Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 5.04

4

Crushing pebbles under the soles of his shoes, Rentaro came in from behind the pile of chalk construction material. The facility was silent.

Opening the door, Rentaro cut across the C-shaped corridor and walked straight ahead. After a while, he stopped. “Yo.”

“Hey.”

Yuga lay flat against the floor, arms and leg stubs splayed across it. His DSR sniper rifle had slid across the room, abandoning its master for the last time.

“How did the battle turn out? Why…? Why did I…?”

He used his barely functioning head to look at the blasted-open mess that was his torso. “Ahh…,” he groaned, a mix of astonishment and resignation apparent in his breath.

Rentaro had trouble figuring out what to say. This was the man who killed Hotaru. He should have been cursing him. All the hate in the world wasn’t enough for him.

But at the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was that man. Lying down there was a cybernetic-eye user, someone who had to undergo torturous limb upgrades at regular intervals. Someone shunned by his peers.

“If we didn’t have to meet like this, maybe we coulda been friends, huh?”

Yuga closed his eyes, in a comfortable state of repose. “That’s a pretty pointless what-if… But I wouldn’t have minded it.”

“Were you in that white space, too?”

“White space…? No. What are you talking about?”

“…Never mind.”

“Both of my eyes,” Yuga continued, guessing at the portent of Rentaro’s question, “made it up to 1800x. I heard that my eyes could use all my emotions as fuel. They’d rev up and go down, depending. Anger, sadness, hatred, cursing, hope, happiness… But I guess my hatred and feelings of inferiority weren’t enough to outclass your emotions. What did you use to go faster than me?”

“I cared about other people.”

“Well…that’s out of my ballpark,” Yuga chuckled derisively to himself, whispering the words into the air. “No wonder I couldn’t beat you. That last shot… I couldn’t even see your hands between ejection and reloading. That’s how fast it was.”

“…So that’s how your eyes saw it.”

Rentaro decided to change the subject.

“Yuga, what’s the Five Wings Syndicate?”

“It’s an international, cross-political movement. We’re everywhere. There’s no guarantee the people you trust aren’t part of it, either…heh-heh.”

“…You mentioned how the wings around the pentagram on your arm indicated your rank. You had four of those wings, and they took two away from you. What’d you do?”

Yuga emptily chuckled again. “Nothing,” he wheezed. “Like I told you, I was Professor Grünewald’s favorite son up to that point. I got to work by his side. But there was a single confrontation—a single one—and I lost it. They took the wings away, and I was no longer the Professor’s favorite.”

“You lost it? You?”

“Yes. To another Tendo user.”

“Wha…?”

“Remember? ‘I can’t lose to the Tendo style…again’? I wanted to beat you because…well, okay, there was probably some personal emotion there.”

“…What kind of Tendo skill? Sword drawing? Aikido? Divinity? There’re a lot of different types.”

“The same as yours.”

“Martial Arts? You’re kidding me…”

Had anyone else taken on the successor role? He couldn’t think of anyone.

“It took just twelve seconds,” Yuga said with an ironic smile. “I don’t even know how he got close to me. I looked up, and there he was, in point-blank range. Within the first three seconds, he knocked my artificial right arm off and broke my leg. It was all him from that point forward. His martial arts were a lot like yours, too…or not. His were a lot more…sinister.”

“What’s his name?” Rentaro confronted Yuga on the floor. “I need to know his name! Who was the guy that defeated you?”

Then he noticed the sweat glistening on his forehead. His body must have been near its limit. And Yuga had more pressing business than to answer his question.

“Satomi,” he began, “have you ever seen a line of the dead?”

“Huh?”

“Before, before the Professor performed the, mechanization work on me… I told you, I was blind, right? But even though I couldn’t see, I could, this one time…I saw…it. Right after, the war, the people…who were turned into, into Gastrea… They were listed as, as missing, remember? I saw it. Even through my eyelids. They weren’t alive, or…or dead. A line of people, wandering through purgatory. Satomi… Heaven is so, so far away, but hell… I think, I think if I threw a stone right now, I’d hit…it.”

His lips curled upward in a final self-chiding smile.

“This… This is war. Ours, and yours. The Gastrea War is… It’s not, not over at…”

That was all. Yuga spat out a mouthful of blood, and softly opened his eyes, as if it was his duty to do so. He stopped moving. It was the moment Five Wings Syndicate assassin Dark Stalker left the world of the living—and with him came Yuga Mitsugi, the man who may just have been Rentaro’s friend.