by Yuu Miyazaki
Ayato steadied his breathing, trying to concentrate on his surroundings.
No matter how Eishirou tried to hide his presence, Ayato could still sense him just before he tried to launch an attack. That being the case, the real question was how fast he was able to respond.
He steadied the beating of his heart, letting his prana course through his body.
And then—
“…You’re mine!”
“!”
Once again, Eishirou rushed forward from behind with a knife-hand strike—Ayato just barely having enough time to leap out of the way. The attack, however, still hit him in the side, but he did his best to endure it.
He spun around, using the momentum to deliver a strike with the back of his fist into Eishirou’s chest.
“Aha!”
Eishirou parried the strike, deflecting it to the side, before immediately lashing out with a powerful sideways kick. Ayato blocked that in turn by crossing his arms together above his head, before pushing Eishirou’s leg out of the way with his right hand and delivering an openhanded strike with his left.
Punch met with punch, kick met with kick, the sounds of the contest echoing throughout the abandoned building.
They seemed to be evenly matched in both offense and defense, almost as if they had long been sparring partners.
Ayato continued to watch patiently for an opening, when, finally, as Eishirou unleashed a wide-ranging kick, he spotted one.
“…Now!”
“Wha—?!”
And yet—
He’s not there?!
The strike should have been perfectly timed, however, it cut through no more than thin air.
Or more precisely, Eishirou’s jacket was still there, but Eishirou himself was nowhere to be seen.
“A substitute…?!”
“Ka-ha, too easy!”
At that moment, a flurry of blows came speeding toward him out of the fog, striking him in his temples, the pit of his stomach, and his thighs in quick succession.
“Guh…!”
He concentrated his prana in an attempt to defend himself, but the attacks had left those vital areas aching. Moreover, Eishirou seemed to have poured his own prana into his attacks, much like Jie Long’s martial artists. That wasn’t a difficult technique in and of itself, but there was no way it could be carried out so smoothly without a high level of training.
But Ayato couldn’t give up. Without so much as pausing, he immediately unleashed a spinning counterattack of his own in the direction that the strikes had been launched.
“Ugh!”
This time, he seemed to have hit something, although judging by the force of the impact, Eishirou appeared to have defended himself against the full force of it.
“Heh… You’re quick on the uptake, huh?” Eishirou’s voice echoed around him. “Looks like I’d better be a bit more careful.”
What could be more careful than this?
He crouched down, bracing himself so he would be able to deal with any possible attack, when he heard an uncanny sound, almost as if something was breaking apart around him.
He glanced at his surroundings, but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.
No… Wait… That’s not it!
“…Above?!” he inadvertently called out, just as a web of cracks began to run the full length of the ceiling—and then it came crashing down.
Ayato raced through the corridor as debris of every size imaginable came pouring down toward him, only bothering to dodge the largest of pieces. Chunks as large as his fist struck his body, but he was in no frame of mind to worry about that.
When at last he reached the stairway, he thought he was finally out of the line of direct fire. But his heightened senses suddenly detected a trap being activated.
A volley of bou-shuriken shot toward him from three separate directions. The trap was clearly designed to entrap him in the middle, and it would only really be effective if he was to approach from the direction that he had.
Which meant…
He brought down the ceiling just to lure me here…?!
The debris had come down in such a way as to restrict his movements, forcing him into the snare. He couldn’t help but admire the meticulousness and effort that must have been put into it.
There was no way he would be able to dodge the oncoming projectiles, so he had little choice but to concentrate his prana into his arms and stop them from hitting anywhere vital.
“…Ugh!”
The damage wasn’t serious, but it was enough to bring him to a stop.
And at that moment, he sensed a wave of enmity rushing up from behind.
“It’s over, Amagiri.” Eishirou’s voice, seemingly convinced of victory—cold and calm, and without even the slightest hint of inattention—echoed in his ears.
He may well have been right.
That was, if Ayato hadn’t already predicted his next move.
“Wha—?!” Eishirou’s face twisted in dismay.
No sooner had he appeared behind him than Ayato had already begun to launch a counterattack.
He struck Eishirou’s jaw with the palm of his hand, while at the same time driving his elbow into his chest, before following through with three powerful punches into his stomach.
“Amagiri Shinmei Style Grappling Technique—Divine Thunder!”
“Ugh!”
And with that, Eishirou, his eyes wide open, came crumbling forward.
“Are you all right, Yabuki?” Ayato called out.
“Ouch… Looks like I lost.” Eishirou, his voiced filled with pain, somehow managed to turn onto his back to look up at him.
The sense of animosity that Ayato had previously felt from Eishirou had completely vanished, leaving in its place, rather, a refreshed countenance.
“Tell me one thing, though, how did you know what I was going to do?”
“If I had to put it down to anything, it was just a hunch…”
“Just a hunch?”
“Well, with both of your previous attacks, you came from behind, right? So I guessed you’d do the same thing that time, too,” Ayato replied.
“Argh, so that was it… I guess I messed up!” His tone suggested that he was joking, but Ayato could tell he felt truly chagrined.
“That pride will get the better of you… Or is it just an excuse?” Ayato didn’t know whether to be impressed or dismayed. “Anyway, something’s been bothering me for a while now.”
“What?”
“Did you really go all out? It didn’t seem that way to me.”
“What are you talking about? I put everything I had into it,” Eishirou said with a giddy laugh.
The reaction rang hollow in Ayato’s ears, but now wasn’t the time to argue the point.
“So, Yabuki. Where’s Claudia?”
“Ah, right. The prez… She’s in the harbor block,” Eishirou answered, as promised.
“You mean the one surrounding Seidoukan?”
While the harbor block that surrounded Seidoukan Academy belonged to the school, strictly speaking, students weren’t normally permitted to enter it. Its main use was for storage, making it more or less a warehouse area.
“Given who’s going after her, the worst move would be to let her escape into the city. Even Galaxy would have a hard time hushing it up if anything happened out in public. But then, there are no Festa events today, either, so they’d stand out too much if they tried anything on campus. So that leaves the harbor block. It’s the most logical choice.”
“I see…” Now that he knew where to look, he couldn’t afford to delay any longer. “Eishirou, I—”
“Don’t worry about me,” Eishirou interrupted. “You should be more concerned about your own safety, if you’re planning to go after her, that is.” He flashed Ayato a grim smile. “The people after the prez—Galaxy calls them the Night Emit… But they used to be known as the Yabuki clan.”
“The Yabuki…?” Ayato repeated, sucking in his brea
th.
“Yep. And the guy in charge is my very own father.”
CHAPTER 5
AFTERNOON
“…Haah!” Claudia deflected the Kinoe’s dagger with the blade in her right hand, using the one in her left to lash out with a horizontal strike.
Her assailant fell to the ground without a sound, a pool of red blood spreading around it.
The wound wasn’t deep enough to put her assailant’s life in danger, but nor was it so shallow that they would be able to continue after her right away.
After confirming the situation, Claudia spun around and began to run deeper into the warehouse section. Her uniform was torn in places and stained with blood, but she was fortunate to have been able to avoid suffering any serious injuries.
The sky was hidden behind thick, leaden clouds, with rain beginning to fall. According to the weather forecasts, it was only expected to grow stronger.
Claudia carefully avoided the cameras, set throughout the harbor area at regular intervals, before deciding to hide for a while in a large, dome-shaped warehouse that was filled with row upon row of stacked shipping containers. The huge entrance door was open, as an autonomous vehicle was busy ferrying containers inside—but Claudia, of course, had already known that.
Thanks to the guaranteed employment security offered by the integrated enterprise foundations, the harbor blocks belonging to the city proper were filled with workers, but in those belonging to the six schools, everything was painstakingly automated.
“Whew… This is rather intense,” Claudia said to herself, leaning on a nearby container as she let out a long sigh, trying to catch her breath.
She had been on the move for nearly half a day by then, ever since the attack on her at dawn. She had thought she was ready for it, but the exhaustion was catching up with her.
The Yabuki clan was as good as was to be expected of a combat group under Galaxy’s direct control. Claudia had only been able to evade them as successfully as she had thanks to her early preparations and the Pan-Dora’s precognition.
But at this rate, she didn’t know how long she would be able to hold out.
“…Looks like there’s no signal,” she murmured as she tried repeatedly to use her mobile, before giving up and returning it to her pocket.
The Yabuki clan possessed a number of skills exclusive to members of their lineage. Some of the worst were their abilities to create barriers that could stop anyone in their tracks and even block out sound and electromagnetic waves. Worse still was the fact that those techniques consumed hardly any mana or prana at all. As such, unlike the abilities of Stregas or Dantes, they were all but impossible to sense.
“I suppose that the situation is more or less as I should have expected…” Claudia forced herself to smile, her hands tightening around the hilts of the twin swords.
Just a little while longer.
Just a little while longer, and her wish would be granted.
The only dream she had ever truly wanted.
The selfish wish of a someone who no one fully understood.
It was almost within her reach.
“…I can’t afford to die now, not here.”
Given that she was, of course, putting everything she had into it, the only thing left for her to do was wait to see which of her innumerable overlapping plans would bear fruit.
After all, her opponent, the Yabuki clan, had hundreds of years of experience in its favor, and then there was its leader, Bujinsai.
It was probably fair to say that this was the most challenging predicament Claudia had ever found herself in.
And yet, she couldn’t stop her lips from twisting into a vague smile.
It wasn’t her usual, perfect smile, but something else, something purer, and—
“—!”
At that moment, she leaped upon a nearby container.
A barrage of shuriken tore into it, clearly flying after her in pursuit, but Claudia remained one step ahead.
She raced across the top of the container as fast as her legs could carry her, scanning her surroundings to make out her pursuers, moving soundlessly like shadows.
With the Kinoe being as strong as they were, she would probably have been able to prevail in a one-on-one fight, but two together was a dangerous combination, and with three, escape was the only sensible option left open to her.
“One, two, three…four. I guess this must be one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems,” she murmured, leaping out of the warehouse and back into the pouring rain.
She might have been able to do something if she had been willing to use the Pan-Dora’s precognition, but she wanted to save that ability not for attack, but for survival.
That being the case, all she could do was keep on running.
“—”
“Hmm, this girl’s more troublesome than I was expecting,” Bujinsai, after listening to a report from one of the Kinoe, whispered to himself.
From his position atop a huge crane overlooking the harbor block, he cast his gaze through the rain and over the gray, hazy scenery that lay before him, the gloom eerily reminiscent of a graveyard.
“Just as I feared… Slipping up at the beginning really has worked against us… That idiot son of mine. No matter how much I hammer it into him…,” Bujinsai grumbled to himself as he stroked his chin. There could be no doubt that their target had been tipped off by Eishirou. “To think that he’d rebel against me like this… It’s infuriating. If he wasn’t so talented, I’d have given up on him years ago.”
Shadowstar, Eishirou included, was currently supporting Bujinsai and the rest of the Yabuki clan. The other members might serve their purpose, but Bujinsai had his doubts that his son would do as instructed.
The Yabuki clan specialized in espionage and assassination, not military force. It was fair to say that they had committed an irredeemable blunder the moment they had failed to eliminate the target when they had first engaged her.
That said, even if the target wasn’t the school’s second-ranked fighter, she was still, after all, a student. He had by no means been underestimating her, but he had never expected her to be able to fend them off for so long.
Things had been going well up until they had cornered her in the harbor block, but now that he thought back on it, there was something off about how everything had played out. The target seemed to be too well-informed.
The harbor block wasn’t the kind of place people frequently stumbled into, but they had nonetheless put up barriers to keep out any unwanted visitors. They had also taken control of the security cameras that practically littered the area. One might say that there could be no better field for chasing down one’s quarry.
Yet, despite all that, the target had managed to evade their net, as if she knew the precise location of every single security camera.
She showed no hesitation in selecting her escape route, almost as if she were as familiar with it as her own backyard.
She might have been the student council president, but it was incomprehensible that a student, who ought to have had no connection whatsoever to the harbor block, could be so knowledgeable about its layout.
Could it be that she led us here…?
On top of that, her combat abilities were more advanced than they had imagined.
More troublesome than her physical skills was the precognition offered to her by the Pan-Dora, which she seemed to be able to use at will. Bringing her down was always going to prove difficult.
And yet, even taking all these factors into account, they still ought to have been able to corner her hours ago. In other words, based on Bujinsai’s view of the situation, there had to be another element at play, something that remained yet unclear.
“Where are our scouts? And the ones I sent to circle around south? They’re late reporting back.”
“We seem to have lost contact with them a short while ago—”
“—!”
Bujinsai suddenly leaped backward, the Kinoe to whom he had been speaking j
umping forward to shield him. At that moment, a fast-moving figure suddenly appeared out of nowhere, landing a powerful kick on the Kinoe and sending it hurtling down from the top of the crane before it could even attempt to defend itself.
“…”
The face of the figure who had attacked so viciously, without making so much as a sound or betraying her presence, was hidden behind an unsettling mask.
She landed atop the tip of the crane and silently turned toward Bujinsai.
“Hmph, that mask… You’re Jie Long’s brat, then?” Bujinsai asked, his eyes narrowing as he slowly stroked his chin. “This might be the harbor block, but this place belongs to Seidoukan. You’ve got a lot of gall to creep in here, Seiten Taisei.”
“…HEH, SO MY FAME PRECEDES ME.” The woman—Alema Seiyng—replied not with a voice, but through text displayed on an air-window, as she removed her wolf-shaped disguise and flashed him a broad grin.
“To think that a former number one like yourself has fallen so far, relegated to working behind the scenes as the Ban’yuu Tenra’s loyal hound… I really do feel sorry for you.”
“YOU’VE GOT A SHARP TONGUE, OLD MAN. I GUESS IT’S ALL A LIE, THAT SAYING THAT FOLK MELLOW WITH AGE.” Alema, unmoved by Bujinsai’s provocative greeting, continued to grin right back at him.
…Hmph. So she didn’t rise to the bait.
She had a lot of nerve—as perhaps should have been expected from someone who had been Jie Long’s strongest student up until the Ban’yuu Tenra had usurped that position.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Your actions are in clear violation of the Stella Carta. If anyone was to find out, even Jie Long won’t come through this unscathed.”
According to the Stella Carta, students were expressly forbidden to enter the grounds of the other schools without prior permission—all the more so when such students belonged to one of the schools’ intelligence organizations.
That said, from a security point of view, it wasn’t actually difficult to do so, as long as one kept away from the central areas of each campus.
Nonetheless, the schools continued to abide by that rule, to avoid the kind of information war that had erupted during Asterisk’s early years, which had ended up having a deleterious effect on the operations of the Festa. As such, it had become convention for them to go so far as to tip one another off when one of their own students violated it.
