Enrollment Arc, Part II

by Tsutomu Sato

…they abandon their own will.

  After discarding the shed skin of one’s own will, the whispers of the devil sneak in. No, in this case, the whispers of the puppeteer.

  “Mibu, use your ring!” A man had been hiding, cowardly, behind a sixteen-year-old girl. That man gave a shout—almost a scream, in fact—and he swung his arm down toward the floor.

  There was a soft crack and white smoke. At the same time, an inaudible yet stinging noise spread through the room. It was psionic noise. It was waves of Cast Jamming interfering with magic execution.

  She heard three footsteps inside the smoke. Tatsuya stuck out his hand twice. Palm strikes, inside the smoke. His eyes were closed. There were two dull splats and two thuds on the floor.

  “Miyuki, stop,” came an instruction during the spare moment that came after.

  The magic program Miyuki had been constructing immediately changed into something else. The wind whipped around, sucking in the white smoke. It was all compressed down to the size of a ping-pong ball, then imprisoned by dry ice that had appeared in midair, and fell to the floor.

  Now that the room was visible again, she saw the three men lying prone. One man rolled around in intense pain from frostbite, and the other two had fainted, bruises on their faces.

  “Tatsuya, was it all right not to arrest Mibu?” asked Miyuki, confused—but in no way guessing that he had an ulterior motive. Her suspicions of his relationships with women was no more than a silly, childish form of communication between siblings. She was well aware that Tatsuya wouldn’t entertain that sort of personal feeling.

  “I don’t doubt your skills, but with as little visibility as we had, things could have turned out with an unexpected surprise. You don’t need to take any risks—Erika will take care of Mibu for us.”

  If she chose the shortest route to the exit, she would have to bump into Erika, who was waiting back on the first floor. And from how the girl looked, she didn’t seem to have enough mental capacity to take the long way around.

  “I don’t think there is any reason for Erika to get so zealous about it…”

  “Not unless her opponent is Mibu.”

  Miyuki didn’t really know why people got so hung up on specific enemies. To her, battle was something to be avoided first—and if that didn’t work, won at all costs. It was the same no matter who she was fighting. Whoever they were, it didn’t change the fact that they were an enemy. She only knew that there were people who were specific about who they fought, and that was all.

  “I see. Erika will be fine, I expect.”

  So she left the girl to Erika, then decided to help her brother arrest the terrorist thieves.

  Sayaka’s actions were essentially reflexive. She’d been given the ring of antinite as a last resort in case she needed to escape. She was being educated in the usage of magic, so she knew the properties and limitations of Cast Jamming. In fact, she was more knowledgeable than most magicians at its application.

  This ring didn’t have the strength to defeat a magician. Cast Jamming could only disrupt magic—its only use was to avoid magic-based attacks. She couldn’t beat that freshman with it.

  She’d never seen such adept technique before. The freshman’s martial prowess was now burned into her mind.

  When she’d been given the ring, her leader had emphasized many times that she should use the ring to escape. That vision was burned into her eyes, and the words carved into her ears, and they were controlling her limbs.

  There were sounds of things hitting the floor behind her. There was nobody following her. She knew they meant her allies had been defeated. But with her thoughts paralyzed, she never realized she had the choice to go back and help them. She just followed what the manual said to do in case of failure—to return to the relay base belonging to a certain organization outside school. Dominated by that unreasonable but compulsive idea, she ran through the hallway and dashed down the stairs.

  And there she stopped.

  “Hello, there! Nice to meet you!”

  A single female student—by the way she introduced herself, she was probably a freshman—was standing in her way, her hands joined behind her back, smiling in a friendly way.

  “…Who are you?” she asked with clear caution in her voice.

  But the freshman didn’t change her cheerful expression. “I’m Erika Chiba from Class 1-E. I would just like to make sure that you are the runner-up in the national middle school girls’ kendo tournament the year before last—Sayaka Mibu, correct?”

  She found herself hit with a shock that she didn’t understand. Somewhere in the shadows of her mind, somewhere in her heart where she couldn’t see, she felt a pain, like she’d been struck with a shinai. “…Is there something wrong with that?” she asked in return, hiding the shock and her pain.

  “No, not at all. Nothing wrong with it. I just wanted to make sure.”

  Erika was still standing with her hands folded behind her.

  But there were no openings. Her body was slender, so it was far from blocking off the hallway, but Sayaka couldn’t see an opening for her to slip by. And…those hands she hid behind her back—were they empty?

  Was she holding anything?

  “…I’m in a hurry. Could you let me through, please?” She couldn’t feel anyone pursuing her from behind. But he probably snuck up on people perfectly silently every day before breakfast. Sayaka clamped down on her impatience and spoke to Erika as calmly as she could.

  —Of course, she also knew there was zero probability she’d be able to just walk on by.

  “Where could you be going?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “So…you don’t intend to answer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose negotiations have failed,” declared Erika, seeming to enjoy this. It was a silly way of making her point, but Sayaka was fully aware the girl was never going to let her through anyway.

  Sayaka quickly looked to her left and right. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a weapon. She had her CAD, but if she used magic, she would give up the only advantage she had—the Cast Jamming.

  In her peripheral vision she saw a silver rod roll her way. It was one of the stun batons her allies had brought with them. Its reach was a little short, but it was a worthy substitute for what she was familiar with.

  Slowly, imperceptibly, she dropped her weight.

  She gathered her body’s strength in her feet…and instantly leaped forward, rolling to pick up the baton. Then, without a moment’s delay, she came up and pointed at the female student blocking her way.

  Erika watched her, wondering what she was doing. “You don’t need to hurry. I would have given you time to pick up a weapon…”

  Sayaka’s face flushed red. She cast a sharp glare at Erika to try and cover up her awkwardness and embarrassment at what was essentially a one-woman comedy act. “Move out of the way, or you’re going to get hurt!”

  “And now I have a proper reason to defend myself,” she muttered, seeming to be no longer interested. “Not that I was going to use that as an excuse anyway.”

  She brought her hands out in front of her. In her right hand was an extending police baton, and in the other was a wakizashi with an actual blade. She tossed the weapon in her left hand aside.

  “All right, then shall we begin?” she asked, bringing her right hand in front of her.

  Sayaka assumed a stance again, with her weapon in front and her left hand supporting her right. She had a two-handed middle stance, while Erika stood in a one-handed half-stance.

  It began suddenly, without any pre-match crossing of swords or shouts.

  As soon as Erika saw her move, her baton flew toward Sayaka’s neck. She immediately raised her own hands. With the defensive reflexes built into her body, she barely managed to stop the attack—and a moment later, her opponent had spun around behind her.

  “A self-acceleration spell…?” she muttered. Erika didn’t answer. “…The same as Watanabe?�
�� Those words, however, caused Erika to stop. It was only momentary, but it was enough to turn things around.

  When she went to take another step, an irritating noise on the floor stopped her foot. It was psionic noise, and she wasn’t hearing it with her ears. Erika scowled, and Sayaka became the attacker.

  She delivered a flurry of blows without leaving any time to breathe. Face, face, hands, torso, diagonal, upward, face, reverse diagonal… Her sword skills bore witness to the fact that she was not only well-versed in kendo as a sport, but in the old-fashioned ways, too.

  She attacked like a flame. As fast as the wind, as quiet as the forest, as daring as fire, and immovable as the mountain, as the saying went. Her attacks were like a conflagration.

  At some point, the psionic noise disappeared. She’d known that would happen. Cast Jamming worked by injecting psions into antinite. If you stopped the psion injection, it would stop emitting noise. The noise inside the room, too, eventually decayed and terminated. There was no way for Sayaka to maintain the Cast Jamming, since she was currently pouring everything into her sword attacks. It wasn’t good enough to let her remain in a state to use magic, and it couldn’t keep up with the speed of her sharp and fierce magic-weaved attacks.

  And yet Erika still didn’t try to use magic. Was she being pressured too much to build a magic program? Erika was a Course 2 student who struggled with compilation. Her CAD, however, was a specialized one with an emphasis on speed, and she was an expert at using this specific shape of CAD. And even under the effects of Cast Jamming, the supply of psions to her sealing spells was stable.

  If she pushed herself off and got away, she should be able to activate the magic she specialized in. It didn’t look like Sayaka was pressuring her enough that she couldn’t get away. Her attacks were like a conflagration—but on the other hand, they were just as reckless and frantic.

  Erika was handling them, blocking them, never moving more than she needed to. There was no impatience in her eyes. There was no disturbance in her breathing.

  The first one to be disrupted was Sayaka, tiring from her attacks. The tables turned in the blink of an eye as the attacker and defender swapped places. One scraped past the other’s finishing strike. As Sayaka stood there stiff as a pole, Erika flashed her own weapon across and knocked hers to the side. Her attack had been aimed at its base, and the stun baton, more fragile in construction than a wooden sword or a truncheon, bent.

  “……” Sayaka stared down without fear at the police baton that was now in her face. A strong fighting spirit was in her eyes.

  “Pick it up,” demanded Erika without moving her weapon.

  “……” Sayaka didn’t understand what she was talking about, and couldn’t answer.

  “Pick up that wakizashi and show me everything you have. I’ll crush the illusion of that woman chaining you down.”

  Despite the police baton in her face, Sayaka bent down. She picked up the wakizashi Erika had tossed aside before, then took up a stance again. But then, for some reason, she broke her stance and added her left hand to her right.

  The brass ring on her right middle finger shone. She removed it and threw it to the floor. “I won’t rely on that dumb thing. I’ll defeat your technique with my own power.”

  Sayaka took off her blazer. Beneath the blazer of the First High girl’s uniform was a sleeveless one-piece. Her arms were now exposed from the shoulder down—everything below her shoulders had gained freedom.

  Then she turned the blade over. Striking someone with the dull edge ignored the construction of a katana, and she ran the risk of breaking it in vain. She took this stance despite the risk, showing her hesitation to kill and her discontent at having to dull her blade.

  “I can tell,” she said, taking such a stance and facing Erika. “Your skills—you’re from the same school as Watanabe.”

  “My skills are a little bit different from that woman’s.”

  They each exchanged short sentences, but from then on, silence ruled.

  The silence gave way to tension, and tension to strain.

  The very moment that strain crested, Erika vanished.

  There was an instant crossing of blades. A high-pitched metallic sound rang out.

  Erika’s strike had been difficult even to observe, accelerated by magic as it was—but Sayaka stopped the blow. Stopped a single stroke.

  And then the wakizashi fell from her hands. A moment later, she dropped to a knee, holding her right arm.

  “I do apologize. I might have broken the bone.”

  “…It does feel cracked. It’s fine. That means you couldn’t hold back.”

  “Yeah. And you can be proud of that. You forced a daughter of the Chiba to fight seriously.”

  “Oh… So you’re from the Chiba family?”

  “Actually, yeah. And Mari Watanabe is one of our pupils. She’s in the register—but I’m a master, and I know the secrets. So in pure sword skills, I’m better than her.”

  Sayaka smiled a little at that. A fleeting, carefree smile. “I see… Hey, this is a little selfish of me, but would you mind calling a stretcher? I kind of feel…a…little dizzy…”

  After those words came out, she collapsed to the floor. Erika carefully sat her body up and held her. As she lay there unconscious, she whispered, “It’s all right. Your kind underclassman will accept the honor of carrying you.”

  “You want me to carry Mibu?”

  Tatsuya asked the obvious question, but Erika nodded, not timid at all. “It’s okay! She’s not that heavy.”

  “That’s not the problem…”

  “You have a perfect reason for carrying a cute girl around. You should be happy!”

  “That’s not something I would get happy about… Wait, no, that’s not the problem, either…”

  “…You know, it’s occurred to me before. Tatsuya, are you not interested in girls? You have those interests?”

  “Those as in what?”

  “Like, you’re gay?”

  “Of course not! Anyway, that’s not the problem.” Fighting a building sense of futility, he attempted a logical explanation that Erika would have to understand—though at this point, he could feel himself growing resigned. “We could just call for a stretcher. Why do I need to carry her?”

  Miyuki just giggled.

  “Because it would make Mibu happy, obviously.”

  Tatsuya found himself suddenly unsure of how to respond. With her being so unreasonable with him, persuading her with logic would be difficult, to say the least. In fact, he was at a loss for words.

  “Why not, Tatsuya?” prodded Miyuki. “It may not be a race against time, but it cannot hurt to get her healed as soon as possible. I believe you carrying her there would be the fastest solution. Besides, you’re making no progress here, are you? This is Erika we’re talking about.”

  “Hey, Mizuki, what was that supposed to mean?”

  “Sheesh, you’re right. Guess I have no choice.”

  “Hey, Tatsuya, what’s with the follow-up attack? Two-against-one is how cowards do things!”

  “Oh, my, and here I was trying to take your side, Erika.”

  “No way! Lies, all of it!”

  As though the pleasant (?) conversation between the noisy, loud Erika and the coolly reflecting Miyuki were his BGM, Tatsuya gently picked Sayaka up. He made sure not to jolt her around and disturb her.

  “Huh. Yeah. You’re really something, Tatsuya.”

  He didn’t know what Erika was so impressed with, but she nodded to herself a few times. Getting involved with that would probably take a long time, so he just started walking.

  Sayaka’s face, in its unconsciousness, resembled a state of sound sleep.

  After discovering via the monitoring function in his portable information terminal that the squad that had infiltrated the library had been captured, the captain of the boys’ kendo team, Tsukasa, knew that the next step would be to contact the leader of Blanche in Japan, his older brother, and ask for furt
her instructions. And as quickly as possible.

  He was his older brother from another marriage, so they were stepbrothers, but right now he trusted him more than his actual parents.

  He felt like he hadn’t been happy at all with the second marriage, but at some point he’d come to and realized he was fine with it.

  Directly after trying to consciously think about when that happened, his thoughts vanished into white noise. He realized he was spacing out for a moment (in internal time, at least), then shook his head, telling himself this wasn’t the time or the place. It was too dangerous to use wireless communications on school grounds. They wouldn’t be monitoring it or anything, so there shouldn’t be anything about sending a normal message that needed to bother him, but this was an emergency situation. He’d be safer assuming all transmissions outside the school, whether through landlines or not, would be under observation.

  Tsukasa hadn’t thought leaving school would present an issue. Despite it being an emergency, it wasn’t as though the country were at war, with itself or otherwise. There would be no gun fighting when he stepped out of school. They’d be strictly checking any outsiders before they entered, but they wouldn’t obstruct a student from returning home.

  Or so he’d determined—but unfortunately, he found his expectations betrayed.

  “Is that Tsukasa from the kendo club? Goin’ home already?”

  As he was going to the main school gate openly, so as to not draw suspicion, a voice stopped him from behind. It wasn’t a friend of his, but he did know the person. He turned around to see another senior standing there—one for whom the expression “scraggy” fit like a glove. The person wasn’t tall, but he had a solid physique, all muscle and no fat.

  On his arm was a disciplinary officer arm band. “Tatsumi… Well, with everything that’s happening, clubs are canceled for today, right? I thought I’d get myself on home.” Appearing agitated would be careless and foolish, Tsukasa told himself, managing to respond in a calm voice.

  “Right. Well, that’s true. It really isn’t a good time for club activities, is it?”