by Yusuke Kishi
Perhaps even a weapon as evil as this can save the lives of thousands of people like the blessed rain that comes after a drought.
We know the exact location where the psychobuster is kept. Normally, there would be no way to navigate there, but if the object in the box could somehow be activated, it should be able to lead you to it.
Saki-chan, you have a rare and valuable quality. In a word, I would describe it as strength. Though you cry and are discouraged, you never break. You always accomplish what you set out to do. We have always seen that in you and Tomiko-sama agreed whole-heartedly with us.
If the psychobuster exists, I’m sure you will find it. Please use it to save the the lives of everyone in the district.
We love you from the bottom of our hearts, and will always watch over you wherever you go.
From your mother, Mizuho.
I began to cry as I reached the end of the letter.
I passed the letter over to Satoru, who was watching me anxiously. Then I opened the box.
The object inside was about fifty centimeters long and looked kind of like a sea roach. It had a shell on its back made of parallel, overlapping plates inlayed with dark blue stripes.
“It’s a false minoshiro…” Satoru whispered in surprise.
It was different from the false minoshiro I had seen before, but the overall resemblance was there. However, it didn’t have a single feeler on its back and didn’t look anything like a true minoshiro. I would’ve called it a fake false minoshiro, or maybe a copy false minoshiro.
“But does it still work?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“I wonder. There’s a piece of paper in the box. It might be an instruction manual or something.”
I took out the paper and unfolded it. It had turned completely brown with age and was filled with unfamiliar, angular kanji explaining how to operate the fake false minoshiro.
April 11, year 129. Collected from excavated underground storage room No. 4 at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba.
Model number: Toshiba Solar Autonomous Archive, version SP-SPTA-6000
Operating instructions and notes:
① The unit must be placed in sunlit area to charge battery before powering on. After long periods of storage, required charging time is minimum six hours under strong sunlight. Battery may drain fully if used in dim areas for extended periods of time.
② To return the unit to hibernation mode, give the verbal command and ensure that the activity indicator lamp is turned off, then store the unit in a dark place.
③ When placed in security mode, the unit will obey commands, but may attempt to hypnotize you and escape when given the chance. You must be more wary of it than you are of wild animals.
④ The unit was designed with long-lasting and age-resistant materials, but its ability to self-repair has reached its limits. Replacement parts are probably no longer available as the model is quite old.
⑤ There appears to be a faulty spot in the electronic circuit. Repair is impossible. When the unit begins to malfunction, power it down temporarily to prevent overheating.
⑥ As most of the information contained in the unit is class four, please exercise extreme caution when operating the unit. Under Ethics Committee regulations, all autonomous archives are to be destroyed immediately upon discovery, so knowledge of the existence of this unit must be kept strictly within library personnel.
“Year 129 was over a century ago. I really doubt that it still works,” Satoru said.
“Let’s put it under the sun and see.”
The machine had probably been hidden away in the library storerooms underground for over a century. My mother had taken the time to find and bring it with her when she escaped, so I really hoped that it wasn’t completely unusable.
We borrowed a metal cage from Jakujou and placed the fake false minoshiro in a sunny spot on the temple grounds. There was probably just enough time before sunset to give it a full charge. Only the gods knew if we would actually be able to use it.
“This way.”
We looked skeptically at the place Jakujou indicated. It was a large cave in the bedrock of the hill behind the temple, the opening barred with a grid sturdy wooden poles. No matter how I looked at it, it was obviously a dungeon.
“Why here?” Satoru asked, his brows furrowed.
“We cannot let an exospecies stay in the guest quarters. Least of all now, when the queerat rebellion has claimed so many lives.”
“But Kiroumaru is the general of the Giant Hornet colony and loyal to humans. Not to mention he saved Inui’s life. To keep him here…” I was at a loss for words.
“We received orders from the Ethics Committee to exterminate any and all queerats, regardless of their colony. These beasts are more than happy to turn traitor when they see the tides of battle turning,” Jakujou said as he unlocked the gate.
His tone of voice suggested that not executing Kiroumaru was some kind of special favor.
The dark dungeon was hot and smelly.
“Look, Kiroumaru. You have guests who’ve come all this way to see you,” Jakujou said.
From the far end, a large, dark shape came crawling forward on all fours. The ceiling looked too low for it to stand upright. I recognized Kiroumaru immediately. His glittering green eyes and complex tattoos that ran all the way down his muzzle. He was big for a queerat, and his face had a uniquely wolfish resemblance. One eye was scarred shut, his entire body was covered in unhealed wounds, and he had lost a lot of weight.
There was the rattle of chains as he approached. He braced himself on unsteady legs.
“Thank you for coming. It shames me that you had to come to such a foul place.”
Even here, his tone of voice was unchanged: proud, with traces of cynicism.
“I’m Saki Watanabe. Do you remember me? This is Satoru Asahina…”
I turned to Jakujou, unable to bear it any longer.
“This treatment is uncalled for. Unchain him at least!”
“But we don’t have permission from the chief priest…”
“Aren’t they in the middle of the ritual right now? We’ll get permission later,” Satoru said decisively, breaking the chains on Kiroumaru’s hind legs with cantus.
“This is a problem. You shouldn’t have done that.” Jakujou sounded distraught.
We ignored him.
“I remember you two well. I know Saki Watanabe-sama from the Exospecies Division, but Satoru Asahina-sama was still an innocent boy when we last met. You’ve grown into a fine man.”
He walked right up to us, eyes narrowed against the light coming in from outside.
“I apologize for how you were treated… And thank you for saving Inui.”
Kiroumaru grinned broadly. “Please, what I did was only natural. So what do you intend to do about the fiend?” he asked, getting straight to the point.
“An exospecies member has no business with our affairs! Know your place!” Jakujou shouted, but Kiroumaru pretended not to hear.
“The fiend wiped out my most elite troops,” he said to us. “Our arrows were were stop mid-flight and our weapons were torn from us with cantus. We were helpless. Even if it is just a child, I must admit it is something to be feared.”
“What happened after?”
“Although it could have killed us all in the blink of an eye, the fiend seemed to enjoy playing with us. My brave soldiers were shot, stabbed and tortured to death,” Kiroumaru said, his expression unchanged.
“But you made it out okay.”
Looking at his missing eye, I realized how utterly insensitive that sounded.
“I must say it’s almost a miracle that I was able to escape. To allow me to escape, my elite troops advanced in close formation, but their weapons were ripped from them as if attracted by a giant magnet. They fought with their claws and fangs. I saw them being butchered out of the corner of my eyes as I ran by, passing no more than twenty or thirty meters away from the fiend, and dived into a ditch. I must have had heaven’s p
rotection.”
“I see. The fiend has attacked our district… Don’t worry, we will avenge your soldiers.”
“But gods…humans cannot use cantus against each other, is that not so? In that case, how will you deal with the fiend?”
“How do you know that?” Jakujou yelped in surprise.
“The gods underestimate our intelligence. It is common knowledge among our kind. Naturally, that slimy bastard Yakomaru knows as well. I’m sure his strategy hinges on it,” Kiroumaru replied, still not looking at Jakujou.
“Kiroumaru, how do you propose we defeat the fiend?” Satoru asked, perhaps expecting that a renown general like him would have some ideas.
“If the use of cantus is out of the question, we can only rely on the traditional tactics of my kind. Guns, poison arrows, traps… But the fiend is constantly surrounded by Robber Fly soldiers to protect it, so it won’t be easy in any case.”
As I expected, there was no magic solution.
“Right, I have another question. We’re going to Tokyo after this–do you know anything that might help us?”
Kiroumaru’s remaining eye widened in surprise. “Neither gods nor my kind venture near that cursed land. I believe there are no colonies whatsoever in that area.”
“We heard that the land and water were contaminated in the ancient wars. Is that true?” I asked.
“Large areas do indeed appear barren, and it’s possible that harmful substances still remain.”
“Is it true that there are still toxic fumes and radioactivity that will kill you as soon as you step foot into the area?”
Kiroumaru grinned. “No, that’s just a rumor. Any poison gas would have dissipated long ago, I expect. As for radioactive material, plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, but I don’t believe the area is polluted enough to endanger life.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have been there once before. Of course, I did not ingest any food or water from the area, but I walked around Tokyo for a day and breathed in its air and noticed no detrimental effects to my health.”
Satoru and I looked at each other. Was this a sign from the heavens? Kiroumaru seemed to guess what we were thinking.
“I never forget the geography of an area once I have visited it. I beg you to allow me to lead the way.”
“You can’t trust anything this creature says! An exospecies is an exospecies. You don’t know what it’s planning behind its facade of loyalty,” Jakujou warned hastily.
“You can doubt my loyalty. But believe this: my hatred for Yakomaru is very real. That brute imprisoned my queen, and I have no doubt she has been as ill-treated as I have. No matter what it takes, I’ll rip Yakomaru limb from limb and rescue the queen. Right now, that is my only reason for living,” Kiroumaru said, cold fire blazing in his green eyes. “Although I said earlier that I experienced no problems with my health, I must tell you that a third of the soldiers that accompanied me died or were injured. There are still dangers lurking in that dark land. Going there without a guide would be suicide, even for a god.”
Although Jakujou continued to protest vehemently, we had stopped long since stopped listening. We had to go, and our minds were filled with nothing but that dangerous land called Tokyo.
The fake false minoshiro showed no signs of turning on even after over six hours in the sun.
“This is bad. We have no idea where to go if this thing doesn’t work,” Satoru sighed. “Even if we have the address, we still don’t have a map from the right time period.”
“Let’s charge it again tomorrow. It’s been in hibernation for over a hundred years after all. More importantly, we have to get going soon.”
I touched the fake false minoshiro. It was warm from the sun, but showed no indication that it was going to work.
“Good. It’s almost sunset, so the light reflecting off the river will conceal us better than darkness will.”
Kiroumaru seemed in much better spirits after he had eaten and washed. Since he couldn’t go around naked, he was given a monk’s robe to wear. It made him look like a priest from some demonic temple.
“…how are we supposed to control this?” Inui asked when he saw the strange contraption floating in the temple’s dock.
Once I saw the name Muou no Rigyo18 painted on the side, I realized it was a boat of some sort. It was about five meters long and roughly resembled two boats stacked bottom to bottom. There was a roof you could shut to prevent water from coming in. The four of us, three humans and one queerat, sat packed like sardines in a can.
“One person looks through the front window and gives directions, and another one or two people control the boat’s outer wheels,” Jakujou explained.
The outer wheels were shaped like small water wheels, and the axels penetrated the hull so that we could control the wheels by turning the rudders on the inside. But to prevent water from seeping in, the rudders were covered by a half-sphere of glass, so the only way to control it was with cantus. To go forward you rotate the wheels forward, to go backward you rotate them backward, and to turn you rotate one wheel forward and one backward.
“This boat is owned by the temple and is the only submersible boat in the district. It was originally used to survey riverbeds, but it is also used as a last means of escape for the chief priest and other high priests in times of emergency. But given the nature of the situation, we’re giving you special permission…”
“Jakujou, I deeply appreciate everything you’ve done for us,” Satoru said politely. “I regret not being able to thank Head Priest Mushin and Chief Priest Gyousha in person. If you could pass along my thanks, I would appreciate it.”
“Must you leave already? At the risk of sounding tedious, I beg you to reconsider. Going off with that exospecies is madness.”
“We don’t have a choice now. We must use every tool we can.”
We lifted the pack with the fake false minoshiro, a change of clothes, and some other items into the boat, and set out, full of uneasy feelings. I sat in front navigating, Satoru was at the right wheel and Inui at the left. We stayed above the water as we rowed through the canal leading from the temple. Jakujou opened the door disguised as a thicket of reeds. The door closed slowly behind us as we entered the Tone River. That was the last time I saw the Temple of Purity.
It was pitch black inside the boat as we closed the roof and started to dive. The water was muddy and it was already getting dark outside, so at first I wasn’t able to navigate properly. On top of that, the left and right wheels weren’t turning in sync so the boat zigzagged across the bottom of the river. Still, we managed to travel a good distance, hitting a couple boulders along with way, before the three of us finally got the hang of it.
Then we noticed the boat’s biggest flaw. The space inside was small and could only hold enough air for the four of us for short periods of time, so we had to resurface and open the roof for fresh air.
Diving had taken longer than expected because we had to continue moving forward while going down. Surfacing, this delay was almost unbearable. Kiroumaru stuck his head out and breathed deeply. After a while, he closed the roof again and reported his observations.
“It would be better to dive. The scent of my kind is strong up ahead.”
The boat sank slowly beneath the surface once again. We felt it touch bottom and start rolling sluggishly along the riverbed.
“How far do we have to stay under?” Satoru asked no one in particular.
Nobody answered.
After a short distance, I saw the shadow of a boat above us. Then two…three. They seemed to be queerat patrols. The entire lower portion of the Tone River was under enemy control.
Our boat crept beneath the patrols. We all froze, not even daring to breathe. We had no idea how far sound from inside our boat could travel up through the water.
Finally, the patrol boats disappeared from view.
“Let’s surface,” Satoru said.
“But…shouldn’t we wait a
bit? There might be more of them nearby.”
Satoru shook his head. “We might come across more enemies later. We need to get air every chance we get.”
Inui and Kiroumaru agreed with him, so the majority vote was to go up to the surface.
We opened the roof and let fresh air flow in. All of us breathed deeply, relishing in that simple act.
“If we keep going up and down like this, we won’t be able to tell when we’ve reached the ocean. Can’t we just stay above the surface and push through their ranks at full speed? They won’t be able to block us,” I said, not wanting to go under again.
“Didn’t we already talk about this? It’s true they probably don’t have the entire river under their control so we can make it out to the ocean, but that’ll expose our movements and they might guess what we’re up to. Since we have the chance to get out unnoticed, we should take it.”
Satoru’s explanation made perfect sense, so I couldn’t complain.
Now that the sun had set, it was rapidly getting dark. Even being above-water, we had to pay close attention to where we were going. Just as I was wondering how I would see anything underwater, Kiroumaru spoke.
“Please shut the roof and dive. There’s a considerable number of queerats ahead. It’s probably another patrol.”
The boat slid silently underwater. It was unbelievably dark.
The depth of the Tone River around that area was around four or five meters. It wasn’t deep enough to block out light from above, but the moon hadn’t yet risen and the clouds obscured the stars. But the blackness underwater was so complete that I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.
“Sorry, I can’t see anything anymore.”
Inui and Satoru stopped turning the wheels, unsure of what to do.
