Chapter 5

Frozen Field

“…?!”

Yoshino opened her eyes and shivered in confusion. She had been drowsing in a darkness of sorts, but suddenly, the darkness was gone, cold air caressed her cheeks, and before her eyes was a city.

“Uh… Ah…!” She whirled her head around.

She was in the middle of some unknown town. The area around her was devastated, like the aftermath of an explosion. From the sky poured cold rain. She’d experienced this world and these sensations so many times, she was almost sick of it. If there was a difference this time, it was that her peerless friend was not sitting on her left hand.

“…!” She heard a familiar sound from the sky and gasped. She jerked her head up and found several people clad in mechanical armor floating there, just as she’d expected.

“Target confirmed. All personnel, commence attack.”

“Roger!”

Bullets flew from the humans’ hands and feet straight at Yoshino.

“…!!” She kicked at the ground and twirled up into the sky, carving out a complicated trajectory through the air to evade the humans’ attack.

“We’re not letting her get away!”

“Understood!”

Voices rang out behind her, and she was showered with even more bullets.

Each of them was a special blow with lethal power. A manifestation of their malice and murderous intent that could have killed her a hundred times over and then some if she hadn’t been wearing her Astral Dress.

“…! …!”

In a state of confusion, Yoshino flew up into the sky, crying out silently. Her heart was pounding. Her stomach hurt. Her head was spinning.

She couldn’t accept the fact that someone would turn this nastiness, this homicidal wish on her. It was different from the other times. Usually, Yoshinon was on her left hand. And Yoshinon was very strong. Yoshinon didn’t think anything of an attack like this. Which meant Yoshino could also be okay with it. She could make sure she didn’t hurt anyone.

But now…

“Eek…!” She felt an intense impact on her back and plummeted to the earth with a small cry. The attack wasn’t forceful enough to pierce her Astral Dress, but it was powerful enough to slam her and her protective garb into the ground.

Terror flooded her heart. Her teeth chattered. Her feet trembled. Her vision shook. Her head was so jumbled, she was powerless in the face of all of this.

“Unh, ah, ah…”

The rain came down heavier.

“Good. We go all at once now!” the leader-looking woman shouted, and the humans turned their sinister weapons on Yoshino.

She felt their desire to kill her, even more determination and violence than before.

Yoshino threw her right hand up into the air.

“…Zadkiel…!!” She brought her hand down as she cried the name of the catastrophic Angel.

“Did we get her?!” Ryouko’s voice over the comm sounded a little excited.

Origami let out a shallow breath as she stared down at the smoking earth, her guard still up.

“…”

It had been approximately thirty minutes since the alarm rang and the people had finished evacuating. After confirming that Hermit had indeed appeared, Origami and her team immediately set out on an annihilation mission.

The nine AST members on the spot were clad in Outrange equipment. They were soldiers of destruction, heaped with every possible anti-Spirit firepower, centered on the wiring suits that covered their bodies and the standard thruster units. Normally, this would all have been so heavy that they wouldn’t have been able to move, but the Realizer compensated for this weight with the absolute field and gravitational mitigation of the Territory. Every one of these soldiers was assessing the situation, arms still turned on where Hermit was last sighted.

“Wha—?” a baffled voice came over the comm.

The smoke coiling up from where Hermit had fallen disappeared, revealing a ponderous puppet that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Hermit’s small body was plastered to its back.

“That’s…,” Ryouko said.

Origami had seen this puppet before. It was the weapon Hermit manifested last time, an Angel.

The Angel leaned forward and planted both front feet on the ground. White smoke jetted from its four limbs, stomach, and mouth, accompanied by a low rumble. The puppet turned its head to the sky.

“Grrrrazzzzzzzzzzzz…”

It let out a strange howl, like a buzzing in the ears. And then the ground around the puppet cracked as a whiteness radiated outward from it.

“Wh-what is that?!” came the uneasy voice of a team member.

Hermit’s puppet paid them no attention, merely unleashing its disturbing howl and radiating its chill air, while the ground grew whiter and whiter.

“…” Origami looked around.

The same thing was happening in every part of the town, as far as her eyes could see.

The pools of water created by the sudden downpour were swelling up, taking a sharp form, turning into countless thorns and freezing in an instant. A frost descended and crawled along the roads, around the buildings. It was like the entire town had been shoved into a freezer.

In the blink of an eye, Origami’s world was covered in ice. To make things worse, more water was pouring down from the skies at that very second. When the countless drops of water touched the ice covering the ground, they instantly froze in place. A castle of ice, endlessly invaded and added to, burying the city of Tengu.

“All personnel! Stand your ground! Fire!” Ryouko commanded, and Origami gave an order in her mind.

The firearms equipped all over her body moved. The rest of the AST were similarly strafing Hermit with as many bullets as they could fire.

“…” Origami stopped breathing for a moment.

The projectiles froze long before they reached her and plummeted to the ground without even exploding.

She immediately gave a new mental order, launching a simple analysis. In her field of view, a faint but terrifying broad Spirit signal appeared.

“Wh-what is this?”

“Probably the rain,” Origami replied to her comrade’s bewildered question.

“Th-the rain?”

“Yes. The rain is imbued with Spirit power, albeit a minute amount.”

The instant their bullets touched the downpour that completely obscured her field of view, they were coated in ice so that even their momentum was frozen, and they fell out of the sky. The rain and cold air were imbued with Spirit power. This curtain of water was a powerful defensive wall to protect the expanding ice castle and the master sitting inside of it.

“…!” She jerked back in alarm when she saw Hermit, glued to the back of the massive puppet, begin to move.

“Grrrrazzzzzzz.” Growling even louder now, like a machine in motion, the puppet reeled backward.

It wasn’t spewing out the cold air, Origami realized. It was more like it was taking a breath, like it was inhaling deeply.

“…! All personnel, fall back!” Ryouko shouted in her ear.

She gave a mental order to her thruster unit and left the area of the sky where she’d been floating with her team members.

The puppet had no sooner brought its head back down than it was emitting something like a beam of blue light from its mouth, together with a painful, earsplitting squeal.

“Whoa?!”

“Hngh!”

She heard the pained cries of her team members through her comm. Apparently, two of them hadn’t gotten away fast enough. She twisted around in the air and glanced down.

“—”

Two balls of ice about three meters across rolled over the frozen landscape. There was no mistake. Those were the owners of the voices crying out over the comm.

“…Frozen with their Territory? This can’t be real…!”

“…”

As she listened to her team members, Origami kept her guard up and her eyes on Hermit.

As if sensing the chaos among the AST, Hermit started to move again. The puppet turned its back to Origami and her team and began to crawl on all fours, fleeing at tremendous speed, almost sliding across the frozen earth.

“Ngh! After her!”

“Roger that!”

Origami and her comrades gave the order to fire their thruster units.

“…?!” Jerked out of sleep in her room on the second floor of the Itsuka house, Tohka lifted her face with a gasp at the sudden roar of an explosion.

“Wh-what was that?!” She sat up and opened the window with a clatter. And then shivered on reflex.

She wasn’t shivering because she was suddenly overcome with terror. The air blowing in was unexpectedly frigid. The temperature had dropped to an abnormal low. Tohka frowned suspiciously and looked around.

“Wh-what…?”

Rain poured down as far as she could see, and the droplets that touched the ground froze in an instant.

“What on earth is happening?” she asked herself and then suddenly remembered she’d heard some kind of a vwnnnn sound while she was napping. She’d thought it was just a dream, but…

“Was it…that alarm thing?! So then, this is…a spacequake?”

It was very different from that explosion that Tama had told her about, but she could tell just by looking that this was not normal. She had to hurry and evacuate to that shelter thing.

She was about to do exactly that when something weird shot past her window at incredible speed.

“…?!”

A puppet with a short and stout form, maybe three meters tall. And on its back, a girl wearing a green coat.

“That’s… I know her.”

Yes. It was the girl Shido had been seeing.

“…”

Tohka felt her heart pound. She had no reason to think so, but she was suddenly certain that Shido was with that girl. She bit her lip and leaped outside.

“Wha…? What the…?” Leaving the condo with the puppet, Shido opened his eyes wide at the scene that spread out before him.

The familiar cityscape had turned silver. And not from snow piling up on the ground. The city had turned to ice.

“You didn’t hear the alarm? It’s Yoshino.” His earpiece, which had been silent, crackled to life with Kotori’s voice. “Anyway, what were you doing before the Spirit appeared? You took your time getting out here.”

“Oh. I got stuck in some birdlime in the entryway,” he told her.

His foot had been caught in a trap when he was leaving Origami’s apartment, delaying his exit to the outside. It was a strange trap. It had indeed taken him a while to extricate himself, but it hadn’t been anywhere near impossible to escape from. If he had to say, the trap wasn’t there so much to catch intruders from outside as it was to briefly stop someone trying to flee from inside.

“…No, no, no, no.” This was not the time to be wondering about such things. He shook his head and got his thoughts back on track. “Is…Yoshino doing this?”

“Yes,” Kotori replied. “We don’t have the luxury of time here. She’s pulling in rainwater from the drains and freezing it. If this keeps up, it could have a serious impact on the city’s foundations and underground shelters.” She sighed. “The only ones who can stop Yoshino are you and that puppet. You mind going?”

“Of course I’ll go. I can’t just walk away from Yoshino or the town.”

“…Shin, can I add one more thing?” He heard a sleepy voice. Reine. “I checked into a bunch of things, and it looks like your concerns were not necessarily misplaced.”

Concerns. That must have been referring to the thing Shido was talking about when Yoshino came to the house the other day. Now that he was thinking about it, Kotori had said something about having Reine look into it.

“…We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll be brief. Yoshino—” Reine gave him a quick overview of the situation.

“…”

Listening to her, he felt like his heart was being squeezed by an invisible hand. But weirdly, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. He only felt a sense of acceptance that this would be how it was with Yoshino. He was more convinced than ever that he really did have to save her.

Turning his eyes out toward the town once more, he took a deep breath. He patted his chest above his fiercely pounding heart and prepared himself mentally for the mission ahead.

“Okay,” Kotori said. “Turn right and go straight until you hit the main road. Judging from the speed at which Yoshino’s advancing, she’ll arrive there in about five minutes. You should be able to get there before she does.”

“Roger!” He started to move faster.

“Go get that affection meter up and give her a smackeroo.”

“…Unh.” He flinched at hearing the plan out loud.

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”

“Oh, uh,” Shido said, color rising in his cheeks. “It’s nothing, but… Um.”

“What, now you’re getting all bashful?” Kotori sighed in exasperation. “It’s not like it’s your first time or anything.”

“Th-that’s true, but…” He remembered the moment in the department store, and his face grew even redder. “Uh, that was basically an accident, but if I go in for the kiss now, it’s almost criminal, y’know?”

“Ohhh. Huh. So you like little girls, Shido?”

“…N-no!”

“Ugh. What’s that reaction? Did I hit the bull’s-eye? So the sweet spot’s middle schoolers? Eek, scary. I better watch out,” Kotori teased.

“Ew, there’s no way.” He scratched his cheek. They might not have been related by blood, but he’d grown up with Kotori. She was his little sister. He was definitely not into her.

“…”

There was an uncomfortable silence in his earpiece.

“Kotori?” he asked.

“Shut up. Just go already!” she shouted, a little on edge, unusual for her high-handed commander mode.

“Wh-what’s that about…?” Something didn’t quite click for him, but he started running in the cold rain nevertheless.

He somehow managed to maintain his speed without letting the icy surface sweep his feet out from under him and came out onto the deserted main street.

“She’s coming.”

Even without Kotori telling him, he could see a stocky silhouette in the distance.

A smooth, inorganic form. Long ears like a rabbit’s on the head. There was no mistake. That was the Angel that Yoshino manifested, Zadkiel.

“Yoshinooooooooooooooooo!” Shido cried out loud enough to almost rip his vocal cords apart.

“…!” Yoshino twitched in response, clinging to the back of the puppet charging toward him. She had apparently noticed him.

Zadkiel moved like it was gliding across the frozen road and stopped in front of him. And then the stocky puppet bent over, and Yoshino raised a face stained with tears.

“H-hey, Yoshino.” He waved casually. “It’s been a while.”

“…Shido…!” She pushed herself up and bobbed her head up and down as she pulled her arms out of the holes in Zadkiel’s back. Something like a ring glittered on each of her fingers, with thin threads stretching out from them and disappearing inside the puppet. Maybe she moved Zadkiel like a marionette.

“Yoshino, I have something I wanted to give you.”

“…?” She brushed away her tears with a sleeve and looked at him quizzically.

“This.” He reached into his pocket for the hand puppet.

“Shido!” Kotori shouted as a beam of light flew toward Yoshino from behind him.

It grazed her shoulder and cheek before flying off to the rear.

“Wha—?” he gasped and looked over his shoulder. “O-Origami…?!”

His classmate was floating there, enveloped in bombastic equipment and holding a massive weapon. And she wasn’t alone. At some point, all the AST wizards had gathered around Shido and Yoshino.

“Boy! You’re in danger. Move away from the girl,” instructed a woman, who sounded like the captain, in a businesslike manner. Her voice was distorted as though passing through a machine.

“Unh… Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah…!” came a cry next to him.

“…” He looked at Yoshino. She was staring at the AST and shaking all over. He frowned and swallowed hard.

“Ah! Aaah, aaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaah!” Yoshino put her arms back into Zadkiel. And then she slid backward, a wave of bitingly cold air washing over the area.

“Y-Yoshino…! Wait!” Shido pleaded.

But Yoshino could no longer hear him over the rumbling of Zadkiel inhaling.

“Th-that’s—!” Racing down the frozen street, Tohka shivered in fear at the sight ahead of her.

On the open road, she could make out Shido, the blue-haired girl she’d seen the other day, and the AST. And the girl was retreating on top of the puppet, making it lean back like it was sucking in the surrounding air.

“—” Tohka felt a pit of ice in the bottom of her stomach. For some reason, she understood—on a level that could only be described as instinct or intuition—that this was very bad. The air was somehow vibrating in a way that was very similar to the shuddering that happened when Tohka was about to launch a blow with the full force of Sandalphon.

“…! Shido!” she shouted, knowing only too well that there was no point in it. She immediately plunged a heel into the ground and shouted the name of her most powerful sword and throne, of the miracle made manifest.

“Sandalphon…!”

But nothing happened.

She screwed her face up. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t anticipated this. Kotori and the others had more or less explained to her what kind of being she was and how they wanted her to be now. During that process, she’d also been told that her powers had been sealed.

Of course, it would have been a lie to say that this hadn’t made her anxious in the beginning. After all, the power she’d had up until that moment was gone overnight. She’d come to understand that this was necessary for her to live with Shido as a human being. And to be honest, she couldn’t believe how great her life was now.

She still couldn’t stand Origami, and it wasn’t as though she completely trusted Kotori and Reine. But spending her days with Shido filled her with a brightness she’d never felt before.

However…

“Sandalphon. Sandalphon! Sandalphon…!”

In order to save him, she had to once again access the power she wasn’t supposed to need now. She plunged her heel into the ground again and again. But no matter how many times she tried to summon it, Sandalphon did not appear.

“Hngh. Please… Come to me, Sandalphon!”

Gritting her teeth, furrowing her brow, on the verge of tears, she continued to kick at the ground.

“…Ngh!”

In her mind, the sight of Shido felled by that assassin’s bullet sprang back to vivid life. His side completely gouged out. Him falling helplessly to the ground. Her unable to do anything at all. She definitely didn’t want to go through anything like that ever again.

The girl brought Zadkiel’s head back down.

“…”

Spiraling out of control, Tohka’s mental state became unstable. Psychological stress that threatened to render her unconscious stormed through her head.

“Hngh. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Zadkiel spewed that compressed cold air from its mouth…

“Wh-whoa…?!” Shido fell down on his backside, pushed back by the incredible pressure radiating from Zadkiel.

The AST members deployed in the area launched repeated attacks on the Angel as it started to suck in air, but they were all repelled by the rain.

And then Yoshino released a torrent of cold air from the puppet.

“Wh—?” He didn’t know exactly what the attack was, but he was pretty sure whatever it was, it was powerful enough to instantly end his life. And there was no way he was going to be able to dodge it, not now.

“Shido—,” he heard Origami say, but it was too late.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

After being frozen in place for a few seconds, he frowned as he opened his eyes. And gaped.

“Th-that’s—”

A massive throne had risen up in front of him and protected him from Yoshino’s blow.

“S-Sandalphon?”

Yes. That magnificent, metallic throne. Steel armrests, seatback with the hilt of a sword peeking out. This was none other than the Spirit Tohka’s peerless weapon Sandalphon.

“Wh-why is this—?”

“Simple.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear.

“Kotori? What’s going on? Wasn’t Tohka’s power sealed?”

“I told you. If Tohka’s mental state becomes unstable, there’s the possibility of the sealed power flowing back from you to her. She’s far from full power, but I never imagined she’d be able to materialize her Angel.” She paused meaningfully. “…She sure loves you, huh, Shido?”

“Huh…? S-so why’s Tohka’s…?” While he gaped in astonishment, things were moving around him.

He wasn’t the only one surprised by the appearance of the throne. Yoshino’s eyes were wide as she momentarily stared at the unfathomable mystery before quickly fleeing on Zadkiel’s back.

The AST fired their thrusters and went after her.

Origami glanced at the throne in front of Shido before shrugging slightly and going after Yoshino with the rest of her team.

“…”

He stared dumbfounded for a moment before gasping out loud. “Right! I have to go after Yoshino, too.”

“Shido!”

He heard a cry from behind. The adorable tone, the unique intonation. And above all else, the throne in front of him. He didn’t need to ask who it was.

“Tohka… Huh?” But when he looked back, his eyebrows jumped up at an unfamiliar sight of her.

She was wearing her usual Raizen High School uniform, but beautiful films of light shimmered on her chest and skirt and other key points on her body.

“Tohka, what’s that…?” he asked, looking over her amended uniform.

“Mm?” She blinked a few times and then dropped her gaze to her own body. “Oh?! What’s this?! My Astral Dress?!” She apparently hadn’t noticed her new look until he pointed it out to her.

She patted at the films of light and then lifted her face with a gasp and turned her eyes back to him. “Are you okay, Shido? You’re not hurt?”

“N-no, I’m okay. Thanks to you,” he replied, looking up at the throne towering before him.

She looked away awkwardly before continuing, her voice slightly trembling. “Um. Okay, I-I’m sorry…for stuff.”

“Huh…?” He stared at her with blank eyes.

“I mean!” she groaned. “I got all annoyed at something I don’t really understand… I didn’t even say thank you… I got in your way. I’ve wanted to apologize this whole time…”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing…”

They needed to have an actual conversation, but there was no time for that now. He swallowed hard.

The Spirit Tohka’s Angel, Sandalphon. And her Astral Dress. Though it might not have manifested completely, the fact remained that this was still an ability that went beyond any human understanding. Tohka has the Spirit power to resist the AST’s CR unit and Yoshino’s Zadkiel.

Shido let his thoughts race for a few seconds before turning back to the semi-Spirit. “Tohka, I need a favor.”

“Mm…? What’s going on?” Her head tilted to one side.

He dropped to his knees without hesitating and bowed his head deeply.

“Sh-Shido?”

“Please. Lend me your power. I know it’s unreasonable of me to ask this of you. But I have to save her… I have to save Yoshino!”

“…” After a brief silence, Tohka spoke in a small voice. “Is Yoshino…that girl?”

“Yeah.”

“…” She gasped and then continued, sounding sad somehow. “…Is that it? So you do care about that girl. More than me.”

“…Who told you that?!” Shido lifted his head and looked at her.

“Huh…?”

“That’s not true at all,” he told her. “That’s not what’s going on here.”

“Shido. Danger. Giving Tohka unnecessary info—” Kotori started to say something, but he ignored her and kept speaking.

“She’s…like you, Tohka.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah. Yoshino is like you, a Spirit.”

“…Really?!” Tohka furrowed her brow.

“That’s not all,” he continued. “Just like you, she’s got this power she can’t do anything about, and she’s been suffering all this time!”

“…”

“I made a promise to her. I said I’d be her hero. I said I’d save her. But I won’t even be able to catch up with her by myself!” He bowed his head deeply once more. “Please, Tohka. Lend me your power!”

“…” Silence descended on them. But it didn’t last long.

“Fwoo. Haah.” He heard a deep breath, followed by a brief almost-laugh. “…Ha-ha.”

When he raised his face, he saw that Tohka was pressing a hand to her forehead. And then she spoke very quietly. “…Aah, is that it? So that’s what’s been going on. How could I have forgotten that it was a boy like this who saved me?”

“Tohka?” He couldn’t hear what she was saying over the pouring rain.

She ignored his questioning tone. “I just have to go after that girl then?” Now her voice was louder, clear to him, almost drowning out the rain.

“Tohka…!”

“Don’t say anything more. No time,” she said, taking a few steps toward Sandalphon. And then she kicked it. The massive throne toppled over forward and changed shape ever so slightly.

“Th-this—”

“Get on. You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?” Tohka jumped onto the back of the sideways throne.

“R-right…” Baffled, he climbed up onto the sideways Sandalphon. No longer a throne, it looked more like an ill-formed boat or surfboard now.

“Hang on,” she warned, and then they began to slide along the frozen ground at an unbelievable speed.

He was pushed back by the wind and pulled down by an intense gravity. He grabbed on to whatever handhold he could find on the seatback.

Tohka didn’t hang on to anything. She simply stood casually on Sandalphon’s back like she was connected to it through powerful magnets in the soles of her feet or something.

“If I go any slower, I’ll lose sight of her! So we gotta do this!”

“Y-yeah…!” he barely managed to say over the intense wind.

“Honestly.” He heard an exasperated voice in the earpiece in his right ear. Kotori. “It’s great that Tohka agreed and all, but that was rash, Shido.”

“Lecture me later…!” he said. “Just help me now, Kotori!”

“Of course.” She sighed. “It’s our mission to rescue Spirits. We’ll do whatever we can.”

“I owe you one…!”

Sandalphon continued to accelerate and shoot forward over the ice, but Shido somehow managed to pull himself to his feet and stand up with some help from Tohka.

“Squad B! Go! Surround Hermit!”

“Roger!”

Origami heard the voices of Ryouko and the members of her team responding over the comm.

Together with two other AST members, she changed direction slightly and broke free from the main group chasing Hermit. Their destination was the intersection approximately one kilometer ahead.

Her Territory neutralized the wind pressure that was so strong, it would have prevented her from keeping her eyes open, along with the gravity that would have caused her to lose consciousness.

“…”

When she arrived at their destination, she put on the brakes, which felt like striking her foot down in the sky, and reversed direction. She could already see Hermit and the puppet coming this way.

Once the three members of Squad B had sighted their target, they deployed to the sides, gave commands in their heads, and launched the two anchor units equipped on the sides of their thrusters toward the ground. Threads of light stretched out from the six anchors, weaving through one another to form a massive net.

“Laser web deployment complete,” Origami said. “Connection with beta and gamma confirmed.”

“Good! We’ll herd her in!” Ryouko came through over the comm.

“…?!” Hermit popped her head up. It seemed that she had finally realized this was an ambush. But it was too late.

Ahead, a lattice of magical light stretched out on both sides. Behind, the pursuit of Ryouko and the rest of Squad A. And Origami and Squad B floated above with their deployed laser web.

“Ah. Ah, ah, aah…!” Hermit opened her eyes wide and cried out in despair, clinging to the puppet’s back.

The AST, however, had no sympathy or mercy for Spirits.

“All personnel! Attack!”

The team pulled out their No Pain blades—sight-equipped, high-output laser weapons for close-range fighting—and charged Hermit.

However…

“Unh…Ah. Ah. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Hermit screamed, and an incredible wind whirled up around her. The falling rain froze like hail and formed a vortex that covered the Spirit to create a dome, where a snowstorm raged on the outside.

“—Tch.” Regardless, Origami brought No Pain down on the ice storm barrier protecting Hermit.

She quickly noticed something strange. No Pain—and the Territory stretched out around Origami—began to freeze with a crackling sound at the point of contact with the dome.

She immediately extinguished the blade and temporarily released her Territory.

“…Ngh!” The equipment attached to her body instantly regained its weight, and the distant view she’d seen so clearly grew hazy. Not to mention the biting chill that blanketed the town and the icy rain pouring down from above touched her now for the first time. It was as though she’d teleported from a greenhouse to a snowy mountain in the time it took to blink. Her heart leaped up as if stunned, and she struggled to breathe.

“Basic Realizer, restart,” she somehow managed to say, fighting an exhaustion that threatened to render her unconscious.

An invisible barrier popped up around her once more, and she began to float gently. She fired her thrusters and narrowly escaped Hermit’s barrier.

“Hngh! Is everyone okay?!” Ryouko shouted. She’d likely escaped the barrier in the same way as Origami.

But there were only five voices including Origami’s in response. It seemed that the other two had been frozen with their Territories.

“…” She turned her eyes toward the snowstorm dome on the frozen road.

Hyoooooo. Swirling with a frigid whistle, the half sphere was about twenty meters across—a fortress of cold ice bullets imbued with Spirit power raging.

From the moment it froze the Territories and laser blades—neither of which had material form to begin with—it was clear that this was no ordinary snowstorm.

“Ah. What a hassle. What’re we supposed to do about this?”

“There is a way,” Origami replied and sent the barrier data she’d scanned earlier to her teammates.

“This is…”

“Yes. The Spirit power value of the barrier was not significant. The field was reacting to the magic output by our Realizers and temporarily increasing defenses locally.”

“In which case…it can’t freeze us if our Territories are released?”

“Most likely,” she agreed.

Ryouko groaned in frustration. “That’s just too impractical. Sure, we’ll escape being frozen, but that barrier’s made of chunks of ice. They’re like bullets at that velocity. Our wiring suits are more or less bulletproof, but I can’t imagine they’d keep us safe until we made it inside.”

“So then how about an attack with a gun not imbued with magic?” another team member suggested.

“…That’d be tough, too. Even assuming the bullets did get through the barrier, the Spirit’s got her Astral Dress. A physical attack can’t so much as scratch the Spirit if it’s not cloaked in magic.”

Ryouko was exactly right. A Spirit’s Astral Dress could only be shattered with the magic output by the Realizer. But the snowstorm barrier cloaking the area reacted to that very magic. It was a double wall with different characteristics. This was indeed a hassle.

But Origami fired her thruster and flew up into the air.

“Origami?”

“We can just do this,” she muttered as she lowered her eyes, regulated her breathing, and increased her focus. Then she expanded her Territory from a radius of three meters around her to nearly ten meters all at once.

The more the Territory was expanded, the lower its density became and the more its attribute values dropped. With her Territory now deployed to ten meters, it probably wouldn’t have been able to stop an attack from the Spirit, but that was fine for the moment.

She approached a mixed-use building nearby.

“—!”

Krr, krr, krr, krr, krr!

The tip of the building entered her enlarged Territory, twisted off, and floated in the air. The concrete exterior wall peeled away, the insulation was torn to pieces, and the steel bars of the foundation were forcibly twisted off with an earsplitting squeal. Computers and papers, likely from an office inside of the building, spilled out of her Territory and tumbled downward.

It was quite heavy. The load on her brain was intense, and she was attacked by a ferocious headache.

“O-Origami…?! What are you doing?!”

Ignoring this, she held the tip of the building up and flew to a point directly above Hermit’s barrier. And then she let out a small breath. “We crush it with physical objects. This should force a momentary release of the barrier. Be ready for your chance.”

“…Honestly. Reckless as always!” Ryouko said with a sigh before giving the order. “You hear that, gang?! It’s a bit brute force, but it doesn’t look like there’s any other way. Stand by as close as possible to the barrier with output on maximum! All personnel attack when the barrier drops!”

“Roger!” The other AST wizards readied their equipment and set their Realizers in motion.

Origami quieted her breathing and brought down the hand holding the building aloft. The incredible weight of the lump of steel and concrete plummeted toward the snowstorm dome.

Her eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly.

A beam of light caught the tip of the building she’d just dropped, and the enormous chunk of concrete was split clean in two.

“…”

That wasn’t all. By the time it reached the ground, it had turned into mere scraps and fragments. Hermit’s barrier remained intact.

“That was…,” she started, and an earsplitting alarm beeped in her ear.

“Origami! Th-the Spirit signal has increased! This signal—”

Before Ryouko was even done speaking, Origami was shrinking her expanded Territory down even smaller than normal, to a diameter of two meters. The larger pieces of equipment now accidentally peeked out of her Territory and were forced to obey the laws of gravity once more. They slammed into the ground.

Instantly, hair the color of night danced before Origami’s eyes.

“…!”

She felt an enormous load on her Territory, even though its defensive powers were greater now at the smaller size. She didn’t need to guess at the cause of this new burden: the sword the girl before her had swung.

“Hmph. So you guarded?”

“…Tohka…Yatogami.” Origami groaned the girl’s name and pulled her laser blade No Pain off her hip to launch a slicing attack at Tohka, who was clad in scattered pieces of Astral Dress.

“Hup!” Tohka dodged this flash and planted her feet on the fence of a nearby rooftop.

“Why are you here?” she demanded, while keeping her blade of light carefully turned on the Spirit.

“Hmph.” Tohka smiled boldly as she pushed back bangs wet from the rain. “Sorry, but I won’t let you get in Shido’s way.”

“…” Wondering why he was suddenly brought up, Origami readjusted her grip on No Pain.

“Ngh! Why is Princess here?” Ryouko cried with annoyance. “Did she come to help Hermit?”

Yes. A triple-A rank Spirit—otherwise known as Princess.

Normally, no Spirit signal could be detected from the girl in front of her, but it was there now, however weak.

“Ngh! Deal with Hermit later. All personnel, change target to Princess!” Ryouko shouted.

A reasonable decision.

This was indeed their chance to hit Hermit, but they’d get nowhere if Princess attacked while they had their hands busy with her. The barrier was definitely annoying, but Hermit wouldn’t go on the offensive as long as they kept a certain distance, so it was only natural to save her for later.

For some reason, however, Origami felt like Tohka nodded slightly when she saw Ryouko and the others float up and head in her direction. Almost as though things were going exactly as she’d expected.

She had no time to ponder this. Tohka launched herself off the fence, brandished her sword, and came at Origami once again.

“Hngh.” Origami readjusted her grip on her blade of light and soared through the sky to counterattack.

To go back three minutes in time.

“Shido! What is that?!” Tohka cried.

He jerked his head up from his precarious position atop Sandalphon (with Tohka’s support) as the throne slid along the frozen road at top speed.

“Wha…?!” he gasped.

It was a bizarre sight. A snowstorm swirled above the ground to create a neat half sphere, and AST wizards were ostentatiously readying their weapons on all sides of it.

“What the hell is that…?!” he cried.

“…It’s a barrier Yoshino built. Hmm, nice work, too.” Reine neatly explained the results of analyzing the chilly dome. It was a fortress of ice that would automatically fire back in response to attacks from the AST with their CR units.

Shido digested this information and explained it to Tohka, who put a thoughtful hand to her chin and groaned.

“This is a problem.” Now he heard Kotori’s voice in his right ear. “No one can get near Yoshino like this.”

She would normally have been right about that.

Shido swallowed hard. “No.”

There was still something bothering him.

“We won’t know unless we try…but that might not necessarily be the case.”

“What?”

And the scene ahead changed.

Origami floated up into the sky, ripped off the top of a nearby building, and carried it over to Yoshino’s barrier.

“Wh—?”

“Tch! So she’s going to try and break up the barrier with that?” Kotori cried venomously. “That’s some really off-the-cuff stuff there.”

“Wh-what should we—?” he stammered.

“Mm,” she said from his side. “Shido, you got an idea about what to do with Yoshino or whatever her name is, right?”

“Uh, it’s… I don’t know if it’s poss—,” he started and then gritted his teeth. “No, I do. I will do something.”

“Yeah?” Tohka said, and the corners of her mouth slid up.

“Tohka…?”

“Then I’ll leave her to you. I’ll take care of that AST or whatever. I will not let them get in your way.” She ran to the front of Sandalphon to grab the hilt peeking out of the chair back and yanked it free with a flourish. And then she kicked at the chair back and flew off into the sky, toward Origami and the building.

“Wh—? That girl…!” He opened his eyes wide, stunned, as he crouched down on the speeding Angel.

He clenched his jaw and turned his eyes forward. Now was not the time for him to be shouting that it was dangerous or that she was reckless.

Tohka the Spirit. The girl who had finally pulled free of the cycle of fighting. To save Yoshino—and probably to support Shido—she was leaping into battle once more. All he could do now was repay her for that!

He stayed low, crouched down on Sandalphon, and charged toward Yoshino’s barrier. Along the way, he asked his commander/sister a question as a final confirmation. “Kotori. I want to check on one thing.”

“What?”

“There’s just so much going on, I forgot to ask about one thing. That day I sealed Tohka’s power…I was shot by Origami, right?”

If his memory was accurate, Origami had mistakenly fired on him that day. And he had suffered a wound that a normal person could not have survived.

After a moment of silence, Kotori replied, “Yes. That’s a fact.”

“What exactly…was that? Is it another one of my mysterious powers?”

“…You’re half-right.”

“Meaning?” he asked.

Kotori groaned, slightly troubled, before continuing. “It’s related to your powers. When your body takes lethal damage, flames consume you and you regenerate. A hack of a skill on par with undead monsters. But this one didn’t just come from nowhere.”

His eyes grew wide. But he was out of time.

“I’ll refrain from asking you to tell me its origin story. But tell me one more thing. I can recover even if I’m mortally wounded. There’s no mistake there, right?”

“Yes, that’s affirmative,” Kotori said.

He let out a sigh. “That’s a relief. If that had been all in my mind, I’d be about to actually die.”

“…Shido! Don’t tell me you’re—,” Kotori started to say, as the building in the sky above was diced by Tohka, becoming chunks of concrete that slammed to the ground around him.

The AST members in the area quickly shifted their target to Tohka and floated up into the air.

As if to take their place, Sandalphon and Shido arrived at Yoshino’s barrier. Or rather, with their momentum, they crashed into it.

“Eek…?!” He started to shake all over. He couldn’t sit there in shock forever. The part of Sandalphon that was touching the barrier was squealing as it froze over. The barrier was no doubt reacting to Sandalphon’s Spirit power.

“Crap…!” He hurriedly jumped down from the throne-surfboard and stood in front of the dome-shaped snowstorm—the barrier of the raging ice pellets. The force was a magnitude greater now that he was standing in front of it.

“So Yoshino’s inside,” he muttered before pulling the puppet out of his pocket and moving it inside his jacket. He hunched over as if to shield it with his body, and then he put one foot forward.

“Shido, wait. What are you planning to do?”

He didn’t stop moving.

“You’re going into the barrier? Counting on your ability to recover? It’s reckless. You have to stop.” Kotori very much did not sound like she was in commander mode.

“Hey, whoa.” He grinned wryly. “I heard you weren’t upset at all when I got shot.”

“The situation was different. The barrier is over five meters out. Five meters, okay? You’ll be advancing while being pelted with a barrage of bullets? And if any Spirit power is detected in that range, you’ll be frozen solid like Tohka’s Sandalphon.”

Kotori kept going.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m saying that while you’re in the barrier wall, your wounds won’t heal. This is totally different from taking a single bullet from a gun. If you lose power halfway in, you’ll die!”

“…Spirit power. Is my ability to regenerate Spirit power?”

“…”

He heard Kotori gulp, but he didn’t stop pushing forward. This might indeed have been a stupid move. But he couldn’t quit. After all, he had made a promise. To save Yoshino. To be Yoshino’s hero.

He took a deep breath and stepped into the barrier.

“Shido! Shido! Stop right now!” Kotori shouted, more desperate than he’d ever heard her before. “Stop…! Big Br—”

All he heard was the gusting snowstorm.

“Unh…! Waah…!” Inside the barrier, Yoshino was crouched down on Zadkiel’s back, crying by herself.

The space was so quiet, it was hard to believe it was surrounded by storming ice pellets. There was no sound except for the strange echoes of her sobs.

She was so scared that she couldn’t go outside. But in here, she was very lonely.

“Yo-shi-non…!” she squeaked out in a tear-soaked voice. She knew she wouldn’t get a response. But she couldn’t not—

“You called?”

“…?!” Her shoulders twitched, and she lifted her face with a gasp.

And then she wiped away her tears and opened her eyes wide.

There it was, her familiar puppet on the border of the barrier.

“! Yoshinon…?!” she shouted and jumped off Zadkiel’s back to run over to the puppet. She wasn’t seeing things. This was without a doubt Yoshinon, her beloved friend who had disappeared a few days earlier.

But…

“…Ee…!”

Thud! Someone collapsed behind Yoshinon, and Yoshino froze in place.

Actually, the boy hadn’t collapsed behind the puppet. He was wearing Yoshinon on his hand. She couldn’t really tell what he looked like because he had fallen facedown, covered in blood.

“…!” Her eyebrows shot up.

He had likely forced his way through her barrier. Blood pooled on the spot where the boy had collapsed.

It was apparent even to Yoshino’s eyes. This was closer to a corpse than a person now.

Then she became less sure of her assessment. Because, suddenly, the body of this half-dead person began to shine faintly, and before she knew it, flames licked along his skin as if lapping at the many wounds he’d suffered.

While she sat there stunned, the boy was healed completely. And then she was finally able to see his face.

“…?! Shido…!” she cried out in shock.

That was right. The battered and beaten boy on the ground was none other than Shido Itsuka.

He flopped over onto his back and let out a long sigh. “I—I thought I was a dead man…”

Having just barely made it inside the barrier, he took some deep breaths, chest heaving, and once his nearly stopped heart had regained its usual tempo, he sat up.

Even though the outside was a wild snowstorm of machine gun strafing, the inside was quite quiet. It was a curious space. Shido was somehow reminded of an igloo. Inside it were a massive puppet and a girl whose eyes had bright-red rings around them like a rabbit’s.

“Yoshino!” He stood up, brandishing the rabbit puppet. “I came to save you just like I promised…!”

She stared in amazement. “Unh…” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to sob.

“Whoa…! Hey! D-don’t cry!” He waved his hands back and forth in a panic. “D-did I do something wrong…?”

She shook her head. “No…I’m…just…happy you…came…!” she managed to say before beginning to wail once again.

Smiling slightly, he stroked her hair with one hand. And then he made the puppet on his other move.

“Heyooo, it’s been a minute. You good?”

He tried not to move his mouth very much, practicing what ventriloquism he’d picked up from watching Yoshino. His attempt was awkward, but Yoshino happily bobbed her head up and down.

Perhaps it was an odd sight. After all, Yoshinon was the puppet Yoshino made speak and move herself. However, Shido recalled what Reine had said to him earlier.

“…After investigating, I discovered there was another extremely small signal underneath the graph of her mental state.”

“Umm… So then, that means…”

“…Basically, it means there’s another personality inside of Yoshino. But only when she’s wearing the puppet.”

“! …D-does Yoshino know this?”

“…Hard to say. The only thing that’s certain is when she was talking with you in the department store, it wasn’t her but the other personality that manifests through the rabbit doll. Yoshino herself left all the reacting to Yoshinon and deliberately shut down her mind, or something very similar to that. That’s why you couldn’t seal her powers with a kiss.”

“…Oh.”

“…And one more thing. There’s something really fascinating about Yoshinon.”

“Fascinating?”

“…Mm-hmm. There are a number of reasons why a person produces a second personality. But one of the most likely explanations is to escape from serious pain or stress like abuse. Basically, you create another self to convince yourself that it’s not you suffering, it’s someone else.”

“… So Yoshinon’s a part of her because it’s so traumatic to have the AST trying to kill her?”

“…No. It’s hard to believe, but it’s possible she produced a personality that would keep her power in check. Not to keep herself from being hurt, but to keep from hurting other people.”

“—”

“…Shin. I know you can save her. I mean, a girl this kind… You gotta.”

That had been the extent of their conversation.

“…”

Yoshino suddenly bowed her head. “Th…ank…you.”

“Huh?” He was jolted back to the present.

“…For…saving…Yoshinon.”

Shido fidgeted in embarrassment for a second and then nodded. “Next is you, Yoshino. I’ll save you.”

“What…?” she replied.

He got to his knees so that he could be at eye level with her. Nothing came through his earpiece. It had probably been smashed when he came through the barrier.

It hurt him not to know Yoshino’s mental state, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. Wherever she was at, he had to just do it. To reach out to Yoshino, who had lost her puppet, to have this conversation now. He needed to have faith that he would be able to earn some of her trust in this brief time.

“Umm, so, uh, Yoshino? To save you…uh, there’s one thing I gotta do.”

“What…is it?”

“…So don’t think I’m a weirdo or anything.” He swallowed to wet his mouth, which was dry from nerves. “You remember what a kiss is?”

She stared at him blankly for a moment before shaking her head.

“Y-you don’t? Umm. So we have to do that to save you… Oh, and not in a weird way! It’s—” He stopped speaking.

“—Huh?”

The reason was simple. Yoshino had lowered her eyes, suddenly…and pecked him with pursed lips.

Instantly, he was filled with the sensation of something warm flowing into his body.

“…?! Y-Yoshino…?”

“…?” She cocked her head to one side. “Did…I…do it…wrong…?”

“N-no… It wasn’t wrong, but…,” he said.

She nodded. “If it’s you…Shido. I trust you.”

Then Zadkiel behind her and her dress under her coat turned into particles of light and melted into the air. The snowstorm barrier enclosing them suddenly lost its strength and vanished with a wink.

Yoshino jumped up in surprise. “…Sh-Shido… Is this…?!” She looked all around, not understanding what was happening, and then crouched down as if to hide her now half-naked body.

“Uh, oh.” Shido was embarrassed all over again. “Right. Umm. I have a lot I want to tell you! B-but for now anyway—”

“Mm…” She narrowed her eyes, blinded by the dazzling light shining through a gap in the clouds. “It’s…so…warm…” She gasped with wonder, like she’d never seen the sun before.

Actually, maybe she hadn’t. He didn’t know the true nature of Yoshino or how she manipulated water and ice, but he was pretty sure that it had been raining every time she’d appeared in this world.

“So…pretty…,” she murmured, looking up at the sky.

He followed her lead and lifted his own face and quickly found what Yoshino was staring at.

Now free from the heavy rainclouds, the sky was colored with a magnificent rainbow.

They didn’t get to bask for long. A strange buoyancy wrapped around Shido and Yoshino.

“Whoa!” he cried, while Yoshino looked at him in confusion.

“…?!”

He was familiar with this sensation. It was the transporter on Fraxinus. Kotori had no doubt confirmed that Yoshino’s power was sealed and had come to recover them.

“…Hup!” A second later, the familiar bridge replaced the frozen streets in his field of view.

“…?! …?!” Yoshino was understandably panicked.

Shido sensed another presence arrive at the same time and looked back with a gasp.

“Aah… You’re okay, Shido?” Tohka was standing there, her Raizen High School uniform singed in places. Apparently, she’d been recovered from the middle of battle at the same time as Shido and Yoshino.

“Tohka! A-are you okay?!” he cried.

She let out a sigh of relief, and the sword in her hand and the patchwork film of light covering her uniform melted into the air. “Mm. Not a big deal… You look much worse than me.”

“Oh…” He tousled the hair at the back of his head. His clothes were red with his own blood and riddled with holes.

“Eep…!” Yoshino cried out and hid behind Shido. She was apparently not ready to see Tohka again.

He smiled by reflex. “It’s okay, Yoshino. This is Tohka. She helped me save you.”

Yoshino very timidly looked at Tohka. “Toh…ka…”

“Mm.” Tohka stared at Yoshino with a complicated look on her face for some reason.

“Hmm?” He raised an eyebrow.

He could hear feet loudly trotting in from the hallway. Then the door to the transfer space slammed open, letting a panting Kotori tumble inside.

“K-Kotori…?” Shido was surprised by the sudden intrusion.

She stared at him as though she were examining him carefully. “You idiot…!” She held an arm up high and launched a fierce punch at his solar plexus. And with an exquisite twist to it. A magnificent corkscrew.

“Hngh…?! Wh-what are you doing?!”

“That was so stupid! You should have just listened to me!”

“What—?” He started to reproach her, but he was stopped before he could get anything out. The little sister who had only just sucker punched him was pressing her face to his chest and wrapping her arms around him to squeeze tightly.

“…We calculated the recovery limit to the decimal…!” she cried. “As long as you do what I say, you’ll be safe…!”

“Koto…ri…” He sighed and stroked her hair. “Sorry. I was reckless.”

“You never think. I mean, an amoeba is a deeper thinker. You half-celled animal.” Her face still pressed against him, Kotori blew her nose and then finally pulled away from him.

With snot all over the front of his shirt, Shido chuckled wryly.

Kotori made a show of paying him no mind. The instant she pulled her face away from his chest, she returned to her usual self as the cool commander.

“Honestly, going off on your own…” She shook her head, turned away, and stepped out into the hallway. “Head-to-toe exams for all of you. Come with me.”

“Ha-ha.” He laughed lifelessly and turned to Tohka and Yoshino. “Okay. So let’s go… Wait. Huh?”

For some reason, Tohka looked unhappy.

“Tohka…? Something wrong?”

“Nothing! Let’s go already!” she said and stormed away.

“What is with her?” he wondered before starting after her with Yoshino.