Vengeance Is Mine

by Shiden Kanzaki

  Without the MagLite, he couldn’t see the bottom at all and could just barely hear the violent flow of the muddy river. He wasn’t in his right mind. He berated himself for almost losing his breath at the sight of the wide-open mouth of hell below him.

  Behind him came the growls of the wolves and the sound of their footsteps sidling up beside him. The soles of his shoes seemed to have grown roots, for he had to forcefully peel his feet away as he forced himself to jump. He felt an uncanny floating sensation when the wind hit his face; he was getting sucked into the darkness at amazing speed. He flapped his arms to maneuver himself to fall feetfirst, but it didn’t work.

  Abruptly, his whole body was hit with something hard, and he almost lost consciousness. But he was forced aware again by the frigid water that streamed over him. The flooded river started to carry Rentaro’s body away with the force of a roller coaster. Even if he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see even a meter in front of him in the muddy river. He was stunned witless for a second, until he started struggling desperately to find a handhold. However, he’d lost his sense of equilibrium and couldn’t tell if he was heading up or down, and his screams turned into muddy bubbles.

  Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a pitch-black mass, and it was approaching him. By the time he realized that it was a large, sharp boulder standing in the bottom of the river, it was too late. With the impact much stronger than he imagined it would be, his backbone creaked and most of the air in his lungs turned to bubbles and was forced out of him.

  He crashed over and over into driftwood and boulders, and still unable to tell up from down, he spun like diseased leaves being scattered by the wind, turning over and over on the river bottom. Rocks the size of fists pelted his body all over like slugs from a shotgun. He was about to lose consciousness again. If he let go of the reins of consciousness right now, he knew instinctively that he wouldn’t wake up again. He waved his arms around desperately.

  Suddenly, Rentaro’s right hand grabbed onto something. When he realized that the rough protrusion was a handhold on a rock, he made a split-second decision to stretch out his left hand as well and go against the rapids. Blood was streaming from the top of his shoulders. He gritted his teeth and clung on with his whole body, yelling as he heaved himself upward.

  Before he knew it, Rentaro was lying faceup on a rugged bank, his chest heaving up and down. As he vomited the water that he had swallowed, he fought against chills that made his stomach feel like it was going through the wringer. Finally, Rentaro lifted his pallid face and looked around.

  Before the Great War, it had probably been a mooring place for boats. There was a small concrete pier with an abandoned mooring rope, and next to it he could see a dark brown shack. Gazing at the black rapids that looked like ink had been poured into them, he told himself that he was not completely out of danger yet.

  Rentaro wrung out the dirty water from his uniform and stood up unsteadily, holding his aching body as he changed out his equipment. He hadn’t noticed that the backpack he was carrying had been washed away, and the silencer had also come off, but at least his gun was still stored in its holster. It was a painful realization that his food rations, water, and the explosive he had gotten to defeat the Pleiades had all been washed away.

  Relying on the dim glow of the beta light, he went into the shack and found a match and portable fuel. There was alcohol and food, too, but it had been abandoned for more than ten years, so he decided that it would be better not to touch it. His uniform was heavy with the water it had absorbed, and his consciousness was about to give out, but in order to run away from those fearsome predators, he just had to move.

  However, he reached his limit faster than he thought he would. Unexpectedly, his vision wavered and his knees weakened. Rentaro fell to his knees. A wheezing sound escaped from his throat and his body trembled like he had the ague.

  When he looked up again, he saw an enormous tree trunk that pointed straight into the sky. This was probably thanks to the Gastrea virus. Giant sequoias that were easily more than five hundred tons were growing here and there, and just the outer circumference of their trunks was probably about ten meters.

  When Rentaro found a good clearing, he gathered firewood and laid out the solid fuel. The matches were damp and his hands shook, so he lost some matches before he finally lit a warm fire on the tenth try and managed to carefully move the subsequent fire. As the red flames grew bigger, he let out a sigh of relief from the bottom of his heart.

  After much effort, he peeled off the clothes twisted around his body, gave them a good wringing out, and put them back on. His body was covered with scratches and bruises, but seeing that he was able to move, he figured he did not have any broken bones. He was still worried about tetanus and other bacterial infections, but when he remembered that the portable dose of antibiotics was also in his backpack, his face twisted wryly.

  After his body had warmed up somewhat, the tense knots of nervousness also started to come loose. As if waiting for just that second, there was suddenly a sharp pain in his side.

  “Ow… Gah!”

  A large shadow the size of a lion had bitten Rentaro’s side, and fresh blood was spraying out. More than the pain, he felt dumbfounded.

  Rentaro retreated to lean against one of the sequoias, holding his side. “Those guys…sure are persistent,” he managed to squeeze out between pants.

  At Rentaro’s words, the pack of wolves appeared smoothly out of the shadows of the trees. They showed no sign of being afraid of the bonfire.

  Why are they still here? he thought over and over in his head. Hadn’t he taken a gamble and jumped into the river to wash away his scent to avoid letting them use their highly developed sense of smell? He thought that much and then shook his head. It wasn’t worth thinking about. They had followed Rentaro down from the cliff and through rapids; they weren’t going to stop now.

  Just then, the hedge of wolves suddenly split, and a gigantic Gastrea walked out from the depths of the darkness. It had round pupils and a pointed snout like a canine, and its silhouette was slightly short and stout rather than sharp. Its white fur gathered more red as it reached its back, and on all fours, it was already over two meters tall, making all the other wolves look like pups.

  It was a Japanese wolf, said to have been extinct since 1905. Its canines were overgrown and looked like a saber-toothed cat, its tail was split into three, and one of its eyes was cloudy. Its fur was shedding all over the place. It looked as evil as the watchdog of hell.

  It was probably a Stage Three, and no doubt the leader of the pack.

  Rentaro’s legs became unable to support his body, and he slid down to the ground with his back still on the tree trunk, leaving a diagonal trail of blood along the way. Checking the wound in his side, he saw that the hand and shirt he had been using to press down on the wound was bright red. It was a serious wound that needed immediate treatment.

  Rentaro gritted his teeth and looked up at the sky. Was today the last day of his life? If so, what had been the point of his sixteen years of life? Was the hominid called Rentaro Satomi put on this earth for sixteen years just to be eaten by Gastrea in the depths of this dark forest today? Irreplaceable memories flashed in his mind, and before he knew it, tears welled up and flowed down his cheeks.

  The leader of the pack walked in front of him with sneering eyes, filling Rentaro’s vision with its open mouth.

  But right before Rentaro was devoured, the wolves suddenly perked their ears. They changed the direction of their stances, tilting their bodies forward. As they growled, they focused on the darkness beyond the bonfire before Rentaro.

  He looked in the direction of their gazes hazily, but Rentaro couldn’t make anything out. However, the wolves could see something. Just as he thought it, the pack of almost fifty wolves howled and rushed into the darkness. Immediately after, there was the sound of combat and yaps of pain.

  Rentaro didn’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly, all the sound sto
pped, and the place was filled with silence. He heard the bonfire popping and the sound of an owl hooting from somewhere. What just happened…?

  Rentaro leaned the top half of his body forward and looked hard at the depths of the darkness in front of him. Suddenly, something was thrown at superhigh speed into the trunk of the sequoia next to him, and the sound of pounded flesh echoed.

  Rentaro gazed in wonder. That something that had been thrown into the tree was one of the wolves that had attacked him. Its neck was twisted with an abnormal strength, its tongue was sticking out, and a straight line was carved into its stomach. With the crash, a flower of blood bloomed on its face, and it became clear that it was dead.

  Seeing the slash on its stomach, something stirred in Rentaro’s memory. Where had he seen this nightmarish swordsmanship before…?

  He raised his voice in surprise. This was the same thing as what he had seen with Enju three days ago at the civil officer frontline headquarters. They had found civil officers dead on the street while they were recruiting members for their adjuvant. It had looked like a quarrel between civil officers, but it had ended in him not knowing who had actually done the killing. The two civil officers lying piled on top of each other had been carved with the same swordsmanship. Why was this here?

  “Is there anyone who saw what happened?”

  “C-could you be Rentaro Satomi?”

  At the scene of the crime, this was the first thing the witness had said.

  “What if I am?”

  “Uh… Y-you… Never mind, it was my mistake. Forget about it.”

  “Huh? What do you want?”

  “I said, forget about it!”

  When Rentaro had spoken, sounding irritated, the witness had turned and left the scene before Rentaro had a chance to call him back. Thinking back on it now, that was a strange dialogue. Why did the witness go out of his way to check Rentaro’s name and then insist that he had made a mistake afterward?

  Could it have been something like this? What if a civil officer pair that was definitely not supposed to be there was there? A pair that had been defeated by Rentaro and Enju and were treated as if they were dead and removed from the civil officers’ list? That’s why the witness doubted his own senses. Because there was no way dead people could walk around…

  There was one. Just one pair that could maneuver such a sharp slash and that was supposed to have died in their clash with Rentaro and Enju during the summoning of the Zodiac Scorpion. Why hadn’t he noticed until now?

  Three more wolves were blown out and crucified on the tree trunk in succession from out of the darkness. There was a cross cut into their stomachs, a death cross—the universal symbol of God’s authority over those who were going to die.

  Rentaro’s arm flung up, and he aimed his gun into the darkness. After a while, the leader Gastrea of the pack came stumbling out. Both of its saber-toothed cat fangs had been broken, and it was covered in cuts. There was a deep wound on its neck, and fresh blood dripped steadily from the wound and dyed its white fur red. The Gastrea looked with pleading eyes as its head shook left and right, and then fell to the ground with a plop. The body seemed to be at a loss for a while after losing its head, but it finally fell sideways to the ground, shaking the earth as it fell, and then stopped moving altogether.

  * * *

  “Papa, I think he’s the guy that was with Enju.”

  “Oh my.”

  There was the sound of a bell, and first, a white-gloved hand grasping the tree trunk firmly appeared from out of the pitch-black darkness. Next, a face with a white mask and silk hat was revealed, reflecting the orange light of the bonfire. In his crimson red tailcoat were the double guns, Spanking Sodomy and Psychedelic Gospel. Next to him, with short swords in both hands wearing a frilly black dress, was a young girl.

  Goodness.

  “Fancy meeting you here—my dear friend.”

  “Kagetane…Hiruko……!”

  The strongest magician whom Rentaro had ever fought in a life-or-death contest appeared.

  6

  To think that he would one day sit around a fire with this man…

  Rentaro held his gun at the ready as he used his teeth and left hand to wrap a bandage around his stomach, never letting his guard down.

  The bleeding at his side had stopped at least, but if he tried to do too much, it was possible that the wound would open up again, so his movements would be limited for a while.

  Rentaro’s gun was trained at the people sitting on the other side of the fire facing him.

  Kagetane gave a forced shrug. “I wonder if you might put that gun down soon.”

  “No,” said Rentaro.

  The man threw a dry branch into the fire. “Have you already forgotten who provided you with the bandages and antibiotics?”

  “What about you? Have you already forgotten what you two did?” Kagetane and Kohina Hiruko. They were the terrorists who had summoned the Zodiac Scorpion, driving Tokyo Area to the brink of destruction. Rentaro had used the railgun called the Stairway to Heaven to end the matter before anything happened, but one wrong step and it could have turned into Tokyo Area’s Great Extinction.

  “If I get serious, your little toy gun’s not going to work, you know.”

  Rentaro was at a loss for words. He had experienced firsthand the despair-inducing defensive ability of the repulsion force field Kagetane used; the thing could repel antitank rifles. Yet after all this time, Rentaro still didn’t know what the man was after.

  In their encounter earlier, while Kohina had asked enthusiastically, “Papa, can I kill him?” Kagetane had made her be quiet and threw over bandages and antibiotics himself.

  Their relationship had once been one where they were after each other’s lives. There were a lot of reasons for Kagetane to hate him, and no reason for Kagetane to help him.

  Rentaro’s nervousness didn’t go away as he gently put the gun down. “Why are you here in the Unexplored Territory? Are you helping old Kikunojo with more of his conspiracies and doing some secret maneuvering?”

  “Oh dear, can you please not ask any leading questions? No comment,” said Kagetane.

  “You were the ones who killed that civil officer pair on the street in the frontline base three days ago, weren’t you?”

  “Let’s see.” Kagetane put a hand on his chin and looked at the girl. “Do you remember, Kohina?”

  The Initiator beside him, Kohina Hiruko, hugged both arms around her knees and covered her face, staring at Rentaro with upturned eyes. “You must be an idiot. How can I remember every little ant that I trample?”

  Rentaro was speechless. He realized again the difference between his values and those of these killers. Explaining morals to these two was likely to be more futile an endeavor than preaching to aliens.

  Kohina looked next to Rentaro for a second and then at him with upturned eyes. “Where’s Enju? Is she dead?”

  “She’s alive. She’s doing something else.”

  “I see.” She spoke curtly, but her mouth smiled happily. “Enju…I want to see her, I want to kill her. I want to see her, I want to kill her. I want to see her, I want to kill her.”

  Just then, Rentaro noticed that there were now four short sword scabbards on Kohina’s back.

  “Satomi, what about you? Why are you in a place like this?” Kagetane asked.

  Rentaro couldn’t decide whether or not to tell the truth. Would it be safer for him to bluff and say that his friends were close by? “I’m here to defeat Pleiades.”

  “Pleiades?”

  “The unidentified Gastrea that can shoot mercury at long distances. Apparently, it’s in this forest.”

  “Yeah, apparently it is.”

  That response was suspicious as hell. “Don’t tell me you guys were also in the line of battle yesterday fighting against Aldebaran?”

  Kagetane laughed so hard he held down his mask, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “Of course not. I climbed the tallest tree in the a
rea to get a better view. Why should we have to fight? What good would it do us?”

  “If we don’t fight, everyone will die.”

  “So fight, and then what lies ahead of that?”

  “Peace.”

  “I have never desired that.” Kagetane looked at Rentaro with pity in his eyes. “I can bear an eternal hell. I can bear this body being half-carved open and dissected. But you know, if peace and joy were to continue forever, I would scream and plead for someone to kill me.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Are you saying I wasn’t until today?”

  Rentaro and Kagetane glared at each other wordlessly as the bonfire sent up flames and started burning stronger. Rentaro shifted his gaze first. He couldn’t suppress his anger at everything the man did, but even if he threw himself on Kagetane now, he would most likely be swiftly murdered.

  Kagetane sprinkled what looked like seasoning into the camp pot that was set over the bonfire and stirred the contents with a spoon. Finally, salted-plum rice gruel was served on a plastic tray. It wasn’t a dish that sounded very appetizing, but Kagetane had probably made rice gruel on purpose out of consideration for the injured Rentaro, offering him something easier to eat.

  Since his backpack had been washed away by the river, Rentaro had exactly zero food rations on him. And there was no chance that he would be able to get any in the future.

  There’s no way he poisoned this, right? Rentaro thought as he waited for the two of them to eat theirs, before timidly slurping a spoonful himself. It was salty, and there was some kind of soup stock in it as well, so it tasted less like gruel and more like chazuke, but it didn’t seem like the taste was being covered up by salt like many store-bought versions; rather, it left a curious aftertaste. Rentaro was surprised to find that it was an understatement to call it delicious.

  Kagetane himself flipped up his mask and slurped the gruel with neither relish nor disgust, but the flames of the bonfire threw up intricate shadows. Unfortunately, from where Rentaro was sitting, the other man’s face was a shadow and Rentaro couldn’t see what it looked like.