“Ange-san!”
Machina had detected someone making a phone call.
No one was going to answer that call, but they managed to
trace who had made the call quickly enough.
It came from the Fujita home – Mutsuki’s family home.
Once they arrived, Mutsuki’s younger sister, Fujita Chiaki,
rushed out. She had been hesitantly watching things outside the house and tears
filled her eyes when she saw someone she knew.
“Are you okay?”
Ange just about asked “you’re still alive?” instead but
caught herself.
“Um, something isn’t right. The TV is weird and I don’t hear
anyone at all talking outside.”
The girl was panicking, but she had not fully grasped the
situation yet. She may have been starting to realize that people had vanished
from the city. Ange patted her on the back to help calm her.
Once she checked inside, she found the Fujita family was
confused, but all five of them were there: father, mother, older sister, younger
sister, and littlest sister.
They had apparently eaten dinner together and started
watching TV as a family when the TV suddenly started acting oddly. A few shows
did not start when they were scheduled to begin. The channels showing recorded
shows continued as normal, but the live news programs all showed empty studios.
The older sister had checked some websites that were updated in real time, but
they had suddenly stopped updating as well.
They had initially assumed there was some kind of trouble,
but things only grew more and more disconcerting and no one answered when they
calling the TV stations. The internet was functioning on the software side of
things, but no one was accessing any of the sites.
It had felt a lot like their family had been cut off from
the world, so they were scared and trying to find a way to escape.
Explaining the situation to the Fujita family would only
scare them, so Lucia snapped his fingers to put the five of them in a deep
sleep. The trio carried them to their respective rooms and placed them in their
beds. They could assume this whole situation was only a dream.
And after placing a stuffed animal in the arms of Mutsumi,
the third sister…
“What does this mean?” asked Ange.
“There is something in common between all of the people
unaffected by this situation,” said Machina.
“Kind of makes me happy,” said Lucia.
The three of them walked outside.
With the Fujita family asleep, Machina could not detect
anyone else in the world connecting to the communications network. They spotted
an airplane that had landed safely, so apparently the pilots were avoiding an
accident and then falling under its effects.
But there were exceptions who were not affected by it:
Fujita Mutsuki’s family, Ange, Machina, and Lucia.
In other words…
“It looks like the people who Mutsuki-kun loved are
unaffected.”
“…”
“Th-that feels too optimistic to me, but I can’t deny the
possibility.”
Ange and Machina blushed and tried to dodge the issue, but
that did best describe the current situation.
It was unlikely Mutsuki had done this consciously. Leaving
his family alone in an otherwise empty world would be dooming them to a living
hell, so something subconscious inside him must have created these exceptions
like some kind of bug in the system.
But what did it mean for this bug to have occurred?
“…”
“What do we do?”
They exchanged a glance.
They knew what they had to do. First, they had to save
transformed Fujita Mutsuki, break free of this situation, and return humanity
to normal.
Thanks to that bug, they were the only ones who could do
that…no, they were the only ones who would want to do it.
But wanting to do it did not tell them exactly what they had
to do.
How could they save Mutsuki now that he had fused with
Lilith? Would they have fight against Micha, Schwarze, and Ren who had sided
with that fusion? And even if it all worked flawlessly, was there any way to
restore the humans who had melted away?
“Let’s head to FeTUS HQ.”
The first to speak up was Machina.
“Is there something there?”
“I do not know, but Miss A told us to return to the
sanctuary. There may be something there.”
“That’s a pretty flimsy hope,” sighed Lucia.
They had too little in the way of guidance, so Ange was
unsure if it was even worth going with Machina.
Drip.
“…?”
But then she felt some wetness on her cheek.
It was water…seawater.
Thinking it was rain, she looked up.
“Huh?”
She saw an enormous structure floating in the night sky, as if placing a lid
over the city.
It was so big that Ange and Lucia could not tell what it
was. Machina was more familiar with artificial objects, so she finally realized
it was a ship. But she could only tell it was the bottom of a super-massive
cruise ship.
However, all three of them could tell where that ship was
headed.
It was moving toward the mountain that overlooked the city.
Which meant it was headed toward Megutono Academy that stood
at the peak.
“Hop on!”
With a powerful sound of scraping metal, three cars parked at nearby houses
changed form.
The engines alone were extracted and they took
grasshopper-like shapes. The driver’s seats moved up to the heads with four
tires surrounding each one.
Machina hopped onto the seat for one and Ange and Lucia
followed suit after a moment of hesitation.
Then the total of 12 tires began rotating at high speed.
The grasshopper engines surrounded by the tires were ejected
like coil shooters. They launched straight toward the mountain. Gravity pulled
them down partway through, but the grasshopper portion detonated the gasoline
in the instant of landing to instantly reaccelerate them.
They arrived at Megutono Academy on the peak faster than the
big but slow-moving ship.
The three of them landed below the familiar clocktower.
At the same time, they saw two people jump down on top of
the clock tower.
“Miss E, Jiyuuni Ange, and Satowa. We are here to meet you.”
“Fujita loves you too and wants you by his side. So come
with us.”
It was Ren and Schwarze. That confirmed who was on that
ship.
“Get in.”
There was no time to chat. Machina made a split-second
decision and opened the tower door.
As soon as the three of them rushed in, the floor within was
split in two. The inside of the tower was designed to act as an elevator to the
lower level, so slicing the floor naturally created a pit straight down.
While the three fell, they could see Schwarze and Ren
pursuing them.
“I was hit by a barrage of defenses last time I was here!”
“And I will use those to delay them. …If I can.”
FeTUS HQ’s alarms blared at the presence of three intruders.
Shutters covered up the pit and an electric current rushed in to attack.
Machina reached out a hand and the Witch’s command had the
shutters pause just long enough for the three of them to pass through and then
shut tight. The anti-angel electric current was reprogrammed to wait until
those three had passed and then be emitted upwards.
“It’s no use, Miss E!”
The closed shutters were carved through in mere seconds and the two new
intruders passed through. The waves of electric current were shredded with
claws and a sword.
FeTUS Witches Misses B and C did not waste the time to
unlock the path ahead, so they destroyed the defenses instead.
Even while forcibly breaking their way through, they moved
faster than the three who were simply falling.
“What do we do now?”
“I want time to search for whatever Miss A was talking about
once we arrive in the sanctuary. You will have to stop them here, Jiyuuni-san.”
“Don’t blame me if I kill them!”
Ange raised Prominence toward those charging in at her.
“Syzygy!!”
The fire burning within her sword turned to plasma and erupted
out.
It grew to a beam large enough to fill the entire elevator
shaft and was launched upwards. It took less than a second for it to envelop
the two pursuers.
The inside of that was hotter than the center of the sun. Not
even FeTUS had heat-reduction devices capable of enduring that, so the only
defense was to transport the dimension itself like Machina did. But they would
have to first stop their fall to create a “staring point” for that transport.
Or they should have.
“Lancelot!!”
“Eh? Wait!”
Lance-wielding Ren charged straight down the center of the
beam.
Ange panicked when her collar was grabbed. Machina was
surprised and distracted too, but…
“We are here because Adam has given us life. Do not defy
him, for that is defying the very laws of nature.”
“Gh!”
Schwarze also caught up and grabbed Machina’s hand.
Machina tried to send out golden thread to bind her, but the
thread unraveled and vanished like dust as soon as if touched Black Cat’s skin.
“The Anti-Code? That was fast.”
“This is the law of nature. Defying us is defying your very
nature as a living being.”
All of FeTUS’s tools were programmed machines. There was an
Anti-Code that would neutralize all of them and all of the Witches could use
it.
However, it was supposed to take a fair amount of time to
insert the code, but Miss C had done it in an instant. Even though that had
never been her forte since she preferred to fight more directly.
Those two’s energy boost had been far greater than they
imagined.
“Tch. Adam’s doping? Play fair!”
“What a rude thing to say. Obeying him is an inevitability
for and the duty of all women.”
Ange tried to resist, but she could not at all keep up with
Miss B’s speed or strength, despite having fought on equal footing with her
just a few weeks earlier.
The women chosen by Adam could draw out more than 100% of
their body’s strength. That power had helped Ange a few times in the past, but
now it was working in those two.
“Come with us. We can live in eternal bliss with Fujita.”
And more than that, their enthusiasm was much greater.
While the fleeing three were only trying to get away, Ren
and Schwarze truly thought they were doing the right thing.
“I realized over the past five days that this world has gone
insane. When those men were introduced to ‘Haramiya Koishi’ as a girl with the
misfortune to be born poor, not one of them felt a twinge of sympathy. They
laughed, greedily indulged in her body, and said nothing at all to her while
thanking the man who had sold her to them.”
“Society is fundamentally broken. I was created to kill
people more efficiently. The politicians who used me to bring down their rivals
are now heroes in their countries. The people who kill most efficiently and
deceive most effectively are the ones who receive all the praise.”
“People’s souls have been corrupted by discord. They are
corrupted to the core by original sin.”
“Fujita is attempting to correct that, so you should help.
This is the only way to rid the world of its insanity. We can only rely on the
Perfect One!”
“Jiyuuni, you must understand. Metatron, the flame of
indignation at the source of your power, is supposed to be anger toward the
world’s discord.”
“…”
Ange flinched when they touched on her personal weak point.
Only once it was put to words did she realize that she and
Metatron were the same as the people supporting Fujita Mutsuki now.
They were the same as her when she turned herself into an
all-destroying bomb out of her rage toward the human world.
They said Mutsuki was the one who had felt that same rage
and turned himself into a being who could change it all.
“Oh, shut the hell up.” Lucia flipped around while falling
and circled behind Schwarze and Ren. “Who cares about the laws of nature? I
love Mutsuki-kun, and that’s why I don’t like what’s going on here.”
He sent a karate chop toward the back of their heads to end this instantly.
His karate chops could pass through flesh, so they could
directly attack the human nervous system. A single attack could knock them out.
“!?”
Except his attack was stopped before they hit.
An arm grew from Schwarze’s back and grabbed his hand. It
was a slender, female arm.
“Ohhhhhhh!”
A moment later, the arm grew as thick as a log and punched
Lucia away.
The power was great enough to cancel out the energy of his
fall and he was launched upwards. The arm returned to normal thickness while
the owner reverted her tall body to normal size while riding on Schwarze’s
back.
And she fixed her maid uniform that had shifted out of
place.
“You too, Miss D?”
“Please stop this resistance, Miss E. FeTUS exists to stabilize the human world
and the time for our greatest task has finally arrived.”
It was Daima Makoto. There had been three Witch pursuers
from the beginning, but she had shrunk down to hide behind Schwarze.
The fall ended just them. The five of them landed at the
bottom level of FeTUS HQ, a hallway lined with countless doors. Lucia landed a
short time later.
They glared at each other – three against three.
“What are we supposed to find here!?” asked Ange.
“We need time to search, but it does not look like we will
get it,” replied Machina.
“Tch. They’re only human. I can stop them by myself,” said
Lucia.
Being punched must have pissed him off because he stepped
out in front.
But Makoto did not seem remotely intimidated by a demon,
despite the supposed compatibility issue. She adjusted her white lace glove
that continued past her elbow, and…
“That is impossible.”
A moment later, her fist grew large enough to fill the
entire hallway.
Lucia and the other two stared in shock as that fist was
mercilessly swung their way.
They were sent flying.
Ange and Machina put up their guards and Lucia tried to
escape by turning himself to liquid, but all three were launched with the exact
same force. The glove must have been made to repel water, so Lucia could not
get to her skin.
“Gh…damn her.”
“Miss D was the final guardian of this sanctuary. That means
her abilities have been customized to be most effective within the HQ.”
“I would prefer not to punch students, but you leave me no
choice.”
She raised her left hand and it too grew large enough to
fill the hallway.
It was large and powerful.
She had a power boost from Adam, but there was also no way
to defend against this simple attack. At this rate, they would be knocked out
by the simple impact rather than anything related to skill.
“Get inside where we have some defenses!”
Machina struck the floor.
A door down the hallway flew open to reveal a grassy field
and blue sky.
The three of them rushed inside simultaneously. The fist was
too large to fit through the door, but the doorframe was shattered from the
blow.
From the field side, the door itself disappeared as soon as
the frame was destroyed. They had temporarily managed to isolate themselves
from their pursuers.
“They’ll be in here soon, so we need to search! Miss A must
have left something for us!”
“But what!?”
They had escaped in here, but the grassy field really was
just that. Miss A’s beloved table sat in the center. It contained a washed tea
set and a few cookie tins. A game of chess sat there unfinished and the stuffed
rabbit she always played against was there too.
A new door appeared in the grassy field. Without bothering
to check who had accessed it, Machina bound it in gold thread to prevent it
from opening.
Ange and Lucia searched for “something”, but that was
difficult when they did not know what it was. They checked all around the
field, but it was only a hologram.
Once accessed, it disappeared to reveal a hall with playing
card patterns on the floor. That was the place Ange had burned before.
The only thing that remained unchanged was the table. Ange
and Lucia ran over, assuming there was something in the tea set or chess set.
At the same time, a hole was blasted in the wall rather than
the bound door.
Misses B, C, and D rushed in.
“Kh.”
They were trapped. They would have to fight, even though
they had already been shown how outmatched they were.
Ange, Machina, and Lucia stood side by side and the three
Witches faced them.
“Myrddin.”
Ren’s lance returned to being a short sword.
“Prominence – Loop!”
Ange split her large sword into two blades to fight back.
“Shut up.”
“!?”
A third party’s voice was suddenly heard in the sanctuary.
It was a quiet, mumbled voice. Ange and Lucia did not even
hear it. Ange rushed to strike Ren with her dual swords.
But Ren did not even raise her weapon.
In fact, the three Witches – no, all four Witches including
Machina – had stopped moving altogether.
They could not move. They could clench their teeth, but
changing their expression was about all they could do.
Their clothes had suddenly become as hard as rock. They had
received a fair amount of muscular modification, but witches were generally
powerless without their tools, so they were motionless.
“Yahhhhhhhhh!”
But Ange did not notice and continued rushing in.
“Stop that, you savage!”
Ren’s short sword flew from her hand like it had a mind of
its own and it blocked the slash.
“Wait, eh!?”
The scabbard flew toward Ange as well, and with enough speed that she needed both swords to block them. She panicked.
But Ren was even more surprised.
“Excalibur!? Impossible! That’s a hidden code!”
This interception did not seem to be her idea.
Ange put some distance between them and the sword returned
to its scabbard, which then reattached itself to Ren’s hip as if to say its job
was complete.
The battle ended calmly.
“You?”
Lucia was the first to realize who was speaking.
The stuffed rabbit on the table had an obvious red light in
its eyes.
“What is all this hubbub about? Oh, an angel and demon have
gotten in. Do something about that, will you? I really would prefer not to be
burned like last time.”
There was no tension at all in its voice, but it had also
kept the four Witches frozen from the moment it began moving. All six people
there were dumbfounded.
“Who are you? Was Miss A…telling us to meet you?”
Miss A had always had this partner by her side while having tea here. She had
also sometimes played chess with it. But none of them had known it had a mind
inputted into it.
The four Witches were confused and the rabbit blinked its
red eyes.
“Miss A? Oh, yes.” It must have realized who they meant.
There was a hint of sadness in its voice. “Henriette… Yes, she is dead. She
held out for quite a long time, but it seems her time finally came.”
“Dead?”
Machina had not been there, so she alone gasped. The other
three seemed to have already accepted it in some way, but hearing it stated so
bluntly must still have been hard. A shadow fell over their faces.
The rabbit picked up on the situation based on the
differences in their expressions and its red eyes flashed.
“Ugh.”
With a quiet groan, Ren, Schwarze, and Makoto fell to their
knees.
At the same time, Machina could move once more and stumbled
in place.
“What did you do to those three?”
They had fallen and she had been freed. She appreciated that the rabbit had
taken her side, but she was still worried about those enemies who were like big
sisters to her.
“I injected them with wormwood. They have simply fallen
asleep with a nice, lightheaded feeling. They will wake back up in two or three
hours.”
A close look showed the three of them were indeed only
sleeping. They had apparently been given a knockout code through their hardened
clothing.
Even with the boost from Adam’s power, they had been
defeated so easily.
Ange and Lucia had no idea what was going on, but they knew
enough to be cautious of this extraordinary newcomer.
“I detected abnormal values in the sleeping trio’s physical
abilities. And here we have an angel, a demon, and the child who left surgical
scars on Henriette’s stomach. I can only conclude that the time of Adam is upon
us.”
“At least we don’t have to explain that.”
“Please have a seat. But given my form, you will have to
prepare your own tea.”
The previous hologram rebooted and the grassy field returned.
Miss B and the other two collapsed Witches were left behind
and did not enter the field. Ange and Lucia put away their weapons for the time
being.
The three of them sat at the table.
The stuffed rabbit’s eyes continued to flash. It was
apparently using the network to gather information on the current state of the
world.
“Who are you? I don’t know much about computers, but are you
what they call an AI?”
Ange and Machina remained cautious, but Lucia spoke casually
to it since he could shrug off an attack from a machine.
“I am nothing as old-fashioned as artificial intelligence.
The evolution of life inevitably approaches a breaking point and intelligence
is no different. Creating intelligence means creating a child that will
eventually take its own life.” The rabbit’s eyes shined as it opened a tin of
cookies. “In the end, all human actions – be it going to space, creating
people, or constructing a virtual intelligence – comes back to earning their
daily bread. By growing and harvesting wheat. Civilizations role is to develop the
techniques and intelligence needed to mix that wheat with sugar, bake it, and
create delicious cookies.”
It was apparently multifunctional because it picked up a
cookie and bit into it with its front teeth. Whatever the structure of its
mouth was like, it ate the cookie up.
“Henriette loved to find out what kind of soil would produce
the most wheat. On the other hand, I preferred creating the most efficient
sickle for harvesting that wheat.”
“!”
Machina reacted to that.
The rabbit referred to Miss A as Henriette. That was a name
that 600-year-old Alice Arc had used for about 100 years during the 17th
century. That was right about when she had established FeTUS.
Machina knew the name of the Witch who had helped her do
that. While Alice had worked hard to create the soil that was FeTUS, that
individual had been in charge of combat and had developed Witches’ wisdom and
weapons, such as the springs that were much like the sickles to harvest the
wheat grown from that soil.
“Are you…Miss Y?”
“Miss Y? You mean of that Y Device?”
Ange recognized that name. The Y Device had given them the most trouble in
their fight against FeTUS.
“You could say I am a copy of a someone’s memories. I have
no way of saying how similar I am to the original, though. …Oh, could you bring
me some chocolate?”
“Yes, yes. …Wait, this box is nothing but hard candy.”
“Really!? Oh, Henriette, you ate my chocolate, didn’t you?
You always would eat everything and replace it all with hard candy.”
Lucia was relaxed and seemed to get along with the rabbit
fairly well, but…
“But enough about who I am. I am more curious about who you
are.”
The red eyes directed at the boy were unliving balls of
glass, but they held a sharpness that seemed to see right through him.
“You have the same DNA sequence as Eve’s womb, the Holy
Grail that Henriette spent her entire life creating. Since you appear to be a
demon, could it be?”
Machina’s eyes widened upon hearing he had the same DNA
sequence as Eve.
Lucia also looked somewhat surprised. But only that his
secret had been discovered. It only made him scratch the back of his head.
“Are you…the previous Eve?”
“Seems that way. Or at least my body is.”
He moved his hand in front of his face and the skin of that
hand, that face, and the rest of his body grew brown. His androgynous build
grew rounder and more feminine.
“It apparently belonged to a girl named Lucya who was chosen
by Avalon, the Adam from a few thousand years ago,” he calmly explained.
“Although I had my female cells sealed away. Oh, but I can turn back pretty
easily. The seal placed on me by that old hag Lilith is coming undone. I think
she doesn’t care much about me anymore.”
Machina and Ange both stared.
Machina’s was the obvious reaction. FeTUS had spent so long
gradually developing the Holy Grail needed to save humanity from the rivalry,
yet the original they were trying to reproduce had been so close by.
As for Ange…
“That’s the perfect person to keep around Adam. Although
sealing away your sex kind of defeats the purpose.”
“Lilith set that up. She was thankful she had created me,
but she lacked confidence in herself. She was afraid Mutsuki-kun – that is,
Adam – would choose me again since I was young and she had grown so old. That’s
why she tried to restrict me by making me a guy.”
“I see.”
The other two were still too shocked to say much, but Miss Y
seemed to have figured something out. Her eyes stopped glowing for a bit as she
began to think.
But she stopped that line of thought before finishing.
“So this boy is what remains of Eve and Miss E is an
Eve-based clone.” She looked to Ange. “Then who are you?”
“Eh? Who am I? I’m Jiyuuni Ange of the angel combat
division.”
“Is that all? Hm, your DNA is normal, your parents were some
nobodies, and you have nothing special about you save for your exceptional
Fruit of Knowledge.”
“Well, excuse me for having nobody parents. Not that I ever
knew them.” Ange was angry, but then she calmly continued. “I was simply made
Fujita Mutsuki’s bodyguard because I was in the combat division.”
“And no other reason?”
“Um…”
Finally, she recalled something that had flashed through her
mind earlier.
She was different from those other two.
The world had changed based on Fujita Mutsuki and his Adam
DNA. With the exception of this rabbit since she was not a living creature, all
life forms around the world had been changed.
The only people unaffected were Mutsuki’s family, Lucia
whose DNA was closest to the Adam DNA, and Machina whose womb was a duplication
of that.
She alone did not fit in there.
“…”
What did that mean?
She was not sure if she understood that or not. She bit her
lip and looked away from those flashing eyes.
Had anyone noticed the flush to her cheeks?
“Well, no matter.” The stuffed rabbit turned back toward
Lucia. “The current Adam boy, Fujita Mutsuki, is both Adam and a modern human.
That means the source of his bloodline is the previous pair: Avalon and Lucya.”
“Oh, so I might be able to physically interfere with him even
now.”
“If that body is based on Fujita-kun, then it contains a
large number of your cells after you healed him so many times. The possibility
is high.”
Lucia and Machina began working out a plan.
Mutsuki’s cells contained a large number of Lucia’s cells.
Enough to change his biological sex.
Lucia could get in there. And only into the Mutsuki part of
that Mutsuki-Lilith mixture.
And if he could get in there…
“O’clock, lend Miss E your power.”
It was not visible in the grassy field hologram, but the
giant rabbit decoration in the actual hall leaned forward. It entered the field
and made a straining sound as it stood up.
“Hee hee. This is my greatest masterpiece. I assure you it
has a 100% chance of defeating any intelligent being.”
Miss Y tossed Machina a pocket watch she had pulled from
somewhere.
It needed to be wound and the second hand ran a little slow.
“Thank you. You can entrust Miss A’s will with us.”
Machina tightly wound it.
“Hmph. Her will is not what matters.”
That was apparently the startup switch. When the giant
rabbit began to move, the stuffed one turned to the side.
She faced the rocking chair Miss A always used.
She said nothing more, so the others took a step back.
Lucia, Machina, and even Ange did.
“That takes care of the three Witches, but he’s bound to
have a few angels defending him,” said Ange.
“I will deal with them,” said Machina. “FeTUS and Miss A have
spent centuries researching how angels use their flames and how to control
them. The result of all that research resides within me.”
“Once we find Mutsuki-kun, I’ll contact him,” said Lucia.
“I’ll find some way of drawing that old hag Lilith out of him. And then…”
“Defeating demons is an angel’s job.”
They knew what they had to do.
The only remaining opponents were the living being closest
to being classified as a god and Michael, the glorious sword of heaven that
humanity worshiped like a god.
They could not imagine how outmatched they would be here,
but they had been given the will to fight back.
They were proud of that fact alone, which only solidified
their resolve.
They were proud that they wanted to save Mutsuki.
When the grassy field hologram disappeared, they saw the
hole in the collapsed elevator hall outside the half-destroyed hall.
If they looked up through there, they were sure to see the
ship on which he rode.
They brought their feet together and leaped outside.
“…”
But the other two failed to notice that Ange alone seemed
somehow distracted.
Happy new year :)
ReplyDeleteTBH Lilith is like my favorite character now.
ReplyDelete