Chapter 5

Savage Sandalphon

The time was six PM. The orange light of the evening sun illuminated the cluster of buildings in front of Tengu Station.

A boy and a girl walked through the small park up on high with an exquisite view of this scene. There was nothing particularly special about the boy. He was an average high school student. But the girl…

“Heh.” Ryouko Kusakabe licked her lips as she narrowed her eyes. “Ninety-eight point five percent match. This is definitely no coincidence.”

A Spirit. A world-killing catastrophe. A young woman of the same type of the ultimate, evil calamity that scorched this very planet thirty years earlier and caused a large fire five years prior.

“…”

However, the figure Ryouko had her eyes on was just a cute girl at the moment.

“Permission to shoot?” came a quiet—or rather, penetratingly cold—voice from behind Ryouko.

She didn’t need to look back to know it was Origami.

Like Ryouko, she was wearing a wiring suit with a thruster unit, and in her right hand, she held Cry Cry Cry, an anti-Spirit rifle as long as she was tall.

“…Hasn’t come down yet,” Ryouko told her. “They said to remain on standby. The bigwigs are probably still discussing it.”

“Oh.” Origami nodded, seeming neither relieved nor dejected.

Ten AST members, including Ryouko and Origami, were standing by in two-person cells in a one-kilometer circle from the park where the Spirit was. Their cell was on a plateau currently being developed into a residential area even farther off from the city than the park. Although trucks and cranes came and went constantly during the day, it was quiet at this time in the evening.

A few hours earlier, the brass had decided that yes, the girl Origami saw was a Spirit, and they’d given permission to launch the CR units immediately.

Apparently, the minister of defense or the chief of staff or someone was still uncertain about what exactly they should do. Their options were basically to launch an attack or hold off.

No spacequake had been detected, so the alarm was silent, which meant that none of the residents had evacuated. If the Spirit ran wild now, they’d suffer serious casualties.

That said, however, sounding the alarm now was likely to incite the Spirit, which was definitely not good. The situation was not ideal.

However…

“This is a good opportunity,” Origami said, her tone as dispassionate as usual.

Just as she noted, this was also a chance for them—because the Spirit hadn’t materialized her Astral Dress. She wasn’t wearing the external shell that turned the Spirit into a powerful, ultimate, peerless creature, the way the Territories did for Ryouko and her team. It was plenty possible that they could actually hit her if they struck now.

Unfortunately, this was a possibility at best. They needed to deliver a lethal blow with one strike, which was why Origami was carrying the nonstandard equipment of the anti-Spirit rifle.

The gunner cried out, the projectile squealed, and the target shrieked in the agony of death. Thus: Cry Cry Cry. Or CCC, for short. The gun had such powerful recoil that it would break the shooter’s arm and knock their wits right out of their head if their Territory wasn’t deployed.

Ryouko didn’t really think they would get to use such a powerful weapon. “I wonder if the bigwigs would actually give us permission to fire in this situation, since they’re on the fence.”

“If they don’t, we’ve got a problem,” Origami replied.

“…Well, given the sitch, that’s true,” Ryouko agreed. “But I think it has to do with who’s responsible for what. Like, what happens if we get permission to shoot, but we can’t take her out with one shot, so the Spirit runs wild? And can we claim we didn’t know she was here, even if she’s wreaking havoc in our world?”

“If that’s how they make their decision, we’ve got a problem.”

Ryouko shrugged. “A lot of them value their own position over a bunch of lives.”

The look on Origami’s face didn’t change in the slightest, but she gave off an air of indignation.

Then Ryouko heard a voice mixed in with static in her ear. “Yeah, yeah, this is Point Alpha. What’d they—huh?” Her eyes widened at the information transmitted to her ear. “Roger that,” she said and ended the communication.

“…That’s a shock,” she told Origami. “They gave permission to fire.”

She honestly hadn’t expected this. She’d assumed they’d be ordered to remain on standby.

Actually, now that she was thinking about it, the order to attack the school the previous day had also been a drastic measure, something that would have once been almost unthinkable. Had there been some reshuffling in the positions of the higher-ups?

Well, Ryouko would just do her job. To be more specific, she would entrust the trigger to the squad member who had the highest probability of success in this mission.

“Origami, go ahead and take the shot. You’re best suited to it of all the crew we got here. Failure is not an option. You must take her down with one shot.”

“Roger,” Origami replied without any emotion whatsoever.

There wasn’t a soul besides Shido and Tohka in the park, which was colored by the twilight sun. The space was quiet. All they could hear were the cars in the distance and the cawing of crows.

“Ooh! What a view!” Tohka leaned over the guardrail that prevented people from falling as she looked out on the city of Tengu in the dusky light.

Following the route so cleverly (?) laid out by the Fraxinus crew, they’d reached this park with its wonderful view just as the sun was starting to set. It wasn’t the first time Shido had been here. It was actually secretly one of his favorite places. Surely Kotori chose this as the end point for their date.

“Shido! How does that transform?!” Tohka pointed at a train running in the distance, eyes shining.

“Unfortunately, the train doesn’t transform,” he told her.

“What? So it’s a fusion type?”

“Well, it does connect to other cars.”

“Ooh.” She nodded with a strange acceptance and whirled around to face Shido, leaning back against the railing. With the twilight sky behind her, she was indeed gorgeous, like something out of a painting.

“Still.” Tohka stretched and changed the subject, a carefree smile on her face. “It’s pretty sweet, this date thing, huh? It’s actually, like, kinda fun.”

“…Ngh.” Shido was caught off guard by this. He couldn’t see it himself, but he was sure his cheeks were turning red.

“What’s wrong, Shido? Your face is all red.”

“…Just the sun playing tricks on you,” he said, looking down.

“Oh yeah?” She came over to his side and peered at his face, looking up from below.

“Ee—!” he yelped.

“It is really red. Some kind of disease?” she asked, so close that he could feel her breath.

“Uh… N-no. That’s not…it…”

Even as he averted his eyes, the word date flooded his head. He knew about them from manga and movies. Usually, if a couple came to this kind of lovely place at the end of a date, they’d—

His eyes naturally found her soft lips.

“Mm?”

“—!”

She hadn’t said anything in particular, but he felt like she could see right through to his wicked heart. He pulled back from her, looking away again.

“Huh. You’re so fidgety.”

“Sh-shut up…” Shido glanced at her face as he wiped away the sweat beading up on his forehead with his sleeve.

The gloomy look that had been on her face ten days earlier and the day before had largely faded. He let out a sigh, took a step back, and turned to face her again.

“So? No one tried to kill you, right?”

“…Mm. Everyone was nice. So nice that I still can’t believe it, to be honest.”

“Oh…?”

“That many people not rejecting me. I mean, just not denying me.” Tohka smiled with a self-deprecating edge. “Those mech-heads… Umm, what were they called? Aay…?”

“You mean the AST?” he asked.

“Yeah, that. If you told me that all the people here are working with them and trying to trick me, it’d feel more real.”

“Whoa, whoa…”

Her thoughts really did leap to extremes, but he couldn’t laugh at this one. After all, for Tohka, that was the norm. Being turned away, continually rejected, was her reality. It was…really sad.

“So then that would make me one of the AST, too?” he inquired.

“Nah.” She shook her head back and forth. “If I had to say, you’d be the one working against your will, threatened by your parents or your siblings or someone being held hostage.”

“Wh-where’d that come from?”

“…Don’t make me imagine you as an enemy.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Now it was Tohka turning away from him. She rubbed her face with her hands as though she was trying to force a different expression onto it before turning her gaze back toward him.

“But today has meant a lot to me. I never dreamed the world could be…this kind, this fun, this beautiful.”

“Oh. Yeah?” Shido’s mouth relaxed, and he let out a sigh.

“And…” She knit her brows together, a slight smile curling up on her lips. “…I sort of understand what those guys—those AST—are thinking.”

“Huh…?” He made a puzzled face, and Tohka’s eyes grew a little sad.

It was not quite the same as the expression of gloom he so hated, but it had a tragic air that made his heart constrict in his chest just looking at her face.

“Every time,” she started slowly, “I appeared in his world, I destroyed something so wonderful.”

“—!” He gasped. “B-but it’s not like you’re doing it on purpose!”

“…Mm… I have no control over whether or not I appear or what happens when I do.”

“So then—”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that for the residents of this world, the end result is destruction. I finally understand why the AST are trying to kill me.”

He didn’t know how to respond. The pained look on her face was ripping his heart in half, and he was finding it hard to breathe.

“Shido, it would be better if I didn’t exist,” Tohka said and smiled.

Not the innocent smile he’d caught glimpses of that day, but a weak, pained smile, like that of a sick patient who understands the end is near.

He gulped hard. At some point, his throat had grown bone-dry. As he painfully felt the moisture seeping into his tense esophagus, he managed to pry his mouth open somehow.

“That’s not…true…!” he said forcefully and balled his hands into fists. “I mean…there was no spacequake today, was there?! I just know something is different from usual today! If we can figure that out…!”

Tohka slowly shook her head. “Even if we did find some other way, it wouldn’t stop whatever presence is sending me here at irregular intervals. I would still appear here just as often.”

“Then…!” he shouted. “Don’t go back there!”

She lifted her face, her eyes wide, as if this idea had never occurred to her. “That…isn’t… possible…”

“Have you tried?!” he demanded. “Even once?!”

“…” She pursed her lips and fell silent.

Shido pressed a hand to his chest in an attempt to right his abnormal heartbeat as he coated his throat with saliva once again. He had shouted the words in the spur of the moment, but if it were possible, then the spacequakes would no longer happen.

According to Kotori, the spacequakes were the aftermath of the Spirit moving from some other location into this world. If Tohka was pulled here at irregular intervals through no will of her own, then all she had to do was stay here forever, and everything would be fine.

“B-but I just—There are so many things I don’t know, you know?” she protested.

“I’ll teach you everything!” he replied instantly.

“I’ll need food and a place to sleep.”

“We’ll figure that out, too!”

“Some unexpected things might happen.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!”

Tohka fell silent briefly before parting her lips. “…Are you sure it’s okay for me to live?”

“Yeah!”

“Is it okay for me to exist in this world?”

“It is!”

“…I’m sure you’re the only one who would say that, Shido. I mean, the AST would obviously hate it if someone who posed a threat was living in their space. Even the other people would oppose the idea.”

“Who cares about the AST?! Or other people?! If all of them are gonna reject you, then I’ll accept you so completely, it cancels all of them out!” he shouted and suddenly reached a hand out to her.

Tohka’s shoulders shook slightly.

“Take it! That’s all you need to do…for now…!”

She dropped her head, and after a few seconds of silent thought, she slowly lifted her face and tentatively reached out her hand. “Shido…”

“—”

Just as their hands were about to touch, Shido’s fingertips twitched, and he felt an arctic chill for some strange reason. It was an unpleasant sensation, like being licked all over by a sandpaper tongue.

“Tohka!” Even though he hadn’t consciously intended to call out to her, his throat shouted her name.

“…Ngh!” Before she could respond, he shoved her as hard as he could.

The slender girl tumbled backward at the sudden shock, like something out of a manga.

“—Ah.” Not even a heartbeat later, he felt something burst through the place between his chest and his stomach.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” Tohka cried out, covered in dirt, but replying to her was beyond him at the moment.

He couldn’t breathe. It was also hard to stay conscious and on his feet. At any rate. He felt…bad…

“Shido?” Tohka asked in a daze.

Trying to find out what was wrong, he put a shaking hand to his side.

Weird.

It was like…there was nothing there to…

“Ah…” Origami heard herself gasp as she watched the silhouette of Shido crumple with vision enhanced by her Territory.

She froze for a few seconds, still pressed to the ground, flattened on the residential development project, the anti-Spirit rifle CCC still in her hands.

A few seconds earlier, when Origami launched the CCC Realizer, the special warhead loaded in it had been given an attack field, and she had pulled the trigger only after she had her target perfectly in her sights. Everything had been in perfect alignment.

If only Shido hadn’t pushed the Spirit out of the way.

The bullet she fired had ripped cleanly through him instead of the girl.

“—”

She opened her mouth, but this time, no voice came out. She could tell that her finger, the finger on the trigger, was trembling very slightly.

…Because I just did that to Shido—

“Origami!”

“—Ngh!” Ryouko’s voice brought her back to herself.

“Throw your pity party later! I’ll ream you out until you die! Right now—” She glared at the park with trepidation. “You have to focus on surviving!”

“Shido…?” Tohka called but got no response.

And why would she? There was a hole in Shido’s chest bigger than her hand.

Everything was jumbled in her mind, and she couldn’t understand what any of this meant.

“Shiiiidoooo.” She knelt down beside his head and poked his cheek. She got no reaction.

The hand that had been stretched out toward her only a few seconds earlier was covered in blood.

“Unh… Ah… Aah… Aaah…” After a few seconds, her head began to digest what had happened.

She knew this scorched scent hanging over the area. It was the smell of that group that always tried to kill her—the AST. A single, polished blow. That girl had likely delivered it.

However powerful Tohka might have been, if she had taken that hit without her Astral Dress, she wouldn’t have gotten away unscathed. If Shido had taken an attack like that with absolutely no defenses…

“—”

Feeling dizzy, Tohka placed her hand on Shido’s eyes, which were still staring up at the sky, and slowly closed them. Then, she took off the blazer she was wearing and laid it gently over his body.

She got to her feet and turned her face to the sky.

Aah, aah.

It was no use. It wasn’t meant to be, after all.

For a brief moment, she had thought she might be able to live in this world. She had thought it might somehow work out if Shido was with her. She had thought it would be incredibly difficult—but that she might be able to pull it off.

However… Aah…

However…it wasn’t meant to be, after all.

This world did indeed reject her. And in the worst, cruelest way possible!

“Adonai Melek—Astral Dress Number Ten!” She managed to squeeze the name out. Her Astral Dress. It was absolute, powerful. It was Tohka’s Territory.

Instantly, the world cried out. The scenery around her bent and twisted, wrapped around her body, and took on the shape of her magnificent Astral Dress.

Colored in this skirt made of a shining film of light, the catastrophe descended—creaking, squalling.

The air squealed, as if singing its dissatisfaction with Tohka’s sudden materialization of her Astral Dress.

She lowered her eyes. The person who shot Shido was on that plateau, flat like the top of a mountain had been carved away. A person worth killing was there.

She dug her heels into the earth, and a throne rose up from the ground with a massive sword sheathed in it.

Wham! Tohka kicked at the ground, put a foot on the throne’s armrest, and pulled the sword out of the backrest.

“Aah.”

She cried.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It was loud enough to reach the heavens.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

It grew intense enough to make the ground rumble.

She felt her heart grow numb, crushing the ego inside her.

“How dare you—!”

Her eyes were moist.

“How dare you! How dare you! How-dare-you-how-dare-you-how-dare-you-how-dare-you-how-dare-you—!!”

Clutching the sword in her hand even more tightly, Tohka killed the distance between them—between herself and the point where her gaze was focused.

“Wha—?!”

“—”

In less than the blink of an eye, she shifted to the plateau she had been looking at. In front of her were a woman with her eyes wide open in disbelief and a girl with no expression on her face.

“Sandalphon—Final Sword: Halvanhelev!!”

Cracks raced through the throne under Tohka’s foot, and then the whole thing crumbled into pieces. The fragments swirled up to wrap around her sword, turning it into something even larger, a weapon that was beyond massive at a total length of more than ten meters.

Tohka brandished it nimbly and swung it down toward the two girls.

The light of the sword grew even brighter and, in an instant, extended out from the blade and crawled along the ground.

The area exploded.

“Wh—?!”

“—Ngh.”

The two women cried out in trepidation as they leaped aside in the nick of time.

It was only right that they dodged. With just one blow, Tohka cleaved a broad swath of land in two.

“You…monster!” the taller woman shouted and started to come at Tohka, wielding something that looked like a crude sword.

Such a weapon could never touch Tohka, not when she was clad in her Astral Dress. She simply turned her gaze on the woman and made the attack vanish.

“No way.” The woman’s face was racked with despair.

However, Tohka was not interested in her. She turned her eyes on the girl. “Aah. It’s you. It’s you,” she said quietly. “You were the one who killed my friend—my good friend, Shido.”

For the first time, the expression on the girl’s face twisted, albeit only the slightest bit.

That didn’t matter, however. There wasn’t a thing in this world that could stop Tohka once she’d called Halvanhelev. Looking down at the girl with pitch-black eyes, she raged with composure.

“I will kill, destroy, and slaughter you completely. Fail. Perish. Die.”

“Commander!”

“I know,” Kotori replied to her flustered subordinate, twirling the lollipop in her mouth. “Don’t freak out. You’re not a monkey in heat.”

The Fraxinus bridge. Displayed on the monitor in front of her were Shido on the ground with a chunk ripped out of him and the battle of the Spirit Tohka.

It wasn’t that Kotori didn’t understand why her subordinate was upset. The situation was overwhelmingly, absolutely, devastatingly despairing.

The spacequake alarm had finally started to sound, but the residents’ evacuation was nowhere near finished when the battle between Tohka and the AST began. The sole saving grace was that they were fighting in an area under development, so no one lived there yet.

Tohka’s first blow easily shattered that bit of optimism.

It had been such a transcendentally destructive force that it made the Spirit’s attacks up to that point seem almost kittenish.

With a single strike, she had split that expansive development area in two and created a ravine in the center.

Then there was the sudden death of Shido Itsuka, who was supposed to have been Ratatoskr’s ultimate weapon.

Kotori and her crew had been placed in the worst possible position.

“Well, the move does lack grace, but I suppose he gets a passing grade as a knight… If this had killed his ‘princess,’ we’d be looking at total failure here,” Kotori said, not looking particularly serious as she flicked the lollipop stick.

The crew turned their gazes on her in trepidation.

That much was to be expected. Her brother had just died, after all.

Reine and Kannazuki alone reacted differently.

Reine was calmly monitoring Tohka’s battle and collecting data, while Kannazuki looked strange somehow. A flush crept over his cheeks, and drool trickled out of his mouth. From the look of him, he was thinking something along the lines of, Aah, a hole that large ripped into your body… Must be amazing. M-must be incredible. B-but it’s pointless if you die.

“Hey.” Kotori kicked Kannazuki in the shin and stood up.

“Haah?!” he yelped.

“Listen.” She narrowed her eyes and snorted as she told the crew, “Keep doing your jobs. This isn’t the end for Shido, right?”

Right. His actual job had only just begun.

“C-Commander! It’s—!” A subordinate on the lower deck cried out, stunned, pointing at the left side of the screen, which displayed the park.

“There we go.” Kotori grinned and moved her lollipop to the other side of her mouth.

Shido was in the center of the screen, lying in the park with the blazer laid over him. Except flames were suddenly rising up from that blazer. It wasn’t because the Spirit’s life force in it had been lost or because the sun had set it on fire.

After all, it wasn’t the blazer that was burning.

The crew of Fraxinus cried out in amazement again.

“H-his wound—”

Yes, the gaping hole in his midsection was on fire. The flame blazed so high, it blocked out the area of the wound itself and then steadily weakened, leaving a smooth scar behind. Shido’s body was completely restored.

“…Mm.” Shido lay on-screen.

“Mm… O-ow!! That’s hot!” He saw the flames still smoldering on his stomach and bounced up. He hurriedly slapped at himself to put the fire out. “So—h-huh? I… Why?”

A huge commotion rose up on the bridge.

“Wha—? C-Commander, this—”

“I told you,” Kotori said, licking her lips. “If Shido dies, we can just start a new game.”

The crew all turned disbelieving eyes on her, but she ignored them.

“Pick him up. Shido’s the only one who can stop her.”

I don’t get it.

Shido gave his stomach several inquisitive pats. There was a clean hole in both the blazer and shirt he was wearing, and his necktie had been partially cut off. But he wasn’t concerned about this embarrassing outfit at the moment. He had something much more pressing to attend to.

“How…am I alive?” he murmured, touching himself again.

He’d had a horrible feeling and shoved Tohka. In the next instant, there’d been a hole where his stomach was, and he’d passed out.

There were big holes in his clothes. They were also stained with a lot of blood. It definitely hadn’t been a dream.

“Right. Tohka!”

He was certain that hit had been meant for her. What had happened to her? He scanned the area, looking for the Spirit.

Suddenly, black light jetted from the plateau above, followed by a tremendous roar and a shock wave.

“Whoa?!” Caught entirely off guard, he fell to the ground, blown back by the wind. “Wh-what the—?!”

He looked up and froze.

The plateau looked a lot different now than it had before he lost consciousness. The terrain in that direction was basically pristine mountains, unchanged in the past thirty years, with the residential development site nestled in there. Now those mountains were crumbling, rocks tumbling from the face, as if an air raid was underway.

Wait. That wasn’t quite right. He could see several sharp cross sections, as if the mountains had been sliced into over and over with a giant sword.

“That’s…,” he murmured, dazed, and then felt all the weight leave his body. “Hngh…!”

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this sensation. By the time Shido realized it was the Fraxinus transit device, his view had changed from the park on high to the interior of the vessel.

“This way!” the crew member waiting there called.

“Uh, uh-huh.” Slightly confused, Shido was yanked onto the bridge.

“How do you feel upon awakening, Shido?” Kotori asked from her captain’s chair on the upper deck of the bridge as she flicked her Chupa Chups stick around.

“…Kotori.” He smacked his ringing ears and frowned. “…I kind of can’t get a grip on the situation. What happened, exactly?”

“Mm. You got hit with an AST attack, so the princess lost it, and now she’s trying to kill the AST.” Kotori flicked a finger upward at the large bridge monitor.

“Nn—wha…?”

Shido watched as Tohka swung a massive sword on the display and sliced through the mountains while the AST fought back. Actually, he couldn’t really call it fighting back.

The AST were launching incredibly powerful attacks, but not so much as a speck of dust was reaching Tohka. Even though she wasn’t landing any direct hits, the mere aftermath of her slashing was throwing the wizards’ flight off course as though their Territories did not exist, knocking them back easily.

It was the overwhelmingly one-sided march of a champion.

“She’s completely lost it,” Kotori told him, shrugging. “She really couldn’t forgive them for killing you.”

“What the—? That’s…!” Shido shouted. “And wait! How am I alive?!”

Kotori grinned meaningfully and then turned her eyes toward Tohka on the monitor. “We’ll talk about that later. We’ve got other things to take care of right now.”

“Other things?”

“Yes. We’d really prefer to avoid human injury with the Spirits.”

“…Well, obviously!”

“Okay! There’s our good little knight. So off you go. To stop the princess, right?” Kotori narrowed her eyes, like she was really enjoying herself, and then called out in a strident voice, “Fraxinus, turn back! Move to the battle point! Keep the error to less than a meter!”

“Roger!” Several crew members—apparently pilots—called out as one.

Then with a leaden rumble, Fraxinus shuddered.

“K-Kotori!” Shido exclaimed.

“Hmm? What?”

“You said stop Tohka. Can we even do that?!”

“What are you talking about? It’s not a matter of can, it’s do. It’s up to you, Shido.” She shot him a look of exasperation.

“M-me?!”

“Of course. How long are you going to be all wishy-washy here? You’re the only one who can stop her.”

“B-but how exactly?!” asked Shido, sweat beading on his forehead.

Kotori pulled the Chupa Chups out of her mouth, a devilish grin crossing her lips. “Don’t you know? There’s only one way to rescue a cursed princess, isn’t there?” She puckered her lips and planted a kiss on her lollipop.

The situation was extremely bad. All ten standby members of the AST were fighting, but they hadn’t been able to get close to the Spirit, much less injure her. The Spirit didn’t even seem to see anyone other than Origami, like a lion who didn’t think about the ants she crushed under her feet.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!” the Spirit roared, her face wet with tears and her voice thick with rage, and brought down her massive sword.

“…Gah!” Origami fired her thruster to twist and escape into the sky, dodging the blow. But the shock wave from the sword invaded her Territory and hit her hard. “Ngh…!”

Her guard was down for a mere instant.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” the Spirit howled and swung with all her might, slicing through the wind to come at Origami again.

“Origami!” Ryouko shouted, panicked. But it was too late.

The Spirit’s sword touched Origami’s Territory.

“—”

Origami learned she’d been too optimistic. She thought she had calculated the rough force of the aftermath of the sword, but she’d been wrong. It was clear they were from different worlds.

The Spirit’s attack was like the iron hammer of a tyrannical king, so strong that it felt like blasphemy to even compare it with her own power, to even think about an attack strategy.

In terms of time, it was a mere 1.5 seconds.

Her Territory…

“—”

Origami’s space, her absolute power, shattered without a sound, without a voice, and she was thrown down to the ground.

“Ah…”

“Origami!” Ryouko’s voice sounded far off somehow.

Perhaps because Origami’s Territory had been released, the burden on her brain had eased somewhat, but in exchange, every part of her body screamed in pain. She wouldn’t get out of this with just a broken bone or two. Blood spilled from a wound somewhere on her body and filled the wiring suit. She moved her head—suddenly heavy, as though it had just remembered gravity—the tiniest bit.

Her vision was hazy, and the only thing she could see clearly was the Spirit standing in the sky: the tiny girl clutching a sword with a terribly sad look on her face.

“—I’m going to end you.”

The Spirit raised her sword and then stopped. Particles of light popped into existence around her, shining darkly, and converged on the blade of the sword as if sucked in.

Origami didn’t need anyone to explain what was happening. This blow would be the full might of the Spirit. If she got hit with that now, without her Territory deployed, she would die. She had to get away. However, racked with pain, her body was too heavy to move.

Ryouko and the other AST members had already been knocked out of the battle. There was no one left who could stop the Spirit.

The Spirit waited for the dark light to color the sword and tightened her grip on it.

That was when…

“Tooooooooohhhhhhkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

She heard someone yelling from the sky, from even higher up than the Spirit.

“Huh?” Origami asked, stunned, even lying on death’s doorstep as she was.

It was no wonder she was surprised. It was the boy she’d shot earlier.

“The princess is in the air? …Then we’ll throw Shido down from here. Parachute? He doesn’t need one. We’re in the lower atmosphere, and once he gets close to the Spirit, we’ll neutralize gravity for him… Ohhh, mm-hmm. It’s fine, all good. So long as she’s directly under Fraxinus… What? What if she’s a bit off that straight line? Hmm… Well, then a beautiful flower will bloom on the surface—a bright red one.”

Kotori stared at the monitor and chuckled.

“H-hang on a sec!” Shido cried. “Why are you making this so difficult?!”

“Oh, you know, if the chances of success are the same, then the fun way is obviously better.”

“You’re the only one having fun here!”

“Geez, you’re loud,” Kotori complained. “Take him.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Two brawny men appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Shido’s arms, and dragged him out.

“Ah! Hey!” he yelled. “I’ll remember this, Kotoriiiiii!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll remember for you, so go on now.”

Shido was led to the hatch in the lower deck.

“Luck be with you,” said the men, pushing Shido out into the sky.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!”

The surging air made the clothes on his body as well as his cheeks flap. The sensation of being suspended above the earth very nearly made him empty his bladder. He would never be scared of a roller coaster again.

In the height of his terror, his mind very tenuously holding on to consciousness, Shido caught sight of a shadow in the center of his field of view. He thrust out his arms and legs to stabilize himself and stared at the blurry girl.

“Tooooooooohhhhhhkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

He shouted her name as loudly and as long as he could.

Not even a heartbeat later, he felt the gravity on his body and the plummeting sensation weaken. Support from Ratatoskr, most likely. He was still falling, but now he could…

“—”

Tohka turned her face upward at the sound of his voice, still brandishing the massive sword. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were bright red, and her eyes were moist. She looked rather miserable.

He met her eyes.

“Shi…do…?” she murmured uncomprehendingly.

His descent gradually slowing, he put his hands on her shoulders and stopped in midair, held up by the Spirit standing in the sky.

“H-hey…Tohka.”

“Shido…? I-is it really…you…?”

“Yeah… I think it is anyway.”

Her lips trembled. “Shido! Shido! Shido…!”

“Aah, wha—?” he started to say, and then an incredible light filled the corner of his field of view.

The sword still brandished in midair shone black, like it had changed the area to night.

“Wh-what’s that…?” he stammered.

“…! Oh no! My power—” Tohka frowned as light began to leak from the blade, and lightning bolts cut into the ground.

“T-Tohka, this—”

“I made a mistake with Halvanhelev’s control…!” she cried. “I have to release the power somewhere…!”

“Somewhere?” he shouted in response. “Where?!”

“—” She looked silently at the ground.

When he followed her lead and turned his own eyes in that direction, he saw Origami lying there, battered and beaten.

“…Ngh! Tohka, you…!” He gasped. “Y-you can’t release it there!”

“Th-then what am I supposed to do?! It’s already in a critical state!”

Even as Tohka spoke, the sword shot black lightning out into the air.

Then Shido remembered what Kotori had said. He remembered the only way to stop Tohka and seal this power away.

“So okay, just calm down and listen.”

“What?! This isn’t the time—”

“There…might be…a possibility…we could do something…about that!”

“What?!” she cried. “What exactly?!”

“R-right. It’s…”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. After all, Kotori’s method was just too nonsensical, baseless, not a chance in hell…

“Hurry!” she urged him.

He made up his mind and opened his mouth. “I-it’s, you know—! Tohka! Y-you have…to k-kiss me!”

“What?!” She frowned.

It was no wonder. To think he would say such a thing in a time of emergency. Of course she would think he was pulling something.

“S-sorry,” he said quickly. “Just forget it. We’ll try to find—”

“What’s kiss?!”

“Huh…?”

“Hurry up and tell me!”

“…A—a kiss is, like, when you put your mouth against someone else’s—”

Without any hesitation whatsoever, Tohka pressed her pink lips against his.

“Mm?!”

His eyes flew open, and he cried out without saying anything. Tohka’s lips were firm, soft, and even smelled sweet somehow; all these sensations mixed together to create hell and heaven in his brain. That whole thing about first kisses tasting like lemons was a lie. This one tasted like the parfait Tohka had eaten that afternoon.

An instant later, her sword cracked, crumbled, and melted away into the sky. And then the film of light that made up the dress covering Tohka’s body burst open and disappeared.

“Wha—?” she cried, baffled.

“…Ngh?!”

Shido was the more startled of the two of them. He wasn’t surprised by the disappearance of Tohka’s sword and dress. He’d been skeptical, but Kotori had told him what would happen and what to do.

He was shocked by the way Tohka had spoken while they were still kissing, so her lips had wriggled against him, plunging him into such a state of chaos that his lexicon could no longer completely describe it.

The strength drained out of Tohka’s body, and the pair fell toward the ground. Mind hazy, Shido hesitated and then held on to her so that they didn’t separate. Weakly. Gingerly.

Head first, lips and bodies pressed together, they plunged down.

Tohka’s Astral Dress melted into particles of light, drawing out shining beams behind them. Or maybe it was an illusion. Shido didn’t have the extra brain space to give the question any thought.

Holding Tohka, he fell slowly, twisting so that he was on the bottom when they hit the ground.

“Pwah…!” Tohka pulled her lips away as if to inhale and sat up, moving away from where she lay on top of him.

“S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sorry, Tohka! They told me this was the only thing I could do!” Shido leaped up immediately and jumped back while curling into a ball at the same time to perform a magnificent act of jumping prostration.

Strictly speaking, she had kissed him, but he sort of felt like that wasn’t the issue.

His head remained untrampled after a few seconds, and no curses rained down on him, either.

“…?”

Thinking this strange, he lifted his head and saw Tohka pressing a finger to her lips, a strange look on her face.

“Pwah…?!” His face turned so red, blood threatened to shoot out of his nostrils as he froze in place.

With the Astral Dress she was wearing in tatters, Tohka was half-naked.

“—Ngh!”

Seeing this reaction, she looked down at herself and then hurried to cover her breasts with her arms.

“N-n-no, I wasn’t—,” Shido started desperately.

“D-don’t look, you jerk!!” Tohka glared at him, her cheeks coloring. She might not have known the meaning of the word kiss, but she did appear to have a sense of shame on par with anyone else’s.

“S-sorry…!” He closed his eyes.

“That’s no good, either!” she yelled. “You’re squinting, aren’t you?!”

“S-so then what do you want me to do…?”

A few seconds later, he felt a warm sensation across his body. “Huh?” Unconsciously, he opened his eyes.

Before him were Tohka’s jet-black hair and naked shoulders. She was pressing her body tightly up against his.

“…Now you can’t see,” she told him.

“T-true…” He wondered if this was really okay, but unable to move, he simply stayed frozen in place.

“…Shido,” Tohka said after a while, in a vanishingly small voice.

“What?”

“Will you…take me on a date again…?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Whenever you want.” He nodded vigorously.