For a second, I thought she was going to cause another commotion, but it didn't look like that was the case. The tearful voice that was coming from the back of her throat was dull and husky.
“Don’t worry. It was mine, too.”
“You idiot…! T-Take responsibility…!”
Now in hysteria mode, I knelt down and brought my eyes at the same level as Aria’s who had been looking up at me on the verge of crying and shaking like a small animal.
“You got it. I’ll take responsibility in any way you’d like. But…first we’ve got some work to do.”
“…Kinji…! This is the second time you…”
Aria seemed to have noticed that my voice was much calmer and deeper than it was previously. She opened her eyes wide with an expression on her face that indicated she had remembered something—most likely the bicycle-jacking incident. I brought my mouth to the side of her head that wasn’t injured and whispered into her ear.
“Butei Charter, Article One, ‘Believe in your comrades and help one another.’ I believe in you, Aria. So believe in me, and use me as a decoy. Listen to me. We’re going to work together…and arrest the ‘Butei killer.’”
“It’s time for the ‘bad ending’. Hee hee. Hee hee hee.”
Using a key she must have procured from somewhere, Riko opened the door to our suite. She held the door open with her knife wielding hair just as if it were her own hand, and in each of her actual hands, she held a pistol as she smiled at me.
“I figured you two might have killed each other after fighting among yourselves. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, so here I am! Ah…”
Did Riko catch on to the fact that I was so calm I could have been mistaken for another person? She truly looked happy as she clapped her guns and knives together.
“Haha! Did you and Aria do something together? I’m surprised you could under these circumstances. Hee hee.”
Riko… Did she know about it? Did she know about my hysteria mode?
“So? What’s going on with Aria? Don’t tell me she died,” said Riko pointing to the bed with the knife in her hair. There was a lump underneath the blanket consisting of a pillow and sheets that was made to look like a person was lying in the bed.
“Who knows?”
Just very briefly, I looked towards the shower room to the side of me with my eyes, and Riko, observant as she was, followed my gaze.
“Aaaaah…I just love it when you’re like that. It makes my heart race. I might lose control and wind up killing you.”
“That’s the attitude you better have when you come at me. Otherwise you’ll be killed,” I said in a warning tone.
Riko had a look of shock on her face as she pointed her gun at me.
“You are the greatest. I just love you to death, Kinji. Come on. Show me what Olmes’ partner can do.” Riko started to pull the trigger of her gun, and I raised the emergency oxygen cylinder, which I had hidden next to the bed, in front of her vertically.
“…!”
If she were to fire, it would explode. I would be done for, but so would Riko. Realizing this, Riko hesitated for an instant. That instant was all I needed. I threw the cylinder at Riko, and then lunged at her myself. If I could get next to her, I could overwhelm her with the difference in our physiques. The butterfly knife I had hidden made an audible noise as I opened it in the palm of my hand.
“…!”
Riko knit her brows, and at that exact same moment…
“Whoa!”
The plane must have entered an air pocket because it suddenly lurched wildly. I hadn’t planned on this sort of bad luck manifesting itself again. It took me by surprise, even in hysteria mode. Losing my footing, I fell on one knee and watched as Riko laughed and pointed her Walther at my forehead in the tilted room. And then…
…!
From the muzzle of her gun, a bullet came speeding towards me. I could see it. I can’t dodge this—not to right or left. There’s absolutely no way. If that’s the case…!
Screeeech!
Using my knife, I cut the bullet in two. I was in astonishment myself at the feat. The effects of the hysteria mode I had gone into this time were tremendous. Splitting a bullet in two—to be honest, I was only half way convinced it could be done. I could hear both halves of the bullet driving themselves into the wall behind me to the left and to the right. While Riko was looking at me wide-eyed, a hint of awe mixed with the expression of surprise on her face, I drew the black Government I had borrowed from Aria and pointed it at her.
“Don’t move!”
“Shoot me and Aria’s dead!” Riko threatened.
She seemed to have judged that, given the position her body was in, she wouldn’t have been able to aim the gun at me in time and pointed it toward the shower room. At that moment, the door to the small cabinet next to the ceiling opened, and Aria came rolling out with her silver government in hand.
Blam, blam!
She shot both pistols out of Riko’s hands with amazing precision.
“!!”
Then, while still in mid-air, she discarded her gun and pulled out two Japanese swords from behind her that arced toward Riko like meteors. In that one fluid motion after drawing the swords, she continued to bring them down on Riko’s pigtails, severing them from the rest of her hair. The light brown frizzy hair that had been fashioned into pigtails fell to the floor along with the knives.
“Ah...!”
Riko placed her hands on the sides of her head and let out a cry of anxiety for the first time. Aria put away her swords and recovered her pistol in one smooth motion.
“Riko Mine Lupin the Fourth.” “You’ve been caught in the act of attempted murder, and we’re placing you under arrest.”
I started the sentence and Aria finished it as we simultaneously pointed the black and silver Governments at Riko. Riko looked back and forth between Aria and me with a huge smile on her face.
“I see. You made it seem like she was under the bed and in the shower room, but you were bluffing in both cases. In actuality, you made use of Aria’s small size and hid her in the cabinet…Very nice. You can’t pull off a double bluff unless you’re really in tune with one another.”
“It was against my will, but I did live with her for a while. You get in tune even if you don’t really want to.”
“You two should be proud of yourselves. This is the first time I’ve ever been pushed this far into a corner.”
“We’re far beyond pushing you into a corner. It’s checkmate.”
“You’re such a moron,” said Riko, her voice dripping with venom.
Riko’s hair suddenly began to wriggle about in its entirety. I was late to react to the uncanny scene in front of me. Inside of Riko’s hair…something was being operated?
“Stop! What are you doing?!”
I charged at Riko in an attempt to seize her, but at that moment, the plane lurched violently again. It was descending rapidly…! Aria lost her balance and slammed into the wall. It was the best I could do to simply stay on my feet.
“Buh-bye” Riko said as she dashed out of the suite with lightning speed.
I thought it was odd. This plane reeled in Riko’s favor way too often. She probably had a remote control hidden in her hair that she was using to control the plane. ANA flight six hundred was losing altitude at an alarming rate as it descended among the clouds of a typhoon.
What is she planning to do by decreasing the plane’s altitude this much?
I raced through the corridor surrounded by the screams of the other passengers and went down the stairs. Riko was standing with her back against a window in the corner of the bar.
“Where do you think you’re going to run to in a small plane like this, my little squirrel?” I threw back at Riko the same words she used earlier as I pointed the Government at her.
“Hee hee. Kinji, I’d advise you not to come any closer than that,” Riko smiled, showing off her white teeth. Clay-like objects—most likely bombs—we
re taped to the wall, forming a circle around Riko. “As you know, being the ‘Butei killer’, I specialize in bombs.”
Seeing me stop, Riko gathered the hem of her skirt in her hands and raised it slightly, bowing to me in feigned politeness.
“Say, Kinji. Want to come over to the heaven on earth known as IU? Bringing one person along wouldn’t be a problem. I could take you with me. You know, in IU…” Riko narrowed her eyes. “…you’ll find your brother.”
I don’t believe this girl. She’s desecrating the memory of my brother again.
“Don't make me any angrier than I already am. Mark my words, Riko. Mention my brother again and I just might violate Article Nine on impulse. That would result in an undesirable conclusion for both of us, wouldn’t you say?”
Butei law, Article Nine, “Under no circumstances shall a Butei kill another person while operating as a Butei.” “Ah. We can’t have that. I need you to remain a Butei,” said Riko winking at me and wrapping both of her arms around her body. “Let Aria know that we’ll welcome the two of you anytime, then.”
Boooooooom!
Without warning, Riko detonated the blasting charges behind her.
“…!”
A circular hole had opened in the wall and Riko used it to leap outside of the plane. And she did so without a parachute…!
“Ri-…!”
I tried to shout out her name, but I couldn’t. The air within the room was rushing towards the window as if it were being sucked out by a giant vacuum cleaner. The alarms inside the plane blared, and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling like an avalanche. All the various objects in the bar were sent flying towards the gaping hole—paper, tablecloths, glasses, wine bottles…me.
“…!”
I grabbed onto a stool that was fixed to the floor, and the plane’s automated systems started to scatter about fire extinguishing substances and sheets of silicon from the ceiling. Those adhesive sheets, which were like birdlime, amassed in mid-air and closed off the hole Riko made just like a spider web. Reaching out to a nearby window, I pulled myself up and looked outside. What I saw in the faint moonlight was Riko drifting farther and farther away as she spun in circles like a dancer with the sky as her stage. I watched as Riko unraveled the ribbon on her back, causing her excessively large skirt and blouse to transform into an awkward looking parachute. The last I saw of her was when she waved her hand in my direction and vanished into the clouds with nothing on but her undergarments.
I see now. She lowered the plane’s altitude this far so she could make her escape.
“…?!”
There were two flashes of light that showed up from behind the clouds Riko had just disappeared into, and they were heading this way at a ridiculously fast speed. My hysteria mode-enhanced eyes closed in on the objects.
You…you gotta be kidding me. Missiles?!
Boooooooooom!!
A devastating sound thundered, and ANA flight six hundred experienced the most sever oscillations of its flight. The impact was clearly unlike something caused by a gust of wind or lightning. It was like the plane had been struck twice by a giant hammer.
“…!”
I hung onto the window as if my life depended on it. Then I looked towards the wings of the plane, praying that they would still be there. It had taken one nightmarish beating after another, but ANA flight six hundred managed to be holding up. There were two jet engines situated on each of its wings, and the inner engine of each pair had been destroyed, but the remaining outer engines were intact. The plane was just barely staying airborne as smoke trailed behind it like shed blood. I was still feeling dizzy due to the sudden drop in air pressure, but I had to hurry to the cockpit. ANA flight six hundred might have withstood the missile attack, but it was still continuing its rapid decent.
The captain and co-pilot seemed to have been hit with tranquilizer darts courtesy of Riko, for they both were unconscious.
“…What took you so long?!” Aria, who I presumed entered the cockpit by using the IC chip embedded keys she took off the pilots, turned around and screamed at me while bearing her tooth when I arrived. At her feet lay an odd piece of equipment which resembled the barbette that had been attached to the Segways. It appeared to be the remains of a device Aria dismantled—the one Riko installed for the purpose of controlling the plane remotely via the controller she had hidden in her hair. Aria fit her small body snuggly into the pilot’s seat and took hold of the steering wheel-shaped control column.
“Aria, can you pilot an airplane?”
“I could if it were a Cessna. I’ve never flown a jet plane before.”
She pulled back on the control column with so much force and so little hesitation that I had trouble expelling a few doubts in my mind. ANA flight six hundred responded by elevating its nose as if it had suddenly woken up from a slumber.
“I can control the planes altitude and direction, but…”
“Can you land?”
“No.”
“…I see.”
I could tell that the plane was flying horizontally. Returning my attention to the window, which was streaked with heavy rainfall, I noticed the plane was flying so close to the ocean surface that a chill ran down my spine. It couldn’t have been much more than three hundred meters in the air. It was a perilous situation. I sat down in the other chair and upon finding the radio, switched from intercom to speaker.
“…Please respond…thirty-one. I repeat. This is Haneda Control Tower. ANA flight six hundred, respond on emergency communication frequency one twenty-seven six thirty-one. I repeat. One twenty-seven six thirty-one. Please respond.”
Their communication came through. I turned on the microphone that was installed on the instrument board.
“…This is flight six hundred. The plane was hijacked moments ago, but we’ve managed to regain control. The captain and co-pilot are incapacitated. Currently, we two Butei who were passengers on the flight are piloting the plane. My name is Kinji Tohyama. The other is Aria H. Kanzaki.”
The voices of the people at Haneda were mixed with both relief and surprise in response to my statement.
Great. For the time being, at least we’ve established a connection with the control tower.
I then proceeded to make use of the satellite phone I took off the captain’s belt a short while ago. This type of phone, which was very similar in appearance to a cell phone, was also used in maritime communications, so it was capable of making a connection to a phone line via satellite no matter where you called from or at what speed you were traveling. As I started making the call, I connected the phone to the speaker using Bluetooth. I was still in hysteria mode. Everything I needed to do came to mind in perfect order.
“Who are you calling?”
Aria’s question was answered by the new voice that came from the speaker.
“Hello?”
“Muto, it’s me. Sorry for calling from an unfamiliar phone number.”
“I-Is this Kinji?! Where are you right now?! Your girlfriend is in trouble!”
“She’s not my girlfriend, but if you’re referring to Aria, she’s right here next to me.”
Goki Muto was an excellent student in the Logi division. Keeping relations with the guy seemed to be my inescapable fate, but the time had finally come for it to pay off.
“Wait…What are you doing…?!” Muto said, confused.
“G…gir…girl…”
Having been called my girlfriend, Aria displayed her proneness to blushing and became a stuttering mess. She looked like she was about to start protesting so I placed my index finger on her lips and put a stop to it.
“…Ngh!”
Aria became redder still, but more importantly, she stiffened up and remained quiet.
“…Muto, I’m surprised you knew about the hijacking. Is it on the news?”
“It’s been big news for a while now. A passenger probably used one of the phones inside the plane to report the incident. The guys at Connect looked up the list
of passenger names in no time. Aria’s name was included so we all gathered here at the classroom.”
I gave a brief explanation of our current situation to Haneda Control Tower and Muto. I told them how the plane had been hijacked and that the perpetrator escaped. I also mentioned that we were hit by missiles and two of our engines were destroyed.
“ANA flight six hundred, remain calm. That B737-350 was made using the most state-of-the-art technology. It can fly without any problem using just the remaining two engines. That’s a benefit that won’t change regardless of how bad weather conditions are.”
Aria showed signs of relief at hearing the information Haneda Control Tower provided.
“More importantly, Kinji, you said the two engines that were destroyed were the inner engines, right? Tell me the number on the fuel gauge. There should be a square-shaped screen a little above the center of the EICAS (Engine-indicating and crew-alerting system). You’ll see a circular meter with two rows of numbers, each with four digits. Below that, there are three graduations next to the word ‘Fuel’. Tell me the number that’s in the center, marked ‘Total.’”
That was a vehicle geek for you. Muto spoke as if he were looking right at the instrument board.
“It just became five-forty. It seems to be dropping little by little. It’s at five thirty-five now.”
I heard Muto click his tongue after I told him what he wanted to know.
“Damn it…it’s really leaking excessively.”
“The fuel’s leaking…?! T-Tell me how to stop it!” Aria cried hysterically.
There was a short pause.
“There’s no way to stop it. Simply put, the engines of the B737-350 that are closer to the fuselage are also the gates to the fuel system. If they’ve been destroyed, the leakage can’t be stopped no matter what you do.
“H-How much longer will the fuel last?”
“There might be a lot of fuel left, but it’s leaking out at a fast pace. I hate to tell you this, but…around fifteen minutes.”
“This state-of-the-art technology is really something.” I said in a word of sarcasm to the people at Haneda Control Tower.
Aria the Scarlet Ammo (novel), Volume 1 Page 14
