings, Ain Rand, was after. Putting together what Sumire had said, Rand didn’t think of humans as human. It wouldn’t be strange for a man like that to have ordered Tina to kill herself immediately after being defeated. If Rand found out that she had not chosen to die, then it was possible that Tina would be the next assassination target.

No matter what happened, Rentaro had a hard time seeing a bright future for Tina after she survived today.

Rentaro put strength into the finger on the trigger of his gun. Finally, he nodded once with resolve and closed his eyes. He put his gun away, helped Tina up, and supported her with his shoulder.

Tina’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Why…?”

“I didn’t fight because I wanted to kill you.” Rentaro kept his gaze in front of him and focused on the hospital beyond the wall. “Besides, you saved Enju… Thank you. I kept wanting to tell you that. I’ll make sure they don’t treat you badly!” Through his shoulder, he could feel Tina shaking, and then next to him, he heard the sound of small sobs leaking out. Rentaro tried to pretend not to notice as something hot and wet soaked his shoulder.

“I’ve lost everything. Even though all I had was my fighting ability, I lost, so now everything is gone.”

Rentaro didn’t say anything.

“Rentaro… I don’t know anything anymore. Why did things turn out this way…? What should I do…? I have no idea. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. My life keeps turning strange, so now I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do……”

“Don’t talk. It’ll make your injuries worse.” And then, Rentaro, supporting Tina with his shoulder, walked down the long flight of stairs, one step at a time. The first floor was a nest of explosives, as Rentaro had imagined, but luckily, they were not the type that exploded automatically when triggered by movement. They were all the remote control type, so since Tina was out of commission, it didn’t seem like they would be a problem.

When they left the moldy building, they were met with fresh air and moonlight. Rentaro lifted his face.

First, to the hospital.

“I’ll have you take responsibility for this.” Surprised, he looked next to him and saw Tina smiling weakly with her eyes swollen from crying. “You defeated me, so I’ll have you take responsibility for that.”

Rentaro was taken aback for a moment, but he soon nodded cheerfully. “All right, I will.”

Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot, and Tina fell to her knees.

“Ah………” Tina looked in disbelief at the black hole that had opened up in her chest. The fresh blood leaking from the hole slowly soaked into her clothes. Tina moved her slightly gaping mouth a little, but couldn’t speak as she looked up at Rentaro, then tilted her head in embarrassment as she tried to smile.

A man approached them briskly, wearing a uniform cap with a white cape, shooting a Luger pistol. Fresh blood spouted from Tina’s throat, and she fell backward. Yasuwaki kicked Tina’s stomach hard, sending her body lightly into the air. It landed with a thump when it fell. The whole scene was like a bad joke.

“I can’t believe you’re having so much trouble with a little killer!” said Yasuwaki mockingly.

What’s he doing here…? His brain numb, Rentaro tilted his head in confusion.

Yasuwaki looked in his direction, as if to answer his question. “I safely escorted the Lady Seitenshi to her conference. She is probably in the middle of talks right now. I need to get back before the conference ends, so I don’t have a lot of time. More importantly—” Yasuwaki stopped and grinned evilly. “What’s with that expression? I just disposed of a piece of trash for you. Why don’t you thank me for it?”

When Rentaro heard those words, rage pierced his spine, and his brain lit on fire. “I’ll kill you!” Just as he put his hand to his holster to draw his gun, there was a rustle and an attack from behind. Rentaro gasped as the air was squeezed from his lungs. He looked back and saw a friend of Yasuwaki’s, one of the Seitenshi’s personal guard, with a fist buried in his back. Panting, Rentaro smashed his attacker’s chin with a backward punch, but someone else held down his hips and kicked his legs out from under him. Just as he thought the ground was approaching, a strong force pushed his head down and slammed it into the ground.

A sharp pain shot through his arm, and looking back with effort, he saw that three other guards were on his back, pinning his arms back. Gritting his teeth so hard he thought he might crack a tooth, he groaned and flailed hard, but they didn’t loosen their hold at all. “Yasuwakiiiiiii! You bastard!”

Yasuwaki laughed. “This is exactly what it means to profit from someone else’s fight.”

Just then, Tina’s body curved, and she coughed up blood.

Tina! She’s alive!

After Yasuwaki looked at his own Luger pistol, he looked at Tina warily. “It really is hard to kill them without Varanium bullets.” Then, looking like he just thought of something, he smiled faintly at his friends. “Hey guys, wanna do a biology experiment? The topic is How many shots does it take to kill a Red-Eye with lead bullets?”

The other guards’ shoulders shook, and they started snickering.

Stepping over Tina’s prone body, Yasuwaki pulled the trigger of his gun a few times. Tina’s body danced, and fresh blood gushed out and got on Yasuwaki’s face. Tina’s legs became taut, and they kicked at the ground.

Rentaro yelled. “Stop it…! I’ll kill you, Yasuwakiiiiii! You bastard…! I’ll kill youuuuuu!”

Yasuwaki spread his hands and laughed maniacally. “That’s it! That’s the expression I wanted to see, Rentaro Satomi!” He kept laughing. Yasuwaki lifted the muzzle of his gun and aimed between Tina’s eyes. “It’s time for the finale!”

“That’s enough!”

The roar of the dignified voice made every person at the scene freeze.

Yasuwaki, his subordinate guards, and everyone else froze with their mouths gaping, holding their breaths and looking in the same direction.

“Lady Seitenshi……,” someone muttered.

Her beauty was like that of glittering stars, but her piercingly powerful eyes were like lightning. This authority of pure white wasn’t supposed to be here—but she was.

Yasuwaki let his gun drop and turned pale as he stepped back.

The binds on Rentaro loosened, and he stood up in a daze. Why was she here right now? Wasn’t she in the middle of a conference?

Yasuwaki seemed to have the same questions and started saying agitatedly, “Why in the world…?”

“I heard that you all were acting without permission, so I excused myself from the meeting with President Saitake to come here.”

“Impossible! I cannot believe you threw away a conference with the ruler of Osaka Area for the sake of a mere civsec officer!”

“To me, Satomi is not just a mere civsec officer. And I cannot overlook your violence any longer.”

The Seitenshi looked sideways at Rentaro. “Satomi, please tell me. You saved my life. What is it that you wish for in return?”

What did he want? He made a hard fist. It was obvious. “I want power! I want the power to protect the people I care about!”

The Seitenshi kept her eyes shut for a while. Finally, she opened her eyes and said resonantly, “Satomi, with power comes responsibility. You must not forget that when you swing your sword, it leaves blood behind it. With too much power, one becomes a tyrant, and with too much responsibility, one’s heart breaks. From the beginning of the universe, power and responsibility has never been balanced. But you must find that balance.” She paused. “Very well, I will give you that power.”

The dignified voice resonated in the night sky. “With my prerogative as ruler of Tokyo Area, I waive the written appointment of the IISO and hereby promote Rentaro Satomi from Rank 1,000 to Rank 300. Satomi’s top-secret information access key is now at Level 5, and his pseudo-rank has been promoted to first lieutenant. In other words, you are now one rank above Yasuwaki. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes,” said Rentaro.

“Justice without power is not worth anything. Become stronger, Satomi, stronger than anyone.”

Rentaro raised his face quietly and the personal guards froze, with Yasuwaki losing all color in his face. Rentaro drew his XD gun and fired three times. One hit Yasuwaki’s right shoulder, the second hit his side, and the last blew off the thumb of his right hand from the joint.

“Arghhhhhhhhh!” Yasuwaki screamed.

Rentaro looked coldly sideways at the flustered guards who pointed their guns at him. “Who do you think you’re pointing your guns at?”

Surprised, the guards stopped moving.

Rentaro passed by them to stand in front of Yasuwaki, looking down at him. Yasuwaki shuddered, awestruck, and tried desperately to back away. “Ahhhhhh… D-don’t come near me… Don’t come near meeeeeee!”

Rentaro, with the full moon behind him, raised the muzzle of his gun and aimed at Yasuwaki. His heart was boiling like magma, but his voice was frozen at absolute zero.

“Get out of my sight, and never come near Tina again. If you refuse, I will shoot you to death here and now for refusing to obey orders from a superior officer.”