Apparently, Shirley had sprung the aforementioned electromagnetic net on everyone while they were distracted by my appearance. Satsuki had escaped it because she’d flown off immediately with her magic, but it was a rather calculating move on Shirley’s part. Well, even if it was electromagnetic, it was still just a net, so it probably wasn’t designed to do any harm... It seemed like she’d yet to bring out the “really” dangerous items she’d mentioned earlier in the park.
As someone who’d been caught in the net, however, Lyun was irate and glaring daggers at Shirley. And in the middle of all this, Corona flew up over the cliff’s edge, too, making this a four-way—no, a five-way, including me—standoff. That was when Zeta radioed me over the transmitter.
“Yo, Rekka. Things are in place now on Kiri’s end, as well. Camera roll in three, two...”
So, it’s finally show time...
I straightened my cowardly posture and stood bolt upright as I took a deep breath. The girls had their eyes glued on me.
“I am Galactic Great, protector of the galaxy!”
But they were all watching me with dubious disgust, mind you.
“R-Rekka... are you all right?”
“I am Galactic Great! I do not know this Rekka you speak of!”
That part was important, so I made sure to emphasize it. The girls all looked at me dumbfoundedly, including Satsuki and Shirley, who already knew about Galactic Great. They probably couldn’t believe I’d started to act the part for Zeta’s show, Legend of a Real Hero: Galactic Great, here and now. But while they were all agape, I took the opportunity to call out Rachelle, who was still hovering overhead.
“Evil harpy of envy and madness, Rachelle!” I shouted, pointing a finger at her. “Just because you’re unpopular, you’ve driven madness into the hearts of girls from across the stars to make them fight! All to disenchant the boys of the galaxy and keep them from having healthy, loving relationships! I’ve seen through your evil plan, and this is as far as you go!”
“Hahaha... hah? What are you saying, Rekka? I’m the angel of love and passion, not envy and madness!”
“Silence, you fallen... you fake angel!”
Of course, I wasn’t doing this for airs or appearances. It was part of my plan to save Zeta and Kiri’s stories, as well as the rampaging Rachelle. Which was why I, who had only played the role of background trees in school plays until now, was putting everything I had into the coolest hero performance I could pull off!
“Your wicked deeds may be allowed by the laws of entropy, but I, Galactic Great, will never stand for them!” I threw my bright red scarf over my shoulder and struck a heroic pose. “I will burn brighter than the Big Bang!”
“I don’t really follow, but...” Rachelle was still smiling dopily in her intoxicated state, face flushed red. “My power has already surpassed that of an archangel! No one can stand against me now! Gone are the days of being picked on by my superiors and doing grunt work like a secretary!”
What? Is that all she wanted from her extreme power-up? Really? How mundane... I guess that proved Rachelle wasn’t actually evil at heart, just overworked and fed up with being benevolent about it. But it still didn’t change the fact that she’d been one giant headache for me.
“It may be my role to save damsels in distress, but I still have to punish bad girls like you!”
“Hey, watch your mouth on a live broadcast. Nothing risqué.”
“Oh, my bad...” I apologized to Zeta under my breath.
As part of my plan, I’d had Zeta switch up her channel’s programming structure so she could air a live show. Which meant that all of this was being streamed directly by viewers. We only had one shot to get it all right. I couldn’t fail here!
“I’m grateful for everything you did, Rekka, but I won’t let you get in my way!” Rachelle poured more of her maniacal love energy into the heroines. “Now, come! Your beloved is right there! Fight for him! Show your love!”
So her plan was to send everyone into such a wild rampage that I had my hands full dealing with them...
“REKKAAAAA!”
“Hm? Bwuh!”
I was suddenly tackled from behind and sent face-first into the ground.
“I won’t let you go anymore, Rekka!”
I-Iris?! Since she couldn’t fly, she’d run the long way around to get up the cliff and come at me from behind.
“Hey, idiot! How can a hero get taken down that easily?!”
“D-Don’t say that...”
I replied to the irritated Zeta as quietly as I could so no one else would hear, but she was right. This certainly didn’t look good.
“Ugh, fine! Repeat after me right now, got it?!”
Obeying Zeta’s instructions, I repeated the line she gave me through the transmitter.
“Curse you for using the innocent girls as your puppets! How underhanded of you, Rachelle!”
Aha, I see! That would explain why I’d just let Iris knock me over instead of defending myself. It made perfect sense that a hero would avoid hurting innocent civilians. And that was fine with me. I wanted to resolve this conflict between the heroines without hurting anyone if possible. Nice thinking, director!
“Eeheehee! Now, how about we pick up where we left off?”
“What?”
With that, Iris suddenly started unbuttoning her—wait, did she mean picking up with that?! What was I supposed to do?!
“Iris! Get away from Rekka!” shouted Corona.
“Don’t you dare do anything strange to Nammy!” shouted Lyun.
They both raged at Iris and her forwardness, blasting her with their dark and wind magic respectively.
“Whoa!”
I pushed Iris aside using the power of the suit and took both magical attacks in her place.
“Gwah!”
“Rekka?!”
“Nammy!”
Corona and Lyun were both shaken to see their attacks hit me.
“Ugh, guh... This suit really is amazing...”
The spells they’d fired were pretty powerful... The intensity of the love energy they were receiving from Rachelle must be making them even stronger than usual.
“What are you doing to Rekka?!” Satsuki screamed.
“That was Iris’s fault!” Lyun screamed back.
They continued to shout at each other.
“If you guys don’t butt out, I’m going to snap, too!”
After being interrupted, Iris had pretty much half-snapped already, flaring up at the other girls. And then...
“Now you’ve done it, little girl!”
“Huh? Kyah!”
Rosalind had finally peeled off the sticky substance she had taken to the face and, after stepping back and waiting for an opening, was launching a surprise attack on Shirley. Crap!
“Rosalind, stop!”
I kicked off the ground with all my strength and ran forward to tackle Rosalind, who was coming at Shirley from the side. With her in my arms, we rolled along the ground together... right off the cliff!
“Uwaaaaah! Ack!”
How many times has this suit saved my life today...?
“Rosalind, are you okay?”
I’d made sure she landed on me and not the other way around, so I was hoping she was all right, but...
“...”
There was no response. Instead, she curled up in my arms and muttered shyly...
“Rekka... my chest...”
I looked down to try and figure out what she was talking about, and when I did, I realized that I’d accidentally clutched one of her breasts when I grabbed her.
“I’m s-s-sorry!”
“N-No, it’s all right...”
“Oh? I always thought Rosalind was one of the more confident heroines, but it seems like even she has her weaknesses. How cute.”
Now’s not the time for your nonsensical input, R! Mind your own business!
Rrrrrumble!
“What’s that?!”
Suddenly, a huge
shadow fell over us. Something was blocking out the sun, and when I fearfully looked up to see what it was...
“You...”
Floating in the sky overhead was a train-sized Leviathan carrying a livid Tsumiki on her forehead. I was wondering where Lea had disappeared to earlier, but it seemed she’d gone off to wake up the unconscious Tsumiki and replenish herself with dark matter.
“I came to punish you for asking Iris to strip out of nowhere, only to find you groping Rosalind’s chest in broad daylight! You disgusting lolicon!” Tsumiki roared.
“You’re wrong!”
“Oh, so it doesn’t matter whose boobs they are?”
“What are you even saying?!”
Tsumiki seemed to have lost her mind, too... Wait, hold on.
“By the way, when you said punish...”
“I’m going to beat that womanizing, lust-driven head of yours to the ground, of course! Do it, Lea!”
“Okay, but... I just consumed all that dark matter. Will this really be all right?”
“You know how tenacious Rekka is! He’ll be fine! Besides, if we don’t do anything, he’ll just ask another girl to take her clothes off for him!”
“That’s unforgivable.”
“Exactly! Now squash him!”
“Nooooooo!”
I started running with Rosalind in my arms and dodging the rain of water bullets coming at me. Which wasn’t easy considering how busted up and holey the terrain was.
“Zeta! Are the other preparations not done yet?!” I called to her through the transmitter.
“I posted the commercial to the site and the netvision forums already. There are plenty of hardcore superhero show fans, so hopefully word will spread quickly. We haven’t quite hit our target numbers yet, but... Hey, it’s not time for you to appear yet!” Zeta hollered in a panic.
Not a moment later...
“Hold it!”
I heard a familiar voice from the clifftop where we just were. The heroines had all followed me down, so it had to be...
“I am Star—No, I am Galactic Beauty! You who threaten the peace of the Earth—er, the galaxy! I will punish you in the name of the Great... uh, the Great... the Great Universe!”
It was Galactic Great’s partner, Galactic Beauty. But the one playing her part was no longer Iris. Zeta had come to collect the costume she’d stripped off and given it to Star Prism a.k.a. Kiri. Like Zeta had said, Kiri wasn’t supposed to appear until later. There were still other preparations to make. But nevertheless, here she was. Considering her personality, she’d probably gotten tired of sitting on the sidelines.
“Wait there, Galactic Great! I’m coming to save you now!” she yelled before jumping courageously off the cliff.
But she was met with a great deal of resistance from the heroines. They each shrieked for her to go away and let their attacks fly.
“Yaaah!”
Their collective attack shot her down immediately. Everything from her cool entrance to the way she was instantly taken out was like a perfect replay of the kaiju incident earlier. We really should have waited until all the preparations were in place!
“Ow, ow, ow...”
“Galactic Beauty! Don’t push yourself!” I called to her.
“No, I’m okay!” she replied in an amazingly cheery voice for someone who’d just been shot down. She then glared up at Rachelle in the sky. “If it’s come to this, then I’ll just have to cut things off at the head! Don’t you move!”
“Aww, I can’t feel any love energy coming from you! Outsiders should keep out!”
“Yaaah!”
Wow, Galactic Beauty got taken out again! And by a single forehead flick this time! Just as we feared, Rachelle was super powered up by all the love energy she’d absorbed. Her rampaging on top of that was just a bonus. What to do...? Starmon had said we needed to be more powerful than Rachelle in order to use that. But if she’d powered up more than we’d imagined, our plan had better be extra effective if this was going to work out—wait, was Kiri falling this way?!
“Uwah!”
“Guh!”
“Ack!”
Kiri crashed into me and Rosalind, and the three of us went rolling together.
“Y-You all right, Ki—er, Galactic Beauty?”
“I-I’m fwine...”
She didn’t appear hurt, but her head was clearly still spinning from falling out of the sky. The dubious slurring gave her away. Now... where was Rosalind? She wasn’t in my arms anymore, and I wasn’t really sure what had happened. I looked around to see her on all fours with her face half buried in the dirt. There was a nice, long gouge out of the ground behind her, so I guess she ended up getting knocked the furthest by the impact with Kiri and inadvertently used her face for brakes... How tragic.
“Reeeeekka...”
Yanking her face out of the dirt, Rosalind called my name in a voice so deep it sounded like it had come from the depths of hell. As she did, Satsuki, Iris, Harissa, Tsumiki, Lea, Shirley, Corona, and Lyun appeared behind her. Each and every one of them was glaring my way furiously. I mean, I’d taken hold of Kiri at some point in the tumble to try and protect her, so it did look like I was hugging her, but...
“Stop messing around!” the girls all shouted in unison.
“You guys think this is my fault?! You’re gonna blame this on me?!”
“W-Wait, why am I being chased, too?! Really, why?!”
I ran as fast as I could, and Kiri was forced to run with me.
“Hey, stop running! Heroes don’t just turn and flee from danger!” Zeta scolded.
“Sh-She’s right!” Kiri agreed.
“Don’t listen to Zeta, Kiri! We can’t fight back against them!” I argued.
I grabbed Kiri’s shoulder just as she was about to turn back, and I encouraged her to keep running.
“Damn it! Just because your immediate opponents are being controlled doesn’t mean we can let this scene drag on forever. It gets old pretty quick. No, wait, maybe we could use this...”
“What is it? Did you come up with something, Zeta?”
“Hold on. I don’t know how well it will go, but I might be able to use the live broadcast to our advantage.”
“Really?!”
“I said hold on! We’ll see. Just believe in the fans and hang in there.”
“Easier said than done right now!”
Boom!
Corona launched a blast of dark magic that exploded the ground beneath us like popcorn and sent me and Kiri flying.
“Guh!”
I somehow managed to use the suit’s power to land on my feet, but there was a second explosion almost immediately. This one didn’t seem magical, however, so it was probably Shirley’s doing.
“Is it just me, or are your attacks getting more and more violent?!”
“It’s your fault for bringing in new girls one after another, Rekka... Why can’t you keep your eyes on me?!” Satsuki yelled as she prepared a magic attack I’d never seen before.
“Uh, Satsuki, when did you learn that kind of magic?! Didn’t you say you were bad at offensive spells?!”
“I used the Magic of Omniscience to access information on lost magics!”
Spurred on by her rampant passion, Satsuki had started to use her heirloom magic in ways she never had before, making her all the more powerful.
“It looks like I can’t afford to hold back any longer.”
“Not you, too, Shirley!”
Shirley began pulling out some rather menacing-looking devices... probably the “really” dangerous items she’d mentioned earlier.
“Goodness. Thanks to you being an indecisive, lucky pervert, the carnage has gone from girls fighting over you to girls trying to punish you for being so disloyal.”
“Gee, it’s nice to see you’re as calm as ever, R!”
Especially since I was the victim in the scenario she was describing!
“Oh, yes! Yes! Just like that! That was the purest burst of love energy yet! Ever
yone, keep fanning the flames of your passions! Ahahaha!”
And so the heroines’ pursuit grew even more intense as Rachelle wriggled in elation in the air above, cackling all the while. It left me and Kiri with nowhere to run. We’d been cornered.
“Oh, Rekka...” Iris called, cracking her knuckles on behalf of everyone else.
“W-Wait, let’s all just calm down first...” I desperately pleaded.
“...Hm? What?” said Kiri.
Something seemed to have caught her attention, but I didn’t have the leisure to look and figure out what it was.
“Repent!” shouted Iris.
“Are you going to kill me?!”
My fear of Iris made her clenched fists look several times more intimidating! Not even the cutting-edge space tech in my suit would protect me from her! Just as I seriously braced myself for imminent death, a hand shot in from the side and caught Iris’s fist.
“You...!”
Iris tried to pull her fist back, but couldn’t.
“It’s here...” Kiri muttered from under Galactic Beauty’s helmet. “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here! It’s finally heeeeere!”
She stood tall and threw her hands in air, cheering loudly before using that momentum to toss Iris to the side.
“Wah! Wai—!”
Iris stuck the landing just fine, but seemed surprised at Kiri’s sudden change in attitude. And that went for just about everyone else present. I was the only one who knew just what the “it” Kiri was talking about was.
“If it’s here, then... the plan worked?”
“Yup! I can feel the energy of everyone’s support now!” said Kiri.
“Yeah, we somehow reached our target numbers,” confirmed Zeta through the transmitter.
The key to the plan this time was Kiri’s—or rather, Star Prism’s—special ability. She could purge the hearts of the heroines that had been brainwashed into aggression by Rachelle’s craziness, but she’d need a substantial amount of power to do it. Star Prism gained additional power commensurate with the number of people who were cheering for her, so it was possible to get her enough support to make it happen. The catch working in our favor was that people didn’t necessarily need to be cheering for Star Prism, per se.
But there was still an issue of logistics. We were in a remote corner of Japan. It wasn’t exactly like there was an audience here, and it was far too dangerous to try and bring one out. That was where Zeta’s netvision channel came in.
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 10 Page 11