Volume 17, 4: Or a Taboo Brings Peace - Salvage_XXX(1/3)
Part 1
A high school boy like Kamijou had no way of calculating the sum total of the potential and kinetic energy dropped on the earth or how far the damage and effects to the surface would spread. So he spoke the conclusion that even a high school mind could comprehend.
“You overdid it, you idiot!! Luca said she’d lend you her chest if you wanted to cry! Just because you’re in love is no reason to use the entire earth as a punching bag!!!!!”
“U-um, I was kind of imagining a calmer sort of crying. I wasn’t planning on lending my chest to anything that aggressive...”
The pirate girl also must have been frightened by the impact of that hard punch because she was acting oddly and her voice was trembling.
Love was a frightening thing.
Kamijou spotted a torn memo pad among the scattered rubble, so he crouched down.
“What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.”
The area overhead was cracked so wide open that it was easy to forget they were underground. He held back unathletic Fran who kept trying to move out ahead and then he and Luca finally found the door out of the rubble-filled hangar. There must have been an electric lock, but the door had bent and fallen out of place from the previous impact.
“Wow. How powerful was that impact?”
“This isn’t going to trigger a volcanic eruption, is it?”
The stairway unit was made from steel, but it had just barely retained its shape. They set foot on the stainless steel steps and began the long, long journey.
Kamijou realized Fran was no longer asking to be carried.
Something really must have changed inside her.
When they opened the door out onto the surface, everything was dark.
“That isn’t going to bring on an ice age like a meteor strike, is it? The ice age prediction was supposed to be misinformation.”
“It’s already around 5. The sun would normally have set by now. It is midwinter after all.”
It was hard to tell whether the wreckage they saw belonged to the meteorological observatory or the space station. Kamijou almost suspected the world had ended. It was fortunate that the only people here had been the abnormal former Kamisato Faction and Useful Spider. Any normal people would have been killed instantly.
“This is no time to be glad everyone survived. That means they’re going to pursue us after this.”
As she explained that, Luca pulled one of the small motor sharing carts from the wreckage. They had come from Useful Spider, so it was not surprising some spares would be stored here.
The pirate girl was the driver again, so Kamijou and Fran clung to the roll bar from the side.
“Go, go. Let’s go,” said Fran. “Roar! Let’s wipe them all out!”
“I kind of feel bad for Kamisato since he got confessed to and rejected without getting a say in the matter...!”
The cart was situated so low to the ground that it could not drive over even a coffee can on its side, so it had trouble in the rubble. After weaving left and right to avoid the wreckage, they finally made it to the road down the mountain.
Unlike on the way up, their excess weight actually helped. They picked up more speed than expected, the small tires screeched at the sharp curves, and Kamijou felt the squeezing at his heart return.
A high-pitched sound like a distant roaring echoed through the mountains. It came from the peak of the mountain.
“They’re beginning their pursuit. Watch out behind us!”
“I’ll take the shot when it comes to it, but you’ll load the bullet with the ramrod, right?”
“I’m not even sure what a ramrod is, but if I screw it up, it won’t blow off your fingers, will it?”
And as they discussed that, a beautiful beast slid down the slope next to them and charged right toward the cart.
Kamijou saw gorgeous long blonde ringlet curls and a dress colored a toxic blood red. She was dressed like a princess, but she ran on all fours, bared her canine teeth, growled, and went right for the throat like a beast. This girl had perfectly combined the two conflicting aspects of human and wolf.
“Mary...!?”
“Mhn!!”
Kamijou heard a strange voice while time seemed to stop.
He saw Fran pull an antenna rod from the side of her overstuffed backpack and she used that to strike the wealthy wolf on the side of the face as she tried to tear out Kamijou’s Adam’s apple. There was little force behind the blow, but the element of surprise had been effective. Mary was thrown off target, so she rolled and bounced a few times along the road before getting up like nothing had happened. She then kicked off the ground with all four limbs and pursued them with ferocious intensity.
Fran swung the antenna rod in a circle and began provoking the wolf girl for some reason.
“Curse that evolutionary Turbo Granny. I’ll aim for a homerun right off the cliff next time!”
“Fran’s been awakening in a weird direction! Aren’t people supposed to turn into a calmer adult when that happens!? Like a school doctor!!”
“School doctors are only seen as sexy because there’s a bed in the infirmary,” argued Luca. “Don’t get distracted by the decorations and lose sight of their true essence.”
“No! It’s the warmth of nursing you back to health when you’re weakened by a sudden cold that makes them so attractive to boys!! And that same aspect applies to dorm managers!!”
Meanwhile, the next one arrived.
While they were forced to drive full speed down the dangerous mountain road, a giant form stepped over their heads.
A far-too-giant human foot shook the earth.
Maya, the girl in white burial clothing, had grown so large they had to look up to see her properly.
Kamijou nearly forgot this was real.
It felt like having the Statue of Liberty chasing them around.
“What the hell is going on!?”
“Maya’s Censers should have been crushed when my station crashed...”
“You didn’t know?”
They could not slow down, so Luca pressed down on the gas even harder.
“In addition to her Censers, she maintains her own scent just in case. That’s why she’s always munching on vegetable sticks and sipping at sweet drinks. You’ve heard what you eat can change how you smell, right!?”
“Damn her. I always thought she was showing off her femininity by eating nothing but fruits and vegetables, but it was for this!?”
“You didn’t notice how bitter she was watching you eat as much meat and fish as you liked? And how you view a ghost without a physical body completely changes depending on where you start from. The status of a ghost in a ghost story depends on how the story got started and where it came from, right? The Censers are like an artificial ‘haunted location’. Think of it like a prism that separates light. Depending on how you mix and distribute the parts, a harmless wandering ghost can turn into a spirit that shakes an entire nation!”
“Her body is supported by a sweet smell and her body produces that sweet smell... Hm? Hmm??? What? Isn’t that like a chicken and egg situation!?” complained Kamijou.
“That’s why Maya has no weaknesses and no one can stop her once she gets her perpetual motion machine up and running with that endless cycle. She can maintain an invincible status that would warrant building a shrine and worshiping her as a god.”
“And who ever said the smell coming from Maya’s body is sweet?” asked Fran. “You make too many assumptions about girls.”
“Even if she’s an enemy, I believe in that ephemeral ghost girl’s femininity!!”
Far from ephemeral, she was stomping around like a kaiju, so it would be all over if that monster stepped on them. Even a large tour bus would be squashed so flat it would be indistinguishable from the road. As they watched, her steel pylon of a leg swung like a pendulum. As soon as Kamijou realized she was kicking like a soccer player, it happened.
A large portion of the mountain’s slope was torn away.
It went beyond who or what she was attacking.
The bedrock shattered from the frightening force of the blow and pieces of stone larger than suitcases poured down like rain. The curving mountain road was hard enough to navigate already, so the small cart swerved wildly to the left and right.
Kamijou thought he was dead. An experience one only wished to go through once in a lifetime continued on and on without end. Even with time slowing to a crawl, Kamijou realized he could not sense each and every impending death. He grew accustomed to the feeling and they all shot right past him. His heart could not keep up with this deadly ride that came rushing at him at such high speed.
“Curse Maya. She’s not paying much attention to her feet after growing so big.”
“Yeah, she has pretty large breasts, so when she stops hunching forward and stands up straight, she can’t see her feet and ends up tripping.”
“Bff!! Cough, cough!!”
Kamijou briefly heard some unfortunate chatter, but he refocused on the battle soon thereafter.
“B-but Maya’s firepower is top class, so she’ll get someone else to target for her so she doesn’t waste her attacks.”
“My money is on that tracer Ellen. The two of them together would be like a ballistic missile and radar.”
The trip down the mountain path was much faster.
In no time, they left the mountain and entered the streets of Academy City on the cart.
Part 2
“Yes.”
Below the Windowless Building, Kihara Yuiitsu stretched and spoke.
“While pretending to fear me and making me the villain, are they starting to grow accustomed to the cruel stimuli?”
Part 3
Kamijou’s group wished to retrieve the original A.A.A. from the District 11 container yard and use it to create the magical tunnel needed to rescue Kamisato. With their base in that state, Useful Spider would be unable to continue guarding the containers.
Kamijou and the girls raced through the powerless streets with no traffic lights.
There seemed to be quite a few people driving in makeshift races that had no bearing on the recovery, but this was entirely different. A girl in a red dress moving on all fours was easily keeping up with a four-wheel cart powered by a 50cc engine, a magical girl was flying overhead with a jet engine on her wand, a girl in a suit of armor and covered in weapons was riding a military horse, a young wife in a swimsuit and apron was sliding along the road in ice boots, 10 yen coins filled the sky like a flock of wild birds and poured down one after another, and a vengeful spirit the size of a high-rise building was pursuing them from behind. Anyone who did not get out of their way now had to be suicidal. Someone like that would clearly lack the fundamental human ability to learn.
“This looks like the Hyakki Yakou! We’re going to start a new legend!!”
The most dangerous one may have been Ellen the Tracer. She had no direct combat skill, so she had hitched a ride with the girl who was controlling a mechanical lizard the size of a semi-trailer truck. It was unclear how accurate she was during this car chase, but they could not assume they would lose their pursuit just by turning a corner. These girls would continue chasing them forever. And Ellen also increased the accuracy of the powerful but hard-to-aim people like Maya, so she was too large a risk to ignore.
“Luca, do you have a countermeasure!?”
“I’m already doing it!”
“Fran, I want your opinion as a magician this time. The keys are the original A.A.A. and a Caribbean magician. Do you think we can save Kamisato with Luca’s help?”
“Don’t underestimate a girl experiencing the high of announcing her broken heart.”
“I see,” said Kamijou with a smile.
He too made up his mind.
“Then leave the rest to me.”
It was a mystery where the functioning vehicle had come from, but a giant yellow school bus charged into the intersection from the side.
“Deborah... That trucker girl!!”
The pirate girl’s eyes widened. The cart took a sharp turn and slipped right under the bumper of the approaching bus.
Or it should have.
But while clinging to the same roll bar, Fran saw Kamijou Touma let go and use the momentum of the turn to leap toward the school bus.
If he had jumped toward the hard windshield, he would have been killed instantly.
The side windows were intentionally made more fragile so they could be broken to escape if the bus sank, but Kamijou’s forehead was still split open when he broke through one of them head first. But he gained something worth the price. With a loud shattering sound, he and a sea of glass rolled inside the deadly weapon on wheels. With blood flowing down his face, he grabbed at the driver.
“Wah! Dammit, you...!!”
“Sorry. I regret only running from the High Priest. And because I stayed silent and watched with Kamisato, I can’t escape the weight bearing down on my back. I’m sick of that sort of thing!!”
It was unclear how strong Deborah was, but she could not do much while focused on driving the bus. When he grabbed at her, the large wheel spun wildly and the mass of steel lost its balance. It swerved nearly perpendicular to the road, rolled onto its side, and slid along while making a mess of everything on the inside and outside.
The armor girl’s horse was nearly hit by the sliding bus, so she frantically pulled on the reins, lost control, and fell from her steed. Wolf Girl Mary tried to slip past the bus on the side just as the back of the bus ran into a pile of white sand. The bus hopped up irregularly and betrayed Mary’s expectations. The heavy mass hit her like a roundhouse kick and the quadruped in red dress and blonde ringlet curls was thrown through a nearby building’s window.
The driver named Deborah had long since passed out.
Kamijou grabbed the fire extinguisher kept inside the bus, smashed the window that was pointing up now that the bus was on its side, and climbed up on top. He brushed up his bangs that were wet with his own blood. The giant mechanical lizard jumped over the bus like it was a hurdle and the broom-riding cosplayer passed by overhead. A weird bicycle where the rider lay on their back – he thought it was called a recumbent bicycle – approached next. He threw the fire extinguisher at the rider, scored a direct hit, borrowed the bicycle from the girl who slammed into a pile of white sand, and righted the bicycle in both hands. He could never get used to how the pedals were located out front where the handlebars would normally be. He made a few imitative attempts and managed to start riding it while lying on his back and looking down toward his feet.
“What is with this bike? This is going to hurt my neck...!”
He had trouble getting going, but it was stable enough once he was up to speed. And this seemed to be a racing model, so as he changed the gears, he felt like the sharp wind was blowing by even faster than in the cart. Elza growled like a beast and her fingers passed right by him, but his throat just barely escaped. He drove on out ahead.
He raced toward the giant lizard that Ellen was riding.
That was when the night air whirled unnaturally overhead.
“Ma...ya...!?”
After seeing Fran’s station fall, it may have been wrong to compare something to a meteor so readily, but the foot dropping vertically toward him really was like a meteor. The one strike took out entire piles of white sand, smashed the asphalt, and caused the buildings to creak, suggesting either their earthquake-absorbing structures or their actual foundation had been taken out.
“Stay away...”
The ground itself, and not just the recumbent bicycle, hopped up.
Keeping himself from falling off the special bicycle was the most he could manage.
“Stay away from our Kamisato-kun!!!!!!”
But the roaring vengeful spirit still had poor aim. If Luca was to be believed, Maya had not crushed Kamijou underfoot because her breasts were too big to see anything down there, but he could not rely on that coincidence again and again.
(Is Luca having trouble too?)
They could not communicate by cellphone and he did not have a navigation system displaying her position, but if he followed the former Kamisato Faction, he could gain a general idea of where Luca and Fran’s cart was fleeing. They had clearly strayed from the shortest route to District 11. They seemed to be fleeing in circles.
Whatever the horsepower of the moped-sized 50cc engine, it had to have great fuel efficiency. They would not run out of gas so easily, but the driver’s willpower was a different matter. They needed to lose their pursuit sooner rather than later. The tracer was preventing that, so Kamijou had to eliminate Ellen.
And with his own wheels, catching up to her was not that difficult. After all, Ellen herself was busy tracking the cart out ahead. Since she could not choose her own course, it was obvious who had the advantage.
Kamijou pedaled the racing recumbent bicycle at tremendous speed and kept the mechanical lizard in his sights. Then he thought he heard the girl in the baggy lab coat click her tongue.
“Tch!! Maya, add a +3 correction. I’ll tell you their estimated loca-...”
She trailed off and pushed the radio away from her ear while flinching from a loud noise.
“Oh, curse you, Fran!! She’s jamming us from her backpack!!”
Kamijou was not the only one fighting.
While the large lizard slowed down, Kamijou pedaled the racing bicycle and caught up. He rode up alongside it.
“Lime!!”
With that shout, the large lizard swung its tail.
Kamijou’s recumbent bicycle was thrown through the air. With a normal bicycle, his legs would have been smashed along with the frame, but the strange design paid off here. Since he was lying on his back, the bicycle below him was destroyed, but it did not reach Kamijou himself.
In fact, he remained right there in the air like with a Daruma Otoshi doll and he fell on top of the lizard’s thick tail.
He was fully focused on his task.
He clung onto the tail as it desperately tried to shake him off, but then it reacted to Imagine Breaker. With no brakes, the running lizard fell apart and scattered across the road, momentum intact.
Kamijou slammed into a pile of white sand.
“God...dammit...”
(I can’t let it end here. None of it is over yet. I haven’t saved anyone...)
He felt woozy after the blow to his entire body, but he forcibly gathered his thoughts and got back up.
He saw a small form similarly standing in the darkness.
“...Ellen.”
“Why is it you...?”
Unlike Kamijou, she had slid across the asphalt and had to have taken a lot of damage. Even so, she got up. There was great resentment in her voice and a light burned in her eyes. She supposedly had no direct ability to fight, but she stood back up on pure willpower.
“You aren’t Fran and you aren’t Luca. Why does it have to be you, the one who doesn’t understand anything...?”
“How should I know?” spat out the spiky-haired boy. “But if I had to say, maybe it’s because their true battlefield lies elsewhere. I promised them they could leave the rest to me, so I’ll take care of this entire pain-in-the-ass warmup round. That way Fran and Luca can focus on Kamisato.”
“Fran was lying to us...”
“So what?”
“If she hadn’t guided Kamisato-han here, none of that would have happened!! He matters more than my life, so I can’t leave his fate in her hands!!”
“Isn’t that all the more reason to give her a chance to make up for what she did? She wanted to be one of you, but she couldn’t. Yet she still found herself smiling happily with the rest of you, so can’t she do something here!? Kamisato asked me to take care of you girls. And Fran asked me to help bring her love to an end. None of you could be more stupid, so I’ve got to stick with you all to the end. I’ve steeled myself for this already!! I have no intention of digging back up the old arguments about right and wrong at this point!! If that was going to shake my resolve, I never would have urged Fran to action and picked a fight with you all!!!!!!”
Then a smile formed on Ellen’s lips.
It was the ferocious smile of someone viewing their enemy, but the girl still smiled.
“...You really are different.”
She sounded like she was confirming something more important than the truth of the world.
“You seem somewhat like Kamisato-han, but you’re completely different inside.”
“To hell with that. Don’t even compare me to that bastard.”
She was not a fighter.
She was meant to use her delicate forensics skills to provide logistical support.
“I am Arimura Ellen.”
But the girl in the baggy lab coat did not take a single step back.
Just like Karasuma Fran and Toyama Luca, Arimura Ellen had feelings she could not shake free of.
“I will not hold back!!!!!!”
It only took one attack.
And that was why Kamijou Touma did not even think about holding back either.
Part 4
Kamijou looked down at the unconscious girl for a while.
That was when a familiar cart dove out from the intersection’s side road. He had thought they were far out ahead, but they must have returned to the same place while trying to escape.
“Perfect timing. Hop on!!”
“Thanks.”
Kamijou grabbed onto the roll bar again while glancing back toward the baggy lab coat girl lying unmoving on the ground.
Hoodie Bikini and Rabbit-Ear Antennae Fran gave a warning with no readable emotion on her face.
“That was too reckless.”
“Not as reckless as you.”
He smiled bitterly while accepting the Bunny Grey band aid the expressionless girl gave him.
The cart took off once more. They had eliminated Ellen the Tracer, but that did not mean the threat was entirely gone. No matter how poor their aim was, plenty of their enemies had enough firepower to destroy them in a single attack if they did hit.
“So what do we do!? Since you managed to pick me up after I jumped off, you must be driving in circles. Can we really escape Maya, Elza, and the rest of that crazy Hyakki Yakou!?”
“Not to worry. It took a while, but we’re about to leave District 7 and enter District 18. It won’t take long to get to District 11 now!!”
“I wasn’t talking about-...”
Kamijou stopped midsentence and looked back while clinging to the roll bar.
“Fffffraaaan...”
The ghost girl in white burial clothing and vaguely heart-shaped headdress was pursuing them with her giant legs. She slipped between buildings and the entire street shook like an unreliable thicket of trees in a typhoon.
“Don’t threaten Kamisato-kuuun!! Karasuma Fraaan!!!!!!”
“How can you pull off the magical ceremony needed to save Kamisato with that chasing us!? I don’t know how hard those ceremonies are, but we’re done for if one of her soccer kicks or head slides hits us!!”
“With that cosplay girl Olivia and the others up in the air, we can never escape on the ground. It’s like having a helicopter in the air during a car chase.”
As Luca drove the cart, a clear change came over the scenery.
While they had been surrounded by college prep schools with strange shapes thanks to the famous designers that worked on them, they now saw pyramids of stacked metal containers and gantry cranes that almost looked like giant torii.
It was hard to read without any streetlights, but the sign that flew by clearly said District 11.
“We made it...”
Maya and more of the former Kamisato Faction were still in hot pursuit. At this rate, they would be guiding those girls to the site of the ceremony. It was as hopeless as attempting a risky surgical procedure while a biker gang poured into the hospital.
But even though Luca held the wheel and would be the one holding the scalpel, her face contained some tension, but no irritation.
“Why do you think we were circling around and around that dangerous city?”
“?”
Hadn’t that been to get as far away as they could from the former Kamisato Faction? And hadn’t they failed to lose those girls?
But Kamijou’s guess was wrong.
“I knew from the beginning this 50cc cart couldn’t truly lose them. In fact, not even a floating supercar loaded with an antigravity engine could manage that,” said Luca. “And if they can interfere with the ceremonial ground in the container yard, all of this will be for naught. So setting up the defensive line here would be a losing gamble from the outset. Failure would be our only option.”
But the pirate girl was not done speaking.
She had more to say.
“So did you really think I would set up a defensive line with a countdown to the end of the crucial ceremony? I’d never allow that! The only way to ensure they won’t interfere even for an instant is to set everything up so I can complete the entire ceremony as soon I arrive on the scene. That’s what I was doing while driving around the city!!”
Part 5
How had Ellen, the tracer and forensics girl, been following Luca and Fran’s cart around?
More than just perfect pitch, all of that girl’s senses were perfect sensory analysis devices, so what exactly had she picked up on in this wide world?
“Hm, hm, hm. I see. She must be in a rush because she’s spilling quite a bit there.”
Baggy Lab Coat Ellen had smiled while riding the giant mechanical lizard controlled by Lime, who wore traditional Japanese clothing yet had coral-like angel wings growing from her back with strings extending from each point.
“What can you see? Their exhaust or the tire marks?”
“There is that, but the biggest one is the gunpowder. She must have needed a nitrogen compound like nitric acid, but that’s my specialty since it’s an established part of quite a few inspection methods. I would never mistake this smell.”
Ellen had laughed and hid her mouth behind one baggy sleeve.
“Also, Luca uses an outdated musket, so it uses antique black powder. She’s so intent on using the old-fashioned production methods that it has a distinct aroma. Academy City is a dangerous city, but the scent of that retro gunpowder stands out in this high-tech city. There is simply no way she can escape me now.”
But Ellen should have wondered if that scent of gunpowder really was being leaked on accident. She should have asked if Luca might be letting it spill behind the cart as she drove out ahead.
As she shook the dark city around her, Ghost Girl Maya knew victory was hers. The enemy was only fleeing and had not put any more distance between them. She did not know where they were going or what they would do there, but they would be unable to calmly enter their base and relax if this continued. She did not need to give this too much thought. She only had to continue chasing them to either crush them or wait for them to make a mistake and crash.
She could not be shaken.
The ghost girl in burial clothes could not be shaken when she was working to protect Kamisato Kakeru.
After all, he had accepted her.
A mysterious shadow ha-->>