I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 14

by Namekojirushi

  “Hey, Mom, Dad... why have you two been looking so dubious for a while now?”

  I decided to just go ahead and ask what it was, but my mother furrowed her brow and tossed a worried look my dad’s way.

  “...”

  And as for Dad...

  “Hmm, how should I put this...?” he pondered aloud, scratching his head.

  “What? Just spit it out.”

  “Well, I actually don’t know what it means, but...” he began explaining, “The pace that you’re being involved in stories is completely abnormal, Rekka.”

  “Huh?”

  That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say.

  “No, but... Isn’t the Namidare bloodline all about that?”

  At age sixteen, a supernatural power to get caught up in “stories” awoke... That was the gist of the Namidare bloodline. It was Dad himself who’d told me that. R had filled me in on all the details, but there was no way Dad didn’t know about all that.

  “Yeah. It’s normal for we Namidares to get involved in stories, but I said the pace you were doing so wasn’t normal. In half a year, you’ve saved, what? Thirty girls? I’ve never heard of someone doing that.”

  “...Is it really that weird?”

  “At most, it should’ve been five or six... There are even some cases like me where I got sent to another world and traveled for years in one single story.”

  At most, there should only be five or six stories... Then what had happened to me? I had to wonder. I wasn’t really shocked to hear all this, but I was a bit unnerved to hear my strange penchant for trouble was unusual even in my oh-so-unusual family. What... was up with me?

  “Allow me to answer that question.”

  Just then, a third party interrupted us. I turned with a gasp to see who it was, and there stood a woman in a strange outfit lined with blue and red. She looked quite neat, which made her stand out amongst all the rubble and wreckage. I couldn’t say for sure whether she was a friend or foe, and it seemed my parents couldn’t either. L, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly who we were dealing with.

  “Doctor?!” she gasped loud enough that her astonished voice echoed through the area.

  Wait, did L just say “doctor”? As in, the doctor? I’d only ever heard of her, and surely Mom and Dad didn’t know her... This would be our first time meeting her.

  “L... long time no see.” The doctor approached L before anything else and hugged the little girl close. “I received R’s report, but I’m glad to finally see you again.”

  “Wha... Wh-What do you want?! Don’t touch me!”

  L shoved the doctor away with a gasp, and the doctor’s face clouded with sadness.

  “L, I’ve heard what happened. And I’m sorry for not being able to see you back then. I know being busy wasn’t an excuse. It was my fault for not considering how you would feel when you were all alone.”

  “Shut up, shut up! I don’t want to hear it!”

  L shook her head furiously, pushing the doctor away at every turn. But then...

  “Now listen here.”

  My mom walked over and flicked L on the forehead, cutting off her temper tantrum.

  “Ow!”

  “I don’t know what happened between you two, but you should talk it out properly.”

  “...”

  Holding her forehead, L fell silent. She wasn’t trying to back away from the doctor anymore, however. Seeing that, the smile returned to the doctor’s face, and she stood up. Then she turned to look at me... and looking kinda turned into staring.

  “Um...”

  “Ah, sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Rekka’s face, so I couldn’t help myself,” the doctor laughed shyly.

  “It’s been a while...? Uh, we haven’t met before, have we?”

  “We have, although I’m from the future, so you could say that I know ‘future’ Rekka.”

  “In other words... You know me, but not really me me? That’s a little confusing.”

  “Heh, that’s an interesting way of putting it, but yes, that’s about the size of it,” the doctor said with a mischievous laugh. “But truth be told, you also know a different version of me in this time line.”

  “Huh?”

  “Can you tell who it is?”

  A different version of the doctor in this time line, huh? In other words, I’d met her past self before. Put on the spot like this... I knew how smart she was, so I was tempted to say Shirley, but her hair color was all wrong. Hmm... Seeing me struggling made the doctor chuckle again.

  “Sorry, sorry. Now’s not the time for a quiz. Just so you know, the answer is the king of Laputa.”

  “Whaaat?!”

  I couldn’t help but shout in surprise. That expressionless little girl turned into such an emotional and beautiful woman... Nope. I just couldn’t picture it.

  “Heh, I’m sure it’s confusing, so feel free to just call me Doctor,” she said with a smile, seemingly satisfied with my surprise.

  “Um, okay then, Doctor...”

  I glanced at L as I started to speak to the doctor. I felt bad for interrupting their emotional reunion, but there was something I really needed to ask the doctor.

  “You’ll answer my question now, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me ask you this... What am I?”

  I was an anomaly even among the Namidares, something that surprised even Dad... Despite being slightly nervous about it, I asked anyway.

  “It may not be the answer you’re looking for, but I’ve researched this abnormality of yours with your cooperation—or rather, the cooperation of the future Rekka Namidare,” the doctor began quietly. “Firstly, I started my research on what exactly the Namidare bloodline was. Why is it that you Namidares, with completely average strengths and spirits, hold the power to overturn helpless tragedies?”

  “...”

  “I spent quite a lot of time researching it, but I couldn’t find a logical explanation for it with existing scientific or magical means. That’s why, well, this is just a theory, but... I believe the Namidare bloodline possesses the ability to activate a certain power.”

  “Power? But I don’t have any special powers.”

  “Power isn’t necessarily something that can be perceived with your eyes. Electrons and neutrinos existed long before methods of observing them were invented, for example.”

  A power that couldn’t be observed, but was definitely there... When I thought about myself that way, I couldn’t help but look at my arms and legs. Of course, nothing had changed from this morning. They were just ordinary limbs.

  “At first, I thought the power of the Namidare bloodline was simply to turn bad endings into good ones. You used the tremendous good inside you to convert them, you could say. And so, through your involvement, you were guiding the stories and their heroines to happiness.” There, the doctor paused. “But I’ve also found precedent for Namidares turning bad endings into even greater tragedies, so that idea was scrapped. If the power of the Namidares was really to change things for the better, whether consciously or not, then it shouldn’t be possible for their involvement to make things worse.”

  The same as how if you keep adding positive numbers to a negative one, the sum eventually becomes positive. I got that. But according to the doctor’s interpretation, the power of the Namidares didn’t explicitly act as positive numbers.

  “Then what kind of power is it?”

  “The final conclusion I reached was actually rather simple.”

  “And that was?”

  “The power to change.”

  Her answer was to take the good and bad out of the equation. It was simply about changing.

  “The Namidares have the power to change stories. However, whether that change is from a bad ending to a good one, from tragedy to something less unfortunate, or even from tragedy to worse misery... That’s all up to the Namidare in question.”

  “Hm...”

  “Now, let me ask you this: wh
at exactly is the Namidare power changing, then?”

  “Hm? Isn’t it the stories?”

  “That’s a nice idea, but I think the real answer is a little different. You’re changing fate,” the doctor declared, holding up a finger.

  “Fate...?”

  “That’s right. What you’re actually saving varies to a great degree. Someone’s life, the well-being of an entire kingdom, the existence of a world, sometimes even the flow of history itself... It’s the so-called power to change fate that heroes of legend possessed, and it’s been passed on through the Namidare bloodline... Or so my theory goes.”

  “...”

  “Standing at the crossroads of fate, you shoulder the burden of choosing a direction. Thus we’ve dubbed you the crossroad keepers,” the doctor said in a serious voice.

  As for what that meant for me and my dad, the Namidares in question... The doctor’s description of us felt a little more grand than warranted, making us exchange dubious glances, unsure of whether or not we should be embarrassed or surprised.

  “And so, that leads me to the main topic of you, Rekka Namidare...”

  Finally, I thought we were about to get to the real heart of my question. I was dying to know what the doctor was going to say, but when she opened her mouth...

  RRRIP!

  An ear-splitting tearing sound came from on high.

  “Wh-What?!”

  Caught off guard, I looked up at the sky in a panic. And there...

  “That’s...”

  It looked like a large hole had been cut in the sky. In mid-air. In empty space. It literally looked like someone had sliced the air open with a sword, and it was gradually widening with that obnoxious tearing noise.

  “No way...” L murmured with a nervous expression.

  I actually recognized the phenomenon too. It was the same as when L had first appeared in my room—it was the end result of someone using the time translocator. And it was kind of...

  “Huge...”

  The tear in the sky now didn’t hold a candle to the one L had caused. Please tell me this doesn’t mean more robots...

  “Another herd of small fry?”

  Mom held her rapier at the ready while Dad drew his sword. My parents were ready and raring to go. But...

  Ka-clink! Thunk, thunk, thunk...

  The first thing I could see on the other side of the tear was feet.

  “What?”

  And they were way too big. Just from its ankle to its knee, this robot was already as tall as the ones we’d been fighting. And as the rest of it started to come through, the tear in the sky only grew bigger. When it fully emerged, unlike the slow, round robots from before, this one was actually humanoid with a distinct head.

  Ba-dooooom!

  “Crap!”

  Just the impact of it hitting the ground was nearly enough to knock me off my feet. I managed to keep upright by grabbing hold of a nearby broken fence, so I extended an arm to help support L too. Eventually, the tremors quieted. We then turned to look back up at the robot... The gigantic robot.

  “...”

  Seeing it tower over us like a mountain, I reflexively gulped. The robots and golems that had been fighting until now looked like children in comparison.

  “To think they’d be able to send something like this...” the doctor muttered to herself with a pained expression.

  While there wasn’t really a need to confirm it, her reaction told me that this gigantic robot wasn’t a rescue team from the agency. No, it was enemy reinforcement.

  “Hey, you! Don’t tell me the hardliners snatched the time translocator!” L roared, turning to the doctor.

  “Rather than taking the device, they may have simply stolen the technology...” she replied with a still-pained expression. “You remember the people from the agency who previously prepared you to be sent here to this time line, right? It seems they may have leaked the design for the time translocator to the enemy, but...” There the doctor trailed off, mumbling as though she were talking to herself, “Who exactly would be able to use the device to this degree?”

  “Well, let’s leave the rest of the thinking for later,” my mom interrupted, brandishing her rapier. “I assume it’s okay to destroy this thing, no?”

  “Totally okay,” I nodded in immediate response.

  “Golem!”

  “Urorororogh!”

  As Mom called for her golem, she took off running.

  “Awaken, awaken, awaken...”

  The spell she chanted made the blade of her rapier glow with light. Its twinkling luminescence danced in the air, forming some kind of strange characters. Was it a language from another world? The string of letters then all focused onto the rapier at once.

  “Hah!”

  Mom used her rapier to stab the light into the golem’s leg, where it seemed to funnel. The next thing I knew, I was hearing clattering and rattling all around us.

  “What is that?!” I asked, looking around in surprise. “The robots are...”

  The various parts of the robots that Mom and her golem had defeated earlier were rolling across the ground, pushing through rubble and floating into the air. They were all coming to gather around her golem. Just as I realized what was happening, the parts began merging together with the golem.

  “Wh-What?!”

  In no time at all, the golem had grown easily as large as the gigantic robot that had appeared. So Mom could do even that... Right before my surprised eyes, the giant robot and giant golem started to fight.

  “Urorororogh!”

  The golem threw the first attack with its hammer. The robot stopped the strike aimed at its head with both hands.

  Creeeeak! Whirrr...

  The robot then counterattacked by slamming its knee into the golem’s body. Loose rubble dropped down from its crushed body, making us spectators run for cover. The brawl continued after that.

  “Urorororogh!”

  Creeeak...

  The golem and robot exchanged blow for blow. They appeared to be evenly matched in that department, but the golem was slowly being worn down as the robot knocked off more and more of its parts.

  “Too bad... The materials are too different.”

  “Can’t you win, Mom?”

  “In the end, this golem’s just a pile of rubble. If only orichalcum and mithril existed on Earth...” Mom said with a resigned sigh.

  “What about that lightning magic you used earlier?”

  “I can use it, but it probably won’t have much effect on that giant thing.”

  “Is there a limit to the amount of force you can put in your magic or something?”

  “My magic is the power of awakening—it awakens an object’s inherent power and amplifies it. Golems are just one application of that.”

  So earlier she’d magnified the static electricity in the air into full-blown lightning, huh?

  “How about you, dear?”

  “I’m getting old, honey. This’ll be tough even with your help.”

  Mom and Dad consulted with each other, but they were short on good ideas.

  “...”

  And if Mom and Dad didn’t know what to do, we really might be out of options. Just as I was about to hang my head...

  Stomp!

  “Yeowch!”

  Something heavy fell on my foot with great force, making me yell out in pain and surprise. No, nothing fell on me... L had stomped on my foot!

  “Stop looking down!”

  She... She was right. Honestly, today hadn’t gone well at all. I was just getting jerked around from one thing to the next.

  “...Isn’t that the norm for you?”

  “Huh?!”

  R...? I could swear I’d heard R’s voice, but she was nowhere to be seen. Was it a figment of my imagination? A hallucination? Or did L’s violent scolding remind me of R’s scathing tongue?

  “All right!”

  Remotivated, I started thinking again. Mom and Dad were a famous duo that had once saved
another world, but I was the one with the active Namidare bloodline right now. Saving this story would be up to me. Using everything I had at my disposal, I’d have to come up with some way to make it work.

  “Magnifying power, huh?” I pondered over my mom’s explanation of her magic. “Hey, doctor...”

  “Hm?”

  “You know that sphere you used to fly around on as the king of Laputa? How did it float?”

  “Oh?” The doctor cocked her head at my sudden question, then answered, “That was just a simple anti-gravitational device. I don’t use it anymore, though.”

  Anti-gravitational...

  I looked south. The former island of Laputa where she’d lived was a 30-minute walk from here, if I recalled correctly. Which meant it’d be, what? Fifteen minutes if I ran? I’m sure the doctor would be able to convince the current king of Laputa. At the very least, there was a chance...

  But could we pull it off? The story this time was pretty straightforward. The enemy came, so we fought it. We defeated it, even, but then a stronger enemy appeared. Rinse and repeat. It was a simple test of power. There wasn’t really room for any of my usual tricky, rule-breaking maneuvers. But I had to try.

  “Dad, Mom, everyone! Listen up!”

  It was only a matter of time before Mom’s golem lost. Before then, I had to get everyone up to speed on the plan I’d just come up with. And so I began explaining... After hearing me out, my mother had a very reasonable response.

  “For real?” she asked.

  “For real,” I answered.

  “...”

  She then gave my dad a questioning look, to which he replied...

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Really, Dad?”

  “You’re my son, after all. I did something similar when I saved your mom, I think.”

  Dad’s casual response made Mom rub her forehead and sigh.

  “Goodness me... They do say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  She then turned to me and poked her finger into my chest.

  “Do what you need to. We’ll be here to pick up the pieces.”

  “Can’t you just pray for my safety instead?”

  “If only prayers worked like that... Even if you use all your bravery and knowledge, there may come a time when things don’t work out. And when that time comes, accept your noble death with dignity. Your father and I will mourn for you... and then have another child.”