Keeping her hold on Rentaro, Enju jumped toward the ocean, hopping like a rabbit from the top of one moored rental boat to another. The bullets that were following in hot pursuit riddled the boats with bullet holes right after Enju jumped off, sinking the boats.
Rentaro was astonished as he was pulled about by the intense G’s. Using only one point of support while shooting two fully automatic guns at once was usually pretty useless if the enemy was more than five meters away. Just being able to follow Enju’s movements—which were hard to even see—and control the recoil at the same time was already no small feat.
Enju hopped high in the air and, checking the warehouse district on the wharf, tapped Rentaro’s shoulder twice. The signal meant she was going to drop him.
In less than a second, he felt the now familiar floating feeling. This time, the drop was from about five meters in the air, so he used his right leg to break the fall and rolled swiftly into the shadow of a nearby shipping container to hide. He did that all in one movement and turned his neck to survey the place where he had been dropped. There was heavy construction equipment and the like that had been left behind next to evenly spaced-out metal freight containers. Of course, the Unexplored Territory was uninhabited, so the heavy equipment and containers were all covered with rust from the salty ocean breeze.
Rentaro stood with his back to a container, held his gun ready, and inhaled deeply, then exhaled. Jumping out from the shadow of the container, he aimed the XD at Kagetane in the flesh and fired. The stinging recoil flung his arm back, and the .40-caliber Varanium bullet was fired, its empty casing bouncing onto the ground. To fire at the Promoter, who acted as the commander, was a standard by-the-book move for tag-team battles.
However, Rentaro found himself being surprised for a third time. There was a strange noise like someone hitting a cracked bell with all their might, and the bullet disappeared. Kohina had appeared by Kagetane’s side unnoticed. It took Rentaro a few seconds to realize that she had cut apart the bullet.
Rentaro’s legs shook. You’ve gotta be kidding me. He fired off as many shots as he could. As if ridiculing his efforts, every last one of the bullets was cut down with a crack. Spinning her body like a top as she skillfully used her two swords to repel the bullets, she looked like she was dancing.
Kohina kept spinning in circles with her short swords in hand until she finally came to a sudden stop with her head tilted in question.
“That’s impossible…,” Rentaro breathed.
In the back, Kagetane flipped up his mask, gripped one of his guns that had run out of bullets in his mouth, and calmly used his free hand to change the magazine as he walked toward Rentaro. Darkness lurked behind the mask, and Rentaro could not see his features. The ocean breeze made the long tails of his tailcoat flutter, and it made Kagetane’s body look larger than life. There were not even any traces of him having used Imaginary Gimmick.
Enju’s face also paled as she drew closer to Rentaro. Rentaro closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could. “Enju, how many seconds would it take for you to defeat Kagetane one-on-one?” Rentaro asked her, his eyes not leaving the enemy.
Enju seemed to realize something and looked worriedly at Rentaro, but she finally faced forward and said, “I’ll defeat him in ten seconds!” and dashed off in a blast with the superfast acceleration that could be called a distinguishing trait of Model Rabbits. Kohina came forward to intercept her, but Enju slid to evade her slash and rushed toward Kagetane.
Kohina saw the signal too late and a regretful expression crossed her face, but she soon turned to focus her attention on Rentaro.
It was the story of two rooks aiming for the unguarded kings at the risk of their own lives. At this rate, it was a race to see which Initiator could cut down her opponent first. Enju was definitely not an easy opponent for Kagetane to handle. However, the same could be said for Rentaro about Kohina.
Kohina came at him as fast as a bullet with her body low to the ground. The device in his artificial eye started sparking, and the back of his eyelid stung as if getting burned. He could just barely track her movements. Twisting his upper body to avoid one sword, he used his right fist against the second sword that was aiming low.
Now—he thought. An explosion rang through the air, and golden empty shell casings spun as they were ejected. Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 3—“Rokuro Kabuto”!
“Off with your head!” Kohina shouted.
The quickly swinging fist exchanged blows with the short swords. The force of the shock wave sent a cloud of dust high in the air, and Rentaro and Kohina were both knocked backward with their feet flailing. Rentaro was able to move again first. In no time, he was shooting with his XD as he drew near Kohina. Kohina flourished her two swords as she cut down the bullets with piercing, resounding sounds. Rentaro narrowed the distance between them as he fired. But even when they were less than three meters apart, not a single bullet hit the swordswoman with her twin swords.
Rentaro gave in to his impatience and started firing, aiming at her head instead of her body. Right after he did this, he was attacked by intense regret. As if waiting for this moment, Kohina avoided the bullets just by moving her neck, and moved to close in on him. He got chills when he realized she had lured him in. She thrust the sword blades at him at an impossible speed, and his artificial eye became so hot it burned, as it was forced to to operate at super-speeds. Rentaro avoided the thrusts on instinct alone and pinned her arms to her sides. Lowering his hips, he swept Kohina’s legs out from under her, taking a judolike stance.
However, his enemy was not to be taken lightly. In an instant, she used her strength to free herself and ran away, kicking off of Rentaro’s back and springing into the air. The sword she forcefully pulled out gave Rentaro a shallow cut. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw the small girl fly almost five meters into the air with one jump.
However, he predicted where she was planning to land, and then it was Rentaro’s turn to shout. “Above you, Enju!”
Enju, who had been playing a seesaw game with Kagetane, alternating between attacking and defending, hurriedly did a backflip to jump out of the way. Kohina skewered the spot where Enju had been with an amazing force as she dropped down.
“Howl, Sodomy! Sing, Gospel!” Kagetane shouted. His two guns fired, making explosive sounds like a rotating saw. One of the shots that followed Enju hit her left arm as she retreated.
“Argh,” she said as the arm that was hit by the 9-mm bullet flew up to the left reflexively.
“Enju, get down!” Rentaro shouted as he changed the magazine of his gun in a split second. Drawing the Sigma gun with his left hand, he pointed it at Kohina, pointing the XD in his right hand at Kagetane. With his arms crossed, he pulled the trigger on both at the same time—an impromptu double-gun stance. Immediately after, muzzle fire scattered from both of Rentaro’s hands like fireworks, and both arms were thrown back with intense recoil.
Kohina used her swords to repel the bullets as she danced, while Kagetane mumbled something under his breath. By the time Rentaro realized that it was the preliminary setup for Imaginary Gimmick, the bluish-white phosphorescent wall had already appeared with a bang to repel Rentaro’s shots in all directions.
The Sigma in his left hand ran out of bullets first, so he threw the whole gun away. He took a reinforced steel cylindrical can out of his pouch, pulled the pin out with his teeth, and threw it. As Kohina thought only to clear it away without worrying about the details, Kagetane raised his voice for the first time. “No, Kohina, not that!”
She fell for it.
Exactly two seconds later, the steel can exploded in a blast of light that spread to blow the darkness away.
It was a stun bomb, with an explosive blast of light that was 170 decibels and 200 candelas. When it exploded, the vibrations created by the compressed shock waves of this chemical-throwing bomb would have made someone go deaf in a small room, and it scattered light brighter than the sun.
“
Ahhhh!” Kohina writhed in pain as she covered her ears and screamed in anguish. It even had enough of an effect on Kagetane. Enju was not one to let that chance go to waste. The rabbit-footed girl closed the gap between them in an instant and tread firmly on the road with her left foot, creating a deep impression in the ground.
Kohina immediately crossed her short sword to protect herself. There, Enju landed a direct kick. Enju’s center kick was strong enough to kick through thin steel plates, and despite breaking one of the short swords, its power did not wane, and she blew Kohina off the pier. Then, kicking the surface of the water and creating tsunamis, Kohina advanced about twenty meters before she sank.
“Rentaro!” said Enju.
Even before Enju called out to him, Rentaro had already started running. He sprang out in front of the remaining man in tailcoats. Before Kagetane’s muzzle could be trained on Rentaro, Rentaro used a striker to set off the bottoms of the cartridges he had in his legs. The extractor positioned along the fake hidden nerve pulled onto an empty cartridge and ejected it.
At the same time the explosion sounded, Rentaro’s leg flew up with amazing speed, and on top of that, Enju matched the timing of her kick with Rentaro’s.
He and Enju’s eyes met. “Tendo Martial Arts Type 2, Number 24—‘Inzen Genmeika’!” he yelled, with Enju shouting next to him, and they gave two explosive kicks, side-by-side.
When the impact reached Kagetane, a bluish-white light blocked it, and with a large crash, it blew away the air around them. Kagetane was also blown off the pier, landing on the water and sinking. Rentaro checked where Kagetane hit the water and fired a few shots after him with his XD. He ran out of bullets after three shots. As the night fell silent, the quiet sounds of small waves breaking on the shore returned.
That was when he first realized that he had been yelling and taking short breaths. Rentaro gripped his gun firmly with both hands, praying and waiting. Gradually, his breathing calmed down. “Enju,” he said. He bent over Enju, who had sunk to the ground, and looked at the wound on her arm. Rentaro frowned.
Enju’s wound showed no sign of healing and was still oozing blood. Varanium bullets prevented a Gastrea from regenerating after being wounded, and it was no different for the Initiators who were able to regenerate thanks to the Gastrea virus. Facing Varanium weapons, she was as vulnerable as a regular human being.
Enju’s eyes welled with tears and her mouth was turned down at the corners.
“I-it’ll be fine!” he said as he patted Enju’s head lightly.
“It hurts!” she retorted.
“Dummy, how can you expect to be unhurt after being that reckless?”
Enju looked at the surface of the water. “Did we beat them?”
Rentaro turned his neck to look past the pier, staring at the dark surface of the water. Cautiously, he pulled out a spare magazine for the XD and exchanged it for the empty one. It hadn’t felt like he had made it past Imaginary Gimmick, but the force was strong enough to rupture the caster’s organs. Even if Kagetane wasn’t dead, he was probably out of commission.
And because Rentaro thought that, when an arm suddenly appeared out of the surface of the water and grabbed his ankle, he was so surprised that he couldn’t react right away. He couldn’t hear Enju’s scream for a second. He was pulled underwater with an incredible force, and his eyes and nose and all his orifices were filled with cold water and darkness. Seeing a white mask a mere twenty or thirty centimeters in front of him, he almost screamed. The hand holding Rentaro’s ankle was glowing phosphorescently. Rentaro gasped as he twisted his body desperately.
Aiming the XD, he fired at point-blank range. He hit Kagetane’s shoulder, but the fingers digging into his skin did not let go of Rentaro. Bad things came in threes. The XD couldn’t fire properly underwater, and the bullet got caught in the slide and jammed.
Cornered, Rentaro fired off the cartridges in his artificial limbs like explosives. Small explosions burst in the water, and as white bubbles clouded his vision, Rentaro himself was also blown back. He couldn’t keep his eyes open in an impact that nearly took off his arms and legs. He felt a strange floating feeling.
He couldn’t tell what was up and what was down and moved his arms and legs awkwardly. He couldn’t even get into a proper falling stance when his back suddenly hit something hard and the intense pain knocked the air out of him. He couldn’t tell what had happened for a moment.
There was the sound of rain as drops hit his arm. Wrenching open his trembling eyelids, a clear starry sky spread provokingly above him. Rentaro was lying on his back on the deck of a small fishing boat. It looked like he had been blown out of the water from the blast of firing all the cartridges in his arm and leg at once and was lucky he had been tossed onto a fishing boat. What he had thought was rain was the spray of water that had been blown up with him.
Using both hands to push his body upright on the deck, he vomited the ocean water he had swallowed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Not only were his clothes heavy from the water they had soaked up, but they clung to his skin and felt disgusting. Where in the world was Kagetane?
Suddenly, his vision jerked down. He thought his knees had collapsed under him, but both feet were planted on the deck. At that moment, he felt chills go up his spine. About two meters in front of him saw another moored fishing boat. Staggering, Rentaro went in for the approach and made a long running jump as he leapt into the air. His instinct was screaming that he had to be there.
As the heel of his shoe flew over the dark sea, he landed on another deck. Sure enough, a scene that made him doubt his own eyes exploded in front of him. As small waves rippled on the surface of the water, they were pushed apart and split in two, and with a thunderous roar, they became two enormous waterfalls.
At around eight meters below sea level, Rentaro could see seaweed and old moss-covered tires. The fishing boat that Rentaro had just been on had been pitifully turned upside down, its bow crushed with a sorrowful sound. Rentaro was horrified as he rubbed his arms.
And at the ocean floor, a pair in a tailcoat and black dress stood close as they looked up at him. They had taken some damage. One of Kohina’s short swords was broken, and Kagetane had been shot in the shoulder and had lost Psychedelic Gospel. However, they were far from being out of commission. Their narrowed eyes clearly showed a will to continue fighting. The flame of their fighting spirit was still burning. This was what it meant to be one of the highest-ranking pairs.
Rentaro let the XD drop and stepped back. His brain wouldn’t process the fact that the ocean had been split by the repulsion field.
“What are you doing, Rentaro?!” Before he knew it, Enju was by his side, grabbing his arm and leaping into the air. They landed on the largest passenger boat anchored in the bay. It must have originally been a café or lounge, and there were a number of table sets with umbrellas lined up on the deck.
Tilting his shoulder toward Kohina, Kagetane also soon leapt onto the stage. Hatred peeked out from behind Kagetane’s mask. His arm was stretched straight out in front of him, his fist clenched. “Why are you getting in my way?! Why?! We of the New Humanity Creation Project were created to kill. If the Monoliths are destroyed and the Gastrea War restarted, it will prove that we have a reason to exist. Hatred will not disappear. The war will not end. We will be needed!
“Don’t you understand, Satomi? A world where the Gastrea War continues is a win for us soldiers of the New Humanity Creation Project!”
Rentaro felt a shock like he had been hit in the head with a hammer. “Don’t tell me…that was the only reason…? You bastard!”
“What if it was? The extinction of mankind is only a trivial matter. If we do not fight, no one needs us. Now, let us have war! And more war! This is my war for me, by me. I won’t let anyone get in my way.”
“Even after spilling that much blood, you still want a massacre?”
“This is a grand experiment! In any case, those who are killed so easily by me will not be ab
le to survive in my ideal country. How was the reaction of those around you when your Initiator was exposed as one of the Cursed Children? Were they happy for you? Did they shout for joy with you? Did they hold your arm with delight? Of course not. I was chosen. Kohina was also chosen. You two are also chosen. You should be able to understand my ideology. Now, Rentaro Satomi, I will give you everything you desire. Come with me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you bastard! I refuse to allow the future you describe!”
“Then, die…!”
Seeing Kagetane point his gun at them, Enju plunged in. However, Kohina predicted all of Enju’s movements as she came in to intercept her. Just as the bottom of Enju’s foot stopped the side sweeping of the short sword, Kohina continued on to ram Enju with her shoulder. Enju, who had been balanced on one leg, was knocked over easily. Kohina grabbed Enju’s leg, and swung her, throwing Enju into Rentaro. Then, Rentaro gasped as he saw Kagetane aiming his gun at them.
A Varanium bullet would be bad. Catching Enju, Rentaro turned his body in a semicircle.
“Howl, Sodomy!” Kagetane cried. A storm of 9-mm Varanium bullets flooded Rentaro’s back, and spasms racked his body as if shocked by electricity.
“Rentaro!” Enju shouted.
He gritted his teeth at the intense pain. He was alive. He had avoided instant death. Rentaro put his hand to his waist and pulled out the string of plastic bell-like syringes. Pulling off the cap with his mouth, he stuck it in his abdomen and injected the medicine.
“Don’t use it unless you have to.” Sumire’s voice echoed in his head.
His heart leapt with a sudden throb. His whole body felt intensely hot, and he felt the illusion of his limbs extending. With the sound of sizzling meat cooking, the wounds in Rentaro’s body healed, and the bullets in his body were pushed out.
It was the AGV test drug, a drug Sumire created while studying Gastrea that made a human’s regenerative abilities go through the roof. This dramatic effect could even overcome the inhibiting effect of Varanium. If it weren’t for the side effect that twenty percent of the test subjects became Gastrea, Sumire would be so famous that her name would be in textbooks.
Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods Page 19