The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (18 page)

“…Oh.”

Emi and Maou exchanged glances, both picking up on something of their own.

“Yeah, dudes, that’s it. You know what Raguel’s trying to look for now?”

The blood drained from Emi’s head.

How long ago was that phone call from Emeralda?

How could I have been so stupid, this whole time between today and running into that woman in white in Tokyo Big-Egg Town?

“The number one item on Raguel and Gabriel’s list right now isn’t the Yesod fragments; it isn’t the Better Half; it isn’t Maou. For now, that all takes a backseat.”

I should have
known
that angel might be coming to Japan.

“It’s Laila. I don’t know why, but they’re tracking Laila’s trail and they’re trying to lay some kind of judgment at her feet.”

“All thanks to that idiot Albert sending an Idea Link with Laila’s feather pen, huh? Man, lucky thing Chiho’s mom wasn’t caught in the cross fire, then.”

Maou groaned to himself, realizing the situation was far worse than it seemed, but Emi felt the brunt of it.

“What…what happens with Raguel’s Call of the End Times?!” She found herself grabbing Urushihara by the collar.

“Garghh!”

“Emilia! That is too strong. And this is a hospital! Calm down!”

“You want me to calm down
now
?!”

Her voice was rising.

“I’ve never met her… I didn’t even know she existed until recently… But…unless I can meet her and talk to her…unless she’s safe, she…she’s my mother, all right?!”

“Um, is something the matter? Should I call for somebody?”

A nurse had appeared, watching them dubiously, no doubt alarmed by the shouting. Emi returned to her senses and, for the time being, released Urushihara.

“I… Sorry. It’s nothing.”

“Oh, no? Well, remember, this is a hospital. I’d like to ask you to keep things quiet, please.”

The nurse, not looking particularly convinced, quietly padded off nonetheless.

Urushihara, near tears and realizing Emi was done screwing around with him, opted to cut out the back talk from here on in.

“Kahh…nnngh… They’re probably gonna kick her out of heaven, I’d assume. Raguel and Sariel work as a team, after all. Or worked.”

“Sariel’s in on this, too?!”

“Nah, dude. Not at this point. I probably shouldn’t dis him too much, but I’m startin’ to get the impression he doesn’t give two craps about heaven any longer.”

Maou recalled the last time he saw Sariel—metaphorically melting into a pile of goo and oozing into the sewer grate after Kisaki, the supreme love of his life, banned him from MgRonald.

“So I dunno how he’s planning to do that, really. Banishing someone from heaven doesn’t happen all that often, but I’ve
never
heard of them going to other worlds, interfering with all kindsa crap over there, all so they can lay judgment on a single archangel.”

A beat, and then Maou nodded and stood up. “…So we’re gonna have to beat up Raguel and make him give us the whole story, huh? If Urushihara doesn’t even know, our only option’s gonna be to ask the guy himself.”

Ashiya remained seated, much cooler to the idea. “Your Demonic Highness, why do we need to, as you say, ‘beat up’ Raguel?”

“Look, I don’t care about how angels deal with humans. Like, not at
all
. But he just took out one of my prime candidates for a Demon General spot in the army I lead. Do I need any more reason than that?”

Ashiya smiled and nodded at Maou’s stern countenance. “Not at all, my liege. I would be glad to lend a helping hand to a talented future comrade.”

“Urushihara. Emi. Suzuno.”

“Mm?”

“What!”

“Yes?”

Maou sized up each one of them in succession.

“I need to smoke this Raguel guy out and make him pay for putting Chi in the hospital. Help me with that.”

It wasn’t the most politely phrased of requests, but strangely, no one offered any resistance to it.

“Well…sure, dude. I’m free anyway. I guess I owe her for least a coupla things.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you saved that talk about Demon Generals until after I kill you, but if it’s one of my best friends we’re talking about, so be it.”

“I will gladly teach even an angel a lesson to protect my friends. For this, and only this, I officially agree to cooperate with you.”

For the sake of a single girl, the Devil King, his Great Demon General, a fallen angel, the Hero, and a Church cleric stood strong in the hospital waiting room, uniting for a common goal.

“…Hmm?”

Maou noticed something tugging at the sleeve of his pants.

“Daddy!”

Alas Ramus, eyes deadly serious, was looking up at Maou.

“Alas Ramus love Chi-sis, too!”

She seemed proud of this affirmation.

Maou whisked the child into the air, smile just as strong as her eyes.

“Wanna do it?”

“Yehh!”

The five of them, plus one toddler, headed down the elevator and marched out of Seikai University Hospital as a group.

They were seen out by the same nurse who had upbraided Emi for screaming in the waiting room.

Waving something resembling a clipboard in her hand, the nurse headed for Chiho’s room.

“Pardon me for barging in, Ms. Sasaki… Hmm?”

Upon entering, she found the young patient’s mother gone. Her handbag was still there, perhaps indicating a quick trip to the bathroom or the gift shop.

The nurse gave herself a nod and stood next to the sleeping Chiho’s bed.

“Ms. Chiho Sasaki? I think your friends might just help you see the outside of this hospital soon!”

She peered into Chiho’s face, a beaming smile painted upon her own.

“You have all these disparate minds focused on a single goal… The mother of a new Da’at, perhaps?”

Several minutes later. Riho, returning from the ladies’ room, spotted a piece of paper on the small desk next to the bed—a rundown of the examinations slated for the next day.

The distraction made her completely fail to notice the faint glow that was now present around the ring on Chiho’s left hand.

Leaving the air-conditioned hospital interior, the warriors from another planet were instantly assaulted by the stifling heat, which showed no sign of loosening even as sunset loomed.

Several minutes after their solemn oath, all five of them were already starting to grimace under the strain.

“So…if you were willing to give that speech just now, do you have an idea of where Raguel might be?”

Emi set up a no-look pass to Maou. He ignored it.

“Uh, you know anything, Urushihara?” Maou asked.

Urushihara, realizing the ball was headed his way, rolled his eyes at Maou for his clear failure to take initiative.

“Well…I got a thought, anyway. But how ’bout
you
go first? You’re
soooooo
good with machines, I wouldn’t want to look like an idiot if I got it wrong.”

The defiant
sooooo
was still ringing in everyone’s ears by the time he concluded the sentence.

“So, what’re you thinkin’, dude?”

“Two places.”

Urushihara’s eyebrows arched upward. “Huh. Guess we’re in agreement.”

Suzuno gave him a poke on the back. “Would you mind sharing it with the rest of the world, please?”

Maou responded with a single arched eyebrow of his own. “What was it that broke apart around us at the electronics store? What’s the thing that’s been flashing white and screwing up for people all day? What just scrambled my and Ashiya’s brains a moment ago?”

“Frizzy-frizz!”

Maou paid Alas Ramus no mind as she played with his hair, still on end even now.

“It’s the TVs, right?”

“You… Wait.”

Emi’s eyes opened wide. Urushihara nodded at her.

“It’s not like all the TVs involved were airing the same program every time. He’s not targeting a single network—he’s working across the entire range of TV signals in the Kanto region. Which means there’s only two places I can think of.”

“If there’s one thing that fancy-pants prick always liked, it’s high places. He’s like a goat or something. Not that I was one to talk, but…”

A summer evening’s breeze lapped at their hair.

“Tokyo Tower and the Tokyo Skytree.”

“Hey, did you know, Ashiya?”

“Yes?”

Shiba Park, in the Minato ward of Tokyo.

The Devil King of another world turned toward his faithful Great Demon General and snorted.

“The top of Tokyo Tower is made out of tanks!”

“……” Ashiya sighed and looked at what Maou clenched in his hand. “Is that written in there, my liege?”

Maou was holding a copy of a small paperback entitled
Everything You Wanted to Know About HDTV* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
. He’d purchased it at a station-side kiosk on the way here.

“The area of the tower that lies above the topmost observation deck is made from steel taken from American tanks that were scrapped after the Korean War,” Ashiya concluded. “It was still hard to obtain high-quality steel in the Japan of the nineteen fifties, the US was eager to develop a new generation of tanks, and—as I understand it—their needs dovetailed each other very closely.”

“…! …!” Maou look at Ashiya, then his book. “…Y-you knew that?”

“When I was working as a theater stagehand, I had to move props around for a play set in that era. They touched upon it in one scene or another.”

Ashiya had a thoughtful look on his face. (The two of them had finally gotten around to fixing their hair earlier.)

“Did you know, Your Demonic Highness, why the tower is painted in white and red? Or, should I say, the shade of yellowish red known as ‘international orange’?”

“…No.”

“According to aviation regulations, any structures or other objects over two hundred feet above the ground that may interfere with air safety need to be painted in alternating shades of white and international orange to indicate the obstruction. These markings are painted across the entirety of Tokyo Tower, however.”

Maou stared at Ashiya, mouth agape.

“But…but the Skytree isn’t that color!”

“The pattern is not required if you install high-powered aircraft warning lights or other devices.”

A few furious flips through the paperback, and:

“………Whoa, you’re right.”

He’d found the relevant section.

Ashiya grinned as his master’s crestfallen look. “That’s what led to the Tokyo Tower we know and love today…but personally, I think a nice shade of pure red would suit this tower the most.”

He sized up the tower before him as he spoke. The tower, all one thousand ninety-three feet of it, was used as a central site for radio, television, and other electrical signals, gradually evolving into an architectural symbol for all of Tokyo over the years.

The Skytree, while still under construction, already had it beaten in height. That still wasn’t enough to tarnish any of the structure’s grandeur, however. Thousands of tourists visited Tokyo Tower daily, and since HDTV transmission duties were now handled by the Skytree, the resulting free bandwidth in the Tower ensured it would be serving Tokyo and its citizens for years to come.

“Y’know, I know I came here on my own volition and stuff…but I’m starting to have cold feet.”

“How so?”

“There’s too many people. Is there really an angel around here?”

It did not affect Maou and his friends whatsoever, but to most Japanese citizens, it was currently the tail end of summer vacation.

Tokyo Tower was a landmark icon of Japan. In this warm August evening, it was predictably mobbed.

“Meaning that Emi has more of a chance to find our target at the Skytree, you mean?”

While Maou and Ashiya were at Tokyo Tower, Emi had volunteered to head for the Skytree, with Urushihara (at his suggestion) remaining at Yoyogi so he and Suzuno could swiftly reach either building and provide backup should trouble arise.

The fact Urushihara suggested this provided Maou some pause, but his logic was sound enough. From Yoyogi, they could either quickly board the JR Sobu Line to Kinshichou, near the Skytree, or hop on the Toei Oedo Line to Akabane-bashi, the preferred stop for Tokyo Tower sightseers.

Suzuno, whose usefulness in a fight was undeniable at this point, protested the idea of being behind the front lines.

But if an angel
really
felt like a scrap, the fact was that only Emi had the strength to deal with that.

So Suzuno acquiesced in the end. Maou’s none-too-subtle reminder that she was incapable of standing up to Sariel at first—and, indeed, helped Maou take Devil King form only because she was outside the field of battle—helped the opposition’s case immensely.

“Hey, but can we settle this someplace where I don’t have to repair a lot of collateral damage again?”

Maou felt justified in emphasizing this point. This was the Suzuno, after all, who destroyed enough of the train infrastructure around Shinjuku station to bring all JR lines to a screeching halt. But Suzuno’s response was arctic in tone.

“Assuming you can collect enough power in said place to turn you into the Devil King.”

The potential of another postfight cleanup filled Maou with dread, but he appreciated that Emi and Suzuno were willing to accept that he might have to take demon form before long. That was a huge step forward for them.

“But the Skytree hasn’t gone into full operation yet, has it? Wouldn’t someone up there notice if some intruder started messin’ around with the satellites and stuff?”

The demons certainly noticed by now—their brains were still a bit scrambled by it—but if, as Urushihara thought, this angel Raguel was inserting sonar signals into TV broadcasts, being harassed by Japanese video technicians along the way wasn’t a very efficient way to go about things.

“Tokyo Tower, as well, is subject to frequent and, may I say, extremely thorough safety inspections. Things are little different here. Instead of fretting over it, I say we make our move and see for ourselves instead.”

Here, on the ground, Maou and Ashiya were just two men stuck at the back of the visitor line.

Given how they needed to investigate this tower as much as humanly possible, their main priority right now was to explore every nook and cranny they had the right to access.

Without a moment’s hesitation, they paid the 2,840 yen required for two tickets to the tower’s twin observation decks. The fact this was their first visit to the site since touching down in Japan added to the lack of pause.

It was, in its own way, a sign of how large a presence Chiho had grown to become in both of their lives: 2,840 yen was, yes, worth
that
much to them.

“Your Demonic Highness, we will be going upward by elevator from this point…”

“Uh-huh?”

“But Tokyo Tower can also be climbed by stairs, I understand.”

“…Um?”

“I think this to be rather improbable, but if an angel like Raguel was on the staircases…”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on, are you saying we should…?”

Maou looked up at the illuminated red tower looming above.

In the back of his mind, he recalled having to climb up the entirety of the Tokyo City Hall building to rescue Chiho, clad in nothing but a pair of boxers.

“…Are you
kidding
me?”

Emi, meanwhile, could just Heavenly Fleet Feet up from the roof of a nearby building to conquer the Skytree. Dressed in a black sweatshirt, pants, and boots to keep her from being spotted in midair, she was on comparative Easy Street.

Wearing a long-sleeved shirt, by itself, almost drowned her in her own sweat when she tried it on at the UniClo in Shinjuku. At nearly two thousand feet above sea level, however, the wind was howling hard enough to give an unprotected human being hypothermia in no time flat.

“Maybe I should’ve put on another layer…”

The muttering was all but drowned out by the sound of her hair flapping in the gale-force breeze. But unless she was willing to shell out serious cash for mountain gear or the latest winter fashions just as the season was ramping up, she’d have to make do with this.

Despite the late hour, the Skytree was still packed with TV staff and technicians, thousands of people running to and fro down on the ground. Instead of trying to dodge them all and enter from below, it was far easier to begin at the very peak and work her way down.

Inspectors, of course, were still doing their work up high. The Tokyo Skytree wasn’t fully built yet, but the news reported earlier about the daily test broadcasts radiating from its antennas. Maintenance and inspection work was more likely to happen at night than any other time.

This was because, if you approached an antenna unprotected during the afternoon or evening hours when the most electricity was coursing through it, you risked being literally cooked by the high-frequency waves running through you.

Emi landed above the observation deck located about 1,500 feet above the ground.

She checked the emergency supply of 5-Holy Energy β she had in her chest pocket, then carefully gauged her surroundings.

She was wary of bystanders, of course. But if the angel actually
was
in this tower, he had probably noticed the holy force Emi had used to reach this vantage point.

In the worst case, Emi could expect an incoming barrage from within the tower at any moment. But, for now, she felt nothing but the cacophonous wind against her face. It puzzled her.

The vast Tokyo cityscape spread out beneath her eyes, the mountains that formed the westernmost boundary of the Kanto Plain hazily visible in the night air.

Taking a quick look at the the high-powered aircraft warning light nearby, Emi carefully began to walk across the roof of the observation deck, taking care not to let the wind throw her off balance.

“So…no dice?”

Except for the heavy wind, the brightly shining warning light, and the sturdy walkway she was currently on, there was nothing.

“Maybe I should look around a bit more, then head for Tokyo Tower…”

She took out her cell phone, almost dropping it in the wind, as she attempted to contact Maou or Suzuno about her failure. Then:

“!”

The wind suddenly carried a clearly out-of-place noise with it. On cue, Emi crouched low and scanned her surroundings.

No one was visible in the scaffolding.

That was what made it seem so eerie to her. What she had heard just now…

“A sneeze?”

“Ehhhh-
choooo
!!”

It was clear as day that time. A man, sneezing, in vastly comical fashion. And she recognized the voice, too.

“Mommy! Up there!”

Alas Ramus pointed him out from within Emi, an odd trace of frustration to her voice.

In the scaffolding, fifty or so feet above her, was a figure that could only be described as bizarre.

Emi was expecting a fight—with this angel Raguel, even, should the need arise. That was what made this man’s outfit all the more ridiculous to her.

It was too dark to make his face out too well, but he was curled up in a ball, arms over his shins.

“Ehhhh-
choooaahh
!!”

Another sneeze. Emi gazed at him, unsure what to do next. But:

“Ah!”

The curled-up man noticed her.

Then he stood right up, in an apparent panic. The force was enough to make his foot slip right off the railing he was perched upon.

“Look out!” Emi shouted instinctively, still not knowing who this was. But the man’s possible fate 1,500 feet below was extinguished in the next second.

“!!”

Emi, looking on, did not hesitate another moment to materialize her holy sword.

It was because the man, just as he fell off the railing, spread his glowing wings into the air.

Beyond any doubt, it was an angel lying in wait for Emi.

Maou was right to finger the TV towers the whole time. But now that the truth was thrust before her, one question remained:

Why didn’t the angel engage Emi in combat when she first approached him?

Emi had energized her holy-force banks to their limits, preparing herself for any potential opponent she could picture. But the angel, wings in the air, found himself foundering around like a kite on a windy day, plopping slightly in front of Emi like a squashed toad. Then he went still.

Once again, Emi wasn’t sure how to react. She took a step forward to investigate further.

But Alas Ramus, in her sword, stopped her.

“Mommy! That’s Gabwraell! Don’t!”