Aria the Scarlet Ammo (novel), Volume 1

by Chugaku Akamatsu

  Aria had a serious look on her face while she was listening to Riko, who wasn’t making a bit of sense.

  “Wait. Hold on. What are you talking about…?! What is Olmes? What is IU? Were you…really the one behind the ‘Butei killings’?!”

  “…‘Butei killings’? Oh. That was just…” Riko shifted her gaze to Aria. “…a game I was using as a prologue. The person I’m really after is Olmes the Fourth—you, Aria.”

  Her eyes were no longer the eyes of the Riko I knew. They were the eyes of an animal fixated on its prey.

  “One hundred years ago, the battle between our great-grandfathers ended in a draw. In other words, if I can eliminate Olmes the Fourth, I can prove that I’ve surpassed my great-grandfather. Kinji…be sure to play your part.”

  The animal-like eyes turned towards me.

  “Members of the Olmes family require a partner. Olmes the First, who fought with my great-grandfather, had an excellent partner. That’s why I had you hook up with Aria—to keep the conditions the same.”

  “You brought Aria and me together?”

  “Yup.”

  Riko giggled and reverted back to her usual frivolous self.

  This girl… The whole “idiot Riko" character was just an act she had been putting on the entire time.

  “I planted a bomb on your bicycle and had it send out a reeeally simple radio frequency.”

  “So you realized I was tracking the radio frequency that the ‘Butei killer’ used…!”

  “Well of course I did. I mean, you were so overtly checking with Connect. But Kinji didn’t seem very interested…so I had him cooperate with you during the bus-jacking.”

  “The bus-jacking too…?!”

  “Kinjiii. A Butei should never entrust his watch to somebody else, no matter what the circumstances are. If you keep track of time with an imprecise watch, you’ll be late for school.”

  My watch… So when we were in the greenhouse, she broke it on purpose. Then she offered to repair the watch as an excuse to take it home with her where she tampered with it. As a result, I missed the seven fifty-eight bus that day…

  “So…everything went just as you planned, is that it?!”

  “Mmm, not exactly. There was one thing that was completely unexpected. I used the bicycle-jacking as a way of getting you two to meet, and I had you team up with each other during the bus-jacking. But I hadn't counted on your unwillingness to stay partners with Aria. I was rather surprised that you didn’t take action until I told you about how I took care of your brother.”

  Kinichi.

  “My brother… It was you…?!”

  Kinichi. The person I idolized and respected more than anyone. She’s the one who killed him…!

  I could feel it. I could feel the blood rushing to my head.

  This was my weakness. When my brother was involved, I couldn’t keep my cool…!

  “Hee hee. Look, Aria. Your partner’s upset. Fight alongside him!”

  Riko… Just what one would expect from the granddaughter of phantom thief Lupin. I assume this is all going according to plan as well…!

  “Kinji, I’ll let you in on something special. Guess what? Your brother…he’s currently my boyfriend.”

  “Cut the crap!”

  “Kinji! She’s trying to provoke us! Calm down!”

  “How the hell am I supposed to calm down!?”

  I am not going to let you continue to insult my departed brother!

  I impulsively tightened the grip in my right hand, which was holding the Beretta, and at that instant, the plane shook violently again.

  “!”

  “Oh là là♪” Before I realized it, the Beretta had disappeared from my hand. The gun made a hollow sound as it broke apart on the floor right behind me. All I could see was the smiling face of Riko who was pointing a small-sized pistol at me—a Walther P99.

  “Non, non. We can’t have that, Kinji. The way you are now, you won’t be of any use in a battle. And besides, Olmes’ partner isn’t the type who participates in fighting. He takes the viewpoint of a regular civilian, giving Olmes hints and drawing out her full potential. Play that role.”

  Seeing an opening while Riko was busy giving her lecture, Aria made her move. She was like a little lioness. I had just noticed her spring forward when she had her two pistols out homing in on Riko. She must have judged from seeing Riko’s weapon that it would work. In close combat between two Butei who always wore bulletproof clothing, a bullet was no longer a weapon that penetrated and killed the opponent in one shot. It became a blunt weapon. That being the case, the total number of bullets in one’s possession would determine the outcome. If Riko were hiding an Uzi, which can contain twenty or thirty bullets, underneath that large skirt of hers, Aria would be at a disadvantage. But a Walther 99 normally only held up to sixteen bullets. In comparison, Aria’s Government held seven bullets. If you put a bullet in the chamber ahead of time, or inserted one into the ejector, that would make a total of eight. Since she had two pistols, that gave her a total of sixteen shots. It was even.

  Or so I thought.

  “Aria, you shouldn’t assume you’re the only one who uses twin pistols.” Riko threw aside her cocktail glass and with that hand, pulled out another Walther P99 from underneath her skirt.

  “!”

  But Aria wasn’t in a position to stop now.

  Blam, blam blam!

  Aria started firing her pistols at Riko from point-blank range.

  “Grah! Why you…!”

  “Haha! Ahahaha!”

  Aria and Riko were competing to hit each other with their bullets, the two of them only inches apart. Butei Charter, Article Nine, “Under no circumstances shall a Butei kill another person while operating as a Butei.” Aria avoided aiming at Riko’s head in order to uphold that law. I’m uncertain if Riko was attempting to fight on the same terms, but she wasn’t aiming at Aria’s head either. Aria’s and Riko’s hands intermingled as if they were in the middle of a fierce martial arts competition. A close-combat gun fight between Butei involved staying out of your opponent’s line of fire, dodging, or using your own arms to knock aside the arms of your opponent.

  Bang! Bang, Bang!

  The bullets fired from their guns miss their small-bodied targets and instead embed themselves into the walls and the floor.

  “Ha!”

  Riko laughed aloud when both of Aria’s guns signaled that they were out of ammunition, but at that instant, Aria pinned both of Riko’s arms underneath her armpits. The two of them stood there together as if they were embracing, and Riko’s pistols went silent.

  That’s the way! In hand-to-hand combat, the odds look like they’d be in Aria’s favor…!

  “Kinji!”

  Aria called out to me, but there was no need. Spinning it in my hands, I opened the butterfly knife I kept as a keepsake of my brother. Its blade looked red, glinting under the emergency lamps.

  “That’s as far you go, Riko!” I said as I ran towards them, careful to stay clear of the pistols sticking out from behind Aria.

  “Quadra… It’s such a coincidence, isn’t it Aria?” said Riko. “You and I are alike in many ways. Our lineage. Our cute looks. And…our nicknames.”

  “?”

  “I have the same name as you do— ‘Riko the Quadra’. But you know, Aria…”

  I stopped in my tracks. Instinctively, it was all I could do, faced with the surreal and eerie scene that spread out before me.

  What…is that?!

  “…Your ‘Quadra’ isn’t the real thing. You’re still oblivious…to my real power!”

  Riko laughed. And as she did so, one of her pigtails was moving—just like the hair of Medusa from Greek mythology. It grabbed onto a knife that Riko had probably hidden on her back and used it to attack Aria.

  “!”

  Just as shocked as I was, Aria dodged the first strike…but Riko’s other pigtail, which was also armed with a knife, found its target, drawing fresh blood.

>   “Aaaaagh!” screamed Aria reeling backwards.

  She had been cut on the side of her head. Red blood gushed out from the wound.

  “Aha…ahaha! Great-grandfather, after one hundred and eight years this much of a difference in ability between descendants can change, can’t it? This girl can’t even use her own powers let alone a partner! I can win! I can win! Today, I can become me! Aha! Ahaha! Ahahahaha!”

  Riko laughed as she started to talk unreasonably again, all the while thrusting Aria backwards with her hair. That hair must have been exceptionably powerful because it was startling to see just how easily Aria was knocked back before falling at my feet like a tattered rag.

  “Aria…Aria!”

  Tightly closing her eyelids against the blood that painted her face dark red, Aria continued to grip the pistols in her hands. Riko licked the blood off the knife being held by her hair with a gratifying look on her face.

  Unreal…She’s a monster. What I need to do right now is get Aria out of here.

  I could hear Riko laughing at the top of her lungs as I turned my back on her and ran with Aria in my arms.

  “Ahahahahaha! Come on, now. Where do you think you’re going to run to in a small plane like this?!”

  It had been a while since the last time I held Aria in my arms like a princess—and she was so light, it filled me with grief. When human beings become stiff or struggle about, they feel heavier than they actually are. Aria must have been losing consciousness because she was in a complete state of lethargy. I ran into the suite we had been in previously and laid Aria on the bed. The first thing I did was clean the blood off Aria’s face with one of the towels that the room was supplied with.

  “Ngh…..” Aria groaned.

  Above her temple was a deep cut underneath her hair.

  This is bad. It hit an artery on the side of her head. It’s not as vital as the carotid artery but I’ve got to stop the bleeding right away…!

  “Get a grip…the wound isn't that deep!”

  Using the hemostatic bandage in my Butei handbook, I sealed the wound on Aria’s head. The bandage was nothing but a temporary form of treatment that used petroleum jelly to forcefully stop the bleeding. I wonder if Aria was aware of that; she smiled listlessly, paying little heed to the lie I told her.

  “Aria!”

  Half crazed, I stuck my fingers into the penholder of my Butei handbook and pulled out a small hypodermic syringe that had the words ‘Razzo’ written on it.

  “I’m gonna use Razzo! You’re not allergic, right?!”

  “…n…o…”

  Razzo was like a condensed mixture of adrenaline and morphine. Basically, it was a restorative drug that contained both an analeptic and an analgesic. “Razzo is a drug that’s injected directly into the heart. This can’t be helped, okay?”

  Having given Aria advanced notice, I climbed on the bed and sat straddling her small body. I then took a hold of the collar of Aria’s sailor uniform.

  “I-If you…do…anything..weird…I’ll…blow…”

  “Right. Do me a favor and recover to the point of being able to blow a hole in me…!”

  I aggressively unzipped and opened up her blouse.

  “Uu……” Aria trembled slightly.

  That bra decorated with the symbols from a deck of cards was completely exposed. Her skin was like white porcelain. Her breasts were adorable, covered by a single thin cloth. My heart raced with a nearly audible thud. At a time like this…talk about indiscretion.

  But damn it, why is every inch of this girl so cute?

  “Aria…!”

  I laid trembling fingers on her white skin. Searching for her sternum, my fingers traveled down her miniature torso. At two fingers length higher, I found her heart. It was right where the front hook of her bra was at.

  “K-Kinji…”

  “Don’t move.”

  “I…I’m scared...”

  As she spoke in such a feeble voice, I used my teeth to remove the cap from the syringe I held in my right hand.

  “…Aria, can you hear me?! Here it comes!”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t budge. The beating of her heart—it had stopped.

  Aria!

  “…come back!!”

  I thrust the syringe into Aria’s chest as if I were slamming my fist down on top of her. Hesitate and it’s over. That’s why I strengthened my resolve and just injected the medicine into her heart.

  “…!”

  Aria went into convulsions. Her face twisted in response to the intense power of the drug. But I was happy to see her face even in that condition. It was proof that she was alive. She had been resuscitated.

  “Ngh…!”

  Aria inhaled deeply through her nose and opened her small mouth in a quiver.

  What’s the outcome…?

  On the verge of reviving, Aria’s pallid skin began to retrieve its pink color and, and her respiration gradually became stronger. And then…

  “Hwuah!” Aria gasped, and the upper half of her body sprung up like a zombie does in the movies.

  “Huh…wha?! W-W-W-W-What the-?! What is this?! M-My breasts?!”

  It would seem that due to the medicine, Aria’s memory was in disarray, and she was unable to remember a few details.

  “Ki-Kinji! You did it again, didn’t you?! W-Why do you want to look at my breasts so badly?! Are you trying to make fun of me? Is it because they’re small?! They just won’t grow, no matter how many years pass! I’m just gonna be one hundred and forty-two centimeters tall for the rest of my life!”

  In her confused state, not only Aria’s face, but her entire body was as red as a boiled octopus while she was closing her blouse. Soon enough she realized that there was a syringe stuck in her chest.

  “Gyaaah!”

  She let out a scream unlike anything you’d think you would ever hear from an elegant high school girl and swinging her arm in a wide arc, wildly yanking out the syringe.

  “Look at what you’re holding! You were taken out by Riko, and I used Razzo to…”

  “Riko…Rikoooo!!”

  In a frenzy, Aria fixed her clothing and grabbed her two pistols off the bed. She then tried to stagger her way out of the room with the look of a demon on her face.

  Not good.

  Razzo was a restorative, but at the same time, it was also a stimulant. Aria’s physical constitution must have made her particularly susceptible to its effects because she wasn’t in her right mind. She wasn’t able to judge how much of a difference there was in combat ability between her and Riko.

  “Aria, wait! You won’t be able to win against her using standard means!” I yelled as I stood blocking the door and grabbed both of her gun-toting hands with my own.

  “It doesn’t matter! Let…go! You go hide in fear somewhere!” Aria yelled back with her hands grasped by mine and bearing her fang-like tooth.

  “Q-Quiet down, Aria! Riko’s going to find out that we’re in the same room and that we’re also not working as a team!”

  “I don’t care! I’m ‘Aria’, anyway! I’ll take care of Riko by myself! And besides, you didn't need to come here to help in the first place!” A crazed look had surfaced in the red pupils of Aria’s eyes, which were glaring at me.

  This is not good. It doesn’t look like I can get her to calm down.

  “You hate me, don’t you?! You said it yourself before you went looking for that cat when we were in Oumi! I remember it clearly!”

  God, what can I do to shut her up? I’ve got to seal this mouth that hollers with an anime voice. But there’s no way I’m letting go of these hands that are holding onto her guns. The second I do, she’ll probably shoot me and run right out of this room. There’s got to be some way to… There might be one…

  It was a last-resort measure that would take advantage of Aria’s weak point. But if I were to go through with it, I…almost without a doubt would go into hysteria mode—that hysteria mode which brought nothing but bad memories and caused my bro
ther’s downfall. It would summon forth my other self whom I absolutely didn’t want to be and didn’t want to show anyone, especially a girl.

  But…but…! But right now, there’s no other way! At this rate, Riko is going to come straight for us. She might even already be behind the door.

  If Riko were to hear us arguing, she would probably reason that she could finish us off easily. And she would be right. Unarmed as I am, naturally I’d be killed, but so would Aria…!

  “I remember! You told me, “I absolutely, positively hate you”! I was acting like it didn’t bother me when you said that but…I was thinking of you as a potential partner and yet…you told me you hated me! The truth is I was really hurt back then…!”

  Aria…forgive me!

  “So I don’t care anymore! If you hate me, that’s fine! Just go ahead and hat–”

  I sealed Aria’s screaming mouth…

  …with my own.

  “………!!!”

  Aria was so surprised, her camellia-colored eyes seemed like they might pop right out of her head. As I suspected, this midget of girl who didn't know how to handle romantic situations, went completely stiff as a result of the kiss I gave her out of desperation. She didn’t just quiet down, her whole body, even the tips of her hands became as rigid as stone.

  And this kiss…It was a double-edged sword.

  Aria’s lips, like the petals of a cherry blossom, were so small and soft… I could feel those lips, slightly warmer than mine, becoming the embers that set my entire body ablaze. My heart thumped loudly. I felt a painfully sharp constricting sensation at the core of my body. It burned like fire, and I could feel something surging up from there that I couldn't hold back.

  …Incredible. This is the first time in my life…I’ve ever experienced such an intense hysteria mode…!

  The two of us took a deep breath as our lips parted. It was a rather long kiss since both of us had frozen up.

  “Aria…forgive me. There was no other choice.”

  “…o-o-o-open a h-ho-…” The strength left her legs, and she sank down onto the floor. “K-K-Kinji, you idiot…! What d-do you think you’re doing…at a time like this…?! That…that…that was my f-f-f…first kiss…!”