Black Bullet - Volume 3 - Chapter 1.8

8

In a squad tent wide enough for ten people to sleep, one that had tent flaps on four sides and a roof, it was spacious enough to give a slight sense of freedom. It was a world of difference from the old tent they had brought with them. Rentaro stood in the middle of the space and gave a big stretch. He was finally recognized as an adjuvant; there was no way he wasn’t happy. He had just gone back to the registration booth again and told them that he had the minimum six officers required and officially completed the adjuvant registration.

Shoma had also wanted to team up with Rentaro, and happened to be looking for him to do so; Rentaro was moved by the coincidence. However, at the same time, someone as strong as Shoma would have been in great demand, so Rentaro had asked him, “Why did you want to join my team?”

“Ever since I heard rumors that you had defeated the Scorpion, I was thinking that I wanted to fight by your side someday. I might be unworthy, but I thought at least the strength of an eighth dan Tendo Martial Artist had to be of use in some way. Let’s work together again like we did in the dojo in the past. Let me in on your conspiracy, too.” It was inevitable after this was said to him.

The girl in the pointy hat had also introduced herself. Her name was Midori Fuse, and she was a Model Cat Initiator. She was a conspicuous speed specialist and also had the ability to retract her nails. It was pretty much as Rentaro had expected.

“Oh, this is pretty nice! Viva freedom!”

Turning around toward the voice, Rentaro saw Tamaki coming in late, followed by a slightly shy Yuzuki, who was looking down. Beyond them was Shoma, with Midori hiding behind him, followed by Enju.

“It’s like a secret hideout!” announced Enju excitedly. Rentaro chided her to sit down, and everyone followed suit, making a loose circle.

Tamaki came to sit cross-legged and cheerfully slapped his knee. “All right! Now that we’ve got six people in our adjuvant, let’s go around and do some simple introductions—”

“Wait, before we do that, there’s something I’d like to ask,” Shoma interrupted. Shoma looked at Rentaro with enigmatic eyes. It was the sort of thing that someone who had not known him for very long might have misunderstood, thinking Shoma had contempt for them based on not being able to see his emotions or hear the intonation in his voice.

“Of course, you’re the one who gathered the members, so you should be the leader of our squad, Satomi. It’s based on that that I want to ask—are you planning on fighting with the six of us? Or do you still intend to gather more?”

Rentaro’s eyes met Enju’s, and then he conferred to Shoma his earlier plan to have five teams with ten people total.

Tamaki put his chin on his elbow and said indifferently, “Oh? Two more pairs, huh?”

“No, one more pair.”

Suddenly, a dignified female voice rang out through the tent, and everyone looked in its direction. Rentaro was taken aback and rose to his feet reflexively. He did not expect the people standing there at all.

Standing in the red light of the setting sun at the entrance of the tent were Kisara in her black sailor school uniform and Tina with her blond hair tied up, sparkling in the evening sunlight. Kisara suddenly flipped her black hair and quickly stepped inside, and before Rentaro could open his mouth, she quietly went to the middle of the circle and knelt formally. The sweet fragrance of Kisara’s hair spread gently throughout the tent.

Kisara quickly raised the black scabbard of the murderous blade Yukikage and prepared to draw it with a clear ringing sound. “Tendo Style swordswoman, Promoter Kisara Tendo, and NEXT-enhanced sniper, Initiator Tina Sprout. The two abovementioned persons have come to pay a visit to join Rentaro Satomi’s adjuvant.”

“Huh?” Rentaro raised his voice hysterically. Sticking out one hand and saying, “Hold on, time out,” he put his other hand to his temple and desperately fought against a headache. “Wait! W-wait a minute. What do you mean, Promoter and Initiator?! N-no, more important, isn’t Tina’s rank still revoked because of her punishment?”

“I talked over Tina’s rank revocation directly with the Lady Seitenshi to have her retract the punishment. Right now, we’re at a critical moment that will determine if Tokyo Area survives or not, so honestly, they’re in a situation where they’ll take any help they can get, you know? I thought if we negotiated well, we’d be able to get Tina’s punishment taken away, and it went just as I expected.”

Then, what Kisara had just said was neither a joke nor a misunderstanding…

Kisara chuckled. “That’s how it is. I just finished registering with the International Initiator Supervision Organization. Tina and I will start at an IP Rank of 9200. Tina’s in a new pair, so she’ll temporarily have a huge drop in rank, but I’m sure her actual ability is a little higher.”

It wasn’t just “a little.” The sniper with the ingenious plan who once fought Rentaro had achieved an IP Rank of 98 on her own without taking into account the combat ability of her partner, Ain Rand. Adding a devilish swordswoman who was a Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing initiate as a Promoter would mean their actual combat ability was…

Realizing that he was getting overwhelmed, Rentaro quickly regained his senses and said, “Come here for a sec,” and pulled Kisara into a corner of the tent. In an irritated voice, Rentaro said, “Kisara, you can’t do this. You should think about yourself a little. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten why you were relegated to doing office work?”

Kisara sulked and pouted, saying, “If you’re talking about my dialysis treatment, I already went today. And even while we’re fighting, I’ll go when I get a chance.” Kisara stopped talking for a moment and put both hands on her hips, glaring determinedly at Rentaro. “So, Satomi, let me join your adjuvant, too. This is an order from your boss.”

“Of course I can’t do that! What if something were to happen to you? Do you know how I would feel—”

She cut him off. “Why can’t you realize that I feel the same way?”

“Huh?”

“When you’re in danger, all I can do is pray. I don’t want that.”

Rentaro was dumbfounded, taken completely off guard.

Kisara straightened and bore her gaze into him. “Please, Satomi. If I start to drag you down, you can abandon me.”

He couldn’t win. Rentaro closed his eyes, exhaled from his nose, and put both hands on Kisara’s shoulders. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll protect you, Kisara. So don’t worry.”

“S-Satomi…?” Kisara’s cheeks turned bright red, and she suddenly bent forward and slumped her shoulders. “Jeez, what are you saying such embarrassing things for, idiot…… Hey…shoulders…they hurt… Don’t…push me…into the…tent… Jeez, you idiot.”

Rentaro’s heart pounded at the rare sight of an innocent Kisara. “K-K-Kisara! I, a-actually, I have always… Huh?”

Just then, there was a discreet cough from next to them, and when Rentaro slid his gaze to it, he saw Tina looking sullen, narrowing her eyes ill-humoredly, saying, “Excuse me,” and looking pointedly toward the center of the tent.

Feeling eyes on him, Rentaro suddenly came back to his senses and realized that there were five pairs of eyes staring at them. Rentaro and Kisara separated hurriedly, both of their cheeks turning red as they cleared their throats and went back to the circle in the middle of the tent.

“Um… So, well, uh… Anyway, we have some new teammates, Kisara Tendo and Tina Sprout.” Rentaro pushed the two of them forward softly.

“My name is Tina Sprout. I look forward to working with you,” said Tina.

“I’m Kisara Tendo. By the way, I’m also Satomi here’s boss. I’m counting on you all,” added Kisara.

“It’s been a while, Kisara,” finished Shoma.

At first, Kisara narrowed her eyes at his gentle voice, but her suspicion soon turned to surprise. “No way. Shoma?!”

“Anyway, you’re my disciple senior, so is it bad that I addressed you casually by your first name?”

Kisara waved her hand in front of her face. “It’s fine, we’ve known each other for a long time. Wow, this takes me back.” However, then Kisara shifted her gaze and lowered her tone of voice. “Hey, Shoma, why did you quit the dojo suddenly? We were really worried, you know. Now that I think about it, why are you suddenly a civil officer now…?”

Rentaro felt bad but casually backed up Kisara, adding, “I was surprised, too.” Shoma didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about the past, but it had been a shock when Shoma, who the master had his eye on, suddenly quit the dojo, and Rentaro would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about how Shoma ended up becoming a civil officer.

“I wasn’t cut out for it,” Shoma said. “That’s all it was.”

Rentaro’s and Kisara’s eyes met. “Sorry, Shoma, bro,” said Rentaro.

“It’s fine.” Shoma said only that, resolutely, forcing the conversation to a close.

Rentaro deeply regretted probing. Within the extraordinary prodigy that Rentaro and Kisara had once been jealous of spread a dark despair. However, there was one more thing Rentaro had to ask him. “The pair that was cut down on the street—was that your doing, Shoma?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

Rentaro sighed with relief and rubbed his chest, shaking his head. “Never mind, don’t worry about it.” Then, suddenly shifting his gaze toward Tamaki, he saw that Tamaki was staring at Kisara, his mouth gaping open.

Yuzuki looked worried and poked Tamaki in the ribs. “What’s the matter, Tamaki?”

“……Yuzuki, it’s a goddess. My goddess is here,” he muttered.

His partner frowned. “Um, Tamaki…is your head feeling okay?”

Suddenly, Tamaki sprang up and went with amazing speed to kneel in front of Kisara. “So lovely, so dignified, so beautiful! On top of that, you’re the boss of the civil officer who defeated the Scorpion. Please, let me call you my angel!”

Kisara tossed her hair and put her hands on her hips, saying haughtily, “It would be problematic for you to call me that.”

“Then at least let me call you ‘ma’am’!”

“Well, I guess that would be okay…”

Tamaki smiled complacently and rubbed his hands together. “Ma’am, shall I massage your shoulders? Or would you like me to prepare a chair for you?”

“Well, I’m hungry, so go buy me some melon bread. Oh, I only like the ones with hard cookie crusts.”

“Gladly!” Tamaki looked like he was being repelled as he flew out of the tent at full speed, and his back looked small in no time.

Rentaro looked disgustedly at Kisara, but Kisara was beaming as she put her palms together in front of her chest. “Look, look, Satomi! I’ve found a new wallet!” Kisara said it with a smile, carefree.

Rentaro scratched his head vigorously, and then put his hands together and gathered everyone’s attention. “Since we have a lot of new faces, I think some introductions are in order.”

When Tamaki returned happily with a piece of melon bread in one hand, they quietly started the introductions. It probably came as a surprise to no one that Tamaki, who liked being the center of attention more than anyone, was most eager to go first.

The chain saws that were powered by small motors embedded in his gloves and shoes were received most unfavorably by their teammates.

Enju covered her ears and shouted, “They’re too loud!”

And Shoma spat, “These are illogical weapons,” and promptly lost interest.

Dejected, Tamaki drew the Mateba gun from his hip and shouted, “This is my big Magnum!” This time, the squad of female soldiers threw rocks at him. His little sister, Yuzuki, turned red with embarrassment and covered her face with both hands.

Next was Yuzuki. She went outside and found two ordinary beech trees, bridging the tops with invisible threads and crossing easily from one side to the other. With cheers and applause erupting around her, the simple-minded Yuzuki bragged, “Well, this is what you get when you mess with me,” and was soon displaying the peak of her ability.

“Hey, we can see your underwear from down here,” Rentaro pointed out. The next instant, there was a high-speed kick that passed through where his neck had just been, and it gave him goose bumps down his spine.

Yuzuki bared her teeth. “Die, you pervert! Die, you Lolita-complex bastard!” flared up at him. If Enju hadn’t practically pinned Yuzuki’s arms to her sides, Rentaro would have been honest to goodness killed.

Real spiders exuded silk from places called spinnerets, but it looked like Yuzuki could exude silk from the tips of her fingers on both hands. A spider’s spinneret was located around where the buttocks or urethra of a human were. As a biology maniac, he was tempted to ask, “Can you produce silk from your anus?” but he had to be prepared to lose his life for that privilege.

Next, it was his turn. He didn’t want to, but he could not hide his abilities from the teammates he would soon be fighting with side by side, so he gave a simple demonstration of what his artificial eye could do and finished quickly. Even with just that, Tamaki, Yuzuki, and Midori, who were seeing it for the first time, were all astounded.

Next was Enju, who stuck out her chest cheerfully and said, “It is my turn at last.” They went outside, and Enju pointed at a single cedar tree standing about five hundred meters away and then released her power. She touched the cedar and came back in seconds.

“She’s even faster than me…” Midori sighed, looking crestfallen.

Enju and Yuzuki, who seemed to have similar personalities to begin with, hit it off almost immediately. Enju and Tina were also friends already, and so were Tina and Yuzuki, so the three of them became a trio in the blink of an eye.

The problem was the remaining Initiator. In short, Midori’s self-introduction was a fracas. Midori was nervous and stiff as she made her way to the front and bowed deeply. “M-m-my name is Midori Fuse. I-I am a Model Cat Initiator, and my special ability is scent divination!”

Scent divination?

“And my IP Rank with Shoma is 970.”

There were sighs of awe from those present. When they were able to overpower their combat opponents without killing them, Rentaro already kind of suspected a high rank, but it was amazing that they were ranked within the top thousand.

Next, Midori showed everyone her ability to retract her nails. Seeing strong nails extend suddenly about 1.5 times the length of her fingers made Rentaro gulp involuntarily.

“You don’t release those nails as far as they can go, do you?” Kisara asked, looking interested.

Midori saw that someone understood her well and broke into a smile for the first time. “You’re right!”

“What do you mean?” Rentaro asked.

Kisara stuck out an index finger proudly. “Satomi, when fighting with weapons, it’s advantageous to keep your opponent from knowing the reach of your attack; in other words, it’s very important to keep your opponent from being able to figure out the distance. You can put pressure on your opponent mentally that way.”

“Really…” He kind of understood, but kind of didn’t.

Next, Enju stuck her hand straight in the air to ask a question. “Are you able to use magic?”

“Magic?” Rentaro repeated back at her dubiously.

“That’s right. I mean, Rentaro, she is wearing a hat like a witch, so she must be able to use magic.” Apparently, she was talking about the pointed hat Midori wore.

The instant her hat was pointed out, Midori became startled for some reason. Shoma shook his head at his partner and admonished her, saying, “Don’t hide anything from your friends.” That seemed to be the last straw, and Midori slowly put her hands on her hat and pulled it off.

Inside the tent, a quiet astonishment spread. On her head, pushing through her hair and pointing straight toward the sky, were two cat-shaped ears. At first, Rentaro wondered if they were fake, but after a while, they folded based on her will, and it dispersed that doubt.

Midori must have been self-conscious about them and hurriedly put her hat back on.

Enju looked at Rentaro as if bewitched. “Is such a thing possible, Rentaro?”

“Yeah, when the Gastrea genes that are mixed in manifest themselves, there are cases where the animal genes are so strong that even the skeletal structure changes. There aren’t many, but they exist. Of the Initiators with bird-type Gastrea genes, there are apparently some who even have wings.”

“I wish I could fly, too…” Tina, who had owl genes, murmured her regret.

The two mischievous girls, Enju and Yuzuki, grinned and tiptoed stealthily behind Midori without her noticing. As Rentaro watched, wondering what they were doing, the two of them whispered, “One, two, three!” and of all things, they pulled down Midori’s skirt as hard as they could. The underwear she was wearing came clean off with the skirt, and in an instant, Rentaro’s vision became filled with a large amount of flesh. To put it concisely, the bottom half of Midori’s body was as bare as a baby’s bottom.

“Neoooooooooooowww!” Midori pulled her long jacket to hide the affected areas and then collapsed starting with her knees.

“Wh-what are you two doing?” Rentaro demanded.

The dumbfounded Enju and Yuzuki did not respond for a while, but finally Enju slowly lifted her gaze and said, “We wanted to check to see if she had a tail, too…”

“I do not have a tail,” Midori said, and then started crying.

Enju and Yuzuki probably just wanted to be friends with Midori. They never thought that they would hurt her feelings, and Enju, having lost her chance to give back the underwear, held them in her fist, nervously pacing back and forth. Finally, she came in front of Rentaro and said, “Here,” holding out the underwear to him and looking depressed.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Here’?! It won’t do any good giving it to me!”

Shoma looked at Rentaro pityingly. “Satomi, have you finally…”

“‘Finally’ what?! I don’t have a Lolita complex!”

And so ended the fracas that was Midori’s self-introduction, and then Shoma, Kisara, and Tina also took turns introducing themselves.

Shoma used the Tendo Martial Arts to cut a tree in half, trunk and all. Kisara showed a sword-drawing slashing attack to cut a boulder ten meters away with a loud reverberation. Tina released Shenfield and shot through a target two kilometers away in one shot with a Barrett antitank rifle, scaring those around her out of their wits.

And so, everyone gave a quick display of the techniques they could use, and Rentaro realized an interesting commonality shared by each pair. It was obvious that Rentaro and Enju were both close-combat specialists to the extreme. If they stayed that way, they would have no way of fighting against mid-to long-range opponents, so as a last resort, Rentaro had started carrying around a pistol. It made them just barely able to also deal with mid-range opponents.

It appeared that the Katagiri siblings and Shoma pair fought with a similar combat ideology. Yuzuki’s spider silk was one of the best abilities for creating a territory, but even so, in order to seal the opponents movements, Yuzuki had to deliver a finishing blow, so it was probably categorized as close range. Her older brother, Tamaki, was also a close-range type, so in order to make up for their weak point, he owned a handgun. The same was true for the Shoma pair (earlier, Shoma had shown them a Sig P226 X-Five gun).

From that point of view, only the Kisara-Tina pair had a different combat ideology. Kisara could attack anything within range of her sword-drawing attack, and had a gun for self-defense. She was a mid-range specialist Promoter. In contrast, Tina was best at long-range fighting, but she could use pretty much any firearm and was an all-rounder.

What should he do in order to draw out the full potential of everyone?

Rentaro was lost in thought when suddenly a man’s voice interrupted, “Excuse me,” next to Rentaro. When he looked, he saw a civilian type of self-defense force official salute and then take a step toward them. “All civil officers who will be participating in the operation must report to the front of the front line headquarters at 1930 hours. This is a summons from Troop Commander Nagamasa Gado.”