Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods (20 page)

Rentaro started to panic. Since Shogen had said they would launch a surprise attack, that meant that it would likely be a night or early-morning attack. There were only two hours left until dawn. If they had left here, then he could safely assume that they had already started their operation.

Taking their careful detour, the three of them reached the small hill where they could look down on the town. Below them, the town was eerily quiet. A countless number of fishing boats and small boats were moored in the bay bent like a crescent moon.

It was a small town that was probably worried about its decreasing population even before the Great War. Just as he thought that there would of course be no light, he saw a single light atop a white building that looked like a church. That must be the place.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of guns and gulped. The first shot signaled the start of the battle, and bursts of gunfire and the shrill sound of swords clashing continued. It had begun.

“Rentaro!” Enju screamed.

“All right,” said Rentaro. “Let’s go.”

“I will stay here,” said Kayo.

Turning in surprise, Rentaro saw Kayo with her back facing him. “Why?” The moment he called out, a four-legged beast appeared in the path where they had come, shooting out like a bullet.

Kayo released her power and clashed with it face-on, holding back its rush. Rentaro was startled. It was a deer Gastrea. There were horns piercing through its skin all over the top half of its body. Getting pierced by a number of those horns, Kayo forced her shotgun into the Gastrea’s mouth and pulled the trigger in a flash.

The Gastrea let out an eerie scream as it was blown away and stopped moving.

Kayo turned as if nothing had happened, despite the blood flowing from her stomach. “It looks like they followed us. Also, did you not hear the noise, Satomi? If no one stays here to hold them back, everyone will be wiped out whether we win or lose.”

Looking behind him after she said that, he heard low growls and shrill whistles from the thick forest they had just come out of. Awakened by the gunfire from town, the Gastrea were communicating with their friends through various frequency bands.

Kayo thrust her fully automatic shotgun into the ground with extreme calm, put down her knapsack, and took out all her extra magazines and started lining them up on the ground. She was preparing to resist to the bitter end. The wounds in her pierced arm and stomach were regenerating even as she did this.

“Then, we’ll stay, too—” Rentaro started.

Kayo rested the shotgun on her shoulder and fired a shot into the sky. Some of the shots found targets, and silhouettes that looked like monster birds gave a cry as they dropped into the forest.

“Satomi, are you stupid?” Kayo said. “The die has been cast. You two must cross the Rubicon River. In return, when you finish, please come back to assist me.”

Rentaro closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then exhaled. If he remembered correctly, a superior commander had to make decisions in five seconds based on the ever-changing state of the war. “We’ll leave this place to you. Stop the Gastrea. But don’t try to do the impossible.”

“Do not worry. Once I am at a disadvantage, I will run away, so please take care of Shogen.”

“All right. Come on, let’s go, Enju.”

“O-okay, got it,” said Enju.

Rentaro started running. The town slowly got bigger. Seeing that the houses and small buildings had kept their original form, Rentaro
could tell that the people here had abandoned their town before being attacked by Gastrea and had taken refuge in Tokyo.

Their original forms had been preserved, but not completely. Normally, in houses or buildings where the heater stops being used, when they undergo large temperature changes, after expanding and contracting over and over, the walls start to crumble. In the case of this town, in addition to the usual expansion and contraction, the salty ocean wind also corroded the base material, so the situation was even more serious.

Looking at the ruined town, Rentaro could plainly feel the weakness of a man-made environment. As Rentaro entered the town, he weaved through the shadows of the buildings. The countless moored boats were also completely rusted, and the fishing boats had been transformed into a bizarre state that made it easy to mistake them for haunted boats. Every time the wind blew, these darkness-colored silhouettes made a grating sound.

Rentaro and Enju gradually approached the vicinity of the gunshots. Rentaro’s heart pounded. His skin, which had become as sensitive as a radar, prickled every time the wind blew.

He wondered what had happened. He hadn’t heard gunshots for a while now. If they had defeated Kagetane, then someone would have given a shout of triumph. Why was it so quiet?
Notice, Rentaro Satomi.

Removing the silencer that was now just an impediment, he held the XD in his right hand and the light in his left. Crossing his arms, he proceeded with the backs of his hands together. He waited to turn on the light. When he met the enemy, he could turn the light onto the enemy’s face and destroy his night vision as he fired off one-sided shots. It was a close quarters gun-battle technique called the Harries stance used by professionals.

Eventually, her feet hit something, and as Enju groped around to pick it up, she let out a short scream. An upper arm had been graphically cut off still holding a gun. It was so fresh, it looked like it would still give off steam. At that moment, a thump came from a one-story house, and Rentaro almost fired.

“My sword… Where…is my sword…?”

“You’re…Shogen…Ikuma…?”

The man with the skull-face scarf who was plunked down on the stool of the general store recognized Rentaro and slowly stood, making his way unsteadily toward him. He seemed to have lost his sight.

“’Scuse me…,” he said. “Do you…know…where my sword is…? As long as I have that, I can still fight…”

Rentaro gaped as he looked for a long time at the enormous broken sword stuck in Shogen’s back. When Shogen passed by Rentaro, he fell to his knees, coughing blood, and then fell to the ground. He did not move again. The situation was so different from what Rentaro had imagined that it took a while for his brain to process everything.

Shogen was dead? One of the highest IP rankers, with a ranking of 1,584? Rentaro gripped his XD and apologized to Kayo in his heart. Finding Shogen’s backup gun at his waist, Rentaro examined it quickly. A Smith & Wesson automatic gun, Sigma. Seeing that it was fully loaded with .40-caliber Varanium bullets, Rentaro tucked it in his belt and stood up. He stopped at the corner that led to the street. “Enju, we’re going out onto the street. However, no matter what you see, you cannot scream.”

“How much worse can it get, Rentaro?” she asked.

Rentaro did not answer. Because they were downwind, he had been smelling the rich smell of blood for a while now. Holding his gun ready, he ran out into the street.

Enju gasped. “Rentaro… What is this…?”

The closest thing was only a few meters ahead. It was the head of an Initiator that had been cut off and rolled onto the ground. It looked at them with a permanent expression of shock. Farther down was a pile of Initiator and Promoter corpses piled on top of each other. These had been killed quickly with a gun. The street had turned into a sea of blood. Among the corpses, Rentaro saw a few faces he had seen at the Ministry of Defense. Rentaro bit his lip and tried desperately to stay upright in the midst of the choking stink as his knees threatened to give way.

Another hundred meters ahead, he could see an open door leading into the church. The candlesticks on the wall burned brightly with flames. The holy cross hanging overhead looked coldly down at the picture of hell below.

At that moment, he heard a familiar voice come from the pier. “Papa, I’m astonished. He really is still alive.”

The Kagetane pair was standing at the tip of the pier, gazing at the surface of the ocean. One had two swords at her waist and was wearing a black dress. The other was the mysterious man wearing a wine-red tailcoat, mask, and silk hat.

Rentaro could not believe his eyes. That pair had intercepted many skillful attackers and had eliminated all of them, yet neither had a single scratch. Rentaro was tormented by an intense regret and took a step back.

Why didn’t he wait until he could call for the support of other civil officers? He had faced the pair a number of times and had been plainly shown their superhuman strength each time. Even if he hadn’t, the outcome of the battle was clear when Shogen Ikuma was killed without being able to do a thing. At that time, Rentaro could have still turned around and run away.

After wasting both chances he had, he was now in the worst possible situation. It was too late to run now. “Kagetane…,” he said. “Where is the case…?!”

“I knew you would come.” A lukewarm wind blew on Rentaro’s skin. With the moon behind him, Kagetane Hiruko turned around with a gun in both hands, opening his arms wide with benevolence. “The final curtain is near. Let’s settle this, Satomi.”

A silent electronic eye watched the confrontation between Rentaro Satomi and Kagetane Hiruko from an altitude of eight hundred meters.

At the operation headquarters in the First District of Tokyo Area, the Japan National Security Council, or JNSC, used the various data transmission technologies that unmanned surveillance drones were equipped with in order to display the events on the monitors in the meeting room practically in real time.

A dead silence had descended on the operation headquarters. Sitting at the long table, the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the Minister of Defense kept looking at each other’s faces furtively. Just moments earlier, they watched the footage of fourteen pairs and one person—twenty-nine civil officers in all—who jointly challenged Kagetane Hiruko and had the tables turned on them.

Currently, they had footage from above as two pairs of four people faced each other silently, waiting for the battle to start.

Sitting at the head of the long table, the chair of the JNSC, the Seitenshi, sighed as she looked at the Minister of Defense. “Currently, what other civil officers are in their vicinity?”

“Er, even the closest pair would take over an hour to reach them.” The bulldog-faced Minister of Defense seemed at his wits’ end as he started dabbing his face with a handkerchief.

The Seitenshi looked at the vice-chair, Kikunojo Tendo. With his boulderlike countenance, Kikunojo returned her look with a nod. “Your decision, Lady Seitenshi?”

After a moment’s contemplation, the Seitenshi stood up from her chair. “Very well—”

Suddenly, the sound of the raised voices of the security police who were standing guard outside the meeting room could be heard. The door to the situation room was suddenly thrown open, and a number of people surged into the room. The Seitenshi saw the girl at the front of the pack, and her response was delayed for a moment.

“What is going on?” the Seitenshi demanded.

The black-haired girl at the front of the pack and president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency, Kisara Tendo, swaggered into the middle of the room, cutting through the middle to thrust a piece of paper in the faces of everyone sitting there. The paper in Kisara’s hands was covered with circles, and outside the circles, like a collection of autographs, were handwritten signatures and stamps of signature seals.

The Seitenshi peeked at the paper and gulped involuntarily. It was a compact under joint signatures. If she remembered correctly, long ago, during the Peasants’ Revolt, they used this in order to form a strong contractual bond among the group and hide the ringleader at the same time.

The gazes of everyone around very naturally turned to the person whose name was one of the many on the list—the Minister of Defense. The other high-ranking government officials drew away from him.

“Good afternoon, Minister Kutsuwada,” said Kisara.

“Wh-what kind of joke is this?” said the Minister of Defense.

“Your subordinate had this very interesting piece of paper, you know. It’s just as it says on the joint compact. You are one in a group secretly maneuvering behind Kagetane Hiruko. In addition, you are also the one who stole the Inheritance of the Seven Stars and tried to leak that information to the media.”

“Th-that’s not true…”

Kisara put her hand to her chin and put on a show of tilting her head. “Handwriting a compact under joint signatures is a very old-fashioned thing to do. Thanks to that, I can round up everyone responsible at once, which saves me the extra trouble.”

The Seitenshi narrowed her eyes. She could not continue to listen silently. “This meeting room is a place of the law that bears the burden of this country’s defense. It is problematic for you to enter rudely like this.”

“Th-that’s right. You are no more than a filthy civil officer dog! I don’t know where you got hold of such a thing, but you need to get out of here!” The minister howled, riding on the Seitenshi’s coattails.

However, Kisara remained composed. “Lady Seitenshi, I agree completely with what you say. However, when I discovered these facts, I could not wait another second to share this with you and hastened to this place. Lady Seitenshi, you must also feel the need to dispose of the spy before continuing with the proceedings, do you not?” She was very eloquent.

The Seitenshi signaled Kikunojo. Kikunojo looked coolly at the Minister of Defense. “Take him away.”

“W-wait…Lord Tendo!” The minister had a pleading look on his face. “I’m… I’m…!” The security officers lifted the man by both arms and took him screaming out of the meeting room.

“Then, I will take my leave here,” said Kisara.

“President Tendo, I cannot let you do that,” said the Seitenshi.

Kisara, who looked like she had been about to turn on her heel, stopped her movement and turned back halfway. “Why not?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot have you leave this building until this operation is completed successfully. I will have you informally confined to this room for the time being.”

Kisara pretended for just a moment to put her hand to her chin and think. “If that’s the case, then I suppose I must stay.”

“Kisara…I cannot believe you would show your face here.” Kikunojo did not do anything to hide his wrath.

However, Kisara just flashed him a calm smile. “Good afternoon, Lord Tendo. It has been some time.”

“Have you returned from hell for your vengeance?”

“I have just come to exterminate a cockroach that was crawling around my bedside. It was only coincidence that I happened to be here at the same time as you. Don’t you think you are being too suspicious?”

“I cannot believe you can joke around like that…”

Kisara’s eyes gave off a cold glitter as she narrowed them. “Every Tendo must die, Lord Tendo.”

“Y-you little…”

It did not sound anything like a conversation a grandfather would have with his granddaughter. Even just knowing part of the relationship between Kisara and Kikunojo made the Seitenshi frightened.

“Please leave it at that, you two,” she said. “President Tendo, if you have been watching the monitor, then you must understand what the situation is to a certain extent. Will you tell us your opinion on the matter?”

4:15 A.M.

The lukewarm wind blew against Rentaro’s skin.

The smell of salt was strong in his nostrils. There was the sound of rippling waves breaking against the concrete wharf. The moonlight made the surface of the water shine like silvery scales, but the bottom of the ocean was so dark that it could not be seen. The smell of the water was mixed with the smell of blood. There was a mountain of corpses nearby. And at the tip of the pier stood the two fighting
asuras
.

Rentaro looked at the spreading sea of blood and asked in a low growl, “Did you bastards do all this?”

“We didn’t want the church to get dirty with blood,” said Kagetane. “Everything that we could do is over already. I’m sure the Stage Five Gastrea will be here soon. All that’s left is to wait.”

“Is the case inside the church? And if I go in and wreck all your preparations right now, will the summoning of the Stage Five be stopped?”

“I don’t think that’s possible, because we are standing in your way.”

“Then, I’ll destroy you.”

Kagetane raised his eyebrows and laughed. “I am the one who will destroy the world. No one can stop me.”

“President Tendo, what do you think the Satomi pair’s chances are of winning?” the Seitenshi asked.

Kisara’s eyes showed no expression as she put her chin in her hand, thinking. “Perhaps about thirty percent? If I am allowed to take my own expectations into consideration, then I believe he will definitely win.”

The Chief Cabinet Secretary scoffed and laughed. “President Tendo, it’s not that I do not understand wanting to believe in the strength of one’s own employees. However, twenty-nine civil officers have just been killed. And one of them is a survivor of the New Humanity Creation Project. He doesn’t even have a one-percent chance of winning.”

“One of them? No, you are mistaken, Chief Cabinet Secretary.”

“What?”

“Secretary, I will spare you the details, but ten years ago, right after Satomi was taken in by the Tendo family, a stray Gastrea invaded my house and devoured my mother and father. Because of the stress of that time, my chronic diabetes worsened, and my kidneys pretty much stopped functioning.”

The secretary looked confused, like he could not tell where she was going with this story. “I-I do believe that is an unfortunate story, but what does that have to do with—?”

She cut him off. “When Satomi protected me then, his right arm and leg were eaten by the Gastrea, and his left eye was gouged out. Near death, he was taken to Section 22. The doctor who operated on him was Dr. Sumire Muroto, celebrated as a miracle worker of the times.”

“Sumire Muroto, you said? Then, don’t tell me he is…”

Thinking that this was a good time, the Seitenshi looked next to her. “Kikunojo, pass out their specs to everyone, please.”

Rentaro glared fixedly in front of him. In front of him was the enemy. The enemy he needed to defeat. Closing his eyes silently, he rolled up his right sleeve and pant leg and stretched his arm straight out. “I will stop you, Kagetane…for the sake of those you killed mercilessly, and for Kisara’s and Enju’s sakes. Kagetane Hiruko, I will stop you!”

With a creaking sound, cracks appeared on his right arm and leg, and artificial skin made of plastic elastomer and silicone warped and peeled off, piling at his feet.

After taking a glance at the materials, the secretary stood up with a shrill cry. “Impossible!” He scratched his head and made his confusion
and fear known. “There is no way… What is the meaning of this…? There was one more? Another human weapon born of the Gastrea War?”

Eventually, a jet-black arm appeared from underneath Rentaro’s artificial skin. His left leg also glistened with black chrome from the crotch down. Air vents that stuck out like barbs autonomously started peristalsis, and when he opened his eyes, his field of vision widened, and the colors became more vivid. His artificial eye was connected directly to his optic nerve, widening his field of vision and allowing it to capture objects in 3-D. Built into his artificial eye was a nano-core processor made using a graphene transistor. It activated and started operating. The inside of the pupil spun, geometrical shapes emerged, his sense of smell became sharper, and a rich taste filled his mouth.

Kagetane’s body trembled. “Artificial Varanium limbs…? Satomi, don’t tell me you’re one, too?”

Rentaro raised his head slowly. “I will give you my name, as well, Kagetane. I am Rentaro Satomi, former member of the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Eastern Force, 787th Mechanization Special Unit, of the New Humanity Creation Project.”

“Satomi’s artificial limbs and eye are made of the alloy Super-Varanium, made from a base of Varanium in a state of weightlessness and mixing in ten different kinds of rare and common metals. It is a next generation alloy that has many times the hardness level and a much higher melting point than Varanium. The section Kagetane Hiruko was with, Section 16, was tactically concerned with absolute defense and created a repulsion force field to stop the attacks of Stage Four Gastrea. Satomi was with Section 22, which was concerned with the exact opposite. Using the propulsion force of ten cartridges in his arm and fifteen cartridges in his leg, he can attack with superhuman strength. It is the personal armament of a New Humanity Creation Project soldier born of the desire to consign Gastrea to oblivion using man himself.”

Kagetane spread both arms and started laughing wildly. “I see, I see! So that’s how it was! From the moment I met you, I liked what I
saw, but I didn’t think we really were the same kind!” The laughing continued.

Enju gave a heartbreaking scream. “Rentaro, I thought you were never to use that again?!”

“It’s fine,” said Rentaro. “More importantly, you need to settle this once and for all. It doesn’t agree with you to stay the loser, right?”

Enju glared sharply in Kohina’s direction and then gave a hard nod. Enju’s and Kohina’s black eyes turned a fiery red at almost the same time as they released their power.

“I am thankful to Kagetane Hiruko,” Kisara continued with dignity. “This past year, no matter how much I hounded him, Satomi lazily refused to use that. He hates himself. But right now, Satomi is seriously angry. I have only seen this once before myself, so I cannot predict what will happen after this.”

The Seitenshi stood from her chair and looked around as she announced, “I hope you all understand the meaning of this fight. The battle between Rentaro Satomi and Kagetane Hiruko could be called the battle between the ultimate lance and the ultimate shield, the battle of opposites. However, they will be at odds with one another. In this battle, when it is all over, one pair will definitely be annihilated. Please fight, Satomi, and prove that you are the strongest!”

“Please win, Satomi… Please.” The Seitenshi heard Kisara murmur under her breath as she clasped her hands together.

The cold night wind blew and teased at Rentaro’s uniform. The air was tense, and it seemed sinful to even breathe. Rentaro stepped firmly on the dirt with the bottom of his boots. Sweating in anticipation of the fight and feeling choked, he tore off his necktie.

The enemy was serious. Even when a large number of civil officers banded together, they could not even scratch him.

Kagetane took a stance. He took his two custom Berettas from their holsters, unfolded their bayonet units, and held them out to his sides. Kohina had also drawn her short swords and was holding them crossed in front of her. As the perpendicular swords and guns diffused the moonlight, they formed the shape of a cross of death, ready to engrave God’s majesty on those who would die.

“Do you understand, Satomi?” said Kagetane. “Do you understand what it means to challenge me, who once held an IP Rank of 134?”

Rentaro took his stance silently. The Tendo Martial Arts Infinite Stance made him conscious of the eternally limitless existence of the heavens and the earth. “Don’t worry. I know exactly what that means, Kagetane. I’ve lost twice, all my allies have been annihilated, and no backup is coming. This is not the situation I wanted to be in, scumbag! Let’s start the fight. I’m going to exterminate you now, you bastard!”