Murder Machine and the Catastrophic Athletic Festival

by Mizuki Mizushiro

  “Geez, you’re irritating! Shut up and piss off already. No, don’t press your damn tits on me, fuck off!”

  “Uahh?!” Reiko tumbled away and fell on her backside. “Owww… Really, you know my body is weak! Don’t be so rough!!”

  “No way. Right now you and I are mutual enemies. Knowing that, you march right into enemy territory, just the two of you. You wouldn’t have room to complain, even if you were forcibly violated, would you? By Kamiya, maybe?”

  “Me?!”

  “Yeah. No need to hold back—do it!”

  “No, no…”

  “Ee?! Y-you beast! Renjiiiiii! Crush this rapist—”

  “You must be joking. He’s not really gonna do it, virgin.”

  “Bwuh?!”

  Exasperated, Kurumiya thrust her iron pipe into Reiko’s mouth, cutting off her screams.

  After a short struggle, Reiko spat the pipe out—“Pueh! Hang on!”—while blushing bright red. “What do you think you’re doing?! I mean, you’ve given yourself away again, haven’t you?! Even if it’s you, I won’t forgive this, Hijiri! I was already mad! Ren—”

  “Should I stick it somewhere lower instead?”

  “”

  “Should I stick it between your big, useless tits? Hmm?” Kurumiya flashed a sadistic grin as she idly poked Reiko’s chest with the iron pipe.

  “Hyah?!” Reiko pulled away, covering her breasts with both hands.

  Renji observed mutely.

  “Y-you’re serious… The look in your eyes is really serious!”

  “Of course I’m serious, moron,” Kurumiya glared. “So—what did you want anyway?”

  “N-nothing…” Reiko scratched the back of her head. “It wasn’t anything important! Just, there’s someone I was a little curious about.”

  “Oh? Kamiya?”

  “No, not that rapist—”

  “That’s a false charge!”

  Ignoring Kyousuke’s objections, Reiko continued, “Let’s see, who was it? Isn’t she here? The girl who made a Busujima-style curry and dealt serious damage to your class—Ah, there she is! That girl.”

  “Huhhh?! M-meeeeee?!” Maina dropped her rice ball in surprise.

  “Yeah. What was your name, uhhh… Ah, I remember! You’re Igarashi, Maina Igarashi! I heard about you from Renko, but you’re incredible! How are you able to make such unbelievable food?!”

  “Uh… That’s, well… I-I don’t really know, either… Oh dear.” Maina began to panic in the face of Reiko’s rambling interrogation.

  Reiko’s glasses shone. “Huh! Now I’m even more interested. Great, I definitely want to clear this up. How about it? I’ll investigate all the nooks and crannies of your body with my hands—”

  “Hold it.”

  “Awwwww!!”

  Kurumiya blocked Reiko’s advance, keeping her from closing on Maina.

  “Excuse me! Just where are you grabbing?! D-don’t hold me like that…”

  “Quiet, tit brain! That’s enough out of you!” Kurumiya held her free hand to her forehead. She sounded acutely irritated. “How many times do I have to say this? Right now we’re in the middle of a battle. Don’t go stirring up trouble! Or is that your strategy? If so, I won’t forgive you, either—”

  “Hijiri, that hurts! You’re hurting me, Hijiri!”

  “You told him to ‘crush’ Kamiya, right? However, even if you were joking, Kamiya is my student. I won’t just stand by and watch him die. This morning he did his best to stay out of the fight, but this afternoon I’m going to have him do some crushing of his own… Our first-year Class A is going to win a total victory! Not your Class B.”

  “……Oh?” Reiko’s expression changed. “This is unexpected. You’re awfully tenacious. I know that for you and Renko both, this is a bitter pill to swallow, but, Hijiri dear, we’re going to crush you just the same. My daughter’s future depends on it… I will absolutely win. After all, even if I lose, I win.”

  “……Eh? What do you mean by that?”

  “Heh-heh!” Smiling, Reiko took her eyes off Kurumiya. “Kyousuke. I got to watch you in the morning competitions, but you’re even less of a big deal than I thought. It was anticlimactic. My children could destroy you one-handed.—Right, Renji?”

  “…………”

  Renji, of course, did not respond. He stood there, apathetic as always, staring at Kyousuke from behind his ivory gas mask.

  “Not just Kyousuke, either… These other kids are all the same. If they stand in our way, I’m telling you we’ll crush them without mercy. We’ll kick them around like pebbles.”

  Listening to Reiko’s remarks, every member of first-year Class A grew angry.

  “…Oh really? If you’re so sure, go ahead and give it a try, auntie.”

  “Hah. Ayaka doesn’t like that person one bit! She’s Renko’s mother, so Ayaka wanted to be friends with her, but…if this is how it’s going to be, then there’s no avoiding it. Shall we get rid of her?”

  “Let’s get rid of her! Let’s kill her and cut her to pieces and cook her right now, and mix her in with the side dishes!”

  “Oh gosh…”

  And so on. While most of his classmates burned with intense rivalry, Kyousuke struggled to respond. He had every reason to come back at her with strong words, but—Kyousuke found himself hesitating.

  I want to win, he thought. But then, from somewhere in his heart, he asked himself, Do I really? Victory would mean winning Reiko’s approval.

  His goal in the athletic festival was nothing less than a total win, but when it came to the question of Reiko’s approval and whether he wanted her to support Renko’s amorous aspirations…Kyousuke didn’t know the answer just then. He wondered whether he might not mind defeating the other first-year class as planned and thus being separated from Renko.

  What did he, himself, want to happen with Renko, he wondered—

  “…………”

  “My, my, what a disappointing leader you have.” Reiko shrugged casually at Kyousuke, who held his tongue and hung his head. “Heh-heh, all righty then! Whether you feel like fighting or not, the fact is that I’m going to thoroughly smash you all! So you’d better get yourselves ready!”

  She stood up to go after tossing out that last provocative line… “Oh, and, ah, Hijiri?” Reiko looked at Kurumiya. “I’d like you to go ahead and let go of me now.”

  Kurumiya’s right hand still had a tight grip on Reiko’s right breast. Looking back at Reiko with a strange, stiff face, she laughed. “…Let go?! Why do I have to let go of you? Do you think I’m going to overlook an idiot who casually strolled into enemy territory? Heh-heh-heh… Come on! I’ll show you plenty of tough love.”

  “Eh?! No way…Hijiri, time out! Please, wait—Ow?!” Reiko whined as Kurumiya began to drag her away. “That hurts! Renji! Renjiiiiii, help meeeeeeeeeeee!”

  “…………!”

  At Reiko’s command, the motionless monster launched into action. Closing the distance between himself and his mother in a single step, he started a strenuous battle to rescue his mistress from Kurumiya’s clutches.

  For the remainder of the break, Kyousuke and the rest of first-year Class A got to finish their meal while watching a true clash of monsters—“Kurumiya vs. Renji.”

  Chaotic Mosh Pit

  WHAT’S LEFT AFTER THE CATASTROPHE

  FOURTH EVENT

  “Nom, nom… Huh, is break time up already? Seriously? I’m not done eating ye—Ah, hey?! You give me back my ‘High-Grade Garbage’ bentoooooo!”

  “…All right then, okay. The second half has begun! The live broadcast will continue, with me, Kirito Busujima, here as always babysitting Miss Arisugawa—”

  “FUCK! This is Kurisu Arisugawa comin’ at you! And I’ve barely even eaten because the whole damn break time was taken up by long-winded explanations and meetings. I mean, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me! Die! You awful old bat—”

  —Bong!

  Before Kurisu could finish, Mizuchi knoc
ked her out and dragged her away.

  The curtain opened on the second half of the athletic festival with the gunshot. The first match to be held was the Unhinged Obstacle Course. During this race, a four-person relay team would have to make it across a two-hundred-meter track littered with eight different types of obstacles, a Spiked-Bat Spin, a Caltrop Balance Beam, Barbed Wire Wickets, a Dead Sea Pool, Poison Hell, Antidote Candy, a Monkey Bars Minefield, and the Wall of Death.

  The large-scale obstacles, which had taken the whole intermission to set up, were all very dangerous, which meant there were a lot of victory points on the line. This important contest could determine the course of the rest of the athletic festival.

  “Take your marks. Geeeeeet set… Go!”

  First-year Class A was the first to jump out ahead the moment the start was signaled. Their runner was Eiri, whose speed was unequaled. When she arrived one step ahead of everyone else at the first obstacle, the Spiked-Bat Spin, Eiri picked up a spiked bat, put the grip end to her forehead, and started spinning around. Once, twice…

  “Excuse me.”

  Eiri’s third rotation was interrupted by Heartless Mei Kuroki, from third-year Class B, who had caught up with her. Kuroki snatched up her spiked bat, took aim at Eiri’s side, and swung wide.

  “Tch—” Eiri paused her spinning to dodge Kuroki’s attack.

  Gaining momentum, Kuroki put the handle of the bat to her forehead and completed one rotation.

  “Excuse me.”

  Again, Kuroki swung her weapon at Eiri’s head with both hands.

  “Ah, really, how irritating!”

  Ducking to evade the second blow, Eiri undauntedly pressed the grip end of her bat back to her forehead and, as she spun, countered with a sweeping kick. Though they were required to complete a total of ten nonconsecutive rotations to clear this first obstacle, Eiri made sure to slip in a counterattack whenever there was a spare moment—

  “—Guah?!”

  —because if, like Michirou, she had focused only on clearing the obstacle, her defenseless body would have been an easy target for another student’s spiked bat, and she would have suffered a similarly agonizing fate.

  “Luu. Luu. Laaa. Luu. Luu. Laaaaaa. ”

  Whereas students like Ronaldo, who focused only on attacking the competition, failed to complete any rotations.

  It was indeed a surreal scene, the students exchanging blows with spiked bats in the designated rotation zone and occasionally spinning haphazardly on their weapons.

  Furthermore—

  “Gyaaaaaah?!”

  After they slipped through the melee surrounding the Bat Spin, another obstacle awaited them—the Caltrop Balance Beam. Scattered around the four-inch-wide and sixteen-foot-long balance beam was a carpet of caltrops.

  The competitors, still dizzy from turning in circles on the spiked bats, found it almost impossible to cross the whole balance beam and tumbled down onto the sharp spikes below. The caltrop-covered ground was quickly awash in blood as the fallen students writhed in agony.

  “And currently in first place we have third-year Class A. Their long white coats are getting dyed bright red as they challenge the balance beam! After them, second-year Class B has arrived at the balance beam. First-year Class A and third-year Class B, who kicked off this fierce battle, have also finally broken through the spiked bats! Second-year Class A is…ah, finally they’ve started spinning around. And the competitor from first-year Class B who suffered a terrible beating looks like he’s about done for.”

  “Kuh, kuh-kuh… You narrowly escaped death, clown… If I hadn’t held back Azrael’s terrible fury, you would be…dead meat…about no…now…guh, guaaahhh!”

  “…Lame. Why did they even bother bringing him along?” Eiri grumbled as she easily crossed the balance beam. Dodging a final swing from Kuroki’s baton, she covered the remaining distance to the finish line unhindered.

  In third place after third-year Class A and second-year Class B, Eiri tied the class color sash around the next runner for their team. “Sorry… I couldn’t take first place. Do your best!”

  “Hyah-haaaaaah! Leave it to me—I’ll turn this around right away!”

  Mohawk, wearing the sash, pushed off the ground at a sprint. On the course ahead, the third obstacle, the Barbed Wire Wickets, lay in wait. Mohawk dived without hesitation into the dense mesh woven out of barbed wire.

  Paying no mind to the sharp metal thorns cutting into his flesh, Mohawk pushed through the anguish. He overtook a male student in a long white coat as he broke through the barbed netting.

  “It itches, it itches, gyah-ha-ha! That level of pain doesn’t even register! For me, this isn’t an obstacle course. It’s a reward race!”

  Next up was the fourth obstacle, the Dead Sea Pool—again without hesitation, he jumped into the pool, filled with water with a 30 percent concentration of salt. Mohawk remained calm as his body, covered in cuts, sank into the salty water. Submerged up to his chest, Mohawk quickly splashed his way across two-thirds of the pool…

  “…Oh? He’s much faster than I thought.”

  He pursued Haruyo Gevaudan Tanaka from second-year Class B, who was currently in first place. Her kigurumi costume was tattered and torn but not so badly that the person inside was exposed. The pool was, true to its name, a “deathly” sea to the injured competitors, but to Haruyo it might as well have been normal water.

  “Oh-ho-ho!” Haruyo held up an arm to the surprised Mohawk. “As your prize for being able to catch up with me, I’ll give you a taste of my fist, underclassman… Bonecrusher Fist!”

  “Gya-ha?!”

  “Acha!”

  Haruyo struck Mohawk on the forehead. There was no immediate effect. Mohawk quickly resumed splashing forward, until suddenly—

  “Hgeh?!”

  Just as he placed one hand on the edge of the pool, Mohawk spat up fresh blood and collapsed. Haruyo pushed aside his body, floating in the bright red water, on her way out of the pool. The competitors for third-year Class A and third-year Class B overtook Mohawk after Haruyo, and Kyousuke’s class fell to fourth place.

  “Get up, you idiot!” Kurumiya screamed, rising from her sofa in the spectators’ seats. “Why aren’t you moving, Mohawk?! Stand uuuuuup!”

  “Uugh… Ku-Kurumiya baby?” Hearing her frenzied pleas, Mohawk opened his eyes just in time to see the runner from second-year Class A overtake him, leaving his class in fifth place.

  Meanwhile, the competitor for first-year Class B, still in last place—

  “Kyah?! M-my flour sack… My face is showing! Noooooo!”

  Bob, whose flour sack had torn, covered her bare face with both hands and stopped right in the middle of the barbed wire netting. The gap left by her class’s first runner continued to widen.

  “Ah, now it certainly looks like the first-years are having a hard fight. Can they possibly come back from this far behind? Currently, second-year Class B is in first place! Following behind them is—”

  “Beg your pardon, but this is where you exit the stage!”

  “…………Huh?”

  As the male student turned to look, Shamaya swung a hatchet down into the back of his head—she had acquired the weapon during the Calamity Arms Race.

  —Thunk. The hatchet made a dull sound, and the male student fell.

  Licking the blood-covered blade, Shamaya grinned ecstatically. “Oh-ho-ho! This really is the best… The feeling of this thick mass of iron as it smashes bones! And the taste of blood as it winds around my tongue! Ah, I am truly revitalized. All the stress I built up during the morning is just melting awaaaaaay. More…more, I want to savor it…”

  “Eee—”

  Looking down at a frightened young man in a happi coat, Shamaya brandished the hatchet. Her emerald-colored eyes glittered grotesquely.

  “Oh, scary, scary. That’s our Killing Mania, huh.”

  “Ah…ah…”

  Nearby, a tall boy with his mouth hidden by a skull scarf—the second bro
ther of the Ripper Jacks, Motoharu Yatsuzaki of second-year Class A—and a wheezing student whose face was covered in eerie yellowed bandages—Faceless Amon Abashiri of third-year Class B—ran past. While attacking each other, the two came to the fifth obstacle, Poison Hell, and were confronted by a swarm of snakes and frogs and lizards and centipedes and spiders and bees and hairy caterpillars.

  “Goodness, I, of all people…I was in a complete rapture!” Shamaya hefted her hatchet overhead.

  “Gyah?!”

  She brought the blade down on the male student’s head. “The match must take priority, mustn’t it? I shall restrain myself this much.”

  “……Twitch, twitch.”

  Leaving behind her weakly convulsing victim, Shamaya leaped into the poison pit. Swarmed by innumerable venomous creatures, she followed after Motoharu and Abashiri, who were struggling hard.

  “Oh-ho-ho-ho! Do you think I’ll allow something like this to stop moi?” Gripping her weapon tightly, Shamaya slaughtered each and every venomous creature in her path.

  “Aaaaaahhh?! My pets, my friends… They’re being tragically killed en masse!! Bite! Sting! Scratch! Everyooooooone!”

  Snakes were cut right in half, lizards were bisected, bees crashed to the ground, spiders were crushed underfoot… No kind of fang or stinger or claw was able to touch Shamaya’s skin. With skillful defensive movements and expert weapon handling, Murder Princess unleashed her fury.

  “…We screwed up, huh? I should have also brought along my own weapon—Guh?!”

  “Ah…ah…”

  Shamaya’s deadly assault did not stop with the venomous creatures. Her honey-colored hair fluttered behind her as she attacked Motoharu and Abashiri as well. Sleeves flapping, Shamaya’s long white coat was quickly stained red. The atrocity of her total domination was overwhelming.

  Witnessing that spectacle—

  “Wow, amazing… Miss Bitch is really strong, after all.”

  Finally coming to a stop in front of the Poison Hell was the third runner from first-year Class A. Ayaka’s dark eyes were wide, but they did not show the slightest hint of fear. Rather…