Volume 18 - CH 8(4/5)
"Tatsuya-niisan, are you going to change your clothes inside?"
Fumiya asked Tatsuya while ignoring the girls and their playful attitudes. Combat equipment for the upcoming operation had been prepared in the van.
By the way, Fumiya's appearance was, as usual, his cross-dressing disguise. Although, had he finally decided to be more attractive with his make-up thicker than before.
"Alright."
Without talking about Fumiya's pretty girl style, he got in the vehicle.
The combat suit that the Yotsuba had prepared more or less looked like the clothes Tatsuya had been wearing just a few moments ago. The only difference would be that the blouson insides were tied up. However, as far as performance was concerned, it rivaled that of the Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion's Mobile Suit.
Today, Tatsuya wasn't using the gun-shaped Silver Horn but the thought-controlled type set with a Silver Taurus bracelet. Hidden inside his blouson wasn't another CAD but a gun and a knife. If they were found by the police, it wouldn't end with just an inquiry. This was also one of the reasons why they had changed their clothes here and not elsewhere.
The helmet Tatsuya was wearing could also function as a gas mask. Fumiya was looking at his brave figure admiringly while he himself was wearing a mini-dress full of button ornaments —— that being said, all of those buttons were gas capsules and flashbangs —— when he called out to Ayako.
"We're going soon."
Fumiya, who was already looking at Tatsuya, nodded immediately.
Ayako and Yoshimi, who had somehow gone into a ‘Whose appearance is not suitable for this mission' debate, turned towards Tatsuya and slightly bowed.
Tatsuya, then, began to walk.
Directly behind him were Fumiya and Ayako, as well as several men in black suits.
The number of shadows around Yoshimi suddenly increased, and then she saw the three of them off.
"Still, the surveillance is pretty tight."
Using something that resembled binoculars —— a sensor that made infrared rays as well as electromagnetic waves visible —— she reported so to Tatsuya in a concerned voice.
The three of them were observing the target building from inside the invisibility field that Ayako produced. Yoshimi had read this ‘Memory' of Gu Jie's new hideout from the corpse of a former Generator. Although it was nothing but a private hospital on paper, in truth, this place undertook illegal requests from the army as an unofficial research facility. The intense policing they saw was to be expected.
"It wouldn't be too difficult to sneak into the building, but with this kind of heavy surveillance, I don't think they'll only have guards. There might be some other things waiting for us."
"So you think that there is some sort of trap set up?"
"Yes."
Tatsuya assessed the situation with his own eyes.
Considering that we're talking about an organization that was used to take on military missions, they were sure to be prepared.
The hospital's owner might have already had his heart remodeled. He may even have been killed already. Anyone would've been able to guess as much, was what Tatsuya was thinking.
Based on this, he searched both the interior and exterior of the building.
The security equipment was certainly overbearing, but it wasn't anything out of the extraordinary for a private operation. Compared to the several sensors installed throughout the Steeplechase event in the Nine Schools Competition, this was nothing.
He could see nine human shadows inside of the building.
Five of those people had a normal human's information structure. They were probably doctors and nurses on duty.
One person had noise in the information structure of his head. He was probably the director of the hospital who had been made into a puppet.
Two people had a distorted information structure type that Tatsuya had seen before. Without a doubt, those two were Generators.
And a single person with a strange information structure was there. Although he seemed more similar to a regular human than a Generator, his age data was definitely weird.
Even if a person had changed their body's age to be different than their actual age, only their true age would be shown. The body's age would be shown alongside their general health.
However, in the information body that Tatsuya was looking at now, there existed two different datasets for his age.
(Such an information body, I have seen one similar before.. When, and where was it?)
Tatsuya sifted through the vast amount of data in his head, quickly finding what he was looking for.
(I see, this was Zhou Gongjin's..)
Due to the fact that Tatsuya had been solely concentrating on localizing his true location that was camouflaged by Ghost walker, the abnormality in Zhou's information structure had gone unnoticed at that time.
However, with Tatsuya never forgetting a single detail, a sense of discomfort appeared.
"Found him. This is probably Gu Jie in person." Tatsuya reported to Ayako and Fumiya with a whisper. Tension ran through the muscles of their back.
"Let's move in immediately."
Fumiya replied with a whispering voice, too. It looked like Ayako didn't have an objection, either.
The three people walked towards the front gate. Due to the magic of the men in black suits, regular humans couldn't see them. Although they had received orders to avoid a fight to the best of their ability, if there was any possibility of the National Defense getting involved, those orders would be ignored.
"Tatsuya-san."
Nodding at Ayako's voice, Tatsuya pressed the button on the radio he had in his hand.
The light that was illuminating the hospital's gate disappeared. The men in black had cut the electrical wire that was supplying the building with energy. The wire in the ground as well; since there was no need to dig it up due to Magic, it had been a simple task.
To begin with, despite being a private hospital, it was still a proper hospital. It was quite probable that the building had an emergency power supply.
Tatsuya confirmed that the security system had been cut off and signaled Ayako with his hands.
Using Ayako's ‘Mock Teleportation', the three of them jumped on the roof of the hospital.
The light had yet to be restored. "Let's proceed as planned."
The plan was simple, Ayako was to secure their retreat while Fumiya acted as her guard.
Tatsuya was to secure Gu Jie's capture on his own.
Even though both Ayako and Fumiya had strongly opposed this plan, they weren't so childish as to pose difficulties when the strategy had already been set in motion.
"Please be careful."
The brother and sister, who looked like a pair of pretty sisters at present, sent him off in unison.
The lights came back on at almost the exact moment Tatsuya entered the building from the rooftop.
Looking at him, not even a trace of panic was present. This timing was roughly what he had expected, so it wasn't as if it had been "in the nick of time".
However, he wasn't being carefree at all. Did their target guess that this kind of operation was taking place due to the power outage? The information body that Tatsuya thought was Gu Jie immediately headed for the emergency stairway from his former position in a room on the 3rd floor.
This movement was convenient for Tatsuya. The risk of involving doctors or nurses became smaller with it.
Tatsuya dashed towards the emergency exit, but stopped in his tracks once he reached the last room in the hallway.
Bullets came flying out of the door and crashed into the wall on the other side.
Tatsuya switched his ‘View' from the emergency stairs and focused it on the weapon of his ambusher.
He used ‘Decomposition' on the gun.
The Magic Sequence for ‘Ignition' was nullified and rendered useless by his Gram Dispersion.
The gun of another Generator who was approaching from the back was decomposed.
A door was vigorously flung open, and Magicians turned into Generators jumped out to attack him.
They were not only wielding strengthened magical skills from being prime field agents turned into Generators in the National Defense's facilities, they were also making use of power and speed impossible for humans to achieve. One of the Generators tried to stab Tatsuya with a knife.
However, not only was Tatsuya a product of the Fourth Research Institute, he was also a Magician heavily trained in hand-to-hand combat. The training he had received had been more oriented towards physical strength rather than magic. As someone who primarily learned to use his body, he was completely familiar with the process of controlling his body with Psions.
Though he hadn't received biochemical enhancements to make his body stronger, Tatsuya made up for this disadvantage by protecting the information structure of his muscles so that even if the burden on his bones exceeded the limits, his body wouldn't suffer damage.
The Generator used the ‘Body Ignition' Magic on Tatsuya. Not needing a CAD, that might have been the proof that he had psychic ancestors.
Tatsuya once again used his Gram Dispersion towards the Magic Sequence aimed at him. At the same time, the Generator's blade was parried with his own knife that he took out of his blouson.
The blade lock lasted an instant.
After Tatsuya parried the attack, his power slipped out, but at the same time, the Generator leaped back.
Tatsuya had wanted to destroy his opponent's posture, but it ended up only lasting for a moment.
On the other hand, he had gained a distance where knives wouldn't be able to reach.
Tatsuya turned his back on his opponent.
He then threw his knife towards another Generator who was approaching from the back.
Perhaps due to this surprising action, the opponent stopped and had to parry the knife throw with his own knife.
His eyes let go of Tatsuya for an instant.
When he turned his attention back to him, Tatsuya had pulled out his gun.
He turned his gun towards the Generator.
Due to the attached suppressor, a small gunshot sound leaked.
The Generator who had expected a magic attack ate a bullet straight from the front.
The high caliber bullet hit him right in the stomach, and the Generator, who had roughly the same physique as Tatsuya, was pushed back. No bleeding could be seen on the Generator who was now on the ground. That was evidence that he was wearing an effective body armor.
Tatsuya turned around once more.
The other Generator had aimed for his neck with the knife in his right hand, and Tatsuya caught it at the wrist with his left hand.
His Magic Calculation Area dissolved the Magic Sequences of ‘Ignition' and ‘Scorching' that the Generator was about to unleash.
That Generator's casting speed was nearing instantaneous levels as a psychic. By sacrificing diversity, his event modification speed had been so drastically enhanced that he could provoke it just by wishing. This came with being a Generator. By getting rid of their free will, it was possible to free up mental activity resources.
However, even with this, Tatsuya's ‘Decomposition' was faster. Even faster than the Generator could complete his magic, Tatsuya's decomposition came out first.
Tatsuya twisted the Generator's right hand and broke his wrist. He then shot him from up-close with his gun.
Even though he didn't have the capacity to feel pain, his faltering physical condition made magic execution nigh-impossible.
Even though the first Generator who had been knocked out had already recovered, his magic execution speed still wasn't back to its normal level.
Suppressing all the Magic Sequences of his opponents, reserve power arose in Tatsuya's Magic Calculation Area with which he counterattacked.
Tatsuya used ‘Partial Dismantling'.
In that instant, holes opened up in the chests of the Generators.
Although the Generators continued to weakly struggle without their hearts, they were in their death throes, and soon, even that stopped.
After confirming that all Psion activity had stopped, Tatsuya headed towards the emergency stairway once more.
Gu Jie had apparently already reached the 1st floor.
Tatsuya jumped down the stairway.
Avoiding damage with minimal inertia control magic, he aimed at the ambulance that Gu Jie had planned on using to escape.
Why was there an ambulance despite no emergency being signaled? Why was there a need for an ambulance to be bulletproof and heat- resistant? Any such questions were shelved in the depth of Tatsuya's mind.
The Psion noise provoked by the Cast Jamming emanating from the ambulance wasn't a problem for him either.
The only thing that was left as an obstacle from Tatsuya were several High Power Rifle bullets shot in succession towards him.
? ? ?
On that day, a large-scale VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft from the USNA came flying to the Zama base. Considering that the Zama base was a shared territory between Japan and the USNA, this was not unusual. The existence of the Special Forces Training Grounds was a secret that was known to the USNA for historical reasons. There was no reason to refuse the landing and no possibility of that to begin with.
After the aircraft landed, the commander of the base accepted a report from the commanding officer of the transport. This wasn't unusual either. In the case of the commander, if there were specific reasons to this visit, it could save some trouble.
The commander of the USNA Army introduced himself as major Benjamin Lowes. The impression that the base's commander had of him was that of a high-class officer, fearless yet smart. Not only because of their current alliance, but also because he had the type of personality which made him not behave in an unnecessarily rude way.
Still, the base's commander didn't relax. He understood with a glance that it was a high-caliber Magician who had just entered the room.
Since this was a base where Magicians were strengthened, there were precise magic power measurement devices. And although he had skillfully influenced the measurement results, on the contrary, it had only served to prove the height of his skill.
After the formal diplomatic exchanges, Major Lowes started to discuss an incredible matter with a refined tone.
"It is shameful to say, but I have been sent here in order to capture deserters."
"Deserters, you say?"
The commander of the base barely managed to swallow his "Again?". He was one of the few officers who was aware that last year's troubles with vampires had been caused by USNA deserters. This, too, was due to the special circumstances of the Special Force Training Grounds of Zama's base.
"As you might know, on December of the year before last, soldiers of our army had deserted and fled to your country. Although we confirmed that most of them died, it appears that it wasn't all of them."
Major Lowes —— Commander of the Stars' First Unit, Benjamin Canopus, seeing through the commander's doubts, came up with a lie. Since the commander wasn't aware of absolutely all the details, he couldn't doubt these words.
"We're not sure what exactly their objectives are but we have confirmed that the deserters plan on kidnapping the doctor who has been providing medical treatment to the Magicians of this base. The attack will take place tonight."
"..Major, you have our gratitude for this information."
"Commander, I think you have an idea of what I'm about to ask of you."
We will deal with this attack ourselves, was what the commander was about to say. Considering that this was about to take place right in front of their noses and that it concerned civilians who were cooperating with them, it was no wonder.
However, Canopus anticipated this reaction and prevented this sentence from coming out.
"I heard that the Ten Master Clans are also pursuing the deserters of our army. We think that stimulating the Magicians currently stationed in this base would be unfavorable for both of our countries."
The commander made a sour face and swallowed the sentence he was about to say.
"Could you, at your discretion, overlook my unit's action in this matter?"
"..This exceeds the range of discretion I am allowed as an officer. Approbation from headquarters is needed."
"Commander. It's an urgent matter. The deserter's attack could happen in a matter of hours. If you say that it is impossible for you to entrust this entirely to us, we could agree to a joint operation with your own forces."
Canopus played his cards right here and now.
"Indeed, if you could lend us soldiers of the Special Force Training Grounds.. Number 024, 026, 029, 037 and 041 would be suitable for such a task."
Those were the numbers of the strengthened Magicians that had been stolen by Gu Jie.
"..I agree to this cooperation. However, I'll have you leave the reporting duty to me!"
Towards the speech of the commander, Canopus returned a salute with a nonchalant face.
This event had taken place 3 hours before Tatsuya had rushed into action.
? ? ?
Even though Tatsuya instinctively protected his vital points, he couldn't dodge entirely. The first bullet hit his left arm, the second incoming bullet was decomposed while he rolled on the ground. The wound he received on his left shoulder was already healed by his ‘Regrowth' by the time he hit the ground.
The sniper who intervened just before Tatsuya could catch Gu Jie came from the sky. No, with such power, a better way of putting it would be that he fell from the sky.
Neither the shadow of a plane nor a helicopter could be seen. It was as if he had been shot from a human cannon to this place.
(Why is the USNA military here!?)
Tatsuya couldn't help but be surprised after reading that person's information with Elemental Sight.
Again, Zama was a joint Japan-USNA joint base. That a USNA soldier was present there was not that mysterious.
However, why would such a person help Gu Jie's escape?
Despite holding such thoughts and hesitations, as a combat magician, half of his mind had automatically reacted to disempower the appearing threat.
The High Power Rifle the opponent was wielding was instantly turned into separate parts as well as the body armor he was wearing.
If that person had been a National Defense soldier, Tatsuya would've erased him.
However, since Tatsuya hadn't thought about the USNA military possibly being involved, he had yet to decide an appropriate way of dealing with them.
(Erasing him would be —— bad.)
Tatsuya concluded so after disarming the soldier. He was currently in the middle of an illegal operation. Giving the USNA a pretext to accuse Japan of abducting their soldiers would be troublesome.
Tatsuya shot at the soldier who was standing there, petrified, as he had yet to understand how exactly he had been disarmed. Once that was done, Tatsuya used his ‘Regrowth' to restore his body armor and rifle to their original state. This whole process had the sole purpose of making out which magic was used against the target next to impossible to discern.
Then, once again, he went after Gu Jie. The ambulance that Gu Jie had boarded had already driven off.
Tatsuya expanded his ‘View' to search for Gu Jie's location.
However, he was unable to. The ‘Eyes' of Tatsuya were focused on something whose priority was higher, something that he couldn't ignore.
Fumiya and Ayako were fighting hard. He ran in the building at full speed.
Fumiya's reaction to the soldiers who landed on the rooftop was immediate.
The Magic that allowed one to inflict damage to the mind and the soul, ‘Direct Pain', deprived the soldiers' hands of their strength and made them drop their weapons. Still, one couldn't say that his reaction to the grenades that had been thrown from their back had been enough.
Ayako immediately erected a physical barrier, one that would correctly interact with the fragments released by the explosion. However, the grenades that had been shot were not exploding ones, but smoke grenades.
The rapidly expanding smoke made it even harder to see than it already was.
Fumiya was able to unleash magic without relying on his eyes, but he was still a long way from reaching Tatsuya's level.
Fumiya's ‘Direct Pain' was a magic that targeted the mind and the soul. He apparently thought that not being able to maintain visual contact wouldn't affect the magic's effect too much.
However, it was in fact the opposite. The ‘Spirit' doesn't exist in this world. Even if one were to search for them, he wouldn't know where to look. Therefore, to aim this Magic, a link from this world to the spirit world was needed. Suddenly, a screeching like the scratching of glass came from the smokescreen towards Ayako and Fumiya.
"Cast Jamming?"
"No, not exactly. But, this is..?"
Ayako was the one to answer Fumiya's doubt. Still, there was no trace of relief on her face at knowing that this wasn't Cast Jamming. She anxiously searched for the noise's source.
Fumiya, on the other hand, concluded that as long as this wasn't the noise of Psion obstructing magic execution, finding out its source could be postponed. At the moment, their priority was to push back this mysterious enemy.
With the CAD on his right hand, he had planned on using an Activation Sequence to blow away the smoke screen with an air flow. However.. His CAD wasn't functioning properly. His Activation Sequence was filled with "noise".
The CAD he had tried to use was a Generalized portable terminal-type CAD, and he was as used to this one as the knuckle duster Specialized CAD he used before. Someone of Fumiya's level couldn't make such a mistake.
Piercing through the smoke screen. High Power bullets struck against the barrier one after the other.
"Yami-chan, increase the amount of Psions injected into your CAD!"
While shouting this to Fumiya, Ayako maintained the barrier by pouring an excessive amount of Psions into her own CAD.
Fumiya operated his CAD once again. As per Ayako's advice, he used twice as much as Psions.
The strength of the signal that returned from a CAD was roughly proportional to the amount of Psions injected in the Activation Sequence. Despite the fact that noise was still mixed in the signal, Fumiya managed to filter it by himself and forcibly executed the magic he wanted to use previously.
The smoke screen cleared up.
The number of enemies had increased to five people. Three were equipped with High Power Rifles, the two that had suffered Fumiya's attack still had trembling arms but were now pointing towards Ayako and Fumiya some sort of flashlight whose muzzle looked like a trumpet.
Fumiya and Ayako instinctively understood that this cylindrical tool was the reason for their misbehaving CADs.
This was the breakthrough in terms of casting obstruction devices that only the USNA had developed, ‘Cast Jammer'. Although neither of these two knew about it, their deduction was spot-on.
"Nee-san, leave this place immediately." Fumiya ordered Ayako so.
"I'll report so you come back and get me later!"
"——Understood!"
For a moment, Ayako wanted to object but after thinking about it once more, she nodded to his words. She was aware of the fact that she wasn't cut out for direct confrontation.
However, she was a beat too late. Fumiya turned away from the enemies at the front. He jumped, not caring about his long skirt, and threw a kick.
The soldier who tried to attack Ayako was thrown back in the air.
"Yami-chan, are you injured!?"
However, Fumiya didn't come out completely uninjured either. His tights were cut up, blood was trickling down from his foot. The soldier who received the kick had apparently slashed him with his knife.
The material that made up Fumiya's clothes wasn't normal, either. It wasn't on Tatsuya's combat suit's level but it was still a high-level protective suit. The knife that the USNA soldier used didn't seem to be normal metal.
"I'm alright!"
Fumiya landed on his other foot and calmed down Ayako. However, simply judging from the fact that he didn't land on the injured leg, the damage must've been pretty severe. Considering that reinforcements were constantly coming from the air, he didn't even have the composure to treat his wound.
Ayako ripped off one of her buttons and threw it behind Fumiya.
An intense flash occurred, the movement of the soldier who was about to attack Fumiya was instantly stopped.
With Fumiya's magic, the soldier fainted.
In the meantime, bullets had constantly been fired at the two.
Ayako had been unable to leave the place. In order to protect Fumiya from the barrage of bullets from High Powered Rifles, she had to maintain her barrier.
If there hadn't been obstruction from the Cast Jammer, she could have easily used the interval between gunshots to escape with Mock Teleportation. Fumiya, too was badly affected by this, and normally he'd have been able to silence all of them at once. But right now, he had no choice but to use ‘Direct Pain' on a single target at a time. Neither of these two had the composure to wonder about the strangeness of their enemies.
The enemy purposely only replaced the knocked out members with soldiers.
If more numbers were sent at once, the battle would turn into an even bigger uphill struggle.
Neither Ayako nor Fumiya had noticed this.
Fumiya, in particular, had his hands full with holding his own against reinforced soldiers.
Ayako couldn't escape, either, because she had to maintain her barrier to be protected from High Power Rifles. First of all, they had to find a way to deal with those.
Just when Fumiya was about to take desperate measures and try his luck, the situation changed drastically. Two gunshots resounded.
The noise that was disturbing the CAD's functioning suddenly vanished. "Tatsuya-san!"
Ayako instinctively called out his name.
Near the rooftop's entrance, Tatsuya stood with his face hid by a helmet. He was pointing his gun at the soldiers who had been operating the Cast Jammer.
One of the reasons Tatsuya didn't just jump on the rooftop was that he wanted to avoid making himself an easy target for snipers, but that wasn't all. He wanted to scatter sleeping gas on the 1st and 2nd floor too. It was now necessary to abandon the idea of preventing a ruckus but he at least needed to find a way to prevent innocent doctors and nurses from being involved.
The extra time it took for him to scatter the gas capsules in each floor's corridors made his arrival late, so much so that saying that he was "in the nick of time" wouldn't be an exaggeration. At the very least, he had arrived in time to prevent Fumiya's reckless final charge.
Along with the gunshots, the Cast Jammer effect was interrupted.
The gunshots had been nothing but a decoy, in truth, and Tatsuya had used Decomposition on the devices.
The High Power Rifles were turned towards Tatsuya. Tatsuya did not Decompose them.
The high power bullets were propelled out of their muzzle. Reading their trajectory, he held up his hand.
It was a trick that he had already shown during the 2095 Thesis Competition, but still, it's effect was undeniable.
The soldier, who mistook this for Tatsuya grabbing with his bare hand the bullets, was petrified.
Tatsuya did not overlook this chance.
With his Decomposition, tiny holes were made in their body armor. The soldiers who had been operating Cast Jammer and the five others rolled on the floor, bleeding from the holes in their stomach.
On the other side of the rooftop, Fumiya mowed down the rest of the opposition with ‘Direct Pain'.
"You two, are you inju.."
Beginning to say so, Tatsuya frowned behind the helmet's visor.
He extended his left hand towards Fumiya's injured foot. The knife wound disappeared in an instant. The cut up tights were also repaired in the process.
After confirming that this was the extent of their injuries, Tatsuya shot the five bodies in the holes created by his earlier Decomposition.
"Umm, what exactly are you.."
With a pale face, Ayako asked the reason for Tatsuya's cruel deed.
"I want them to think they have been knocked down by a gunshot. Though they'll probably understand just by looking.."
With what looked like a wry smile, Tatsuya used his knife to stab the enemies Fumiya had defeated.
"They won't die. I-->>