Epilogue

With its core gone, the giant began to fall apart. We escaped from its collapsing forehead and landed on one of the surviving buildings in the city.

“Mmgh!”

I swallowed the other piece of Raul’s flesh that I’d been given. It gave my body the power to reject the Berserker Cells, and I returned to normal. Just like Shirley had said, the pain had almost driven me insane... but I’d managed to pull it off.

“Guh...”

Squallow had also returned to normal—to his original merman form from before he’d even become a cyborg—and slowly woke up.

“Boss!”

Fam grabbed him in a hug. He slowly lifted a hand and patted her on the head.

“...I guess I worried you, didn’t I?”

“That doesn’t matter!”

Fam started to cry. I figured she probably didn’t want anyone seeing that, so I turned away and watched the pirate ship swoop in to pick us up.

Then I contacted Iris and the other girls to get them to meet up with us. I’d asked them to help the townspeople, but once they saw what happened with the energy storage facility, they’d switched to evacuating them instead.

I was worried that not many had made it out, but I was thinking in Earth terms. I was used to the fastest mode of transportation being a car, but the citizens here had flying vehicles and access to things like Iris’s warp watch.

“Between the military alert and the pirate attack, everyone knew something was up. Most everyone had evacuated before this even started, so it all worked out.”

“I see. Glad to hear it. Thanks, Iris.”

As for Shirley’s attempt to get all of the adults to kill themselves via the master chip amplifier, between her order for their deaths to be slow, our unexpected interference, and Rain’s help, no one had actually died.

Fam and Rain were standing on either side of Squallow, but Shirley and Garnet were standing a bit away.

Everyone was silent. Everybody here knew Shirley’s story. They knew it was possible to sympathize with her, but...

“Shirley... I’m not a hero, and I’m not the police. I just wanted to save everyone. But...”

That was just what I wanted to do. I couldn’t force my way of seeing things onto Rain, who’d lost her mother, or Squallow, who’d been forced to kill Muse. What they thought about Shirley was a different matter.

“...”

“Rekka, don’t make that face.”

Shirley rubbed her slender fingers against my cheek.

“You said you were my friend, right? That’s enough for me.”

“Shirley... Um...”

“Thank you, too, Tetra. And... I’m sorry.”

After apologizing, Shirley headed towards Rain and the pirates. Squallow, still supported by Fam, looked her dead in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll do anything I can to atone. Do with me what you will.”

Shirley lowered her head as she awaited her judgment.

“When we pirates came together, we made a few rules. One of them was forbidding vengeance against our homeland.”

Squallow’s voice was calm rather than filled with rage as he addressed Shirley.

“We’re a bunch of former refugees and poor people. Every one of us suffered back home. Once we became pirates and we learned how to use weapons and wield violence, we all wanted to tear the eyes right out of the people who used to look down on us. But I forbade that.”

A lot of what Squallow was saying applied to Shirley, too.

“Revenge taints your soul. And when a tainted soul returns to the sea after it dies, it taints the sea, too. Our ancestors allow us to shed blood in order to feed our children or protect our comrades... but in the end, revenge is just about you. It’s selfish that way. It’s about getting rid of the thorns in your heart, or feeling the joy you get when you hurt someone you’re angry at, or making the people you hate suffer. It’s just killing for pleasure.”

Shirley was silent. Squallow’s heavy words weighed heavily on her. The regret was visible on her face.

“If I take revenge on you for Muse, my father, my father’s father, and his father before him will never forgive me. And so I forgive you.”

“I... I think Squallow is right,” Rain said. “I do want you to atone, but not for the sake of revenge. Just so I can forgive you some day. Is that all right?”

“...Yes!”

Shirley was still looking down. Her shoulders were shaking softly, and Garnet gently held her in her arms.

Whether this was a truly happy ending or not... I didn’t know. I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been a little faster getting to the top of Ryugu Palace, I might’ve been able to stop Squallow from killing Muse.

“Um, sorry, but why are we all so glum? It’s all over, isn’t it?”

Ugh... And then he had to go and spoil the whole mood.

“Raul, would you shut up?”

“No, listen, kid. I honestly don’t understand why everybody’s so down now that we’ve reached our big conclusion.”

“Look...”

I carefully chose my words as I explained to this idiot what happened at Ryugu Palace after he peaced out. But even then, Raul still looked a little confused.

“Wait, did I not tell you?”

“Huh?”

“Actually...”

I could hardly believe what he said next.

▽

A week later, I was back home, sitting on my sofa and staring at the ceiling.

“Man, that space trip was one heck of an ordeal, wasn’t it?”

“Was it really any different than usual?”

R was right. I hated to admit it, but R was right.

I’d had a fun beach vacation, followed by a trip across three planets. I was still a little tired from it all.

In the end, everything had worked out thanks to Raul, but...

“Man, it still kind of pisses me off thinking about it.”

“What?”

“What else? Raul. How could he have forgotten to tell us something so important?”

“Oh, right. You mean how it was actually Raul in disguise who’d almost been killed by Squallow while the real Muse had been knocked out and was hidden away in the closet?”

“Yup. That.”

When Raul had split off from us during the pirate attack, he’d gone to the top floor and changed places with Muse. He’d known just by looking at them how powerful Rosalind and Suzuran were, so he left it up to us to protect Rain while he took the more dangerous job of protecting Muse. It sounded like something out of an action manga, but he’d managed to pull it off.

I heard later that even though he’d started calling himself the “Phantom Thief Baron” about 500 years ago, he’d actually been alive for several dozen times that long. Could he be older than Earth itself? As I was thinking about that strange man who was probably still wandering through space somewhere, the front doorbell rang.

“Sir Rekka, you have visitors.”

“Right... Huh?!”

Harissa led me into the living room, where I was shocked to see my “visitors.” It was Rain, Fam, and Shirley.

“We came to say hello now that we’re neighbors.”

“R-Right...”

I bowed.

Wait, why was I bowing? What was going on?

“Um, hang on a second.”

I motioned for the girls to come sit down on the sofa. I then went and got a chair from the dining room and sat across from them.

“So... neighbors?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

It was Rain, sitting in the center, who spoke up. Fam was too busy eating the snacks that Harissa had brought, and Shirley just silently smiled.

“Um... Fam, if I remember right, planet Berano agreed to take in the refugees from Planet Gale, and the pirates dissolved after that, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Crumbs of the snacks she was eating fell from Fam’s mouth as she spoke.

“The mermen returned from across the galaxy to live on Berano again, and the former Seageists formed an army to protect the planet from slavers. Did I get that right?”

“Yeah. It’s a resort planet though, so they’re pretty much sticking to the background. Some of the people are scared of them, but the boss and the queen are making it work.”

The mermaids were apparently long-lived beings. Some of their elders remembered when Squallow was the merman king. And things had come full circle. He and Queen Muse were now working together to make sure Berano flourished.

So everything seemed to check out in that department. Now the question was...

“And didn’t you say you were going to help, Rain?”

“Yes. Now that I’ve brought mother and Squallow back together again, the next thing I want to do is fulfill my duties as princess,” Rain said with a bright smile.

Next I turned to the so-far-silent Shirley.

“Shirley, you said you were going to help restore planet Berano, right...?”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s what I said when you left.”

“Okay...”

That’s what I thought. It seemed like I hadn’t forgotten anything or missed anything major. That meant all I could do was come out and ask.