by Yuu Kamiya
…Shiro’s phantom bullet, controlling space to bounce and strike from anywhere, aimed for Sora. There was only one way to avoid it. To read Shiro’s attack completely—was what Shiro’s attack would anticipate, so he’d have to go beyond that—in short, he’d have to win in a race to read the optimal solution. Surely you jest—it’s as simple as impossible. To challenge Shiro on her own terms and win was about as likely as an apple falling up.
“…Jibril, engage Izuna for me.”
Sora answered with a gulp. In this situation, even a slight error in judgment would not be tolerated. He had decided he should cut himself off from Jibril, their strongest force.
“…Are you certain?”
“I’ll have my hands full with Shiro. If Izuna butts in now, we’re screwed. You’re the only one who can rival her head-on—buy us as much time as you can.”
Of course, this carried the risk of letting Jibril, too, become Izuna’s slave—an enemy. If that happened, then everything would really be over. But—
“If that is your wish—”
And Jibril smiled.
“—but you wouldn’t have a problem if I went ahead and destroyed that thing…I suppose?”
“…Damn, you learn the wisdom of our world quick, don’t you? Of course that would be ideal if you can, but let me say what needs to be said. That’s where you die.”
“Goodness… Well, let me go and destroy her normally, then.”
Promptly, Jibril thunked down a step and took off.
Ascending to a tenth-floor wall surface in one step, floating up a hundred meters in the sky with the second. In the same beat, a shot flew keenly toward Jibril’s back—but she dodged it.
“You attack as expected—I am grateful that you save me the time of searching.”
Catching a glimpse of the enemy—Izuna—at the other end of the trajectory, Jibril sneered. She and Izuna, who lit down upon the roof of a fifteen-story building and readied her gun restlessly, faced each other. Jibril, with a proper curtsy, spoke.
“Good day, doggy.”
“……”
“My, a sense of déjà vu overcomes me… Could it be that the one I faced when I challenged the Eastern Union and lost—was you?”
Taking Izuna’s silence for a yes, Jibril narrowed her eyes.
“I see; I had always been puzzled as to why I would lose to a mere Werebeast, but now I understand.”
Jibril. With the smile, indeed, of an angel.
“The conclusion you beasts were able to wring from your intellect was ‘Let’s invite them into a place where we alone can cheat all we want,’ was it? As my master has said that this is a perfectly valid strategy, I have held my tongue, but surely I can say this between you and me.”
Her clear and lofty voice—smudged with lethal hostility.
“I suppose it is unreasonable to expect shame or pride from curs such as you?”
Izuna dropped a bead of sweat and stepped back slightly.
—Rank Six, Flügel. The beings beyond the clouds, whose presence, before the Ten Covenants, would have spelled ruin. Izuna had been startled by those Immanities, Sora and Shiro, but the one she’d been most wary of from the beginning was now in front of her. The instincts remaining in the blood of the Werebeast shrieked. Drop your weapon. Weep, wail, and beg for your life. What stands before you—is death, they said. Hushing these instincts with reason, Izuna gripped her gun tighter.
“Well, I have been told by my master to buy time, but we might as well have fun.”
Jibril delivered this line with a smile like the sun but with eyes as if she were gazing upon trash.
“Please feel free to expend all the cheats you have and further shame yourself to your satisfaction.”
The two launched from the floor, splitting the concrete into the air. Firing with godly speed—their Lovey-Dovey Guns. The two races with the greatest physical power among the Ixseeds, do or die.
—LOVE or LOVED: they cross—!!
—A bullet whizzed by Sora’s temple as he ran through the alley. It would be too easygoing to say he dodged it. It was fired by Shiro. Even if he dodged it once, it would only be expected for it to bounce several times and come for him again! Think. What action would his pursuer not be expecting as she aimed through multiple rebounds?! No time, no room for error, but answer in one decisecond!
“Hrrrrg, this is it!!”
With a roar, Sora dared to backstep in the direction from which the bullet came, toward Shiro. Next moment. The bullet that had bounced back sliced past in front of Sora’s eyes.
“—Shit, you read everything, even this!”
The only reason he’d managed to escape it was that his decision speed and jump distance had minutely exceeded Shiro’s expectation…or something like that. But—next time, an attack correcting for that would come. He knew it: he didn’t stand a chance against his sister when it came to reading this kind of thing.
“Aaagh, whaddaya want me to do, Shiro?!”
Thus screaming, Sora kept running. He had so far made it through Shiro’s attacks only because of his superior physical capabilities. Shiro had no stamina. So she couldn’t run. If she ran, she’d get tired out, and her shooting would lose precision. The advantage of distance and stamina gave Sora the slightest margin in which to think.
(Can’t bluff; useless to intimidate; predicts her opponent’s actions mechanically and mathematically and blocks them off… If a game came out with an AI like this, the devs would get their asses flamed for making it impossible!) Escaping from the lane of multiuse buildings, he leaped into the next building he saw. What kind of building it was couldn’t be answered without asking the Eastern Union, who designed it, but—(Weird entrance, so many curved surfaces—the more curves there are, the harder it’s gonna be to—) But his intuition warned him. He ran past and knocked over a nearby table. Bish—the bullet hit the table. He’d blocked Shiro’s attack, but he felt fear before any kind of relief.
“—?!”
He dropped his posture and leaped, rolling forward. Next moment, a bullet hit a curved lamp on the ceiling and landed behind him.
“You can effortlessly calculate ricochet angles off curved surfaces? I know you’re good, but, cripes, Shiro!”
He found himself wanting to shout, You may be my sister, but you’ve still gotta be kidding me!
“Shit, it’s hopeless. This is beyond fixing with a different playing field…”
—Run. Fast, but with small steps, irregularly! Rule out the expected patterns and then rule out the patterns that would be expected then and then rule out again! Make it to the roof! If you get to the roof, you can narrow down somewhat the places the bullets can—
(—And she’s gotta be expecting that, too. If she’s operating continuously in an uncontrolled state using the optimal solution—) In Sora’s heart, where feelings of despair now wandered—a question popped up. (Wait, isn’t it weird…?) So far, Shiro had never run. When Sora had threatened to escape her range, she had closed the distance by blocking his exit. She’d gone on with her precise shooting, without using up her stamina, without tiring, but—
(…If she was really trying to do me in, there must have been a time she coulda got me if she ran…) The one who’d ordered Shiro not to run—was him, wasn’t it? Because she’d need to save her shooting precision to face off with Izuna. But if her goal was simply to finish him, what difference would it make if she ran out of breath a little? If it were Jibril, then all the more, so—
(…If I’m wrong about this, that’s gonna smart…but hey.) Sora decided: no choice but to do it.
He kicked down the door and got on the roof.
“Hff, hff… Sooo, Shiro? Your brother’s about at his limit. How can you treat a shut-in like this…hff…?”
Tailing him, Shiro showed up on the roof. In her eyes, still—no light resided. Walking, swaying, she gently aimed her muzzle toward Sora. (Tenth story above ground. No tall buildings nearby—)
“Uhh, Shiro… If I�
�m wrong about this—”
Sorry, he was about to say, but he changed his mind. He couldn’t afford to be wrong about this. He wasn’t wrong. This was the right answer. When they’d played Chlammy, he’d left Shiro to take care of a follow-up of that magnitude. This was no time or place for her big brother—to fail!
“Rrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
He kicked the concrete floor and dashed. Shiro’s finger pulled the trigger. He swung out the long sleeve of his remaining shirt. She was unmistakably aiming at his forehead—he put his sleeve in its trajectory. Impact. His last shirt flew away, exchanged for hearts and bullets. But blocking the bullet to his forehead had shut off his vision for a moment. What he should do in that time was clear. Several shots rang out. He couldn’t see. But conviction told him. Shiro was aiming to ricochet them off the sides and the entrance to the roof to create a horizontal bullet hell force field…! If there was a zone of safety—it could only be the result of an action Shiro wouldn’t expect. If there was something that wouldn’t occur to Shiro, it was:
“—Not trying to dodge at all, yeah?”
With that. Sora flew straight toward Shiro’s body. Momentarily, Shiro’s eyes bugged out. He went on to embrace Shiro and fly over the fence and off the roof while countless bullets whizzed by his back. And while falling, Sora stuck his gun toward Shiro.
“—Don’t worry. They say you don’t die when you fall. I’ll be on the bottom for you.”
Point-blank range. Pulling the trigger, Sora grinned. The shot rang through the cluster of buildings—and landed.
“…Brother…I love you. ”
Squeeze! Shiro hugged Sora, who reciprocated.
“Yeah, your brother loves you, too.”
[Izuna, now.]
—In response to the whisper in her ear. Izuna crashed through a window and sailed out from a building across the street. Her gaze and muzzle fixed on the falling Sora and Shiro. It was a reenactment of the scene that had been imposed on Izuna in the first raid. Sora, holding a non-player-controlled Shiro, in free fall from the roof of a ten-story building. Unable to reorient. Unable to—escape.
(—You bastards have given me enough trouble, please.)
But Sora, not even looking at Izuna as she came to greet them.
“…Ha-ha, seriously, it’s just pathetic.”
Smiling with pleasure from the bottom of his heart, in his hand—a bomb.
“—?!”
The haphazardly released bomb was shot down reflexively by Izuna—who in an instant regretted it. (No—I screwed up, please!) The flash that came immediately burned Izuna’s retinas. At the boom that assaulted subsequently, her eardrums went numb. Her hearing was sealed off. In her flickering vision, bullets cut through smoke and flew, and she just barely dodged them—by dumb luck, Izuna admitted, awestruck. (He figured it out, the bastard…no, that’s not it, please.) How he’d seen her attack coming was of no interest. The real question was—(How’d the bastard shoot with such damn precision, please!) Holding a non-player-controlled Shiro, unable to see, and yet shooting precisely from midair. Sora may have been one hell of a gamer, but how could an Immanity possibly—But Izuna’s thought was force-stopped. Her senses, still unsteady from the bomb blast, even so detected it surely. In the falling Sora’s arms. Shiro, supposedly non-player-controlled, calmly, mechanically, and accurately—pointed at Izuna. Shiro’s eyes, clearly paragons of sanity, fixed straight this way—
“That’s why—you saved your energy instead of running, right, Shiro?”
“…Brother…I love you.”
Shiro with a grin. The same line as before, but drily this time.
VIEWING FLOOR
“Impossible—?!”
At this spectacle, at last, Ino cried out. Ino had been relaying the exchanges of Sora and his friends to Izuna the whole time. He thought he’d given the timing and instructions for raids perfectly. And of course, he’d been listening all along to the heartbeats of the fleeing Sora and the pursuing Shiro. The rule was that being shot by the Lovey-Dovey Gun would rob one of control for fifteen seconds. But it hadn’t even been two seconds since Shiro had been shot by Sora. Sora’s shot had definitely hit Shiro. He’d even heard it. But then…how?! Then—at that moment, Ino and Izuna both hit upon the same possibility at the same time.
IN-GAME
(The bastard faked it by having it hit her clothes, please?!) Shiro, falling in Sora’s arms. If they had faked the impact, she should have some article of clothing missing—but it didn’t look like… But then, in a blink, she felt something off about the clothes billowing in descent. The line from Shiro’s hip to her leg penetrated into Izuna’s eyes. And she remembered the shit Sora was pulling early—(No way—really—) On the eve of this decisive showdown on which Immanity’s fate depended.
(—The bastard really just went for the panties, please?!)
It was an absurd conclusion—but, still, that wasn’t enough to explain the situation. If the shot Sora’d just fired was a sham, Shiro should still be Izuna’s slave. But the fact that Shiro was sane and pointing her gun at her led to—just one conclusion. As if jeering at Izuna’s thoughts, Sora spoke.
“You finally get it? From the beginning—Shiro’s never been on your goddamn side.”
The shot when she’d shielded Sora—truly, it was a fine performance; it had even deceived Sora. Looking down at Shiro’s dress shirt, flapping in the wind, there was one… Spot the difference: Just one button was missing. Back then, Shiro had blocked Izuna’s attack at the cost of just one button. Only Shiro, who could read the trajectory of a bullet in units of millimeters—could pull off such a divine performance.
VIEWING FLOOR
(That—that can’t be!) Unconvinced by this fact, Ino screamed inside. (Sora was sincerely panicked! And Shiro’s heartbeat had none of the tension of plotting something!) Shiro’s pulse, since being shot by Izuna—and even now. She was relaxed body and soul. Her heartbeat pulsed as flat as could be. But then that would mean—
(She deceived even her brother?!) That she’d deceived her brother, without tension, or worry, or excitement—without a trace of unease. With no prior arrangement, entirely ad-lib, they’d coordinated…!
IN-GAME
—But Izuna, in the field, didn’t even care about that, either. No matter what kind of trick they had pulled, this situation could only mean one thing. (The bastards got me—please.) It meant that a painstaking web of intrigue had caught her once more. Having lost her balance dodging the initial barrage—the one she aimed for was that “Shiro.” There was no way she could miss, and the clothes that once served as a shield remained hardly at all.
(But—that’s all, please.) The window of the building Izuna had crashed out of—beyond it. From the darkness, a figure brandishing a firearm was lit by a muzzle flash. The one whom Izuna’d defeated—the turned Jibril. The bullet released sprinted keenly through the sky to attack Sora and Shiro. (Looks like they laid a hell of a trap—but this is the end, please.) Izuna was one step above them. That was all, and now it would end—As Izuna thus assured herself of her victory, her body—
—now convulsed with a violent, irresistible throb that enveloped her. Shiro pulled the trigger, and light spewed from her muzzle. At the same time, Izuna realized—the child wasn’t aiming for her. She felt all the skin on her body crawl. It was…Werebeast’s unmistakable—“sixth sense.” Shiro’s muzzle and her eyes both had been fixed from the start beyond her. At Jibril.
—But, having grasped that, who could anticipate? That, as Jibril fired her own bullet—
—Shiro’s bullet was aimed to ricochet off it at Izuna—what a ridiculous idea.
Outguessing and plotting, layered thick and knotty. The counter to the counter to the counter to the counter was impossible to predict—no, even to imagine. The bullet landed at Izuna’s rear—and bounced. To attack Izuna from her blind spot. A fatal blow impossible to respond to or even see coming. The attack Shiro had launched, deceiving her brother,
deceiving Ino, deceiving Izuna, and even incorporating Jibril’s defeat. With such godly—no, diabolical calculation, there was no way it could be dodged. No, definitely no way.
—Under normal circumstances.
“—Now it’s getting fun, please!!”
Crowing. Izuna bared her teeth and sneered. At the same time, blood pumped out of control throughout her body. Her capillaries bursting, her eyes and fur were stained scarlet with blood. Her nerves heated up, her cells boiled, her muscles erupted, the laws of physics roared.
—Bloodbreak. The crimson form said to shatter the limits of physics—
Izuna’s arms, wet with blood—disappeared without a sound. It was beyond the abilities of the two Immanities, Sora and Shiro, to even comprehend. Izuna’s arms, swung down at a speed no one could perceive—grasped the air. Her hands, outrunning sound, generated enough friction against the concentrated air to catch her falling body for a moment. And with a subsequent “kick,” she leaped. While Izuna subjugated inertia and gravity with brutal force, below her the instant-kill bullet—slid…past.
—What kind of nonsense was this? The impossibility of this feat, which defied everyone’s comprehension. But to those who were intimately familiar with games, the phenomenon could be explained in a single phrase. Izuna’s muzzle tracking from a new position, her beastly eyes awash in crimson. Feeling them aimed directly at his forehead, Sora could only—chuckle.
“—A double jump? Give me a friggin’ break, ya big cheater.”
Here it was, that “bloodbreak” thing Jibril had described. Among Werebeasts, who approached physical limits, one who could transcend them.
A single gunshot was heard. But two bullets fired within the same instant bolted toward the falling pair. With nothing to obstruct their paths—the phantom bullets penetrated the foreheads of their targets almost simultaneously. Sora and Shiro, unmoving and helpless, crashed to the ground like broken toys cast away. Next, Izuna landed in the posture of a four-legged animal, and the asphalt cracked gigantically.