The Destruction of the World by Fire

by Shiden Kanzaki

  Rentaro’s heart pounded at the rare sight of an innocent Kisara. “K-K-Kisara! I, a-actually, I have always… Huh?”

  Just then, there was a discreet cough from next to them, and when Rentaro slid his gaze to it, he saw Tina looking sullen, narrowing her eyes ill-humoredly, saying, “Excuse me,” and looking pointedly toward the center of the tent.

  Feeling eyes on him, Rentaro suddenly came back to his senses and realized that there were five pairs of eyes staring at them. Rentaro and Kisara separated hurriedly, both of their cheeks turning red as they cleared their throats and went back to the circle in the middle of the tent.

  “Um… So, well, uh… Anyway, we have some new teammates, Kisara Tendo and Tina Sprout.” Rentaro pushed the two of them forward softly.

  “My name is Tina Sprout. I look forward to working with you,” said Tina.

  “I’m Kisara Tendo. By the way, I’m also Satomi here’s boss. I’m counting on you all,” added Kisara.

  “It’s been a while, Kisara,” finished Shoma.

  At first, Kisara narrowed her eyes at his gentle voice, but her suspicion soon turned to surprise. “No way. Shoma?!”

  “Anyway, you’re my disciple senior, so is it bad that I addressed you casually by your first name?”

  Kisara waved her hand in front of her face. “It’s fine, we’ve known each other for a long time. Wow, this takes me back.” However, then Kisara shifted her gaze and lowered her tone of voice. “Hey, Shoma, why did you quit the dojo suddenly? We were really worried, you know. Now that I think about it, why are you suddenly a civil officer now…?”

  Rentaro felt bad but casually backed up Kisara, adding, “I was surprised, too.” Shoma didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about the past, but it had been a shock when Shoma, who the master had his eye on, suddenly quit the dojo, and Rentaro would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about how Shoma ended up becoming a civil officer.

  “I wasn’t cut out for it,” Shoma said. “That’s all it was.”

  Rentaro’s and Kisara’s eyes met. “Sorry, Shoma, bro,” said Rentaro.

  “It’s fine.” Shoma said only that, resolutely, forcing the conversation to a close.

  Rentaro deeply regretted probing. Within the extraordinary prodigy that Rentaro and Kisara had once been jealous of spread a dark despair. However, there was one more thing Rentaro had to ask him. “The pair that was cut down on the street—was that your doing, Shoma?”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Rentaro sighed with relief and rubbed his chest, shaking his head. “Never mind, don’t worry about it.” Then, suddenly shifting his gaze toward Tamaki, he saw that Tamaki was staring at Kisara, his mouth gaping open.

  Yuzuki looked worried and poked Tamaki in the ribs. “What’s the matter, Tamaki?”

  “……Yuzuki, it’s a goddess. My goddess is here,” he muttered.

  His partner frowned. “Um, Tamaki…is your head feeling okay?”

  Suddenly, Tamaki sprang up and went with amazing speed to kneel in front of Kisara. “So lovely, so dignified, so beautiful! On top of that, you’re the boss of the civil officer who defeated the Scorpion. Please, let me call you my angel!”

  Kisara tossed her hair and put her hands on her hips, saying haughtily, “It would be problematic for you to call me that.”

  “Then at least let me call you ‘ma’am’!”

  “Well, I guess that would be okay…”

  Tamaki smiled complacently and rubbed his hands together. “Ma’am, shall I massage your shoulders? Or would you like me to prepare a chair for you?”

  “Well, I’m hungry, so go buy me some melon bread. Oh, I only like the ones with hard cookie crusts.”

  “Gladly!” Tamaki looked like he was being repelled as he flew out of the tent at full speed, and his back looked small in no time.

  Rentaro looked disgustedly at Kisara, but Kisara was beaming as she put her palms together in front of her chest. “Look, look, Satomi! I’ve found a new wallet!” Kisara said it with a smile, carefree.

  Rentaro scratched his head vigorously, and then put his hands together and gathered everyone’s attention. “Since we have a lot of new faces, I think some introductions are in order.”

  When Tamaki returned happily with a piece of melon bread in one hand, they quietly started the introductions. It probably came as a surprise to no one that Tamaki, who liked being the center of attention more than anyone, was most eager to go first.

  The chain saws that were powered by small motors embedded in his gloves and shoes were received most unfavorably by their teammates.

  Enju covered her ears and shouted, “They’re too loud!”

  And Shoma spat, “These are illogical weapons,” and promptly lost interest.

  Dejected, Tamaki drew the Mateba gun from his hip and shouted, “This is my big Magnum!” This time, the squad of female soldiers threw rocks at him. His little sister, Yuzuki, turned red with embarrassment and covered her face with both hands.

  Next was Yuzuki. She went outside and found two ordinary beech trees, bridging the tops with invisible threads and crossing easily from one side to the other. With cheers and applause erupting around her, the simple-minded Yuzuki bragged, “Well, this is what you get when you mess with me,” and was soon displaying the peak of her ability.

  “Hey, we can see your underwear from down here,” Rentaro pointed out. The next instant, there was a high-speed kick that passed through where his neck had just been, and it gave him goose bumps down his spine.

  Yuzuki bared her teeth. “Die, you pervert! Die, you Lolita-complex bastard!” flared up at him. If Enju hadn’t practically pinned Yuzuki’s arms to her sides, Rentaro would have been honest to goodness killed.

  Real spiders exuded silk from places called spinnerets, but it looked like Yuzuki could exude silk from the tips of her fingers on both hands. A spider’s spinneret was located around where the buttocks or urethra of a human were. As a biology maniac, he was tempted to ask, “Can you produce silk from your anus?” but he had to be prepared to lose his life for that privilege.

  Next, it was his turn. He didn’t want to, but he could not hide his abilities from the teammates he would soon be fighting with side by side, so he gave a simple demonstration of what his artificial eye could do and finished quickly. Even with just that, Tamaki, Yuzuki, and Midori, who were seeing it for the first time, were all astounded.

  Next was Enju, who stuck out her chest cheerfully and said, “It is my turn at last.” They went outside, and Enju pointed at a single cedar tree standing about five hundred meters away and then released her power. She touched the cedar and came back in seconds.

  “She’s even faster than me…” Midori sighed, looking crestfallen.

  Enju and Yuzuki, who seemed to have similar personalities to begin with, hit it off almost immediately. Enju and Tina were also friends already, and so were Tina and Yuzuki, so the three of them became a trio in the blink of an eye.

  The problem was the remaining Initiator. In short, Midori’s self-introduction was a fracas. Midori was nervous and stiff as she made her way to the front and bowed deeply. “M-m-my name is Midori Fuse. I-I am a Model Cat Initiator, and my special ability is scent divination!”

  Scent divination?

  “And my IP Rank with Shoma is 970.”

  There were sighs of awe from those present. When they were able to overpower their combat opponents without killing them, Rentaro already kind of suspected a high rank, but it was amazing that they were ranked within the top thousand.

  Next, Midori showed everyone her ability to retract her nails. Seeing strong nails extend suddenly about 1.5 times the length of her fingers made Rentaro gulp involuntarily.

  “You don’t release those nails as far as they can go, do you?” Kisara asked, looking interested.

  Midori saw that someone understood her well and broke into a smile for the first time. “You’re right!”

  “What do you mean?” Rentaro aske
d.

  Kisara stuck out an index finger proudly. “Satomi, when fighting with weapons, it’s advantageous to keep your opponent from knowing the reach of your attack; in other words, it’s very important to keep your opponent from being able to figure out the distance. You can put pressure on your opponent mentally that way.”

  “Really…” He kind of understood, but kind of didn’t.

  Next, Enju stuck her hand straight in the air to ask a question. “Are you able to use magic?”

  “Magic?” Rentaro repeated back at her dubiously.

  “That’s right. I mean, Rentaro, she is wearing a hat like a witch, so she must be able to use magic.” Apparently, she was talking about the pointed hat Midori wore.

  The instant her hat was pointed out, Midori became startled for some reason. Shoma shook his head at his partner and admonished her, saying, “Don’t hide anything from your friends.” That seemed to be the last straw, and Midori slowly put her hands on her hat and pulled it off.

  Inside the tent, a quiet astonishment spread. On her head, pushing through her hair and pointing straight toward the sky, were two cat-shaped ears. At first, Rentaro wondered if they were fake, but after a while, they folded based on her will, and it dispersed that doubt.

  Midori must have been self-conscious about them and hurriedly put her hat back on.

  Enju looked at Rentaro as if bewitched. “Is such a thing possible, Rentaro?”

  “Yeah, when the Gastrea genes that are mixed in manifest themselves, there are cases where the animal genes are so strong that even the skeletal structure changes. There aren’t many, but they exist. Of the Initiators with bird-type Gastrea genes, there are apparently some who even have wings.”

  “I wish I could fly, too…” Tina, who had owl genes, murmured her regret.

  The two mischievous girls, Enju and Yuzuki, grinned and tiptoed stealthily behind Midori without her noticing. As Rentaro watched, wondering what they were doing, the two of them whispered, “One, two, three!” and of all things, they pulled down Midori’s skirt as hard as they could. The underwear she was wearing came clean off with the skirt, and in an instant, Rentaro’s vision became filled with a large amount of flesh. To put it concisely, the bottom half of Midori’s body was as bare as a baby’s bottom.

  “Neoooooooooooowww!” Midori pulled her long jacket to hide the affected areas and then collapsed starting with her knees.

  “Wh-what are you two doing?” Rentaro demanded.

  The dumbfounded Enju and Yuzuki did not respond for a while, but finally Enju slowly lifted her gaze and said, “We wanted to check to see if she had a tail, too…”

  “I do not have a tail,” Midori said, and then started crying.

  Enju and Yuzuki probably just wanted to be friends with Midori. They never thought that they would hurt her feelings, and Enju, having lost her chance to give back the underwear, held them in her fist, nervously pacing back and forth. Finally, she came in front of Rentaro and said, “Here,” holding out the underwear to him and looking depressed.

  “Wait, what do you mean ‘Here’?! It won’t do any good giving it to me!”

  Shoma looked at Rentaro pityingly. “Satomi, have you finally…”

  “‘Finally’ what?! I don’t have a Lolita complex!”

  And so ended the fracas that was Midori’s self-introduction, and then Shoma, Kisara, and Tina also took turns introducing themselves.

  Shoma used the Tendo Martial Arts to cut a tree in half, trunk and all. Kisara showed a sword-drawing slashing attack to cut a boulder ten meters away with a loud reverberation. Tina released Shenfield and shot through a target two kilometers away in one shot with a Barrett antitank rifle, scaring those around her out of their wits.

  And so, everyone gave a quick display of the techniques they could use, and Rentaro realized an interesting commonality shared by each pair. It was obvious that Rentaro and Enju were both close-combat specialists to the extreme. If they stayed that way, they would have no way of fighting against mid-to long-range opponents, so as a last resort, Rentaro had started carrying around a pistol. It made them just barely able to also deal with mid-range opponents.

  It appeared that the Katagiri siblings and Shoma pair fought with a similar combat ideology. Yuzuki’s spider silk was one of the best abilities for creating a territory, but even so, in order to seal the opponents movements, Yuzuki had to deliver a finishing blow, so it was probably categorized as close range. Her older brother, Tamaki, was also a close-range type, so in order to make up for their weak point, he owned a handgun. The same was true for the Shoma pair (earlier, Shoma had shown them a Sig P226 X-Five gun).

  From that point of view, only the Kisara-Tina pair had a different combat ideology. Kisara could attack anything within range of her sword-drawing attack, and had a gun for self-defense. She was a mid-range specialist Promoter. In contrast, Tina was best at long-range fighting, but she could use pretty much any firearm and was an all-rounder.

  What should he do in order to draw out the full potential of everyone?

  Rentaro was lost in thought when suddenly a man’s voice interrupted, “Excuse me,” next to Rentaro. When he looked, he saw a civilian type of self-defense force official salute and then take a step toward them. “All civil officers who will be participating in the operation must report to the front of the front line headquarters at 1930 hours. This is a summons from Troop Commander Nagamasa Gado.”

  9

  The sun went down, and their surroundings were enveloped in darkness. In front of the frontline HQ was a simple tiered platform, torches on each corner driving back the black.

  Listening to the sound of branches popping, Rentaro turned to gaze at his colleagues, who were bustling silently. Rentaro wondered how many of those gathering here were civil officers. It looked like there were around five hundred pairs, but he wasn’t sure if a thousand officers was a reasonable number to go up against two thousand Gastrea.

  After a time, a pair appeared onstage and the crowd made an uproar.

  “IP Rank 275, Nagamasa Gado, huh…?” Rentaro had seen him on TV many times before, so he knew there was no mistake.

  He was bald with a goatee, a Promoter with a soldier’s disposition. It was true that he was old for a Promoter, since they were usually between their twenties, thirties, or forties, but no one seeing his discerning eyes, his aura overflowing with confidence, and his straight back could call him a worn-out old geezer. No, people called him the Couragous Wizened Hero.

  Next to him was his Initiator, who accompanied him like a shadow. If Rentaro remembered correctly, her name was Asaka Mibu. She had straight black hair like Kisara, but her presence was faint, and she seemed to be a quiet girl. For some reason, her eyes were always shut tight. It did not seem appropriate to call a ten-year-old girl this, but she seemed like Gado’s wife. What drew Rentaro’s gaze above all was the equipment they had.

  “An armor-type exoskeleton, huh…,” sighed Tina, who was on one side of him.

  It was no wonder: Along with combat armor glowing red, Asaka had a light blue cape, and Gado had a cape with the corps’ flag on it. Of course, it was not simply armor that was grossly out of date.

  “Rentaro, what is an ‘ek-so-skeleton’?” Enju asked.

  Rentaro thought about how to answer Enju’s question in a way that would be easiest to understand. “Enju, have you heard of powered suits? They’re suits that increase the wearer’s physical strength and defense when worn. Twenty years ago—around the early 2010s, in order for exoskeletons to protect against rifle bullets, the armor was so thick it was hard to move in them, which meant the battery didn’t last long, and they couldn’t be mass produced. There was nothing good about them. But thanks to high-tech materials like Varanium alloy and carbon nanotubes, they were able to be implemented like hers. What Gado and Asaka have on is the latest model from Shiba Heavy Industries. It raises all the basic specs, from physical strength to armor.”

  “I wish to have armor as well!”r />
  Troubled, Rentaro frowned. He tried imagining Enju wearing an armor-type exoskeleton, but rather than her wearing the armor, the image of the armor wearing her was stronger. Though, imagining Enju drowning in the armor was cute at least.

  But that wasn’t the point. “Impossible. It’s way too expensive.”

  Enju became crestfallen, pigtails and all. “Too expensive, is it…?”

  “Yeah, to put it bluntly, we couldn’t buy it even if we saved up both our salaries for ten years.”

  “Then! I will inquire about getting it from Miori for free!”

  Hey, come on… She seemed to give it up half as a joke, but Enju’s eyes looked pretty serious, and Rentaro’s face stiffened. During the Seitenshi assassination attempt, Rentaro didn’t know what Sumire had said to Enju, but ever since, she started mumbling “Zone” more often, and she seemed a little strange. He was sure that her complete loss against Tina, whom she was supposed to have the advantage over, also had an effect.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her impatience, but for her to disregard her own physical and mental strength and be attracted to the easy answer of an exoskeleton was not something he welcomed as her guardian. I need to find time to talk to Enju about this…

  “Thank you for gathering, brave ladies and gentlemen!”

  Lifting his head in surprise at the sudden shout that reached his ears, Rentaro saw Gado raise his fist on the stage.

  “I am your troop commander, Nagamasa Gado. You are the chosen ones who will save Tokyo Area. I am proud to fight alongside you all.” Gado took a breath and slowly surveyed the gathered troops.

  Not even the rowdy Promoters jeered or snorted with one look from Gado. If Rentaro had been standing up onstage, it would have been vastly different.

  “I’m sure you know that Gastrea are an enemy that increase exponentially via a virus, but as long as you know how to deal with them, there is nothing to be afraid of. You all also know that Tokyo Area is facing an unprecedented crisis. And there is no one who can reverse that situation but us. Kill them! The abominable Gastrea killed your fathers, mothers, friends, families, and lovers! It is your duty as civil officers to kill as many of them as you can. The defeated can be forgotten. The present history is made by winners. No one pities the losers.”