Chapter Four: Yukinari Amano

When he came to, Yukinari was indoors. He thought he recognized the room, but it took him a moment to realize that it was one of the rooms in the Schillings mansion.

“I...”

He turned to one side, where a window revealed that it was completely dark outside; the room was filled with the soft glow of lamplight. Yukinari seemed to have been put to bed.

“You awake?”

At the sound of the voice, Yukinari grunted and sat up, but it made him a little dizzy, as if he were anemic. “Veronika...?”

The female mercenary was sitting with her back to him. But she wasn’t there just to keep an eye on him. This room had two beds in it, and she was sitting on the one next to his.

She didn’t speak immediately. He could see someone lying in the bed Veronika was sitting on. It was—

“Berta!” Yukinari jumped up as soon as he realized who the occupant of the other bed was. The sudden movement caused a wave of dizziness, but he didn’t have time to care. “Is Berta—”

Veronika still didn’t answer; she still didn’t turn toward him. Yukinari put a hand on the wall to steady himself as he climbed out of bed. He looked down at Berta where she lay. The shrine maiden, the girl who had been offered to Yukinari, was sleeping. Or... unconscious, rather. Her eyes were closed, her lips hanging slightly open. Her face was pale; maybe she still didn’t have enough blood. It would have been easy to take her for dead.

“Is Berta all right?” he asked, a touch of annoyance entering his voice at Veronika’s persistent silence.

“Well, she’s alive.” The mercenary said no more than that. In other words, Berta had remained unconscious the whole time Yukinari had been out.

“I cured her... I’m sure I did,” he murmured, but his voice shook as if he knew it was a lie. Yes, he had tended to her wounds. He had felt her heart start beating again. Those things, he remembered. And he remembered Dasa asking how Berta was doing—but he recalled nothing else.

“Sounds like you collapsed, yourself. I only know about what happened after I carried you here. Dasa was here until just a moment ago.” Veronika glanced in the direction of the door. “Until I chased her out of here to get a little rest. We can’t have all of you giving out at once.”

“I see...” Yukinari had thought he must only have been out for two or three hours, but it seemed to have been closer to an entire day. He had used his angel powers of physical reconstitution—in essence, almost of creation—to their limit in his attempt to save Berta. He wasn’t working with that much material, but it was far more demanding to work with the constituent elements of a living being, muscle and flesh and blood, than it was to produce a ball of steel or some water.

What was more, when using his powers to constitute something, Yukinari consumed spiritual power; that was, a specific amount of information. Normally he would first take the information from something else, reducing some object to sand or dust before using that information to produce something new. But he had spent so much time worrying about the serial killer lately that he hadn’t saved up much information in advance, and now he was paying the price.

The overuse of his powers had led to him consuming information from his own self, and that was what had caused him to lose consciousness. He seemed to be suffering from a touch of amnesia, but he didn’t have time right now to track down every last memory.

Veronika finally turned to him. “And what about you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a little anemic.”

“I can’t fault you for that. But still—”

“Berta is who I’m really worried about,” Yukinari said, placing two fingers just below the unconscious girl’s chin. He could feel a pulse.

“She’s not coming around,” Veronika said. “The doctors don’t seem to know what’s wrong with her.”

“Because I fixed all her superficial wounds...” It was understandable that this might confuse the doctors. If he hadn’t done it, though, she would never have survived long enough to be taken to the Schillings home. In fact, it was almost a miracle that she hadn’t immediately died from being stabbed through the heart.

When I showed up, Berta had already been stabbed. How long had it been since she sustained the wound?

He was confident that the gunshot he and the others had heard had come from Berta’s Derrringer. From the time he had heard it until the moment he arrived at the scene... He didn’t know exactly how long it had been, but he thought not a full three minutes. How long had it taken, then, before he had been able to start treating her?

Humans can survive if blood is cut off to an arm or a leg. But the brain is different. It requires constant oxygen and nutrients to be brought to it by the blood. Just five minutes without blood flow can be enough to do irreversible damage to the brain. After ten minutes, the chance of death skyrockets.

Damn it all!

When Yukinari first saw Berta with the sword through her torso, he had thought she was already dead. But in fact, she had been alive. He shouldn’t have talked with Hatsune, should have ignored her so he could get to Berta as quickly as possible. The thought sent an unbearable feeling of shame through him.

Is she still unconscious... because of brain damage...?

Medicine in this world had no way of evaluating the status of the brain. And Yukinari didn’t have neuro-surgical knowledge. In principle, it was possible to create microscopic structures and revive cells using the powers of an angel, but to do so Yukinari would have had to understand their physical construction. It wasn’t like building a gun. The slightest wrong move could make things immeasurably worse.

In other words—even if Berta’s brain had been damaged by lack of blood flow, there was nothing he could do about it. The most he could do now was pray she would heal under her own power.

He didn’t speak.

“Don’t fret too much about it,” Veronika said. “It’s not your fault. Whether someone lives or dies isn’t anyone’s fault. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own survival.” Perhaps that was how Veronika felt, as a mercenary who had seen life and death up close. But...

“No.” Yukinari shook his head with a sigh. “I’m supposed to be her god.”

“...Oh yeah.” Veronika’s shoulders slumped.

Granted, he hadn’t taken on the role voluntarily, but Yukinari was the deity worshipped by Berta and everyone in Friedland. He had responsibilities. It was, one might say, his duty to take on those responsibilities given all the trust that had been placed in him. And on top of that...

Hatsune...!

It was not some faceless, anonymous criminal who had done this to Berta. It was Yukinari’s own older sister, Hatsune Amano.

She had killed more than ten people in this town. She had paralyzed Ulrike and Yggdra’s other familiars. And now she had put Berta in a coma from which she might never wake up.

Was there something more he could have done? Even when he suspected the killer’s true identity, he hadn’t made the information public; he had tried to solve the case with just himself and his close friends. He had even tried to ignore the possibility that Hatsune was the killer. If he’d been willing to face reality sooner, maybe he could have prevented some of the harm she’d done.

How very, very foolish he was.

“Damn it...”

Yukinari bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood.

●

Angela heard a key turning in the lock. She nearly looked up, but then thought better of it. She wasn’t even sure what her face looked like these days. What if they saw it and there was some pathetic expression of hope on it?

In the more than ten days since her capture, Angela had had ample time for introspection. For better and for worse, she was an intelligent person. It allowed her to analyze herself. She had never done so before—partly because she hadn’t had time, and partly because she hadn’t felt it was necessary.

But now she knew what kind of person she was. She felt she had worked herself out in the broadest terms, and she thought she knew herself better than anyone. But...

“Angela Jindel.”

When that voice echoed through her basement cell, Angela trembled. She looked up before she knew what she was doing. Maybe her face was contorted with her disgusting desires, but it didn’t matter to her. In fact, she wanted him to see it. She wanted him to see those desires and despise her for them. She had never known anyone before in a position to scorn her—as much abuse as she had heaped upon others, there had been none who could heap it upon her.

“Yukinari... Amano...”

He stood before her now, this man with his incredible power. She wanted him to crush her, to control her. All her life she had been unfettered, free to do exactly as she wished, but as a result she was terribly lonely. Nobody ever criticized her; no one ever confronted her about anything. The view from the top of the mountain was spectacular, but she was alone there. There was no one she could cling to.

And so Angela sought a god who could rule over her. Something she could bow before, something even higher than the mountain’s peak. Something utterly, irrefutably stronger than her.

She had found some relief in the True Church of Harris. Their God filled that space above her, and absorption into the ranks of the Missionary Order allowed her to accept how she was. Or so she had thought, until she met Yukinari Amano.

The moment she had found herself close to this superhuman creature, this thing that looked like a man but possessed power greater than any person, she began to see how insubstantial and fanciful the things she had thought of as “God” had been.

Yes: God. Yukinari was a god. A god with flesh. A god with fists. He was more than just some ineffable force of fortune; he could intervene directly, an incarnate god who fought his own battles.

And she, who was just a human, deserved to be beaten by him. Trampled. Controlled, domesticated. Then she could finally be at peace. She would finally know she was not alone.

She wanted a collar, an unmistakable sign of her subservience. The thought was so intense it pained her. And that was why—

“Come out. I want to talk to you.”

—when Yukinari pulled out a chain connected to an iron ring, Angela thought she might burst with joy.

He understood. He would give her what she wanted. This man—this god—was the one she must worship.

“Yes—!”

As she went to him, she blushed like the maiden she was.

●

Yukinari was in the reception room of the Schillings mansion with a group of people he had personally chosen. Dasa, Fiona, Veronika, Arlen—and Angela.

Yukinari had decided that, with respect to Angela, he would have to act as a tyrant toward her. That seemed the best way to keep her from being troublesome; it appeared to cause her to do as he said. So when he brought her here, he did so not in manacles, but in an iron collar he had created for her.

Truth be told, he found this tyrant act immensely draining, but as it seemed to make Angela more willing to give him information, perhaps it would be worth it in the end. When he had gone to fetch her from the basement room, she had looked like a young woman receiving an engagement ring from her lover. All Yukinari could do was sigh internally.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t have time to fret about the little things.

“All right.” Yukinari looked around at his gathered companions. He had brought them all here so that everyone could get on the same page when it came to what they knew.

There had been more than ten victims, and Friedland was paralyzed with fear. Ulrike and the other familiars were no longer active, and Berta was unconscious, her recovery questionable. There was no more time to hesitate. Yukinari had to set aside his personal feelings or nothing would ever change. If Berta never regained consciousness, it would be his fault, for refusing to act despite his strong suspicion about the culprit.

“I’ve called you all here today because I want all of you to know what I know about the killer stalking Friedland.”

“Yukinari, have you learned something?!” Fiona looked anxious and excited. Yukinari found it painful; her expression showed an immense confidence in him. But he deserved no praise.

Dasa, and Dasa only, was looking at the ground. She probably had a good guess as to what Yukinari was going to say. For that matter, having heard the conversation between him and Hatsune, she probably knew perfectly well who the killer was. Dasa, of course, knew all about how angels were made.

“To begin with, our killer is in fact an angel.”

“An angel...” Angela whispered. Everyone else was simply struck dumb.

Fiona in particular seemed shocked by this. When she heard the word “angel,” she thought not of the miracle-working puppets created by the True Church of Harris, but of Yukinari. She knew firsthand how powerful Yukinari’s abilities were, how much they had contributed to Friedland. So something inside her resisted the notion that their enemy could be cut from the same cloth.

“Let’s be clear,” Yukinari said, glancing at Arlen and Angela. “Angels are created by alchemy.”

The Church taught that angels were the messengers of God, given flesh in rituals of fervent prayer; alchemy certainly had nothing to do with it. But in reality, the angels were homunculi, artificial life forms created by alchemists. The Church had hunted down the alchemists as heretics, and for generations they had been forced to work in complete secrecy, creating tools that would do miracles for their kidnappers.

Alchemy was responsible for a great many things in the Church. Angels, holy oil. Most likely, the statues of the guardian saint, as well.

Neither Arlen nor Angela looked pleased about this, but they didn’t try to shout Yukinari down, either. Both of them had parted ways with Church headquarters, met Yukinari, and spent time here in Friedland—perhaps they had come to harbor their own suspicions.

“What I’m going to say next is secondhand knowledge from the alchemist who made me—or more precisely, made my current body.”

He proceeded to give them a brief explanation of the way angels, or rather homunculi, were created. How a lump of flesh was given life by summoning a soul from another world. How a homunculus with a sense of self would be difficult to use as a tool—too much risk of rebellion or flight—so the Church ensured that once the homunculus was activated, its memories and personality were wiped out, leaving only a living puppet behind.

Fiona looked closely at Yukinari. “But that means... That means that after they breathe life into it using the soul of someone who already died once, they kill them again.”

“If you consider the erasure of personality and memories to be murder, then yes,” Yukinari nodded.

“That’s awful...”

“B-But they’re already dead, so you can’t really kill them a second time...” A glare from Fiona silenced Arlen’s attempt to defend the Church.

“We can argue about that later,” Yukinari said, and looked around again. “Whatever the case, that’s how angels are made. I died in an accident in my previous world. My soul left that body behind and was used to activate this one—I guess. The difference is, Jirina didn’t eliminate my personality or memories after that, so I’ve continued to exist as myself.”

Then, the Church had killed Jirina for the crime of creating a self-aware angel. Yukinari, enraged, had slaughtered everyone who had carried out the execution, everyone who had ordered it, as well as anyone related to the Church who happened to be in his vicinity at the time. The Harris Church, naturally, deployed angels to try to stop him, but because they lacked Yukinari’s self-awareness, they couldn’t act autonomously. They were literally nothing more than puppets, and in a one-on-one battle their reactions were always going to be slower than Yukinari’s. In addition, the Church used the angels to perform miracles, not fight battles, so they had neither experience with nor strategies for this situation.

As a result, Yukinari perpetrated a mass slaughter, then fled the capital with Dasa in tow, neither the royal army nor the shattered Church able to pursue him.

“Now... here’s the problem. I mentioned I died in an accident. Well, my older sister died with me.”

“You had an older sister, Yukinari?” Fiona asked in surprise.

“Yeah. Hatsune Amano.”

As he spoke the name, Yukinari unrolled a piece of paper on the table in the middle of the room. On it, he had written Amano Hatsune and Amano Yukinari in kanji.

Arlen leaned over the paper, blinking. “We saw this at those crime scenes...”

“This is how we wrote things in my previous world. This is my name, and this is my sister’s.”

“No...” Fiona was always a quick study, and she immediately seemed to grasp what Yukinari was getting at.

“I’m afraid so,” he said, trying to ignore the ache in his heart. “The angel attacking our town is my... my sister.”

“Yuki...” He felt Dasa’s fingers brush his own. He was seized by the desire to take her hand, but he pushed the feeling away. This was no time to be leaning on her kindness.

“When Berta was attacked, I met her, however briefly, and confirmed all of this.”

“Your sister...” Fiona whispered, her hand to her mouth. “But then, why...? If you really talked to her, that means she still has her memories and personality too, doesn’t it? So why would she see you as an enemy? And after what happened with you, why would the Church make another angel with its personality intact?”

Angela, who had been silent until then, spoke up. “In that case...” Everyone turned to look at her, which caused her to frown and fall silent again. But at an encouraging nod from Yukinari, she blushed happily and continued. “Could this be an angel created by some force other than the Harris Church?”

“It’s true, my sister—Hatsune—never said anything about coming here on the orders of the Church. But she didn’t say she didn’t, either. In theory, I suppose there could be some enclave of alchemists outside the True Church of Harris, making their own homunculi, but...”

But if so, it begged the question of why they would have made Hatsune.

“I still think it makes more sense to think that the Church created another self-aware angel so they would have a better chance of disposing of me. My existence is a scandal they want to wipe out at any cost.”

Angela went quiet, but she didn’t seem too upset to have her opinion shot down. If anything, she looked rather pleased. The thought crossed Yukinari’s mind: could it be that her masochism extended even to intellectual matters?

“In any event.” He thought back to his conversation with Hatsune. “We still don’t know exactly why she’s doing this.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dasa look up at him with a hint of surprise.

“But we know for a fact that the killer is my older sister. She admitted as much herself.”

“So we know what’s going on now.” Fiona nodded, but then she looked at the paper on the tabletop. “But Yukinari... This would mean that when you put that sign up, you already thought it might be her. Could you really not have told us any sooner?!”

Yukinari couldn’t answer.

“I know it would have been painful to admit the possibility that it was your own sister who was the killer. But people were dying!”

“Yes,” Yukinari said with a sigh, “that’s part of it. But in my former world, we had something called witch hunts.”

“Witch hunts?” Fiona asked, the words unfamiliar in her mouth.

“Yeah. Something that took place in a particular part of a particular country. People started to think that there were women among them who could use magic. But it was just superstition.”

“Magic... Superstition...?”

“Yes. Superstition,” Yukinari said emphatically. “But in that country, people believed that if you could use magic, it meant you were a servant of the devil, and so they had to kill anyone suspected of doing it.”

“Well, that only makes sense,” offered Angela. “If someone is gaining power from an evil source—”

“Maybe I’m not being clear enough,” Yukinari said, interrupting her. “It was a mistake. These were actually just people who did things a little differently, or maybe had slightly unusual habits. Sometimes it was just bad luck. Think about my Durandall, or Dasa’s Red Chili. Fiona, when you and the others first saw them, didn’t it look like magic? But they’re really just tools, tools anyone can use if they know how.”

“That’s... That’s true.”

“The people in those witch hunts couldn’t use magic, either. They were perfectly normal. But they ended up being labeled witches.”

“If the accusation was false, then they should have simply cleared it up,” Angela said.

“Sometimes it’s not possible to clear up. Sometimes people don’t want it to be.”

As if she had begun to understand what Yukinari was trying to say, Angela went quiet, her expression somewhere between fear and pleasure.

“The people in that area fell into a panic,” Yukinari went on. “A religious organization much like the True Church of Harris... they backed up these witch hunts, gave them a sort of approval. So no one could stop them, and soon enough, no one could think clearly, either.”

Fiona took a deep breath. “There are some similarities with faith in the erdgod there, too.”

When a majority of people believe something to be true, it often becomes widely accepted without serious investigation into its actual veracity. In fact, to doubt such “facts,” and therefore upset the status quo, can become a sin in itself. Thus minority opinions become marginalized, and the majority run amok.

“You can’t find what’s not there, but when they didn’t find anything, they just said it had been carefully hidden. People would point the finger at anyone who seemed the least bit suspicious, and they would be tortured, killed. The belief was that if you were a witch, you wouldn’t die. A normal human would die, but while the flesh might be destroyed, the soul would be cleared of doubt and find salvation—that was the logic they used.”

Angela trembled silently. Maybe she remembered that she had used a similar logic while piling abuse on Jirina in front of Yukinari. She was afraid—and eager—that Yukinari might still be angry about those words, might strike her again.

“Apparently, they used some pretty gruesome tortures. I guess it just shows there’s no length humans won’t go to when they can claim that there are ‘others’ among them who have supernatural powers. The fear of those others, the desire to escape from them, is the perfect excuse.”

“But what does all this have to do with your sister?” Fiona asked.

“Using the powers of an angel, you can make yourself look like a completely different person.”

The others all looked at each other, startled. Yukinari heaved a sigh and went on.

“You didn’t realize because I’ve never done it. And if you put me on the spot and asked me to do it, I would probably find it pretty difficult. Let’s see...”

He placed his hand on the unfurled sheet of lambskin paper. The bluish-white light of physical reconstitution glowed under his palm, and the paper began to change.

“You could even do something like this.”

There was a collective gasp. Fiona, Veronika, Dasa, and Angela were all staring at the tabletop, then looking at Arlen. For a second, Arlen blinked, unsure what was going on, but an instant later it finally dawned on him that Yukinari had changed the paper to resemble a face. Arlen’s face.

“Wh-What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Arlen asked, panic entering his voice. “That’s m-my face!”

Excepting narcissists who constantly look at themselves in the mirror, it takes most people a second to recognize themselves when presented with their own face.

“Think of it as a mask,” Yukinari said. “If I did the same thing to my own face, instead of this piece of paper, I could change myself into Arlen.”

“So the reason we haven’t found the murderer yet...”

“...is because she’s been changing her face. Making herself look like people from this town. She’s probably impersonating someone right now. She could be standing in this very room.”

Fiona and the others looked like they might be sick. But then the deputy mayor said, “I see what you’re getting at.”

“Right. If someone you know could be the murderer, and you could be the next person they kill—that’s a recipe for Friedland’s very own witch hunts. If someone thinks you’re acting the least bit strangely, next comes the accusation that you might be the murderer. They torture you to make you confess, or maybe just kill you before you can kill them. And given that we don’t have any way of seeing through this disguise, pretty soon the terror spreads to the whole town...”

If this were just about the killer changing their clothes or hair to look like someone else, there might be a way to find them, or at least to prove one’s own innocence. But with a murderer who could literally change their own body, it was almost impossible to be certain who might be innocent or guilty.

Fiona seemed to be voicing the anxieties of the entire group as she said, “So what do you propose we do next...?”

Yukinari, of course, had something in mind. He had brought them all there to let them in on it—so that they wouldn’t interfere once he put his plan in motion.

“I’m going to strike her down in one fell swoop.”

“You are?!” Fiona half stood. “What if that’s just what she wants?”

“Maybe it is.”

“I thought we talked about this! I told you, you have to stop trying to do everything on your own!”

“Strictly speaking... I won’t exactly be on my own.” He shrugged. “I’m taking Angela with me.”

“M-Me?!” Angela exclaimed. “But why?”

“As bait.” He gave a firm tug on her leash as he spoke. “If Hatsune really is being deceived by the True Church of Harris and acting on their orders, then you’re an ally of hers, someone she should want to rescue. I guess she might just ignore you, but I plan to use you as a bargaining chip. To get her to show herself when and where I want.”

“Y-You could just as well use Arlen Lansdowne for that!”

“There’s a good chance Arlen was witnessed fighting on Friedland’s side in the last battle. If I give her the chance, Hatsune might kill him.”

Angela fell silent. She seemed to have grasped why Yukinari had brought her, still a nominal enemy, to this meeting—in a collar, no less.

Veronika, who had been silent until that moment, spoke up. “If the Church girl is only coming with you as bait, that means you do plan to fight alone. I agree with the deputy mayor: it’s a bad habit.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Yukinari said, shaking his head. “But this isn’t about Yukinari Amano, the god. It’s... well, let’s call it unfinished business from my human life. It’s something I believe I have to take care of myself.”

He realized that this was selfish on some level. More than ten people had been murdered; Yukinari needed to put aside personal feelings and come up with a serious plan to deal with the situation. However terrible it might have been, he should have prepared a fighting force that could definitively best his sister.

Veronika eyed him. “Can you swear it’s not because you feel responsible for what happened to Berta?”

Yukinari hadn’t expected this, and he couldn’t immediately deny it. “...It’s appropriate that an angel should fight an angel, right?” he said. “Strategically. It’s not like we can muster an army right now, anyway.”

If they brought their full strength to bear on Hatsune, it would open a hole in Friedland’s defenses that could easily be exploited by a unit of the Missionary Order, or perhaps other angels.

“I just... don’t like it,” Veronika half-sighed, but she didn’t pursue the matter.

“The point is,” Yukinari said, “I’m going to take care of this. The rest of you, just hold back and focus on keeping the town safe.” He wanted to make sure they all got the message.

●

After he left the Schillings mansion, the first place Yukinari went was the town’s central plaza. The first step in his plan would be to let Hatsune know what he had in mind.

It would be best if they faced off somewhere outside Friedland. Somewhere near the sanctuary might be good, if he could convince Hatsune to go there. Yukinari knew the geography intimately. Besides, if two angels fought each other to the limits of their strength, the chances of collateral damage were high. Fighting in the middle of Friedland was out of the question.

Yukinari stood in front of his sign and looked at it for a moment. Berta had been attacked by Hatsune, most likely, because she had been staking out this sign. Which meant Hatsune had seen it—had taken notice of it.

“Yukinari?” The speaker sounded somewhat dubious. It was Angela, whom Yukinari had along with him.

The female knight was the only person Yukinari had wanted to accompany him when he left the mansion. As he had explained to Fiona and the others, Angela was to serve as bait. Which was, perhaps, just another way of saying that he didn’t know how else to draw Hatsune out.

“What are you doing?” Angela asked.

“I’m trying to decide how to draw out my sister,” Yukinari said with a yank on the chain he was holding. The chain rattled, and Angela, entrapped by the collar on the other end, was pulled closer to him.

“Stay closer to me when we walk,” he said. “Unless you want everyone in Friedland to see you collared like livestock.”

He had thought this might anger her, but instead Angela blushed and obediently came closer to him. Sometimes Yukinari wasn’t sure whether the girl actually understood that she was a masochist.

“Now, then.” He sighed once and reached out toward the sign. For a second, he wished he had brought something to write with; then it occurred to him that, as an angel, he could just create whatever he wanted. With the power of physical reconstitution, Yukinari focused heat into the pointer finger of his right hand and used it to burn letters into the sign:

I’ll be waiting at the sanctuary with the captured Harris missionary girl.

He noticed Angela swallowing anxiously beside him, perhaps because she had never seen him use his powers this way before.

Announcing where he would be carried the risk that Hatsune might head him off or ambush him, but Yukinari was the one who knew the area around the sanctuary better. He was hoping that knowledge would help neutralize any danger he might put himself in.

He finished writing—or burning—his message on the sign, then looked back over his work. He hadn’t made any mistakes.

“And,” Yukinari said then, turning around. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Dasa was standing there. He had noticed her following them all the way from the Schillings mansion. She was the only one among his little group who wouldn’t listen to what he said to do.

“Dasa, go back to Fiona and the—”

“Yuki. I’m going to help you.” Dasa was never very expressive, but now she had the slightest pout, as though she were concerned or perhaps unhappy. There was a hint of red in her pale cheeks.

“You can’t. Go back.”

“No.” Dasa glared at him.

“I’m going to go fight my sister alone—”

“You have her with you. You’re not... alone.” She referred, of course, to Angela.

“Look, I told you—”

“I’m the one who should be by... your side, Yuki.” Then she walked up to him, inserting herself between Yukinari and Angela. “I don’t in...tend to give... up my place.”

Yukinari was silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh. Angela had a blank look on her face.

“Dasa...”

“Yuki, you... promised Jirina. Promised you would protect me. That you would be at... my side. Keep... your promise.”

Still expressionless and still stubborn, she took Yukinari’s hand.

●

The air in the sanctuary felt almost freezing. The night wasn’t unusually cold. Yukinari figured it was his own emotions that were the problem. This was the chill of a place that had long gone unoccupied. They had only been away for a month, yet it felt almost like an abandoned building.

He was used to having Berta there, having Ulrike there. Without them, there just seemed to be too much space.

Incidentally, Angela wasn’t in the room. Trying to entertain her constantly—trying to maintain the tyrannical front that made her pliant and malleable—was immensely tiring, so Yukinari had confined her to a different room and used physical reconstitution to weld the end of the chain to a wall so she could never escape under her own power.

“Dammit,” Yukinari muttered. It was the realization that he felt lonely that brought the word to his lips.

He was actually surprised to realize he was still capable of feeling lonely. For as long as he could remember, he and his older sister had been together. As she’d said, he’d had her and she’d had him. They were an entire world to each other. Neither of them had many friends or acquaintances, so they were never left feeling lonely. They were used to having only each other.

But now Yukinari felt terribly alone. Since he had come to this world, he had met a wide variety of people, created relationships and made friends. Perhaps he had only been trying to fill the hole in his heart left by the loss of his sister, but all the same, before he knew it Yukinari found himself with more close friends than he could count on one hand. And now, that was what he was used to.

That was why he felt lonely now. As for Hatsune, who felt this was a betrayal... He could understand.

“Oh, my sister...”

But if Yukinari had changed, Hatsune seemed to have changed even more. Yes, she could be surprisingly childlike, but he remembered her as a basically kind girl. She had doted on her little brother, Yukinari. She had always been gentle to everyone; he had never seen her yell at or mock anybody.

He wondered what could have happened to make her the way she was now. Had something changed when she had been reincarnated? Or... maybe she hadn’t changed. Maybe Yukinari was only just now seeing something that had been there all along.

“I...”

He thought back to their life together. From a rational point of view, they were two children who had been neglected by their parents; conventional wisdom might have taken them to be completely unhappy. Yet when it came to the relationship between just Yukinari and his sister, they were totally fulfilled.

“Yuki...”

He looked up when he heard his name. Dasa was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in her usual outfit, but in her right hand she held Derrringer, while in her left was a box of extra bullets. Both were things Yukinari had made and then left at the sanctuary.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah... I’m fine.” He made himself smile.

Dasa came over to the bench where Yukinari was sitting. She rested the sniper rifle against the wall, set the bullets on the ground, and sat down next to him.

“Ah...” Dasa blinked as if she had just thought of something. “The password...”

“Uh-huh.” Yukinari smiled ruefully.

On the way to the sanctuary Yukinari, Dasa, and Angela had settled on a password. Hatsune could turn into anyone at any time. Not just her face, but even her clothes and body. Someone they thought was an ally might be their enemy in disguise.

“I guess just bringing it up proves you’re all right, though.”

If the girl in front of him was just Hatsune in disguise, she wouldn’t even have known about the password. There was always the possibility that she had secretly substituted herself for Dasa immediately after they left the Schillings mansion, before they arrived at the plaza.

“I won’t forget Jirina’s pain,” Dasa said without hesitation.

“Red hot chili pepper,” Yukinari said, responding to the password.

Now they each knew that the other was who they claimed to be. And yet, an unnatural silence fell between them. Neither spoke.

Seated side by side on the bench, they looked not at each other but at the same little bit of the wall. Now that the weapons were ready, there was nothing for them to do but wait for Hatsune to arrive.

Then...

“Yuki...” Dasa, perhaps tired of the strange silence, sounded almost as if she had just thought of something. “I want to talk a little. May I?”

“Er, sure. Of course you can,” he answered, feeling Dasa’s hand edge closer to his own.

What am I acting so awkward about at this late date?

He and Dasa had often touched each other before. They would join hands on their travels, or he would embrace her when they slept under the same blanket. Yukinari saw Dasa as Jirina’s little sister, indeed as almost his own little sister. But this...

“And, uh, what did you want to talk about?”

“About the... world you come from... Yuki.”

This seemed very sudden. He and Dasa had never talked about this sort of thing before. Partly that was because they hadn’t had the chance, but maybe they had been subconsciously avoiding it. What good would it do now to think about his previous life? He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t forget it, so in some ways it was best just not to think about it...

“What kind of world were you in, Yuki?”

“That’s a tough question...”

Now that the subject had come up, he found it difficult to explain. He knew he couldn’t just say that everything had been average, normal, but he didn’t think he had been a strange enough human being to warrant special attention, either. At least, that was how people around him had seen him—both him and Hatsune.

“Were you and... your sister... Hatsune... Were you good... friends?”

He didn’t say anything immediately. It was like she had seen straight through him. “Hatsune and I were...” A wide range of different words went through his mind, but none of them quite seemed appropriate. “My family... My mom got drawn into this weird religion, and my dad hardly ever came home from work. Looking back on it now... What happened to mom probably really hurt him.”

“Your... mother...?”

“Yeah. You already understand it from seeing the True Church of Harris, right? Religion itself isn’t inherently bad, but it can drive people insane if they’re not careful.”

“Yes...” Dasa nodded.

The True Church of Harris preached the love of God to the masses, but in secret they hunted down and captured the alchemists and forced them to help the Church do miracles. Those in positions of worldly power were framed for crimes they hadn’t committed, allowing the Church to expand its influence. Dasa was among those who had lost her family to religion.

“In our case,” Yukinari said, “nobody was killing anybody. But it got to where she only ever thought about the teachings of her religion and hardly ever came home. She would go to her church building and we wouldn’t see her or Dad for days at a time.”

This left Dasa silent.

“So... Well, Hatsune and I sort of became each other’s only family.”

They grew close to each other... Very close. Their family had become a mere shell; they had to hold each other up lest their hearts become as empty as their home.

“Yuki, did... you love your older... sister?”

“I loved her. Sure I did.” The words came easily to his lips. “She was my family, and you love your family.”

It couldn’t be said that he had hated his mother or his father. But then again, it couldn’t really be said that he had loved them, either.

Even though they were his family.

“No.” Dasa looked somewhat perturbed. “I mean... as a woman. Did you love your... sister as... a woman?”

Yukinari was lost for words. He wanted to laugh it off, asked how she could be so silly—but he couldn’t.

Yukinari and Hatsune: two children abandoned by their parents, who were the entire world to each other. She had been his sister, and he her brother. They had been parent and child to each other, they had been friends, they had been teacher and pupil—and they had been lovers. Yukinari and Hatsune knew that if they had each other, they had everything they needed.

And that was why...

That was why Hatsune and I...

“You’ve always abided by Jirina’s... wishes. Is it because... she was an older sister, too?”

Yukinari didn’t answer. How could he possibly? Maybe he had been trying not to think about it.

For a time, Dasa looked at him from behind her glasses.

“I loved my older sister,” she said. “And respected... her. But there was one... thing I always... resented.”

“You, Dasa? You resented Jirina?”

It was a sudden and altogether unexpected confession. As far as Yukinari knew, Dasa had revered Jirina. The two sisters didn’t always seem very similar, but perhaps that was all the more reason they were so close.

“You can never be better than... the dead,” Dasa said flatly.

“Better?” Had Dasa and Jirina been in some kind of competition?

“When my sister... died, she became something absolute within... you, Yuki.”

He said nothing.

“And you can’t overcome the... absolute.”

“That’s...”

They say memory is a beautifying force. People naturally want to forget what is painful or unpleasant. So when we look back on those who have died, we recall only the best things about them. Forgetfulness shaves away their rough edges, until the person becomes more pure in our memory than they ever were in life. They become ever more favorable to the person thinking back on them—indeed, they do become something absolute.

“If even my sister,” Dasa said, still holding Yukinari’s hand, “if even she was just a replacement for your Hatsune...”

“What...?”

“Then I was never even... in the fight.”

“No, that’s—”

—not true, he wanted to say, but couldn’t.

He couldn’t deny categorically that just behind Jirina had lurked the image of Amano Hatsune, whom he had loved most in the world. Throughout his previous life she had been the ideal woman to him, and he had never loved anyone else.

Yukinari had believed that his feelings for Jirina weren’t those of a man for a woman, but were merely gratitude for the life she had given him. But was that only because Hatsune had remained in some corner of his mind? Trying to salve the grief of losing her, had he sought and pursued someone who reminded him of her? But then, learning that that woman was not Hatsune, did he find that he could love no one more than his former sister? Perhaps that had led him to cut off all feeling for the opposite sex.

“But... I am... now.”

“Come again?”

“I can fight now. Fight with Hatsune Amano.”

“You can’t just—”

“Yuki.”

Dasa reached out, her warm little hands enclosing his cheeks. She was still just a young woman; if he had wanted to break out of her grip, he had the strength. Yet he found he couldn’t move an inch.

First, the rim of her glasses bumped against his forehead.

And then her lips met his.

“......Mn.” Somewhere in the back of her throat, Dasa made a sound, not quite a grunt and not quite a groan. Neither of them did anything else, simply feeling each other’s lips and the warmth of their bodies pressed close to each other. The kiss was sudden, almost like an accident.

It really lasted only a few seconds. Maybe Dasa had been holding her breath with nervousness, because when she pulled her lips away, she almost bent double, pressing her hand to her chest and breathing deeply. It made her look more alluring than she ever had before—was it just that the kiss had shaken Yukinari that deeply? Or...

“Dasa...”

“I feel bad... doing that while Berta isn’t... here. It feels unfair. But...” She sounded almost apologetic, not lifting her eyes. “But I’ll fight. Not for your sake. For my own reasons, I’ll fight with your sister. So you don’t have to worry about... me. You don’t have to... be concerned. I have a rival... in love, and I will... kill her. I have... my own... reasons... I’ll steal... you from... her...”

Yukinari didn’t speak.

“So, Yuki, you don’t... have to... worry about me.”

Then she said nothing more, but her breath remained ragged and quick. She seemed confused, as if even she didn’t know what she was saying.

“I’ll see you later,” she said at last, standing from the bench. Maybe she now regretted saying all that she had said. Without a word, though, Yukinari reached out as Dasa left—almost fled—the room, and caught her hand. He pulled her back, rather forcefully. Dasa stumbled into Yukinari’s chest.

“Yuki?”

He reached out, took the glasses off the perplexed young woman’s face.

“Oh...”

She blinked in surprise. He put his hands on her cheeks to keep her from running again—and this time it was Yukinari who pressed his lips to hers.

●

She had known where the sanctuary was from the day she arrived in Friedland, but this was her first time visiting it. It had been rebuilt for Yukinari’s use, but apparently it was the place where young women used to be offered up as living sacrifices to the erdgod.

Hatsune had carefully avoided going anywhere near it, lest she inadvertently run into Yukinari.

It was hardly that she didn’t want to see him. In fact, it was the opposite. She longed to be reunited with her beloved younger brother, to embrace him. But now, so it seemed, he was worshipped as the local deity, surrounded by servants and sycophants. Hatsune hoped to meet him only after she had eliminated these vulgar distractions to the extent that she could.

She had hoped that by leaving his name in kanji at the scenes of her murders, she might startle him into voluntarily leaving behind all the evil people around him. But he had done just the opposite, basing himself in Friedland and trying desperately to protect its inhabitants.

And so she had decided to punish him. It had been so long since she had scolded her younger brother. Dear, sweet Yukinari. They had promised to live their lives together, and only together. Hatsune had poured all her love into him, and yet the moment he was out of her sight he forgot all about his older sister and went making friends with the people of this other world. This did not make her happy.

And thus she had decided to pick one of those who were relatively close to Yukinari and kill them.

She knew how kind he was, and how much pain this would cause him. She had seen how deeply shaken he appeared when she killed the girl with the gun the day before. He was so troubled, in fact, that he didn’t even spare a hug for the sister with whom he was finally reunited, but only dove after the girl’s body, as if to pick up some trash she had thrown away.

That only meant she would have to kill more of them. That, at least, was Hatsune’s opinion. She would kill and kill and then kill some more. The thought brought a smile to her face.

Yukinari would blame himself, no doubt. He would lament that he could not save them. He would be deeply wounded; he would suffer. And then, she was sure, he would turn to his dear older sister to escape the pain. Then, at last, she could hold him again. Her dear, sweet younger brother...

When she finally arrived at the sanctuary, she found it a rather unimposing place despite its name. It was large, yes, but it didn’t look much different from your average warehouse. It didn’t seem ornamented to look intimidating, nor was the architecture very complicated. There might, she supposed, be booby traps inside.

Hatsune, however, felt as happy as if she had come to some amusement park. She stood in the middle of the road that stretched out to the sanctuary and called in a singsong tone, “Yuki! My dear Yuuuki!”

She sounded like a child engaged in some delightful game.

“Your big sister has come to you, just like you asked!” She spread her arms out to her sides as she spoke. “Haven’t I always done everything you’ve asked, my dear Yuki, ever since we were small? So come out, Yuki! Come out and see your big sister.”

She was sure he could hear her, and so she waited. At length...

“...Hatsune.”

Yukinari appeared from the sanctuary. Armed and ready.

He was carrying Durandall, of which she’d heard rumors in Friedland: a carbine with a bayonet. He must have created it using his angel powers. She had seen one once, when she’d caught and killed a member of the community watch unawares. The gun was obviously the product of Yukinari’s particular interests; it made Hatsune smile even as she recoiled at the ugliness of the weapon.

Yes—now that she thought about it, Yukinari had had a model gun just like Durandall. She thought it was from some Western. She remembered the movie; they had gone to a theater together to see it. She had found the show a bit boring, but Yukinari—who had only been in elementary school at the time—had been enraptured.

What does he mean, carrying around a toy like that?

Did he think he could kill her with it? A pitying smile flitted across Hatsune’s face—but it vanished when a girl appeared behind Yukinari.

She was a small woman with silver hair. In fact, her hair was the same color as Hatsune’s. Indeed, the set of her features even looked a little bit like that of Yukinari’s sister. That must be the girl Dasa, the one who had drifted into Friedland at Yukinari’s side.

“Ah... Now I see.” Hatsune nodded to herself in recognition.

So that was who he’d traded her for. Looking to ease the disappointment of losing his beloved sister, Yukinari had found a girl who vaguely resembled her to keep around instead. That was all she was.

The girl herself, however, didn’t seem to grasp that. She kept looking at Hatsune with a challenging glare. She had a gun in her hand, and she was poised for a fight. How impudent of her. A replacement ought to know her place.

“I’ll have to kill her, just for good measure.”

She didn’t recall raising a younger brother who could be satisfied with some pale imitation. Now that the two of them were back together, Yukinari had no need of a replacement for her. At least, he shouldn’t. She was confident that if she killed the girl, he would come to his senses.

“...Hatsune.”

Yukinari muttered her name, coming closer. When he got about four meters away from Hatsune, he stopped. They couldn’t have touched even if they had both stretched out their arms. It was more than close enough, however, for each to perceive the small changes in the other’s face.

Hatsune found this vexing. It seemed to represent the relationship between them at that moment.

“I guess... it would be strange to say it’s been a while,” Yukinari said, his voice hesitant.

“Not at all. It has been a while, my dear Yuki.” She gave him a broad smile. “I so wanted to see you. For so long, I wanted to...”

“Me too,” he said, almost reflexively, but then he shook his head. “But given how things have turned out, I wish I’d never seen you again.”

“Why, what are you saying, my dear Yuki?” She looked at him quizzically. “Did you decide you don’t want to see your big sister anymore? But you’re the one who called me here. You’re so selfish...”

Yukinari opened his mouth to say something—but then he closed it again, looking somehow disappointed. She thought he looked distinctly unhappy. Was he really that sad about this?

Yukinari stood silently for a time, searching desperately for the right words. But finally, all he could come up with was:

“You said you would kill everyone, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Just because I made some friends without you?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, smiling. But Yukinari, in fact, seemed upset by this.

“Please, stop, Hatsune. Please—I’m begging you. It doesn’t matter how many people I have around me. My big sister is the most important thing in the world to me.” Then he looked at the ground. “...Was the most important thing.”

“Past tense?”

He didn’t answer, so Hatsune decided to take this in the way she found most convenient.

“That makes me very happy. You’re more important than anything in the world to me, too, my dear Yuki.”

“In that case—”

“So let’s—just the two of us, together—die again.” Her smile as she spoke was so sweet and bright.

After a very long time, Yukinari said, “What...?” He had a completely dumbfounded look on his face; she took it for surprise. “H-Hatsune...?” He spoke as if he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “What do you mean... again?”

Apparently he hadn’t understood yet. That disappointed Hatsune very much. Perhaps dying had robbed Yukinari of his perspicacity. How much a person could change in such a short time. She concluded that the people of this world had been a very bad influence on Yukinari.

“No... You mean that fire...”

“Did you really do not know, my sweet Yuki?”

She looked at him as closely as she could. He looked like he might burst into tears at any moment.

“I set that fire.”

“Why?!” Yukinari’s voice was nearly a scream. “Why would you—”

“We were siblings. There was nowhere in that world that we could be happy, was there?”

However much, however deeply, they loved each other, society would never accept them. They would forever be branded aberrant. Especially when—

“I kept it a secret, but I... I was carrying your child, Yuki.”

“Wha—?!”

“When I realized that, I thought... You and me, and that child—there was nowhere on earth we could be truly happy. So I thought perhaps we could at least all die together. Then we could enter eternity together. We would never have to be apart. It’s true... That’s what I believed.”

Yukinari had frozen, his face pale. Hatsune smiled at him.

“Yes. It really was that simple. I wonder how you could have not noticed.”

He reflected on how foolish he had been. It was so simple...

“So, my dear Yuki, let’s die together. Once we stop time, we’ll be together forever. Our feelings won’t ever have to change. No one will have to come between us. We’ll be invincible. We’ll be two invincible lovers.”

Yukinari said nothing.

“But in order to do that, we have to get rid of the people who are too close to you. We mustn’t besmirch our eternity with impure things. If there’s someone around you, they might take you from me. So let’s die, somewhere where there’s no one else.”

Then Hatsune raised her right hand. A rapier emerged from her palm: first the tip, then the blade, and finally the hilt, which she grasped in her thin, white fingers.

“Our two spirals of time will come together into eternity. Like two cranes flying side by side, or two trees whose branches have grown together.”

Cranes were said never to part from each other once they had mated, and the image of the two trees was likewise a traditional expression for devoted lovers. Things which were two, but one. Phrases that referred to a man and woman whose love would endure forever. When she had first heard the expressions, Hatsune felt that a fog had lifted; it was as if the words had been created for her and Yukinari.

“Hatsune...” Yukinari was nearly groaning. “We’ve already died once. We aren’t siblings connected by blood in this world. We don’t need death to tie us together...”

In Hatsune’s estimation, this thinking was naïve in the extreme.

“But if we stay alive we might change our minds, or someone might come between us, right?”

In fact, just such a group of people had coalesced around Yukinari in this world. Even though he didn’t need anyone around him but her, nor she anyone but him.

“I’m telling you, that’s just—”

“If we die together, we don’t have to worry about that... right?”

She looked at her beloved brother, who seemed so at a loss, and smiled sweetly.

●

Yukinari found himself worried.

He had to bring down Hatsune. He knew that. Ever since he’d seen her stab Berta with his own eyes, there had been no more room for doubt. Hatsune was their killer. If he didn’t do something about her, who knew how many more victims there would be?

And yet... Yet.

Hatsune was Yukinari’s beloved older sister. And she was, most likely, the only other of “his kind” to be found in this world. The only other person possessing the powers of an angel but with their memories and sense of self intact. She had been his family; she shared his previous world.

So Yukinari worried whether, at the last extremity, his resolve would hold. He wondered, when he looked his sister in the eye, if he would be able to do what had to be done.

“Hatsune...”

He had loved her. As family. As a sibling. And as a woman.

He knew it had been a bad thing, and yet he didn’t want to use the word “mistake.” Hatsune had been the sole light in a life beset with a tormenting darkness, and he suspected he had been the same for her. But then the tenuous balance between them suddenly broke.

Amano Hatsune became pregnant.

It’s said that the hormonal changes that occur when a woman becomes pregnant can drastically affect her personality. It’s also said that young women are free to dream, but mothers must have their feet on the ground. Yukinari, as a man, obviously could not experience these psychological changes for himself. But finally their blaspheming of morals had led to the end of Yukinari and Hatsune’s honeymoon.

The sin of a blood brother loving his blood sister: that was what Hatsune was so desperate to purge, in the form of a lovers’ suicide.

Such, at least, was what Yukinari suspected.

“Dammit... Dammit!”

Was the abuse directed at his sister, or himself? It was certainly warranted, regardless. But—

“Hatsune!”

There was no going back now. There was no going home. He understood that with aching clarity.

Even as he pulled Durandall from his back, he moved toward Hatsune until he was at the most advantageous distance.

He just had to be careful not to get too close. Hatsune was using a sword. If he was near enough to use Durandall’s blade, he would be within range of her weapon as well. And Durandall was a gun—specifically, a carbine. It had a short barrel; it wasn’t accurate over long distances. It was chiefly designed to be easy to use, and it was unsuited to careful aiming.

Durandall’s strength as a weapon was that it could be utilized as a gun at any time. It had tactical flexibility. If he came too close, the gun part of the weapon would become ineffective. If they got close enough for their blades to meet, Yukinari would be at a disadvantage.

Confronted with this, Hatsune said, “What’s this? Dear Yuki.” She raised her arms as if she might give him a hug. She already held a rapier in her right hand; now her left palm glowed bluish-white, and soon she was holding another in that hand.

He was facing two rapiers.

What is she planning...?

Based on what he remembered from his previous world, rapiers were thin blades light enough to wield with a single hand, better for stabbing than cutting. Attacks with them were less a line than a point, and that left the user open when attacking. In order to guard against this vulnerability, fencing had developed an opening stance in which the body was held behind the sword while closing distance, leading into a lunge. Holding the sword in one hand and stretching the body out as far as possible was fundamental to this approach.

If a weapon was to be held in the off hand, it was usually a parrying dagger, or a small but tough blade called a main-gauche—something that would allow the fighter to intercept the enemy’s sword. It might be small, but it would be wide and difficult to break. Some even had special blades designed to entrap the opponent’s weapon. A few such devices even appeared to have fangs.

It didn’t matter. Holding a rapier in both hands was not very practical.

Or, it shouldn’t have been.

Is it because she’s an amateur fighter? But...

Hatsune was quite smart. She should have realized quickly how pointless it was to have a rapier in each hand.

And the distance...

Yes, and the distance. While Yukinari was carefully making sure he was at the optimal range, Hatsune had simply produced a couple of swords. She was watching Yukinari’s movements, but not making any attempt to get closer to him.

Maybe an amateur was an amateur, even with angel powers.

For better or for worse, Yukinari had experienced real battle in this world—contests to the death—again and again. In kendo, you could get your black belt if you could defeat someone in combat. From that perspective, Yukinari was a very high-level fighter. A master among masters.

“In that case, I might as well finish this as quick as I can!”

Finish this absurd fight between brother and sister.

Hatsune’s inexperience left Yukinari the possibility that he might overpower her without having to kill her, or so he hoped.

He took a step forward and cut with Durandall, throwing all his weight into the motion.

“Hrk!”

But Hatsune easily repelled the blow with the rapier in her left hand. The surprise threw Yukinari off-balance. Partly he was shocked by the strength with which she had met his attack, but he was also taken aback to see that the thin blade didn’t crack under the assault from Durandall.

Maybe it was made of more than just tempered steel.

“My dear Yuki.” Hatsune closed the distance immediately, stabbing with the sword in her right hand. She was aiming for his heart, but Yukinari dodged. The tip of the rapier grazed his shirt; he stumbled back at the sensation of it.

Yukinari took deep breaths, trying to calm his pulse and breathing, which were both fast with astonishment and agitation. She was no beginner. Or, rather, although Hatsune’s attacks were simple, they were blindingly fast. Yukinari realized now that his sister, who had spent so long changing her face, might well be better than he was at using the power of physical reconstitution to alter her own body. Muscular strength. Nerve enhancement. Improved perception. She showed the ineconomy of movement of an inexperienced fighter, but even a beginner, with enough basic power, could rise to challenge a master. Even the most talented karate fighter couldn’t take on a bear or a tiger barehanded and hope to win.

And she’s got other advantages...

Hatsune was physically small. Most of Yukinari’s opponents had been at least as large as he was or larger—some had even been giant. Erdgods. Demigods. Xenobeasts. The missionary knights. And of course, the statues of the guardian saint. He could attack blindly and still bank on hitting something.

But Hatsune, in the body of a young woman, was a head shorter than Yukinari. He found it surprisingly difficult to fight someone who was noticeably smaller than himself. He could hardly hope to fight from his knees.

“Sweet, sweet Yuki.”

As Yukinari stood trying to size up their respective advantages, Hatsune closed in and struck again.

She was so fast. But her attacks were basic.

“I can dodge you when I know what’s coming!” Yukinari shouted as he evaded three successive blows.

“Is that so?” She looked quizzical. The words showed that she was nowhere near her limit. Yukinari’s shout had been something of a show, an attempt to encourage himself, but Hatsune spoke as casually as if they were chatting over tea.

He couldn’t lose focus for a second. If he let his attention lapse for an instant, she might strike the fatal blow.

Yukinari grunted as he took the fourth strike. He raised his left hand and deliberately let the rapier stab it.

There was the pain, the shock, of having his hand pierced by steel. But Yukinari ignored it, pushing his left hand to the side. It took the sword with it, throwing Hatsune off her stance. That was Yukinari’s chance to strike with Durandall.

He felt something under the weapon. Probably her left shoulder, or thereabouts. The cut wasn’t deep enough to strike bone, but he felt it work through the flesh. This would prevent Hatsune from using her left arm...

“Why, my dear Yuki, that hurts.” As she spoke, Hatsune tossed aside the rapier in her right hand and clamped it over the wound in her shoulder. A bluish-white light, and the wound closed like a tear in some fabric.

“I see now...”

This was the first time he had fought another self-aware angel, and it made him realize just how inhuman, just how monstrous, he and his sister were. They could come back from nearly anything that didn’t kill them at a stroke. Cut off a hand or a leg, and they could simply regrow it. They could kill and kill and it would never end, could never end, an endless hell for the two of them alone. And what was more...

“My dear Yuki.” Hatsune produced a new rapier and began to attack again. She mostly stabbed at him, but sometimes, almost randomly, she would slice as well, so he couldn’t let his guard down. It was like a machine gun spitting a hail of bullets at him.

Yukinari didn’t sustain any serious injuries, but she grazed him repeatedly. And then, to his immense surprise, he felt his knees give out.

Somehow, he managed not to tumble to the ground.

“Wh-What the hell?!”

What had suddenly caused him to go so limp? He forced off a shot from Durandall to keep Hatsune at bay, then he retreated and tried to get a look at his body. Something strange had happened, there was no doubt. What in the world had it been?

He gasped. His wounds weren’t healed. They had stopped bleeding, but they should have repaired themselves—yet there they were. He had been focused on Hatsune, not paying much attention to his healing processes, so he hadn’t noticed.

What did this mean?

Hatsune stopped and spoke. “Oh, you’ve noticed?”

“What do you mean, noticed? Hatsune, what have you—” Was this some trap? “What have you done to me?”

“Oh, now I can’t just go giving it away.” She sounded as if she were chiding him for asking for the answers to his homework. “Try using your head.”

“You’ve... You’ve interrupted my powers somehow.”

“Certainly,” Hatsune said with a nod. “Just like those people with the horns that I found in Friedland. I stopped them from moving the same way. There was some strange power controlling them.”

“Horns—?”

She had to mean Ulrike and Yggdra’s other familiars. She’d stopped them from moving. Ulrike and the others were in something like a coma—so that had been Hatsune’s doing as well. But again, how...

“Is it... that sword?”

“Correct!” Hatsune said with a happy smile.

He had thought it was strange. She had to know Yukinari had a gun, and that she would need one, too, if she were going to fight him. Of course, unlike Yukinari, who had obsessively disassembled and reassembled his model guns, Hatsune didn’t know much about the construction of such weapons. She wasn’t likely to suddenly produce a Durandall or a Red Chili. But it was possible to make a single-shot weapon with nothing but a barrel and a firing device. An angel could easily produce a series of such disposable weapons. It wouldn’t exactly be a machine gun, but it would in practice be possible to fire successive shots.

And yet Hatsune hadn’t done it. She knew Yukinari would have a gun, and yet she had deliberately confronted him with a sword.

That suggested her sword was special.

“I call it the Blood Rose,” she said.

Now that she said the name, he noticed that, indeed, the hilt of the sword, which looked like a white cross, was worked with a pattern of roses red as blood. He had thought they were mere decoration, but he was wrong. They served some sort of purpose. Whatever they were, they could stop an angel’s powers from functioning, and sever the connection between Ulrike and Yggdra.

Angels and familiars had something in common—spiritual power. Most likely, the sword was capable of doing violence to the places of spiritual power in anyone it struck. Or perhaps absorbing the spiritual power of its victims.

Blood Rose... blood... Holy Oil... I get it!

The crimson alchemical liquid was capable of absorbing and storing spiritual power. It also served as the angels’ “blood.” If it could be quickly cycled, it would absorb unstable spiritual power, causing changes in the waves and concentrations of such power.

Meaning, if he were struck with this blade, Yukinari wouldn’t be able to heal himself as usual. Really, it would only slow down the function of his healing, but in light of the fact that Hatsune, also an angel, was capable of healing instantaneously, it could be the decisive difference.

Perhaps this was the great anti-erdgod weapon the True Church of Harris had ordered the alchemists to create. The problem of an opponent’s speed and sheer physical strength would remain, but with that weapon a single person could potentially face down a xenobeast or a demigod.

“My dear Yuki...” Hatsune jumped at him, as sure a strike as if she had transformed into an arrow. Yukinari twisted out of the way, but the rapier stabbed him in his foot, which he hadn’t been able to move in time.

“Hrgh...!”

“Dear, dear Yuki. You mustn’t lose your focus,” Hatsune said, smiling sweetly.

Yukinari reeled backward, and although he had escaped from the rapier, no matter how hard he concentrated, his wounds didn’t seem to heal. His powers were agonizingly slow to activate. It was all he could do to stop the bleeding.

This was bad. This was very bad.

“Dammit...!”

He hopped backward, opening distance. Yukinari was hard-pressed; he had been fighting a singularly defensive battle for some time now. If Hatsune had been more interested in finishing the fight, he might already be dead. It looked like Hatsune was still enjoying her long-awaited reunion with her brother.

“Sweet Yuki. I do love you,” Hatsune said placatingly as she came closer. She stabbed repeatedly with the rapier, left and right, almost like a hail of bullets. “With all my heart. Won’t you die with me?”

“Grrh! You—!”

He swept the strikes away and fired Durandall. He didn’t have time to aim carefully, but given the close range he was still able to plant the .44 Magnum bullet square in Hatsune’s chest.

She stumbled back, and a large red splotch like a blossoming flower appeared on her white dress.

But an instant later, like a clockwork doll, she sprang forward as quickly as she had retreated. Her dress was torn and stained with blood—no, with Holy Oil—but there was no sign of a wound on her exposed skin. It had vanished almost instantaneously.

“Hrk...”

The rain of blows began again. He couldn’t forestall her movements. He was somehow able to avoid taking any strikes to his heart, his neck, his head, or his other most vital places, but shallow gouges appeared in his arms and legs. His movements slowed, making it all the more difficult to respond to the continued attacks.

The gun wasn’t having much effect. It would be one thing if he’d had an anti-personnel rifle that could shred a person to pieces from point-blank range, but even his Magnum was ultimately a handgun—it barely had the energy to blow Hatsune back, and her injuries healed immediately. Yukinari could see that it would hardly be useful even to buy him time.

Yukinari’s weapon allowed him to both shoot and cut, and that should have given him more strategic options and with them the advantage—but things were not turning out the way he’d expected.

“My dear Yuki. Dear, sweet Yuki,” Hatsune chanted, like a lullaby, like a spell, always attacking. Yukinari was on the back foot now; he had no opportunity to use either his gun or his blade. The two rapiers that he had dismissed as an amateur mistake early on now made terrifying sense. Hatsune didn’t need to repel her enemy’s attacks; hence a main-gauche or other defensive accessory was unnecessary. Neither did she need to reach in from outside her opponent’s range to strike. Simply by lashing out with the Blood Roses, wounding her opponent a little bit at a time, she would ultimately emerge victorious.

All she needed to do was harry her enemy, and that was what the second rapier was for.

“Hrr... Gah...”

Slowly, oh so slowly, the swords chipped away at Yukinari. Several times he tried to force an opening for his gun, but either his shots went wide, or they landed and Hatsune immediately healed herself. Durandall’s magazine was soon exhausted, and of course there was no time to reload.

Finally Yukinari could hardly hold himself up any longer; his legs gave out, and he collapsed where he was.

“Giving up already?” Hatsune asked, cocking her head quizzically. “In that case, I’m going to cut off your limbs, okay, Yuki?”

Her kindly-older-sister smile didn’t slip for an instant as she spoke.

“Otherwise, you’re just going to get violent again, aren’t you? We really have to be together when we die this time, so I’m going to pierce us both through the head with the Blood Rose.”

Logically, she was right. The brain was what allowed an angel to control its powers; stab it through with a sword that was specifically created to suppress those powers, and even an angel would certainly die.

“My dear Yuki. I love you,” Hatsune said, and raised her rapier.

This was bad. She was going to kill him.

But even as the thought occurred to him...

Boom.

“...What?” This time Hatsune was the one to sound uncomprehending. A second later, Yukinari’s vision was drenched with dripping blood—no, Holy Oil. He saw Hatsune collapse even as he rose to his feet.

“Hatsune...” Yukinari blinked. Then he turned around—and there was Dasa, Red Chili in hand.

●

Dasa rushed toward them.

She was carrying Red Chili. She had prepared Derrringer as well, but presumably the shot had come from this “sniper handgun.” Derrringer was powerful, and accurate over long distances, but it wasn’t built to track a moving enemy at close range.

Yukinari and Hatsune’s hand-to-hand battle had probably left Dasa without a shot until that moment. But then Yukinari had fallen down, and Hatsune had stopped moving. It wasn’t what Yukinari had wanted, but it gave Dasa an opening.

“Yuki... Are you all right...?!” She came to his side and reached out to help him up.

“Yeah... Mostly. I think.”

The wounds caused by the Blood Rose were slow to heal, but even so, they got better much faster than those of a normal human. At least, so he expected—he would have to use his angel powers again to be sure.

“You saved my neck. I was hoping to finish things by myself, but...”

“S...orry,” Dasa said, eyes downcast.

“Don’t apologize. You really saved me. I appreciate it.” Without Dasa’s sharpshooting, Yukinari would probably be dead right now.

“Hatsune...” He turned to the shattered shell of his sister. He had made Dasa shoot her. He had made Dasa kill her. That much, he deeply regretted.

Dasa had declared that she would kill Hatsune for her own reasons, but Yukinari presumed she had said this in part so that she couldn’t go back on her word. By saying it to him, she firmed up her own resolve. In a different sense, Dasa probably didn’t hate Hatsune enough to genuinely want to kill her.

Dasa wasn’t very expressive, nor always socially adroit—but she was kind at heart. Yukinari knew that well.

Yukinari had said that he would be the one to kill his sister, but when it came to it, he couldn’t deny that he had felt some hesitation. As flawed as Hatsune’s logic had clearly been, she was still his sister and had still loved him—enough to want to die with him.

But that was all the more reason why it should have been Yukinari who finished her off.

After all, Yukinari had been part of the reason Hatsune broke. He had loved her as well, so much so that it wasn’t clear which of them had sought the other first, and once he had accepted that they were something more than brother and sister to each other, Yukinari bore at least half the blame. It should have been his to finish what he had started.

And he had left Dasa to do it. It was pathetic, and he felt terrible.

“Is it... over?” Dasa asked, looking at the fallen Hatsune.

“Yeah. A shot through the brainpan? I’m pretty sure...”

Unlike a sword, a wound from a bullet did more than simply disrupt bodily systems with a foreign object. Particularly with the sort of soft-point rounds loaded into Red Chili, the bullet dispersed its kinetic energy by shattering. The tip of the bullet was hardly larger than the tip of a pinky finger, but a direct hit to the skull could effectively produce a fist-sized hole. It would be more than enough to shred the brain within, leaving nothing intact to direct the body.

“Oh, hey. I guess Angela’s still chained up, isn’t she?” Yukinari said. He needed something else to think about right now, desperately, or he would only sink deeper into depression.

He held Dasa’s shoulder—or rather, leaned on her for support as they returned to the sanctuary.

“Let’s grab her and go home. Friedland’s waiting for—”

That was as far as he got.

He thought he saw something move at the edges of his vision, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t see anything in particular. There was nothing there.

There was nothing there.

Including Hatsune’s body.

“H-Hatsune...?”

“Are you surprised?” she asked. She was sitting amongst the branches of a large tree nearby.

She was no dream and no illusion. Her plain dress was spattered with blood—or rather, Holy Oil. Dasa’s shot had obviously landed. In the head, most likely. Otherwise, why would she have collapsed?

Yukinari gulped. Hatsune’s face—there was a gunshot wound in her forehead. It was unmistakable. There were even traces of Holy Oil dribbling from it. And yet Hatsune was alive. She was moving and talking.

What was going on here...?

“I knew you use guns, my dear Yuki.” Hatsune smiled as if she were revealing how to do a magic trick. “So I replaced the bones in my head with titanium.”

“Defensive plates...?”

Titanium alloy was a metal originally prized for its superb defensive properties. It was light, resistant to damage, and due to its combination of rigidity and viscosity as a metal, it did well dispersing the impact from gunshots.

It was unlikely that Hatsune was aware of the precise protective qualities of titanium, but its lightness and ability to endure harsh environments led to its frequent use in strengthening human internals—for example, in the form of pins used to hold together broken bones. Perhaps she had figured that if it was good enough for a bone, it was good enough for an entire skull.

Yukinari really had been naïve. His opponent was the same as he was, in every possible way. Her abilities as an angel, her knowledge from their previous world—Yukinari and Hatsune had no equals except each other. In other words, the superiority Yukinari had possessed before was now gone.

But...

“Here,” Hatsune said. “You should have aimed here.” She was pointing at her eye. She was right: a bullet to the eye would have had a good chance of destroying the soft flesh and reaching the brain behind it.

“You’re right,” Yukinari said. He gave a little push, hefting himself off Dasa’s shoulder. He took a wide stance as he looked up at Hatsune. “I was naïve. I underestimated you.”

“Yuki? What’s wrong, dear brother?”

“On top of that, I let Dasa do my dirty work.”

“Yuki...?” Dasa looked at him in surprise, but he was focused entirely on Hatsune.

“This time I’m coming at you with everything I’ve got. Get ready, dear sister.”

Yukinari stepped forward and focused his concentration. Perhaps the effects of the Blood Rose were wearing off, because other than a moment’s hesitation in a corner of his heart, the transformation went smoothly. With every step he took, the light covered more and more of him, enveloping his body. From his toes to his knees. From his knees to his waist. From his waist to his chest, and then to his head, the blue steel armor covered him, until finally a line ran across his back and wings with feathers like crystal appeared. The heat produced by physical reconstitution radiated from him in a haze.

The Bluesteel Blasphemer.

Nightmare of the Harris Church, protector of Friedland.

A superhuman capable of bringing down even the gods.

“Is this the famous ‘Blue Angel’?”

“Yeah. I’ll be able to use my full power this way.”

By enclosing himself in a sort of “mold,” Yukinari could focus all his spiritual power on physical reconstitution without having to worry about retaining his own form. The armor also provided a boost to his defense in hand-to-hand combat and would help him resist the Blood Rose.

He should have assumed this form to begin with. Even if it meant meeting his sister in an inhuman form—he should have ignored his qualms and fought with everything he had.

I assume Hatsune can do the same thing, though...

So he had no time to waste. Yukinari dropped to one knee, planting his right hand on the ground.

Physical reconstitution. He was creating something he had already made once, so it was easy.

Hatsune looked startled.

Yukinari plunged his fingers into the earth, seeking sediment with which to build before withdrawing the completed object and setting it at his feet. It was long and thick—an anti-armor rocket. He had used one to defeat the statue of the guardian saint that Arlen’s unit had brought.

Hatsune was capable of healing herself. Yukinari had no equivalent to the Blood Rose—so his only option was to extinguish her in a single fell swoop. This was not the sort of weapon one would normally use against an individual opponent, but against an angel who could continually heal herself so long as she had spiritual power remaining, there was no such thing as overkill.

“Okay, Hatsune, get r—”

“Yuki? Sweetheart?” Hatsune, still smiling, was looking at him in mild puzzlement from the tree. Her whole body began to exude a bluish-white light. All of it. Chances were that she, like Yukinari, was abandoning her human form in search of something better to fight with.

But...

“You know... This body. It was created in order to defeat you, my dear Yuki. So the True Church of Harris showed me a number of different weapons. There were no guns, but there really was quite a range. They showed me how they were built, too.”

The light spread to tree she was sitting on. No—more than that. Even the earth around its roots was caught up in a vortex of the light of transmutation, gathering around Hatsune. This was no simple physical reconstitution. She must be—

“Hatsune...!”

The earth itself gave a great roar. Hatsune’s act of reconstitution spared not even the sky in its lust for material. Yukinari quickly tried to fire the rocket he had created, but the earth blocked his vision, and the whirling air kept him from taking careful aim.

The world turned gray. He could see a bizarre silhouette looming behind the curtain of dust.

Yukinari reeled. The storm ceased as suddenly as it had started. And then...

“I’m ready now, my dear Yuki.”

It was no longer Hatsune who was speaking to him. It was something in a humanoid shape with metal skin. As far as it went, that made it similar to Yukinari’s Bluesteel Blasphemer form. But Hatsune’s transformation went beyond mere armor.

She had changed her entire body. She was five—no, maybe six meters tall. Perhaps it was all the earth she had consumed in this transformation that accounted for the crater more than ten meters in diameter that surrounded her. The metal giant stood at the bottom of it.

“A guardian saint statue...?!”

Or rather, a variant of one—an evolution. The basic design was much the same as the statues; the biggest change was from the chest upward. It didn’t have the statues’ normal head, but rather a profusion of steel pipes folding into a ball, at the center of which was Hatsune’s face. The appearance was as if the giant had swallowed her.

No, wait... This is...

It might have been made of metal, but it looked very much like an erdgod or demigod. One that had grown exponentially in size. Hatsune was presumably controlling it as the core.

Hatsune’s face began to sink into the giant, replaced by yet more armor. But as she disappeared, she said:

“Now, my dear Yuki, let’s continue.”

“Hrgh...!” Yukinari didn’t wait another second before firing his rocket. But the metal giant dodged with an agility out of all proportion to its size. In fact, it reached out its hand and pressed the cannon against its palm.

There was a great crunching of steel on steel as the front half of the barrel crumpled. It was a disposable weapon good for only one shot, but Hatsune didn’t know that; she wanted to make sure he couldn’t use it again.

“Whoa!” Yukinari tossed the cannon aside and scrambled backward, trying to escape the giant’s hand as it grabbed at him. The palm, several times larger than a human being, could practically have passed for heavy machinery by itself. Just to be grabbed by it would have been enough to crush a normal human. Even in his Bluesteel Blasphemer form, he wasn’t sure he could withstand it.

There was a roar of splitting air as the massive hand closed on nothing. Yukinari tried to put more distance between himself and his opponent, but the giant pursued him with remarkable speed. Yukinari danced through the air, but he was unable to evade the huge hand.

In a flash, he produced gunpowder on his palm. He faced the incoming appendage with his right hand outstretched, using his left to keep the gunpowder in place. The moment the metal hand touched him, he detonated it.

There was an explosion, his hand and the giant’s blown apart from each other. It was explosive reactive armor: the force of the blast helped blunt the impact of the giant’s hand while at the same time allowing him to get some space. The idea had come to him in a rush, but it seemed to have worked.

“She’s so fast...”

Because of the giant’s appearance, he had mistakenly assumed that its movements would be like those of a statue of the guardian saint. But this was something entirely different.

Guardian saint statues made very quick individual movements, but it wasn’t possible to connect them smoothly. Each movement was sent to the tuning forks on the statue’s back via control melodies, agitating the Holy Oil within the statue and causing it to move. It was like a puppet controlled with sound instead of strings.

Movements that had been determined ahead of time could be executed readily, but once a statue had to react to a changing situation, the time it took to decide on the orders, translate them into sound, communicate them, and then for the statue to react made it a much more tenuous process.

But Hatsune’s metal giant lacked any of those flaws. Hatsune was its brain, controlling the huge body directly. Yukinari didn’t know exactly how the thing moved, but it seemed to be somehow directly related to Hatsune’s movements, like a sort of powered exoskeleton.

“That ain’t very fair!” It was huge, powerful—and yet fast. It didn’t seem to provide him any opening.

Yukinari tried to get some distance, but with its massive stride, the giant could catch him up easily. He tried to zig and zag, using nearby plants for cover, but it didn’t bother the giant. Any trees in its way it broke in half—or simply dissolved.

Yes: the giant could use Hatsune’s powers. That meant it could heal most damage that was done to it, or produce a sword or spear should the mood take it.

Maybe I could use physical reconstitution to make a pit or something? No, it’s no use.

When Angela’s missionary unit had attacked Friedland, Yukinari had found a pit trap to be useful against a statue of the guardian saint. But that had been exactly because it was no more than a puppet being controlled from afar. With Hatsune, he could dig a five-meter pit and she would probably just climb out of it. It might buy him a modicum of time... but he would have to stop moving in order to prepare it, and could well be attacked in the meantime.

What do I do, then...?

An instant’s hesitation—a catastrophic mistake. The gigantic metal hand grabbed him.

“Gaahh!”

The armor in which he had encased himself gave an ear-splitting screech; he could feel the hand pressing down even from within his suit. He thought he could hear his own bones creaking.

This was bad. If he were to be crushed, it would take a very long time to heal himself. More than enough opportunity for Hatsune to stab him through the head with the Blood Rose.

“Yuki...!” Dasa fired Red Chili, but against the metal armor the handgun meant nothing. It left a small scuff, barely. If she had been using Derrringer, which had been designed to deal with armored opponents—the statues of the guardian saint, specifically—then things might have been at least a little different. Unfortunately, Dasa had no time to go back and fetch her Derrringer from the sanctuary.

She let off six shots in the blink of an eye, an expression of despair coming over her face. She fished extra rounds out of her pocket, but it spoke to how panicked she was that she could hardly load them, instead dropping them on the ground.

“Yuki... Yuki...!”

“Get... Get away!” Yukinari shouted, but Dasa didn’t listen. Instead she ran toward the giant’s foot and flung Red Chili aside. She began beating on the foot with her fists. Obviously, she couldn’t so much as scratch the metal that way. She had gone half mad seeing Yukinari about to be killed.

“Excuse me? You’re in the way.” The giant kicked its foot in annoyance, sending Dasa flying through space.

“Dasaaaaa!”

The blow carried her several meters, until she landed among the branches of some nearby trees. She appeared to be alive—because she had been so close to the foot, it was less like being kicked and more like being thrown—but all she could do was tremble amongst the branches, unable to move.

“You need to die first,” Hatsune said. “I won’t let you die together with my dear Yuki.” Then she raised the giant’s right hand. A single strike from it would surely kill the other girl.

“Stop! Stop, Hatsune! Dasa isn’t—”

“Hush. You need only have eyes for me, sweet Yuki.” She was smiling as she spoke.

And then—

A gunshot rang out.

At the same time, sparks exploded from the giant’s shoulder.

Dasa hadn’t fired, nor had the bullet come from Red Chili.

It was a Derrringer.

And the line of fire... seemed to come from the direction of Friedland.

“It can’t be...” Immediately, Yukinari looked toward the observation platform.

His sanctuary sat in the place that was once home to the ritual, the ceremony in which living sacrifices were offered up to the erdgod. An observation platform had been built not far away so the priests could make sure everything went off smoothly. That was where the shot had come from.

He looked, his vision enhanced by his Bluesteel Blasphemer form, and he could just barely make out a familiar shape.

“Arlen?!”

He could see Fiona beside Arlen, as well. She must have been there to help him, because she appeared to be holding an extra Derrringer.

It looked like there were two more people who weren’t going to listen to what he said...

I’m not one of your believers, so I don’t have to follow your orders!

He could practically hear Arlen’s words in his ears.

Arlen couldn’t shoot nearly as well as Berta, of course. But for better or for worse, there was no missing a target this big. Arlen planted another round into the giant’s shoulder, and then Fiona handed him the second gun.

Maybe it was because he kept shifting position, but his aim wasn’t very consistent; he would hit the creature in the head, then the shoulder. Then he would miss with a shot...

But no matter. He had stopped Hatsune from crushing Dasa. In fact, Hatsune kept having to move right and left to dodge the bullets, using her left arm to cover her chest and then her head—in other words, the places where the machine was joined to her body. It seemed like it was causing her great deal of trouble.

She might have been able to ignore Dasa’s Red Chili, even from close range, but Derrringer’s sniper rounds appeared to nettle her. She was taking care to evade or defend against them.

“No way...”

Still clutched in her right hand, Yukinari focused on the sparks. Suddenly, he realized he could see tiny holes in the armor all around the giant’s body.

Derrringer uses armor-piercing rounds. That’s why...

As we’ve said, Derrringer was originally designed to counter the statues of the guardian saint; hence it was created with anti-armor properties. Due to the extremely long barrel, the explosive power from the charge could be converted into muzzle velocity without any waste, and the tips of the bullets also had a pointed, armor-piercing shape and smooth surface. Thus, they were capable of making holes in the giant’s armor even from a great distance.

Arlen tenaciously continued sniping. At a glance, it looked like he was merely making sparks fly off the giant’s armor, but in fact he was slowly but surely producing a series of tiny holes. And since Hatsune had to defend against the assault, she had to put off killing Dasa or Yukinari.

It was unlikely that the giant was equipped with any long-range weaponry. So even if the sniper shots weren’t doing serious damage, her armor was exposed to a unilateral attack.

Not all of the sniper shots pierced the giant’s armor. Some came in at too shallow an angle and simply bounced off. Others only scratched the surface.

But this giant, mobile humanoid contraption that it was, did not have perfectly uniform armor. There were presumably places that could be destroyed by Derrringer, such as the joints, or the organs that were cycling Holy Oil to help it move. Weak or vital points. Hatsune certainly wouldn’t want any of those to be damaged. Yukinari assumed she could repair them, but she would be vulnerable while doing so.

This turned out to be a spectacular way of stopping Hatsune cold despite her having the powers of an angel, which should have made her more potent than any human being. No matter how large something was, the person controlling it could only focus on one thing at a time.

“Well, all right then.” Yukinari twisted around, placing a hand on one of the giant’s fingers.

He used physical reconstitution—or rather, simple dissolution.

The finger went limp, its joints destroyed. Yukinari forced his way out of the hand’s grip. He moved to the arm, then grabbed onto the giant’s chest. He dissolved the top layer of armor there as a starting point, then went on breaking things down. Hatsune immediately tried to repair herself, but with Arlen peppering her with sniper rounds, she couldn’t muster enough focus to stop Yukinari.

Using his powers of physical reconstitution, Yukinari began to bore into the metal giant. The creature twisted, attempting to pluck him out, plunging its hand into its own wound, but the metal monster lacked the flexibility of living flesh. Its hand got caught on its own armor and couldn’t reach him.

What a strange feeling, Yukinari reflected briefly. He was practically among the monster’s organs. He was literally inside Hatsune’s body.

If Hatsune were to use all her angel powers in reverse—essentially, to focus everything she had on dissolution—then she and Yukinari both would be turned to dust.

That meant he had to end this before the idea occurred to her. At length...

“Hatsune.”

The feel of the “digging” changed. Yukinari forced himself into the space his hand had found—and there was Hatsune’s face. Her body was all but buried in a mess of metal pipes, several of which pierced her flesh. Perhaps, by sharing Holy Oil with this beast, she was able to extend her senses to the giant itself.

She was utterly unable to resist. The structure she had created to control the giant was also her cage. Of course, she could attempt to remove her arms and legs from the giant by force, but at this range Yukinari would never allow her to do it.

“Hatsune...” Yukinari reached out and brushed aside her bangs, her forehead slick with sweat. It was an achingly familiar face; his sister as she had looked when they were young. He stroked her lovely cheeks and forehead tenderly—and then he brought up the Red Chili he had formed in his left hand and pressed the barrel to Hatsune’s head.

The chamber was loaded with an armor-piercing round. He had triple-charged the shot, using three times as much gunpowder as normal. This bullet would cut through anything, titanium or not. Even if the bullet was somehow stopped, the shockwave wouldn’t be.

He cocked the hammer.

“Hatsune... I’m sorry.”

He wanted those to be his last words to her. But then...

“...Mn. Thank you.”

She spoke at the same instant that the hammer was coming down, that the gun was firing.

Yukinari was shocked. Why had she said that? But his question could not stop the gun.

The gunshot roared inside the metal giant, reverberating from every surface. At the same instant as blood sprayed out of the back of Hatsune’s head, the giant went limp, slowly collapsing to its knees before it began to fall apart piece by piece.

With a series of great crashes, its armor came off and its structure began to disintegrate, the pieces of it falling apart around Yukinari’s ears. He dragged Hatsune out from her place at the heart of the giant machine, and atop what was now a mountain of metal junk, he asked: “Why? Why...? Why would you say thank you? I knew you must have been brainwashed...”

“Who... me...? Of course not...” The words dripped hesitantly from her lips, along with blood-like Holy Oil. The red liquid leaking from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth was a sign of how severely she had been injured by the shockwave as it passed through her—but miraculously, she still retained a measure of consciousness.

“I just had... poison... in me...”

“What...?”

“My life in this world... was only ever going to be... six months or so.”

She had made her decision to die once—but then she had been brought back to life in this world. Ordered to kill her beloved brother, and with only six months to live at that. And so...

“I thought it might be nice... if we could die together...”

Was she talking about their previous world? Or this one?

“You could have just neutralized it with your angel powers!”

“I couldn’t... It was mixed into the Holy Oil... flowing through my body...”

“No...”

“Don’t make... that face.” Hatsune smiled, her features covered in blood. “The best thing for me... would have been to die with you, my dear Yuki... But if that’s not possible... then, at least to die by your hand...”

“That’s ridiculous...”

“Yes... I suppose it is...”

Hatsune convulsed. Or was that laughter?

“Sweet Yuki... I died in that world... and only my soul came here, right? I was reborn into a new body, wasn’t I...?”

“Yeah. That’s what it sounds like.”

“What about my baby...?”

“What?”

“Our child... I wasn’t able to give birth to it, but do you suppose... it’s been reborn here... too...?”

Yukinari found himself unable to speak. He had never even considered it. But if babies—if fetuses—had souls, too...

“If it... has... then, Yuki... If you find that child... make it happy... the way you made... me happy.”

“Hatsune—”

“Tell it... its mother says... sorry.”

There was nothing more Yukinari could say. He hated himself for not having known. He was angry at himself for having been unable to do anything.

“My dear Yuki... My dear, sweet... Yuki...”

It seemed the miraculous time they had been granted was almost up; Hatsune’s voice was fading.

“A sister...” A soft voice spoke suddenly. “...ought to be separated from her brother one day.”

“Dasa...”

The girl with the glasses looked expressionlessly down at Hatsune—at the angel who looked so much like her. Her words may have sounded ruthless, but—

“You’re... right. I’ll... sleep, now...” For some reason, Hatsune was smiling. “I’m sorry.”

Those were the last words she spoke. Just as she had said she would, she closed her eyes as if sleeping, and then ceased to move. Even through his armor, Yukinari could feel the warmth seeping out of her, her spiritual power dispersing.

“Dammit...”

This word of regret was the only one he could summon. What Hatsune had done was unforgivable, and her logic was something he could never accept. And yet, she had been his family, the person he had loved most, and the only other one like him in this world. How could his heart not ache to have her torn away from him again?

Why hadn’t they been able to speak differently in this brief life she’d been given here? Why hadn’t they been able to live differently?

Wracked with regret, all Yukinari could do was weep.

●

It was two days later that Berta regained consciousness. Ulrike and the other familiars of Yggdra, whether because Hatsune was now dead or because the effect had a built-in time limit, also began moving again.

The murder victims, though—the townspeople Hatsune had killed. They, of course, didn’t come back. Hatsune was buried by the sanctuary, as a nightmarish killer, the people of the town never learning the truth. The story Yukinari told the civilians was that he had used his glory as a god to “seal” her away so that the awful murderer would never return.

It took time, but Friedland slowly returned to normal. And then, three days later...

“I’m sorry for calling you all here so suddenly.”

Yukinari was in the reception room of the Schillings mansion, surrounded by familiar faces. Dasa, Berta, Fiona, Veronika, Arlen, Hans of the community watch—and now Angela, who had begun to obey what Yukinari told her to do. He looked around at all of them before he spoke again:

“I’m going to fight the True Church of Harris.”

Fiona and the others looked at each other.

“Fight?” the deputy mayor asked on behalf of the group. “You mean... do more than you have so far, just rebuffing them when they attack?”

“That’s right. I’m not saying I’m going to run off and attack the capital or anything. But I am going to do more than just turtle down. I’m going to gather the power to purposefully resist the Church, and when the opportunity presents itself, I’m going to fight them.”

“And what’s brought about this change of heart?”

“Revenge. Or, well... I just want to hit back,” he said firmly.

“Yukinari...” Fiona looked weary. To the people in this room, unlike to the rest of the villagers, Yukinari had explained, sparing no detail, the connection between himself and Hatsune and what had really happened in that last battle. So on the one hand, it was easy enough for them to imagine what might motivate him to revenge.

“That’s not true. Yuki made this decision for everyone’s sake,” Dasa said.

“Dasa,” Yukinari said.

“It’s a bad habit of his.” She looked up at him. “He’s only trying... To make it easier to let... you go.”

“What...?” asked Berta, surprised.

Dasa looked around again, then went on. “If he claims he’s doing this for his own revenge, he can go... without any of you getting... involved.”

“I kind of figured as much.” Veronika sighed and shook her head. “If there’s one thing this incident makes clear, it’s that the Harris Church isn’t going to hold back trying to kill you, Yukinari. It’s not like it was with you, Arlen Lansdowne, or you, Angela Jindel. Even the people of Friedland are going to be considered expendable from here on out.”

“That’s...” Arlen and Angela looked at each other.

The Missionary Order had ultimately come to this town in order to convert its populace—to make them into followers of the True Church of Harris. They had not tolerated any resistance, but neither had they been eager to murder civilians.

“The teachings of the True Church of Harris might be perfectly valid,” Arlen said. “But the church that’s been built upon them—the people who run it—they end up making decisions that kill people.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Yukinari said with a sad smile. “I don’t know what the latest Dominus Doctrinae is like, but I don’t think he has the right to teach anybody or offer anyone salvation. That’s my take, anyway.”

If the True Church of Harris had been a real religion—teaching people the right way to live, holding out a hand to help them to salvation—if that had been their real mission, then they should have saved Hatsune. Should have told her to abandon her fixations from her previous world and live in peace. Yet, though they saw that there was a sick soul before them, instead of trying to save her, they tried to take advantage of her.

And such people controlled this world’s largest religious organization. That had to be dangerous. Who knew what merciless and underhanded things they might do next in their attempts to stop Yukinari, to say nothing of his supporters in Friedland? Yukinari didn’t intend to simply roll over and let them have their way.

Then there was the possibility that similar things would happen in other towns where erdgods were venerated. In order to bolster its prestige and increase the number of its followers, the True Church of Harris was prepared to arm itself and to send that armed force wherever it could. Surely other towns would resist, as Friedland and Rostruch had done.

Yukinari didn’t want to let any more Friedlandians die.

It wasn’t just Friedland: he didn’t want to see any more people killed on account of the Church. But no matter how hard he tried to protect everyone, he had no way of defending against attacks like the one the Church had launched with Hatsune. That was why...

“As long as we’re fighting an organization, the resistance needs to be organized as well,” Veronika said.

“You’re right,” said Yukinari. “That’s why I’m going to go from area to area raising forces, and then I’ll try to resist the capital. It’s also true, though, that it was the events with Hatsune that gave me the idea. So this is a private battle, too, spurred on by personal enmity. You all know that, so you all—especially you, Arlen and Angela, because you’re knights of the Missionary Order—have the right to ignore what I say. Fiona, if you don’t want the people of this town to get caught up in my little war, feel free to refuse.”

“Is that what you’ve been thinking?” Fiona nodded, as if it finally made sense to her.

“If we’re going to make our move, we should do it as soon as possible. I’m sorry to hurry you,” he said to the collected audience, “but I’d appreciate if you could tell me by tomorrow morning whether you’re going to join me in this or stay out.” Then he left the room.

As he walked down the hallway, cold air and twilight filtering in through the window, Yukinari let out a small sigh.

“Yuki.”

He turned to see Dasa leaving the room behind him and coming his way.

“Dasa... I’m sorry.” He looked vacantly out the window as he spoke.

“Yuki...?”

“In the end, I’m putting my own emotions ahead of protecting you.”

Protecting Dasa: it was supposed to be the one and only thing guiding Yukinari’s actions in this world. But now he was placing the protection of many over the protection of this one.

“Yuki...” Dasa came up to stand beside him and reached out her hand.

“Dasa.”

“Yuki. I love you.” She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

They stayed like that for a long moment. Then she said, “I’m... happy. If I can help with what you want... to do, that makes me... happy.” She backed away from him again and went on: “Yuki. I’m not... your little sister. I’m not just a child who always needs... your protection. I will help you... for my own reasons... For my own happiness. If you want to care... for me, if you want to make me happy... then let me help you.”

She seemed to be declaring that they were partners, equals. That she no longer needed him to watch over her constantly.

For a time, Yukinari looked into Dasa’s eyes. Then:

“Sounds good. The two of us together. Until death do we part—no.” He laughed a little and corrected himself. “Even when we part at death, we’ll be together.”

“...Mn.” Dasa nodded, blushing ever so slightly.

They had no way of knowing how things would be twenty years from that night.

How the Frontier Alliance, led by Yukinari, at the end of a grueling war with the royal army, which was completely under the thumb of the True Church of Harris, would finally reach accord and peace.

How at that time, the alchemists and the existence of the Founder, the first homunculus, would come to light, sending shockwaves throughout the world. How Yukinari and Dasa would be responsible for a wholesale change in this world’s values.

No, they couldn’t know yet. All that was in the future.