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!”
Emi, realizing after a few moments that the jumble of syllables she just uttered were meant to mean Gabriel, leaped back and brandished her holy sword without a second thought.
Urushihara told her that Gabriel was back in Japan, but running into the angel as she was snooping around for holy-force sonar clues was totally unexpected.
She had defeated him once before, but he was still a powerful archangel, the symbol of all that was holy up in heaven. Emi stared him down, ready to react to so much as a single twitch.
“You scaaaaared me, girl!”
The first reaction Gabriel made was to warble out that shaky-voiced whine.
“I, like…totally didn’t notice, mm-kay? S-since when were you bumpin’ around down there?”
He glared sullenly at Emi, hands crossed at the elbows, his lips a clear shade of blue.
“It, it, it’s collllld up here!!”
“…Well, don’t look at me.”
Emi found it hard to think of anything else.
In a remarkably inspired fit of fashion coordination, Gabriel’s toga—right at home at a summer party in ancient Greece—was paired with a T-shirt with an I LUV LA logo on it. His legs were bare, the sight of which Emi did not appreciate very much, and he wore his sandals without so much as a pair of insulating socks.
All of his garments, except for the T-shirt perhaps, naturally held untold powers that Gabriel could wield at will against his foes. The power of warmth, sadly, did not seem to be among them.
“I-I mean, E-Emilia? What’re you doing here? Th-the Skytree isn’t even open yet! It won’t be up to full two-thousand-eighty-foot mode until later!”
His teeth chattered a bit as he complained at her.
“I-I-I guess the humans sure did one on me, huh? Yeah, I ain’t ever seen nothin’ like this in Ente Isla. Or h-heaven, even! Like, maybe the Devil’s Castle was T-Tokyo Tower height, but…I didn’t think it’d be so cold and windy up… Grphhoo!”
The archangel’s unhygienic sneeze spread particles of spittle across the city sky. Emi was unimpressed, pointing the tip of her blade at him.
“I’d like to know why you’re here. Weren’t you fired from your Yesod-fragment job?”
“Yeaaaah, about that. You got any t-tissues or something? Like, p-premoisturized would be nice right about now.”
If Gabriel felt any danger at Emi’s presence, he was doing a good job hiding it. But there was no reason to treat him with kid gloves. Not after what he’d tried to do to Alas Ramus.
In a flash, Emi ran up to Gabriel, bringing her sword’s tip to his chest as she had done once before.
“You haven’t forgotten about earlier, have you? I was never a very patient woman.”
“Oh, c’mon! You treat angels and demons the exact same way, girl!”
The wind was starting to make Gabriel tear up.
“Look, I… Y-you know, I told Lucifer, but I don’t care even in the slightest about you or the Better Half or those silly little demons, ’kay? Cross my heart, I’m serious! I’m just here on a bit of a business assignment, so as long as you guys keep all bein’ good little boys and girls for me…”
“Sorry, not gonna happen. That’s why I’m here. Did you fire off those sonar bursts?”
“……”
Emi, the wind to her back, chose her words carefully. For now, she had no clear signal that the angels, as Urushihara theorized, were after Laila.
“Do you remember the girl who knew all about us? That sonar put her in a coma.”
“Huh? Really?”
Was that an honest expression of surprise, or just Gabriel being Gabriel? Either way, the natural-born class clown of heaven’s face betrayed sheer dismay. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.
“Hehhh-choooo!!”
Rather a lot of force behind that one.
Then, at that moment, Gabriel vanished from Emi’s view, her sword left jabbing at emptiness.
“…!!”
“Mommy! Not there!”
Following the holy force, Emi whirled her sword behind her back.
“‘Bzzzt’!”
Then she felt a finger against the back of her head.
“Bang! I win.”
“……”
The Better Half’s blade sliced through nothing but the fog of holy power Gabriel unleashed as a decoy. The real Gabriel was behind her, upside down in the air, putting his finger against Emi’s head like a pistol.
“Maybe I don’t have much of a chance with your sword from the front. But I can always skin this cat another way, right?”
She could sense the holy energy surging into his finger.
“…You gonna kill me and take Alas Ramus?”
Emi’s voice was almost lost in the high-altitude wind.
“Oh, of course not! Now why would I do that when I don’t even know how that child’s fused with you? I’d be super double screwed if I killed her, too!”
Suddenly, the holy force rapidly dwindled, the murderous rage she sensed behind her head disappearing.
“Instead…can you tell me more about that girl in the coma?”
“Huh?”
“’Cause all I did was make sure the test broadcasts from this tower didn’t interfere with what Tokyo Tower was transmitting. Didn’t want that to dilute our sonar’s accuracy. I don’t know how Raguel was actually firing that stuff off, really. He didn’t say anything about it knocking the people of this world unconscious.”
Emi turned her head, never letting her guard down for a moment. She tried her best to stare down Gabriel, although she found it slow going, considering his current inverted state.
“It’s that girl, huh? Chiho Sasaki? That cute girl who’s gone all ‘teen romance’ for the Devil King? She works at the same place he does, doesn’t she? I think Sariel mentioned that.”
“Why do you care about that? Are you gonna kidnap Chiho and treat her like a lab animal? The way Sariel wanted to?”
“Uh…? He was trying to do that?”
Gabriel wiped his nose, then used the momentum to feverishly shake his head, arms wide open.
“Did you honestly think I’m that depraved, too? ’Cause that really hurts, my dear. I just wanna know what that girl’s suffering from, is all.”
“…Why do you want to know so badly?”
Gabriel scratched one of his cheeks awkwardly.
“Wellllll… Maybe I don’t wanna get so directly involved the way Sariel did, but I guess we both wanna know a little, y’know? I mean, you know how folks on Earth research stuff like evolution and genes and all that, right?”
Something about Gabriel’s phrasing disgusted him. She was leaning over his face now, not bothering to hide her frustrated rage.
“You expect me to tell you after saying that to me?”
“…Is that a ‘nah’? Though given everything we’ve done to you guys, I guess it’s a bit much to sit down and have a nice chat over coffee at this point, huh? So how ’bout we do a little business instead, pray tell?”
“Business?”
A particularly strong gust of wind blew Emi’s long hair into the dark sky.
“I’ll even pay in advance! I’ll leak a couple of particularly tasty tidbits to you first. Then you can decide for yourself whether you wanna talk about Chiho Sasaki or not.”
“…Like you can prove you’re not lying through your teeth. I’m not gonna sell my friends over some story the enemy plants into my brain.”
“That’s why I saaaaid, you can decide for yourself! Talk or not, it’s all good in the ’hood! I’ve got a sneakin’ suspicion you’ll consider it, though, once I’m done.”
Finally taking the time to put himself right side up, Gabriel gave his wings a light flap as he landed on the roof of the observation
deck.
“For example, what if I told you that your father…that Nord Justina is still alive?”
“Wha…?!”
The unexpected angle the words took on the way to Emi’s ears made the shock clear upon her face. The reaction seemed to cheer Gabriel up noticeably. He chuckled a bit from deep down in his throat.
“Wanna hear more?”
“…ah.”
Emi wasn’t allowed the time to formulate a response.
“Oh, wait…wait, get away from me, get… Geh-shooo!”
His entire head twisted in pain, no longer able to stem the tide rising from his chest, Gabriel sneezed heartily upon Emi’s face.
“…………”
The gusting wind chilled the completely unwelcome liquid particles that now covered Emi’s cheek.
“Hngh!”
The young woman lowered the butt of her sword onto Gabriel’s head.
“Gahh! Ugh, my eyes… They’re pounding…”
“Keep it short, and I’ll listen to you. But if Alas Ramus thinks you’re lying, I’ll help your head kiss your ass good-bye for you.”
“Oh, jeez, lady…! Why d’you have to treat both me and the demons like we’re some kinda plague…?”
A quick glance at Gabriel’s blubbering countenance gave her all the reassurance she needed.
“I show my foes zero kindness. And that goes double for Alas Ramus’s foes.”
The archangel raised both hands up in a surrender posture.
Five minutes later, the two of them were inside the freshly constructed observation deck.
The lack of wind made things blessedly warmer for both.
Masking sheets were draped here and there on the walls and floor. The space was still clearly a work in progress.
“Hey, I think it’s gotten a lot warmer. You want some?”
Gabriel took a can of coffee out from somewhere within his toga. He showed it to Emi.
“Mommy, no drink! He’s mean!”
Alas Ramus, her animosity for Gabriel clearer than ever, was now materialized and hovering around Emi’s legs.
Emi didn’t need the warning. There was no telling what Gabriel used to warm that can up.
“Oh, come onnn! I didn’t spike it or anything, okay?”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 Page 16