Black Bullet - Volume 4 - Chapter 3.2

2

The next day, a black rain poured down on Tokyo Area. The torrential rains drenched Rentaro’s whole body and dripped from the bottom of his chin. He thought about the temperature being 15 degrees Celsius in July and found it hard to believe how cold it was.

However, that was only to be expected. When Rentaro raised his face, he saw a dark, lead-colored sky.

The day before, the enormous Varanium structure, the Monolith, had collapsed. The seriousness of the effects had become clear after a night passed. On the news Rentaro watched in the morning, he learned that when the Monolith collapsed, a large amount of ash from the Monolith had drifted up into the stratosphere and formed a thick cloud. It blocked the sun and looked like it would remain in the sky above Tokyo Area for three days.

The sound of the Monolith’s collapse had been heard even at the edge of Tokyo, and the vibrations from the collapse were felt all across Japan, reaching even Hakata and Hokkaido Areas. The shock wave from the collapse went halfway around the world and was even seen at the weather observatory at Pike’s Peak in Colorado, USA. On a global scale, there was a 0.3 hectopascal rise in atmospheric pressure measured. Based on recent weather observation models, the ashes and sand from the bleached Monolith were carried north by the westerlies and were expected to fall as far north as Hokkaido.

Even the black rain that drenched Rentaro’s body right now was apparently from the ash and sand from the Monolith’s collapse that had been dissolved by the rain and were now falling back down. From the announcement made by the government, there was nothing harmful in it, but he could not tell if that was the truth or not. At the very least, he did not try to whet his thirst with it.

Even more serious was that for the next three days, the sun would not peek out onto the surface of the earth. There was already a gloomy, defeated mood spreading through the civil officer troops who had survived the hell from last night. If at least the weather changed for the better, their moods could be changed so too, thanks to the secretion of serotonin in their brains, but…

The bottoms of their boots were filled with mud, and it felt very uncomfortable.

Rentaro lifted his head and looked around him. The surrounding area was a wide, vast plain, and Promoters were spread out. There was a mountain nearby of raised ground with one side covered with debris, telling the story of how intense the battle had been between the Gastrea and the self-defense force.

Rentaro was walking where the infantry division of the SDF had made camp.

He was sandwiched between body bags for some reason. This morning, only the Promoters were gathered under the pretext of searching for survivors and rescuing those in the base camp.

Everyone had noticed that it was just a pretext to conceal the real reason they were here.

The SDF facilities they were visiting were destroyed, and its officials were mainly lying around in a state where they did not need rescuing. The fact that the Aldebaran army had flooded the civil officer rear guard meant that the fate of the self-defense force that had been the front guard had already been decided, but it was still a shock to see it with his own eyes. They had been completely wiped out by Aldebaran first, after all.

They could not come to an agreement with the Gastrea or take prisoners of war, so once they started fighting, it inevitably became a war of extermination. Thanks to that, there wasn’t really anyone in need of rescue. It was reasonable to assume that most of those who were not here had become Gastrea themselves.

Apparently, the goal given to Rentaro and the other Promoters was to retrieve the corpses before they rotted and spread serious infectious diseases, as well as to send them back to their bereaved families. Rentaro thanked them silently as he tried to gather as many of the parts of the corpses as he could and put them into the body bags one by one. Nevertheless, part of his brain was still stuck on asking why this had happened.

There had been two battles in Kanto already. In the First Kanto Battle, the self-defense force suffered a defeat. In the Second Kanto Battle, the self-defense force had won. During the Second Kanto Battle, the SDF had come up with a strategy to force the Gastrea out and keep them out, so they were confident that they would be able to win the third battle as well. It was hard to believe that they had been defeated so easily this time.

Just what was the difference between the last battle and this one? If they could not determine the cause of the self-defense force’s defeat, there was no way they’d find the clues needed to help them defeat the Gastrea. Moved by instinct that was close to conviction, Rentaro walked around the remains of the battlefield in search of his clue.

Before long, he came across one strange thing after another. A tank was split completely in two. From the sharp cut on it, he thought that it was probably from the Spear of Light. There were also those that had fallen into holes and couldn’t move. Taking a quick look around, he saw that there were self-propelled guns and missile silos that were also in the same situation.

This was probably the work of the Model Mole—the mole Gastrea that Rentaro had also encountered. They dug tunnels until they were right under the weapons of the main force and then scraped away at the dirt to make a hole, inducing the ceiling of the tunnel to cave in. No matter how good the tank treads were on bad roads, they did not appear to be able to get out of deep pitfalls.

Rentaro’s feelings had surpassed fear and had turned into admiration for their superb strategy. With their sniping, the moles had even brought down the general, Hidehiko Gado, in front of Rentaro’s very eyes.

No matter how Rentaro looked at it, they were being led way too well. They were like a single colony of insects. How in the world were they sharing information?

Just then, he felt a prickle in his mind. That’s right, I had thought about this possibility before. If he remembered correctly, that time, he thought they looked like a school of fish that gathered together to look like one giant fish. Suddenly, in the back of his mind, this image overlapped with the image of Aldebaran retreating with its subordinates circling around it like a swarm of mosquitos.

A lightbulb flashed in his head and Rentaro involuntarily raised his voice. Could that be what it was? If that was the case, then Aldebaran’s real ability was—

“Man, this is terrible.” There was a splash, and Rentaro turned his head to see Tamaki Katagiri standing with a grim look on his face. His dark blond hair had gotten darker after being in the black rain, and his face, under his sunglasses, was somber.

Rentaro made a sound of agreement and turned to Tamaki. “Speaking of which, I haven’t thanked you for your help yet.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“With Kisara.”

Tamaki seemed to understand and looked around them, saying, “Sure.”

Rentaro followed Tamaki’s gaze and saw all the Promoters moving slowly, putting the corpses in the body bags. As a Promoter, Kisara should have also been called for this work, but after talking to the higher-ups about it, he convinced Kisara not to go, saying it wasn’t something a girl should be doing.

Kisara put up a fight, but Tamaki helped Rentaro try to convince her, and they somehow settled the matter without incident.

Kisara had said, “What, both of you?” sulkily, but after seeing this scene with human body parts scattered all over the place, he confirmed that his judgment was correct.

Tamaki shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like I did it for you. I did it for her.”

Just then, there was a noise from far away that split the air, and they lifted their faces.

Rentaro had heard this noise before. It was a helicopter rotor. Looking in the direction Tamaki was pointing, he saw a helicopter the size of a bean growing larger and larger. Rentaro saw the logo of the news company on the side of the helicopter and got a bad feeling.

Looking around, he saw that other civil officers had also stopped working and had turned their faces to the sky.

The helicopter passed over Rentaro’s head with a roar that made him want to cover his ears. He couldn’t hear very well with the sound of the rain and the rotor, but a sliding door opened and a reporter shouted something. He could predict what the reporter was saying.

In the first place, humans liked news where they could laugh about others’ mistakes more than they liked news about others doing heroic things. What did the organization that was optimized for getting ratings have to say to the civil officers who couldn’t even be said to have won an easy victory if they were being nice…?

Rentaro gritted his teeth. Damn it, are they here to publicly scorn us? Suddenly, Rentaro was surprised by an explosion at his ear and a roar that moved upward at the same time. Covering his ears and looking next to him, he saw Tamaki looking up with white smoke rising from the muzzle of his Magnum revolver.

Rentaro then heard the hoarse scream of the reporter in the helicopter. Apparently, the bullet had hit inside the helicopter, and the helicopter made a sharp turn and turned tail.

“Shit! In movies, handguns could make military helicopters blow up, but it doesn’t work like that in real life, I guess?” Tamaki muttered.

“You were trying to blow it up?” Rentaro was dumbfounded for a moment, but when his shock subsided, a smile rose to his face.

The civil officers working around them laughed pleasantly and cheered, and that slowly grew louder. Rentaro realized that the stagnant mood that had been on the battlefield had been driven off for a moment, and looked with wonder at Promoter Tamaki Katagiri.