Vengeance Is Mine

by Shiden Kanzaki

  Hey, this isn’t funny…! Gulping involuntarily, Rentaro’s vision tilted, and he stumbled. It was already too late by the time he realized that the floor had become slanted. With an unpleasant and nauseating sound of collapse, the top part of the building bent over, and the floor became so slanted that Rentaro couldn’t remain standing. Falling and rolling on the floor along with rusted steel desks and chairs, Rentaro landed back first on the floor—which had been a wall just a moment ago. The air was squeezed from his lungs with a sharp pain, like a hole had opened up in his back.

  Suddenly, his hips floated up with a different kind of vibration. Opening one eye, he found the building bowing, as if it were leaning against another building rather than fully crashing to the ground.

  In the bizarre world where vertical had become horizontal, he had no time to catch his breath. Enju tumbled toward him with pieces of glass; he froze when he spotted where she was going to fall.

  At that rate, she would go through the windows and smash into the ground.

  “Ennnnjuuuuuuuuu!” He stretched out his arm immediately. The girl stretched out her hand back.

  With a screech, Enju’s body went through the glass window.

  “Gah!” A heavy impact ripped through Rentaro, nearly dislocating his right shoulder. Opening his eyes as much as he could, he saw that Enju had just barely managed to grab his arm in time and was hanging in midair.

  “Rentaro!” Enju called out in a pained voice.

  He felt throbbing pain along his spine. He didn’t have time to pull out a mirror and check, but he knew he had been stabbed by the countless shards of glass that had tumbled down with the girl.

  Enju’s wondrous jumping ability could manifest itself only with a hard floor to jump off of, so she couldn’t step on air to jump. He had to make sure she didn’t fall from this height. “Hang on, Enju. I’ll pull you up.” Holding the excruciating pain at bay, he gritted his teeth and put all of his strength into his arm.

  Just then, he felt overwhelming pressure and heat on his back. Turning his head, he found the giant snake Gastrea had stuck its head into the building and was flicking its red tongue in and out of its mouth.

  The hot air it breathed out smelled like rotten eggs. With just the long and narrow snout and pair of horns visible, it looked just like a dragon.

  If Rentaro didn’t release Enju’s hand, he wouldn’t be able to evade the giant snake’s attack. He paled with despair.

  Suddenly, the giant snake opened its mouth wide.

  “Satomi, I’m coming.” Unexpectedly, a graceful voice echoed from his radio.

  Kisara, where are you coming from? Turning his head, Rentaro yelped. “Ahh!”

  Kisara was accessing their building from the roof of the one it was leaning on. She rushed down a steep slope with an angle of elevation no less than forty-five degrees, and at a speed close to falling.

  She was being reckless. She didn’t even bring an Initiator with her.

  The giant snake noticed something out of order and raised its head to meet Kisara directly.

  Without warning, there was a sharp exhale. “Tendo Sword Drawing, First Style, Number 6—” With a clear tone that froze the air, Kisara drew the sword at her hip from its sheath as fast as a lightning strike. “—Midaei Suiken.”

  Countless giant cutlines scattered into the air, and Kisara and the Gastrea crossed paths. They were so fast that Rentaro couldn’t tell what was going on. Kisara braked suddenly with the heel of her shoe and exhaled deeply as she slowly resheathed her sword. When the naked blade was sheathed all the way to its base, the head of the giant snake that was already stiffening with rigor mortis spurted blood, and pieces of flesh that had been cut off like dots of a die splattered down in chunks.

  The body that had lost its head wriggled like a loose string, and then fell from the building. It fell with a creak of the ground and a thunderous roar, raising a thick cloud of dust.

  The civil officers below them cheered as they saw the defeat of the enemy’s general-class Gastrea.

  Rentaro watched the scene with his mouth slightly open. Someone who wasn’t an Initiator or a mechanized soldier—a regular human—had defeated a Stage Three Gastrea with a single attack. A Stage Three. With one attack.

  Kisara jumped down to where Rentaro was and flipped her hair. “Satomi, we’re going to pull Enju up.”

  “R-right,” said Rentaro.

  With Kisara’s help, they were finally able to pull Enju up. However, there was no time to pull out the pieces of glass stuck in his back before the world shook and he fell to his knees. Opening his eyes a little, he saw that the floor was getting even closer to horizontal. Cement dust fell and was blown away, and the entire building cracked.

  Rentaro broke into a cold sweat. The edifice was leaning over even more. At this rate, it wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. If they stopped here, they would end up committing suicide with the building.

  “Enju!”

  She nodded once and put her right hand around Rentaro’s hips, and the other arm around Kisara’s waist.

  “Let’s go.”

  Enju bent her legs deeply and jumped. The next instant, Rentaro couldn’t even open his eyes under the pressure; it felt like a giant was pushing its palm against him. Next to him, even Kisara screamed a little.

  Hearing the sound of clothes flapping, Rentaro forced his eyes open a little. The sky was crimson, lit up by the otherworldly glow of the hot air balloons within it, while the forest below held Gastrea in a dense formation. Civil officers, the size of grains of rice, attacked like the thrust of a rapier.

  Rentaro tapped Enju’s shoulder twice and pointed at the middle of the vicious battle below them. His signal meant to land there.

  Enju gave a nod, and, doing a triangle jump off the building, she kicked twice. He felt G’s hit his side so hard that it almost made him groan.

  Cutting through the wind, they went up over a hundred meters before inertia and gravity canceled each other out. They fell into free fall the next instant, and the brown dirt of the ground grew bigger as he watched.

  Just before they ran into the ground, Rentaro and Kisara curled up their bodies and rolled as they landed.

  Even though his vision spun, Rentaro stood up quickly. The ground was muddy with rain, so Rentaro’s uniform was instantly covered in it. But he didn’t worry about the details as he checked his surroundings.

  They were in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by the sound of fighting, the rumble of the earth, and splashes of mud as ground was trampled.

  “Run, Satomi!” Even Kisara shouting with all her might was hard to hear in the midst of the shouts and war cries around them.

  Rentaro and Enju nodded at each other, and they ran through the battlefield, kicking up mud.

  Noticing that Rentaro had arrived, the civil officers around them exploded in war cries that made the air vibrate. Morale rose immediately, and their attack intensified. They surrounded the running Rentaro and Enju in a defensive circle, and the civil officers who had been aiming for the outriders boldly charged at Gastrea of all shapes and colors.

  He saw Kohina jumping from tree to tree like a giant flying squirrel as she precisely severed the heads of the Gastrea around her. Smaller Gastrea were caught up in Yuzuki’s invisible threads, and Tamaki made them explode with his Varanium chain saw punches and roundhouse kicks. Blood splashed into the air.

  All of a sudden, there was a scream from behind him, and even as he ran at full speed, he turned around to see a giant rhino with horns all over its face scattering the civil officers around it as it charged toward him.

  “Go on ahead!” Kisara used her legs to brake suddenly and turned, lining up next to Asaka. The two swordswomen nodded at each other and readied their swords.

  Rentaro wanted to see the outcome of the fight, but he forced himself to face front again and ran on. Soon, he heard the high-pitched scream of a monster dying in agony.

  There was one here, too. Another Gastre
a of the same shape was approaching. They had been planning on catching him in a pincer attack.

  “Let’s go, Satomi.” He suddenly heard the reliable voice of his senior disciple next to his ear, and he was filled with strength.

  Rentaro trampled the mud with the bottoms of his shoes as he stopped, inhaled, and focused his energy. He aimed his right fist at the Gastrea rushing at them and exploded a cartridge. The smell of gunpowder smoke burned his nostrils. Next to him, Shoma was using a similar technique.

  The rhino made the ground rumble as it approached. With its weight, its attack would be like that of a bulldozer.

  Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 3—

  “—Homura Kasen!!!”

  The rhino was hit straight on by two fists rushing at it, and its horns exploded. Rentaro and Shoma were likewise pushed back by the enemy rushing at them.

  The Gastrea with the attack power of a heavy tank had its horns broken as fists exploded onto the bridge of its nose, and its face was blasted into tiny pieces. The rhino’s body, which had veered off in a different direction, did not seem to realize at first that its head had been pulverized. Suddenly, it lost its balance, fell with a crash, and slid on the mud for more than ten meters before it finally stopped moving.

  “Go, Satomi!” Before Shoma could finish talking, Rentaro had already started running. However, by the time he ran past a giant tree and noticed the Gastrea waiting next to it, it was already too late. The hard-shelled Gastrea with large pincers lowered its arms like a strangely swollen hammer. A giant shadow covered Rentaro.

  Just as he was about to be crushed, there was a thunderous sound, and the pincers stopped.

  “Kagetane!” Rentaro yelled.

  The man had sprung out in front of Rentaro and protected him with his repulsion field. It creaked with the enormous force of the attack, and the ground sank beneath them as bedrock was lifted up. The field couldn’t absorb all of the attack, and the capillaries in Kagetane’s body burst, showering Rentaro’s face with blood.

  However, in his brush with death, Kagetane just threw back his body and laughed loudly. “That’s right! Fighting to live! How exciting! This is death! This is war! How wonderful!”

  Enju dove under the crab Gastrea’s body and kicked the six legs holding it up, destroying them one by one. As the body shook and fell, she brought her foot up and kicked straight above her. The shell armor was smashed to pieces, and the giant Gastrea flew up into the air. It crashed into the ground a moment later, bubbles frothing from its mouth as it died.

  Kagetane had released his repulsion field and fallen to one knee. As Rentaro was about to run to him, Kagetane turned his head toward Rentaro and stretched out a hand. From the depths of his mask came a dark, hoarse voice. “Nameless Reaper.”

  Rentaro didn’t even have time to be surprised at the unexpected move as a sickle-shape came toward him, leaving an afterimage. There was a slashing sound, and Rentaro’s shoulders shook. Not knowing what was going on, his eyes opened wide, and there was a thud behind him as something fell.

  When he looked, he saw that the sickle that had grazed his cheek had taken off the head of a Stage One that had come at him from behind. The next instant, blood spurted up like a geyser from its neck. Blood splashed all over Kagetane’s white mask.

  It took Rentaro a while before he realized that Kagetane had saved his life.

  Kagetane stood up and waved his hands. “Go! You don’t have time to worry about me!”

  Rentaro nodded a quick thanks and took off again. They had already suffered a lot of damage. The civil officers had already lost many—a chip was starting to form in the blade of the rapier that was supposed to cut through the enemy forces.

  Even amid all that, the strength of Rentaro’s adjuvant was a cut above the rest. Kohina was pushed back by an enemy attack and thrown into the air, but waiting there was Yuzuki, ready with her threads strung like tightropes. She inverted heaven and earth with a thread wrapped around her foot and caught Kohina midair like a circus trapeze artist. Then, using the rope bridge as a fulcrum, she spun her body and accelerated, and then threw Kohina straight down. Kohina’s surprise attack from above pierced through the head of the Gastrea sneaking up behind Tamaki, killing it.

  Rentaro felt his chest grow warm from the inside. His adjuvant of ten was switching pairs between them as they unleashed a surge of chain attacks to cover each other’s blind spots.

  Finally, the Gastrea started to falter at the adjuvant’s ferocity. The enemy was starting to fall apart.

  With a finger, Rentaro signaled Enju, running next to him. She nodded.

  The cartridges in Rentaro’s leg exploded, and the empty shells it spit out flowed out behind him. “Ahhhhhhhh!” He kicked off the ground. Enju and Rentaro, who were superaccelerated, came together to form a single bullet that passed through the spaces between their enemies’ legs, getting them through the dense enemy formation. Then, breaking out of the forest, the world opened up.

  However, their unnatural stance was their ruin, and they messed up their landing to bounce over and over the muddy ground. When they finally stopped, Rentaro pushed himself up with both hands and spat gritty mud from his mouth. It looked like they had been blown all the way to the plain where the tents had been set up.

  When he looked at Enju next to him, he saw that she was looking up with her head tilted, dazed.

  As he stood, he followed her gaze, and then his body froze.

  “This is…” Rentaro’s neck bent forty-five degrees, locked in position as he looked at the monster standing still in the darkness. “This is Aldebaran…”

  There it was: a large body that could be mistaken for a small mountain. It had a long tail, and eight short, thick legs that looked like stone pillars holding up its gigantic body. It stood on all eight, and on its back was a hard shell that looked like that of an armadillo. From cracks in the shell stretched countless tentacles. Each tentacle seemed to move independently, like the mythological, gigantic, eight-forked serpent.

  There were countless holes in the sides of its shell, as well; they were probably where it released the pheromones that it quickly spread via the wings tucked behind its shell. On its face, there were no eyes or nose. There was a giant hole that seemed to be its mouth, and from the depths of that eternal darkness, its breath whistled as it dripped green mucus. It looked, vaguely, like a turtle or armadillo monster.

  Now that he thought about it, he had only seen its silhouette from afar, or heard stories from people who had fought against it, so this was his first time seeing it with his own eyes.

  Its breath was hot. Just its existence gave off a huge pressure, and when it walked, the earth shook.

  Rentaro’s stomach shriveled in fear, and he felt like he was going to vomit.

  But as long as we defeat this…

  Aldebaran had finally noticed them, and it pointed the tips of all its tentacles at them, not paying any attention to the battle in the forest. It was possible that Aldebaran had realized that Rentaro and Enju were the generals.

  It was a chance match between commanders. The other squad members were doing well, but they would not last long. If he did not finish things here, everything they had done up until now would go to waste.

  Enju stayed on guard as she edged closer to him. “We don’t have much time, Rentaro.”

  “I know. We’ll be at a disadvantage if this drags out for too long. We’ll go at full power from the start.” Rentaro exhaled and relaxed his whole body, then tensed all four limbs and dropped his center of gravity, taking the Tendo Martial Arts Water and Sky Stance.

  “Commence battle. We will now eliminate the enemy.”

  “Hyuuuurrrrooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

  Aldebaran made the first move. Like a bull mad with anger, it gave a war cry and then twisted its body—its tail came at them along the ground, moving as fast as a whip.

  Enju’s arms wrapped around Rentaro’s waist, and the next instant, Rentaro and Enju were in the air.
However, the enemy had taken into consideration the possibility that Rentaro and Enju would evade its first attack: While they were midflight and unable to change direction, it brought down a tentacle in a vertical slash, along with a gust of wind. Rentaro and Enju put the soles of their shoes together and kicked off against each other, separating in midair. With a frightening rush of wind, a giant tentacle scraped the spot where Rentaro and Enju had been the moment before.

  Rentaro activated his artificial eye, and the iris spun quickly, calculating the estimated location of the tentacle’s next attack. Rentaro pointed his leg thrusters in Aldebaran’s direction and exploded one of the cartridges to change direction. His vision contracted and he felt like his body was going to be torn apart by the acceleration. Barely avoiding the undulating tentacles as they attacked one after another, Rentaro rained down on the center of Aldebaran’s shell from above.

  “Haaaaaaaaa!” He released a dropkick with his artificial right leg.

  Super-Varanium and hard skin. Two extremely hard objects hit each other, and a crack formed in the shell as Rentaro felt his foot sink a little into flesh.

  However, it was far from a fatal wound. Aldebaran screamed in pain and shook its body hastily. The vast shell shook like an earthquake, and pathetically, Rentaro had to use all that he had just to hold on. If he got thrown off, those thick legs would definitely trample him.

  “Enju! Aim for its head!”

  Enju had been continuing the air fight, jumping from tentacle to tentacle as they moved in all directions. At Rentaro’s shout, she jumped on a tentacle and ran down the road of flesh with her pigtails streaming out behind her until she drew near Aldebaran’s body.

  Enju kicked a tentacle and dropped a second kick on its shell from the air. The attack exploded onto Aldebaran’s head at the speed of a falling meteor, but it hit the surface of Aldebaran’s face and then, Rentaro was free from the vibrations for an instant.

  “Rentaro!”

  He was rescued by Enju jumping over to him, and together, they crawled under Aldebaran’s torso. The pulsating shell formed a ceiling about two meters overhead and gave off hot body heat, and its eight legs carried out their job of supporting the ceiling.