“Senpai…doesn’t she look like…?”
“Yeah, but…I mean, it couldn’t be…”
The girl was like a little doll dressed in a stifling, lace-heavy dress. Plus, she had an odd aura of power around her for no apparent reason. The little girl Asagi had an arm around sure looked an awful lot like Natsuki Minamiya…
Yes, Aya Tokoyogi had said as much: Her grimoire had stolen Natsuki’s time and experience. That meant it was more than possible Natsuki’s physical body had gone back in time, too…
Yukina had a hand on her nurse’s cap as she murmured uneasily, “This broadcast…is this being sent to every display in the city?”
The parade was being broadcast on the sides of buildings, the storefronts of electronics boutiques, inside rail stations, and on television screens in numerous other locations. And when you put a high schooler with showy looks with a little girl in a lace dress, they stood out even in a crowd of costumed tourists. If one of the escaped convicts after Natsuki just happened to be looking at one of those screens—
“You’ve gotta be kidding me?!”
This is real bad, Kojou thought as he clutched his head—only to dive for his cell phone a moment later.
2
Dancers dressed in risqué bikini armor performed a marvelous sword dance as they paraded down Main Street.
Even by Night Parade standards, the “Ride of the Valkyries” was always the number one– or number two–rated program. The band accompanying the dancers was performing epic opera music, raising the tension level of the onlookers.
Asagi heard her cell phone ringtone right before the climax of that stirring performance. Though heavily tempted to ignore it, she changed her mind midway and reluctantly pulled out the vibrating phone. But when Asagi saw the name displayed on the screen, her eyes widened.
“Sorry, Sana. Could you come with me for a bit?”
Asagi split off from the crowd of sightseers on the sidewalk and headed toward a quieter alley. Though she expected complaints about not being able to see the parade, Sana went right along with her. Relieved by that, Asagi pressed her cell phone to her ear.
“—Hello? Kojou?”
For some reason, Kojou’s voice sounded tense.
“Asagi?! Where are you right now?”
Bewildered by his uncharacteristic behavior, Asagi looked around the area.
“Where…? I’m in front of the Quadra Building, not far from Keystone Gate. The main parade’s just about to pass by.”
“That’s what I thought from seein’ you on TV just now.”
“Eh? No way…?! You saw?”
Asagi went “geh” with a twitch of her cheek.
Thanks to her part-time job turning into a sleepover, Asagi was still wearing the same clothes as that morning; her makeup was all a mess, too. Letting Kojou of all people see her like that was a major blunder on her part.
However, Kojou paid no heed to the young woman’s distress and switched to a different question.
“You have a little girl with you, right?”
“…Erm?”
Asagi knit her brow as she looked down at Sana, standing right beside her. She had no idea why Kojou would react to seeing an ordinary girl with her on TV. She was pretty sure his interests didn’t run that way—
“Well, I do, but…”
“Who is she? Someone you know?”
“Nah, she’s lost. She seems familiar, but I can’t really put my finger on it.”
The phone conveyed Kojou’s sense of bewilderment.
“…Lost? What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t seem to remember… Ah, does this mean that you know her, Kojou? I mean, she looks just like Natsuki, doesn’t she? I couldn’t just leave her on her own.”
“Th-that so…”
Kojou covered the microphone on his end and began whispering to someone. Asagi frowned in displeasure. The first image that came to mind was the face of Yukina Himeragi. She also remembered Yuuma Tokoyogi, Kojou’s childhood friend. Perhaps Kojou was chattering with those girls that very moment…
However, when she heard Kojou’s voice once more, it seemed filled with a strange tension that was far from the festival’s happy mood.
“Look, Asagi…I want you to listen very closely.”
“O-okay.”
“That girl, she might actually be—”
Sana shouted, interrupting Kojou’s words.
“—Mama!”
Surprised at Sana pulling on her arm in fright, Asagi turned her head and looked behind her.
Sana was glaring at a bald man approaching them from the dark alley.
The man was probably sixty-odd years old. He was quite well-built for his age; his bony physique was covered with simple and humble cloth. His skin was fairly sunburned. He somehow gave off the air of a serious yoga practitioner.
When he spoke, the old man’s voice was raspy.
“Found you.”
His eyes were aimed straight at Sana.
Asagi immediately stepped in front of the girl, shielding her.
“Um? Er…mister? What is your relationship to—?”
The old man gave Asagi a single malevolent glance. It was the kind of disinterested glance one gave an annoying weed.
“Out of my way, girl… Hand over the Witch of the Void now.”
Kojou’s voice came over the phone again, bewildered. “Asagi? Asagi, what’s wrong?”
Perhaps it was the sound of a familiar voice that finally snapped her back to lucidity.
Asagi cautiously stepped back while she warily kept her eyes on the intruder.
“There’s this weird geezer coming our way—”
The old man glared at Asagi and shouted, “Pest! Begone—”
His entire body became tinged with red. This was not from blood rushing to his skin out of anger; his very body had begun to emit light like metal heated to a high temperature.
A hazy shimmer made the air waver behind him. Even at a distance, Asagi could feel the scalding air blowing off him.
The way the red-hot old man held super high-temperature flames within his body made him look like an Efreet.
Asagi cried out as she realized what the old man was.
“A Spirit Master—?!”
Spirits were energy beings that existed in other-dimensional space. They were masses of spiritual energy of extremely high purity.
When summoned into the world of men, elemental spirits fell apart and vanished instantaneously. High-ranking sorcerers and holy men could make use of them for attack spells, but put another way, they had no better way to employ the beings due to their natural explosive state.
It was said that only through use of a giant warship-scale spiritual reactor could one summon a spirit and keep it stable. It wasn’t something an individual could use.
However, there were extremely rare exceptions. These were the Spirit Masters—those who summoned spirits.
It was said that the crown princess of the Northern European kingdom of Aldegia was able to summon spirits into her own flesh and freely wield their spiritual power. This geezer was probably a spirit summoner in a similar vein.
Of course, what he had called up was by no means a high-ranking spirit like those employed by the Aldegian princess. Rather, it was an Efreet of far lower status.
However, on the basis of pure attack power, it still put all other sorcerers to shame. The old man was a monster in human flesh, far more frightening than demonkind.
Asagi’s decision came quickly.
“Sana, run!”
Promptly realizing that Sana was the old man’s target, she ran, pulling the girl along by her hand. Sana desperately clung to Asagi, half-dragged along in the process.
She no longer had any time to speak with Kojou. Asagi fished out her other smartphone and shouted into the microphone as she ran with all her strength.
“This isn’t funny, dammit—Mogwai!”
A synthetic voice with a sarcastic air flowed into her ear
.
“I hear ya’, Li’l Miss.”
This was Asagi’s partner—the artificial intelligence, Mogwai.
“Situation?!”
“All analyzed. The old man is Kiliga Gilika. He was born into guerillas in the Kabul valley in the Middle East, a monster who used a spell to transplant an Efreet into his own body to kill his enemies more efficiently. Six years ago, he was arrested on Itogami Island for attempted terrorism and sent to the prison barrier.”
Asagi was beside herself. “The prison barrier? You mean that’s not just some urban legend?”
It was supposedly a prison hidden somewhere in the Demon Sanctuary where the worst of the worst magical criminals were imprisoned. So did that mean the old man was an escapee who’d busted loose? It was hard to believe, but Asagi didn’t think Mogwai would tell tall tales at a time like this.
The old man wasn’t all that fast a runner. At best, he was moving at about the same pace at which Asagi and Sana were running for their lives. However, the old man simply burned away decorative trees and signs obstructing his path, letting him pursue by the shortest possible route. At their current rate, it was only a matter of time before he caught up with them.
“Ugh…Mogwai, calculate route! We’re heading for the utility tunnel to Keystone Gate’s Entrance E. You handle the bulkheads!”
“Entrance E, huh? Roger that. Take a right at the next turn, down the stairs to the underground shopping center…there’s a hatch to the utility tunnel when you get to the landing.”
Instantly reading what Asagi was planning, Mogwai immediately told her which way to flee. Fortunately, the back alleys had been largely swept clean of people while everyone went to see the parade; there was nary a pedestrian in sight to block their escape.
Picking up Sana’s small body, Asagi ran down the stairs and immediately set eyes on the hatch. It was the entrance to a utility tunnel used for work on water lines and buried electrical cables.
Mogwai had already used remote control to unlock the hatch. Asagi kicked the hatch open and plunged into the poorly lit maintenance tunnel. It was a long tunnel not quite two meters in diameter.
After, Asagi ran about fifty meters down the tunnel before falling to her knees. Her endurance was finally at its limits. It was too great a burden for an ordinary high school girl running all out while carrying a little girl in her arms.
For his part, Kiliga Gilika had already entered the tunnel in pursuit of Asagi and Sana.
A thick shutter descended between them, seemingly meant to cut the old man off from the girls. It was an emergency bulkhead meant to protect the man-made island from fire, flooding, and demonic attack.
The bulkhead was some twenty-four centimeters thick, made of high-strength steel imbued with magical energy. It was designed to be ridiculously tough, to the point of resisting even attacks from vampires’ Beast Vassals. Surely even a sorcerous criminal able to summon an Efreet could not easily breach it?
Asagi looked behind her. “It’d be nice if he just gave up, but—”
She twitched with terror, suddenly noticing that the surface of the thick, tenacious bulkhead was emitting a hot orange light.
The super high-temperature flames under Kiliga Gilika’s control were boiling and melting the bulkhead at an incredible speed beyond her wildest expectations.
“This ain’t good, Li’l Miss… The bulkhead’s gettin’ whittled down faster than expected. Its temperature’s gone past the design specs.”
In other words, magic-infused steel was resistant to attack spells, but it wasn’t any stronger than the steel itself against non-magical damage.
Gilika probably didn’t even use spells. He didn’t seem capable of anything as deft as using his summoned Efreet as a spiritual reactor to power offensive magic. He was just conducting the Efreet’s heat. But his method of attack was hard to counter precisely because it was so primitive.
Sana seemed to have decided on something as she looked up at Asagi.
“Mama…”
Her expression almost seemed to be conveying, I’m staying here…run for it!
Goodness gracious, thought Asagi as she exhaled. She embraced Sana around her small shoulders with an impetuous smile.
“It’s all right. I’ll protect you, whatever it takes—we can’t have him looking down on us Demon Sanctuary natives.”
Asagi picked up Sana once again. She didn’t mean it as an empty gesture.
The bulkhead was completely melted. The shutter parted as hot, bubbling ooze, and the red-hot old man emerged behind it. Now that the bulkhead was no more, their only option left was to run.
However, neither Asagi nor Sana had recovered enough strength to sprint at full speed.
The raspy voice of Kiliga Gilika heartily laughed instead. “What’s wrong, girl? This all you’ve got?”
The man was about ten meters away from them, but the heat his entire body was spewing felt right at their backs.
Mogwai laughed with a sarcastic “keh-heh” as it reported, “He’s gonna catch up with you, Li’l Miss, in about thirteen…no, twelve seconds!”
The old man was extending his fire-shrouded arm when Asagi beamed fiercely and stopped where she stood, turning around and glaring at him.
“Excellent…! Right on schedule!”
That moment, a sidewall of the underground tunnel suddenly opened; something gushed in, accompanied by a great roar.
The old man’s body was smashed in the flank and tossed aside.
Sana’s shocked eyes opened wide.
Cold water droplets sprayed all around, soaking Asagi’s feet.
It was water. An underground water vein was gushing in from the wall with incredible force, slamming into Kiliga Gilika’s body like a hammer.
“Arrrrrrg! You little bitch…!”
When the rushing water touched the red-hot personage, it instantly exceeded the boiling point and exploded as steam. It was Kiliga Gilika who was blown away by that shock wave.
Furthermore, the force of the water gushing in from the wall did not diminish. Gilika was dragged into the backflow of the water, only to be slammed against the exterior wall once more.
Sana watched it all in shock as Asagi explained into her ear, “I had the water flow reversed.”
To stop municipal facilities from being flooded by heavy rain, the interior of the Gigafloats had drainpipes crisscrossing through them. The drainage pipes used solenoid pumps and sump pumps to prevent backflow from seawater, but Asagi and Mogwai had taken over the controls to pull seawater in and deliberately flood the underground maintenance shaft.
With Sana still in her arms, Asagi climbed on top of an inspection ladder to prevent them from being swept up in the rushing water. This was the escape route Asagi and Mogwai had cooked up together.
Asagi slid the manhole cover open and escaped to the surface. The subterranean shaft had already been flooded to the brim.
Surely even Kiliga Gilika’s ability to have a super high-temperature Efreet possess him did not allow him to move freely underwater. However, Asagi’s expression remained grave.
“I’d like to say, enjoy being flushed into the ocean…but I’m not that naive.”
The asphalt covering the road behind Asagi and Sana was giving off a strange smell as it melted. None other than Kiliga Gilika crawled out from under it.
White smoke was spewing from the old man’s entire body. He had a series of creepy sunburn-like splotches all over his skin. Apparently, being bathed in a vast amount of seawater had significantly weakened his Efreet.
The old man ground his teeth as he growled, “Now you’ve really done it, girl…”
He approached Asagi and Sana, dragging his feet with each and every step. Even worn down like this, Kiliga Gilika’s combat capability was a grave threat. And Asagi and Sana had no endurance left to flee with, nor was there any usable facility left to flee to.
The old man’s right arm spewed high-temperature flames once more.
“Wonderful�
��it’s been so long since I’ve had such lively prey. I was disappointed when I’d heard the Witch of the Void had lost her powers, but you are an enemy worthy of being burned to ash by my flames!”
Asagi shook her head. “Sorry, but I’m not respectful enough of the elderly to waste my time with a selfish, senile geezer like you… Mogwai!”
“Keh-keh. Ah, looks like ya’ made it in time—please ’n’ thank you.”
It was a flat, quiet voice that responded to the AI’s verbal request.
“Accept.”
This voice came from a homunculus girl with glimmering, pale blue eyes. Like glittering wings, giant rainbow-colored arms spread out from her back.
The giant arms moved like whips as they slammed down upon Kiliga Gilika. There was a dull impact sound as the air clapped, like two huge boulders had rammed each other.
Smashed into the wall of a building, fresh blood flowed out from the old man’s body like it was lava.
“Guah…!”
A dazzling beam from a searchlight shone mercilessly upon him.
As the old man raised his face, he found a giant golem had appeared before him, swallowing the homunculus girl inside of it in the process. It was a humanoid-shaped Beast Vassal, shrouded in transparent, fleshy armor.
Behind the Beast Vassal, an Island Guard mechanized unit had deployed, weapons fully at the ready. Asagi hadn’t called them over; they’d been right there from the beginning.
This was Keystone Gate’s E Entrance—the emergency deployment route where the Island Guard’s main force was always on standby.
Asagi hadn’t been blindly running around. She’d used herself as her own decoy to lure her adversary right to the Island Guard’s doorstep.
And to Kiliga Gilika’s greater misfortune, Astarte had been visiting the Island Guard’s garrison while searching for the missing Natsuki.
The shake of the assassin’s head seemed to say, Unbelievable.
“A homunculus…controlling a Beast Vassal…?!”
Beast Vassals were summoned beasts from another world. They were masses of magical energy so dense that they were sentient and could turn solid.
Though the Efreet that Gilika controlled had a ridiculous level of spiritual power, it was not a being that contradicted the physical laws of the world itself. That was why spiritual reactors and so forth could be maintained through man-made means.
Fiesta for the Observers Page 8
