Aria the Scarlet Ammo (novel), Volume 1

by Chugaku Akamatsu

  Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam!

  Every single Segway had its Uzi blown right off the barbette. And all it took was seven bullets. It was almost too easy. After confirming that the pile of fallen Segways were no longer operational, I made my way back into the gym storehouse. For some reason, Aria was once again inside the vaulting horse. She had the upper part of her body sticking out and an expression on her face that seemed to say, “What in the world just happened?” The second our eyes met, she scowled at me and retreated into the vaulting horse like a mole from the Whack-a-Mole game.

  Uh…

  I’m not sure why, but she appeared to be quite angry.

  “D-don’t expect me to be thankful. I could have taken out those toys all by myself. I’m serious. I really mean it.” While putting up a bold front, Aria seemed to be wriggling around inside that vaulting horse.

  She was trying to tidy up her clothing. Naturally, she was going to have a hard time, however. I noticed when I lifted her up earlier, but the hook on her skirt was broken. It must have happened after the explosion.

  “A-and don’t think this makes up for what you just did to me! That was an indecent assault! A distinct criminal offence!” Aria glared at me with her crimson eyes through the hole of the vaulting horse.

  “…Aria, that’s an unfortunate misunderstanding,” I said, slipping off the belt around my pants and tossing it inside the vaulting horse. “Please understand. That was completely out of my control.”

  “O-out of your control?!” Aria jumped out of the vaulting horse gripping her skirt, which was held up by my belt.

  Landing on her feet with a lightness that attested her small figure, she stood in front of me. She…was standing, right? She was so short that I doubted it for a second. Even if you took into consideration the horn-like hair ornaments holding her twin pigtails in place, she couldn’t have been more than one hundred and forty-five centimeters.

  “Y-you…undeniably…” Aria was glaring daggers at me with that bright red face of hers. She then clenched her fists and must have been expending every effort to get the words out because when she was able to open her trembling rose-pink lips, she stamped her feet at the same time.

  “W-when I was unconscious, y-you were trying to t-t-t-take off my clothes!

  If it’s that embarrassing to say, then just don’t say it.

  “N-n-not only that, but you were staring at my b-b-b-b…” There she goes stamping her feet again. Does she have some sort of grudge against the floor?

  “You were staring at my breasts! That’s a fact! I caught you in the act of assaulting me!” Aria grew so red I thought steam was going to come shooting out of her ears, which were also red.

  “What exactly were you planning on doing?! Y-y-you’d better take responsibility!” Her stamping became even more erratic.

  This is certainly a fine way of stomping on one’s feet. And what does she mean by “take responsibility”?

  “Okay Aria, let’s calm down. Listen to me. I’m a high school student. A second-year high school student at that. There’s no way I’m going to undress a middle school student. There’s too much of an age difference. So you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  I explained it as clearly and kindly as possible, but Aria opened her mouth wide and raised both of her fists into the air. I assumed that the reason no sounds were coming out of that mouth is because she was at a loss for words. But then tears welled up in her eyes as she glowered at me.

  “I’m not a middle schooler!!”

  Crack!

  The floor upon which she was stamping finally gave way and scattered wood chips around her feet.

  This isn’t good.

  My attempts to convince her of my innocence end in failure. It looks like I only succeeded in making her more furious by mistaking her age. Women are creatures with a tendency to become angry when they are thought to be older than they actually are. And this girl in particular was rather violent. At this rate, there’s going to be a large hole in the floor of this storehouse. It would probably be best to follow up with something to calm her down.

  “…Sorry about that. So you're an elementary school student who came here on an internship, right? To be honest, I figured that was the case ever since you helped me out back there. But you really are something, you know that? You’re such a–”

  I was about to say, “brave little girl” when Aria abruptly hung her head downward. The upper half of her face was covered in shadows and I was unable to discern what expression she might have been wearing. She then swiftly placed her left and right hand on each respective thigh.

  Now, what is she up to? Busy girl, isn’t she?

  “You are so… You are so… I never should have saved you!!”

  Blam, Blam!

  “Whoa!” I paled at two bullets, which buried themselves in the floor inches away from my feet. This girl shot at me! With both pistols!

  “I’M…A…SECOND-YEAR…HIGH SCHOOOL STUDENT!!”

  Out of the fire and into the frying pan—yet again.

  “W-wait a sec!” I jumped at Aria, who had brought her pistols even closer to me, and pinned her thin arms underneath mine, forcing her weapons behind me.

  Blam, blam, blam! Clink, clink!

  Aria reflexively pulled the trigger, and the sound of bullets lodging themselves in the floor resonated. That sound was all I needed to hear. I could tell both pistols had run out of ammunition. It’s a good thing I’m in hysteria mode. If it were just the plain old me, I’d be writhing on the floor, riddled with bullets right about now. For a short while, Aria and I were locked together in that position.

  “Ngh! Yaaaaaaah!” Aria yelled.

  I was surprised to find my body had turned itself around, only to realize that Aria performed a maneuver similar to what’s known as a spring hip throw in Judo, and sent me flying, despite the large difference in our size.

  “Whoa!”

  This girl can fight empty-handed as well? She’s damn good at it too.

  Barely managing to perform a break fall, I used the momentum to roll myself out of the gym storehouse.

  “You can’t get away from me! I’ve never once let a fleeing criminal escape! …Huh? Wha-? Huh?” screamed Aria as she fumbled with the inside of her skirt using both of her hands.

  Most likely, she was looking for the magazines with which to reload her empty pistols.

  “Sorry about this.” I lifted up the spare magazine that I took out from underneath her skirt when she threw me and flung it over a distance too far for her to be able to recover any time soon.

  “Ah!” she cried.

  Aria watched as the magazine fell into some far off bushes and shook her now useless pistols up and down in frustration. Her movements seemed to be saying, “Now you’ve done it!”

  “You’re in for it now! I won’t forgive you even if you get on your knees crying and apologize to me!”

  Aria returned her pistols to their holsters and thrust her hands underneath the back of her blouse. And from within that blouse she pulled out not just one, but two katanas! Firearms, hand-to-hand combat, and now katanas?! I was dumbfounded. But that didn’t stop Aria from pouncing at me with the leg strength I would have thought humans were incapable of. Those katanas, not as long as traditional Japanese swords, were zeroing in on my shoulders like two shooting stars. I managed to roll backwards and narrowly avoided losing my arms.

  “You molester! Give up and– Uwaaaah!” Aria, who had charged at me, let out a cry like a new breed of wildcat. She then fell over backwards as if some invisible person had grabbed her from behind and performed a back suplex. Spread around her feet were bullets I had taken out of her magazine. I scattered them on the ground when her attention was on the magazine I threw.

  “W-why you– Uwaaaah!”

  When Aria tried to get up, she stepped on another bullet and fell back with such force that her legs practically went straight up into the air. It was like something you’d see in a com
ic book. While she was still on the ground, I decided to take the opportunity to get out of there as fast as I could. Aria has fighting abilities far greater than those of an average person. But at this moment, anger and shame were causing her to lose composure. I, on the other hand, was in “hysteria mode.” I would have been able to escape even if there were a hundred FBI agents targeting me. That’s what I was thinking to myself as I left Aria behind, paying no attention to her outbursts.

  “You coward! I’m gonna open a giant hole in you!”

  Such was the first encounter between me, Kinji Tohyama, and the demon Butei feared by criminals worldwide as “Aria the Scarlet Ammo”, Aria H. Kanzaki—filled with the smell of gun powder and a complete disaster.

  Second Bullet Aria H. Kanzaki

  I did it again…

  After the opening ceremony, which in the end I was never able to attend, I depressingly made my way to the educational affairs department to report the incident that took place and treaded wearily along to my new classroom.

  Histeria savant syndrome.

  I just called it “hysteria mode”, but when the amount of intra-cerebral beta endorphins secreted during times of romance exceeded a certain level, about thirty times the normal amount of neural transmitters were used as a medium to drastically accelerate the activity of the cerebrum, cerebellum, spinal cord—the central nervous system of people with this trait. As a result, when a person entered hysteria mode, one’s ability to perform logical thinking, make good judgments, and even fast reflexes increased dramatically, and then this and that happens and…Well, to put it simply, when people with this trait were sexually aroused, they temporarily entered a super mode, transforming them into a completely different person. I was back to normal now, but I was pretty depressed about having entered hysteria mode in front of a girl, namely Aria. Normally, this condition was something that needed to be kept a secret from others—especially from females. Females were very frightening creatures…

  In order to leave behind offspring, males instinctively became more powerful to a greater or lesser extent when protecting a female. Hysteria mode was an extreme example of exactly that. Whether it was because of those male instincts or not, I wasn’t sure, but when I went into hysteria mode, the drawback was the bizarre mentality I adopted towards females. First off, I would get the urge to protect a girl at any cost. If I came across a girl in a bind, I’d want to use my prowess as a means of having the girl desire me as I fought for her. The second problem was what I really couldn’t stand. I’d start to act and speak in an overbearingly flamboyant manner in front of that girl. This was also tied to the basis of hysteria mode, which was the instinct to “leave behind offspring”. The intent was to act like a guy that a girl would find charming, but…in hysteria mode, I’d treat females with kindness, flatter them, console them, and casually touch them. I became such a horrible gigolo that just thinking about it afterwards made me want to die. But it was the girls that were really scary.

  If I recall, the worst was back when I was in middle school. The middle school affiliated with Kanagawa Butei High. Some of the girls who learned about my condition found out that they could take advantage of me. They would perform all sorts of mischief to force me into hysteria mode and work me like a dog. Some would use me as tool of vengeance for being bullied. Others would have me punish a teacher for sexual harassment. In other words, I was made to be their self-righteous “hero of justice”. Then you’ve got a girl like Shirayuki, which was a problem in itself…

  And so, I left my hometown and came here to Tokyo Butei High School to take the entrance exam. That morning, renown as I am for my bad luck, Shirayuki just happened to come crashing into me in the hallway and fell down in the process of running away from some ill-mannered guys who were giving her a hard time. It was the kind of incident that would come straight out of a comic book. In any case, I wound up going into hysteria mode here as well. So I beat the hell out of the punks who were chasing Shirayuki and ended up whispering sweet words to her and gently consoling her until she stopped crying and calmed down. Ever since then, her naturally oppressive nature seemed to go into overdrive. But the thing is I wanted to go through life with as little contact with women as possible…

  Magazines and DVDs of “that” nature didn’t really pose a problem. I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing anyway, and more importantly, all I had to do was keep myself from looking at them. It didn’t work that way with real life girls, though. They had bombs hidden within their blouses as well as underneath their skirts and they were walking around all over the place.

  Damn it, I sure inherited one hell of a problematic disorder.

  Curse this troublesome, annoying, and extremely embarrassing ability—this wretched, detestable ability that caused the downfall of my older brother.

  “Teacher, I want to sit next to him.”

  At the very first homeroom for the second year students assigned to class A, I nearly fainted when misfortune befell on me. That girl with the pink twin pigtails was also assigned to class A, and suddenly pointed at me while making that statement. A brief silence fell over the class, and then the eyes of every student homed in on me all at once.

  “Oooooooh!” they all cheered.

  Me? I fell right off my chair. All I could do was sit there speechless.

  “Hee hee,” laughed the teacher. “Well then, let’s start off by having the cute little girl, who transferred to our school in the third semester of last year, introduce herself.”

  Our teacher’s briefing gave me a very bad feeling. The short little girl who sat up from a desk outside of my field of vision and stepped onto the podium was indeed Aria H. Kanzaki. With hysteria mode having already worn off and me back to my normal self, I couldn’t think of what action to take and sat there trembling, half afraid that I might get shot at right there in class.

  “I want to sit next to him,” Aria said abruptly.

  “W-what for?!” I whispered to myself with a voice that finally became functional. It couldn’t be because she wanted to use me as a “hero of justice”. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t figured out about my hysteria mode. Did she take a liking to me? Doubtful. After all, not too long ago, she was enraged and had her weapons pointed at me to the very end. Does this mean she plans to sit next to me and slowly but surely end my life?

  “This is great, huh, Kinji?! I’m not sure what’s going on but it looks like spring has come your way! Teacher, I’ll switch seats with her!” The large guy sitting to my right shook my hand up and down like a secretary to a candidate and left his seat smiling from ear to ear. This guy with spiky hair and a height of nearly one hundred and ninety centimeters was Goki Muto. He was an accomplished student in the Logi division who often took us to the site when I used to be in the Assault division. From scooter to rockets, he had the ability to pilot anything that could be called a vehicle.

  “Oh, my. High school girls these days are quite assertive, aren’t they? Very well, Muto. Trade seats with her.” After looking at Aria and I in turn with a happy expression on her face, the teacher quickly gave her consent to Muto, who knew nothing of the circumstances between us. It finally got to the point where the rest of the class started sending their applause.

  You’ve got it all wrong! I don’t know anything about her. What’s more, she’s the violent girl who was shooting her gun at me just a while ago! Take it back! Take it back, I say!

  Just as I was about to make such a protest to the teacher, Aria spoke up.

  “Kinji, here's your belt.” Out of the blue, she called me by my first name and tossed me the belt that I lent her in the gym storehouse.

  Now that I took a good look at her, it became apparent that she acquired another uniform because both the top and bottom half were brand new. As I caught my belt, another member of the class spoke up.

  “I get it! I know exactly what this is! He triggered a flag!” exclaimed Riko Mine, standing up from her seat to the left of Kinji. “Kii-kun isn’t wearing h
is belt! It was in the possession of Miss Pigtails! This is quite the mystery! But I’ve figured it out!”

  Riko, who was almost as short as Aria, was the number one ditz of the Inquesta division. Her Butei High school uniform, which she diabolically modified into a mess of frills, was evidence of that. I believe they called that fashion “Sweet Lolita”. “Kii-kun” by the way, was the eccentric nickname by which this eccentric person called me.

  “Kii-kun did ‘something’ that required him to take off his belt in front of this girl! Then he absentmindedly left his belt in her room! In other words…these two are in the midst of a hot and passionate romance!” Mine, with her naturally curly hair done in dog ears and flailing wildly, asserted her idiotic deduction.

  Romance? Are you serious?

  But then again, this is Butei High—a stomping ground for idiots. The entire class immediately filled with excitement.

  “W-when did Kinji start dating a cute girl like that?!”

  “I always thought he didn’t have much charisma!”

  “He’s been secretly doing that sort of thing?! The guy doesn’t seem interested in other people in general, let alone girls!”

  “How indecent!”

  Aside from the general courses attended by groups of students assigned to specific classes, the students of Butei High also participated in specialized courses, which were akin to club activities so that students weren’t divided by class or year. This was why most students here were familiar with each other. Still, these guys were getting along way too well considering it was the start of the new semester. At times like this…

  “Y-you guys better…” I clutched my head in my hands and turned my face down towards my desk.