Chapter 5: Mutsuko Sakaki the Traitor?!

Hiromichi Rokuhara had always seemed like a sullen young man. That hadn’t changed, but there was something clearly different about him now: he had wings.

Black wings, like those of a crow, had sprouted from his back, giving him a demonic appearance.

He was standing on the empty window frame. Across from him, protagonist Ryoma Takei sat slumped against the wall, with Yuichi and Natsuki standing next to him.

Yurika was near the entrance, to the left of Hiromichi from Yuichi’s point of view.

Ende was sitting in a seat in the back of the cafe, surveying the room before her, and Mutsuko Sakaki was standing in the window frame next to Hiromichi.

“Hey, I don’t think your ward is having much effect. People have been coming in the whole time...” Yuichi muttered. It was a trivial complaint, but perhaps he needed to get his mind off of the sight before his eyes.

“Well, the ward that I cast isn’t a spell type of thing,” Ende said. “It’s more like a use of public authority, which means that it won’t stop your typical rule-breaker types from getting in.”

Yuichi had to admit that Mutsuko was unlikely to heed a police cordon. She’d already done more than a few arguably illegal things in the past.

“But a ward was never going to work on him and Mutsuko anyway... after all, I invited them here.”

Ende slowly began walking towards the two as she spoke. Then she turned in front of Mutsuko and Hiromichi and spread her arms wide.

“This is my next plan. I was trying to think about how to beat Yuichi Sakaki, and the conclusion was simple: get Mutsuko Sakaki on my side, and make them fight. Pretty effective, right?”

“Uh, what?” Yuichi burst out.

Mutsuko was siding with the enemy?

The premise seemed so unreal, it was making his head spin. His sister might say and do ridiculous things, but he’d always believed she would never betray him, at least.

“Knock it off, Sis,” he said. He spoke quickly, flustered. “This is a joke, right? I beat that protagonist guy, so let’s go home... Oh, by the way, I did that one thing, the elbow strike into kata-guruma throw that you thought up? I wish you’d been here earlier. I won’t get many other chances to do it...”

“The question was how to get Mutsuko on my side, but then, conveniently for me, you seemed to have some kind of falling out on your own.” Ende continued, seeming to enjoy her monologue. “I brought up the subject, and she agreed to it readily.”

“Hey! While we’re here, let’s recover that other Divine Vessel! Then we’ll have almost all of them!” Mutsuko pointed straight at Yurika.

“What are you doing, Sis?” Yuichi yelled.

“Huh? Does the person who whined about not wanting to take part in the war have something to say to me?” Mutsuko asked bluntly. “It’s none of your business, so why don’t you amscray?”

Yuichi, panicked, turned his attention to Hiromichi. “Hey! Why are you working with my big sister? You’re in the same class, so you must know how crazy she is!”

“She said she’d help me, so why should I refuse? We’ve made a lot of progress in collecting Divine Vessels together.” Hiromichi didn’t seem to mind at all, and Yuichi had no response to that.

“Ende!” he shouted instead. “I thought Ryoma was your big plan! What the hell is this?”

“You know, most plans need a backup,” Ende said. “If one arrow misses, just fire another. It’s common sense.”

Yuichi then turned his eyes imploringly to Natsuki.

He honestly had no idea what to do anymore.

“It’s fun watching you panic, but shouldn’t you be protecting Maruyama?” Natsuki asked.

“Th-That’s right. We can’t let him get her Divine Vessel!” Yuichi couldn’t pretend like the situation had nothing to do with him now, and he also couldn’t just let Yurika be assaulted.

“You there!” Mutsuko called. “We don’t want a fight, so just hand over the Divine Vessel and I won’t hurt you! Although if you want a fight, we’re raring to go!”

Yuichi thought about pointing out the contradiction there, but Mutsuko was ignoring the Divine Vessel host Hiromichi and apparent puppetmaster Ende to further the story on her own.

“What, you weren’t planning on killing me when I let my guard down?” Yurika readied her sword.

Generally speaking, in the Divine Vessels War, killing your opponent was the right answer.

You could just steal someone’s Divine Vessel, but a vessel with a still-living host couldn’t take a new one, so you couldn’t use its power. Besides, letting someone live meant they could come back after you again.

Apparently annoyed at Mutsuko taking over the conversation, Hiromichi spoke up. “I don’t need your pitiful power. I already have everything I need. Now, why don’t you hand it over before we change our minds?”

Yurika winced in pain. She seemed to be thinking she didn’t stand a chance against Hiromichi.

Yuichi had come to the same conclusion.

The wings on his back... they were probably the Divine Vessel used by the tengu. They enhanced a person’s ability to fly through the air.

If the guy attacked Yuichi, there wouldn’t really be a problem; he could probably both dodge and strike back. But if he went after Yurika, there wasn’t much that Yuichi could do for her, and Yurika probably wouldn’t be able to fight back on her own.

“Give me a break! You think a righteous hero like me is gonna lose to villains like you? Take this! Brave Slash!” she snapped.

It was the same move she had used to take Alberta’s head off before. Yurika held her sword aloft and then slashed it at Hiromichi.

The invisible slash whistled through the air, but Hiromichi remained unfazed.

“Hey, I told you, that stuff won’t wor—”

“That’s right! Rokuhara is invincible in a superpowers battle!” Mutsuko interrupted enthusiastically. “He can nullify abilities and also steal them! He’s a total cheater!”

Hiromichi seemed to have wanted to say something, but Mutsuko had interfered. Apparently she was a total loose cannon now that she was on the enemy side.

Yuichi picked up a nearby chair and threw it at Hiromichi.

There were three of them, but Hiromichi was probably the only fighter among them, so taking him out was Yuichi’s first priority.

Hiromichi had been about to take flight, but the chair hit him first and he collapsed.

As that was going on, Natsuki rushed over to Yurika while Yuichi charged at the three of them.

Hiromichi wasn’t an experienced fighter to begin with, and on top of that, he was flustered. Yuichi was beginning to think he would be easy to restrain regardless of his abilities. But things quickly took a turn for the worse.

A fourth figure had appeared at the window.

Yuichi normally wouldn’t be so careless — which may have been an indication of just how flustered he was.

Yuichi barely blocked the giant fist that had appeared from behind Mutsuko, but it still sent him flying. The distance between them opened up again.

“Sakaki...” Natsuki moaned.

Yuichi quickly looked in her direction. “Takeuchi!”

Both Natsuki and Yurika were on the ground.

A drone hovered in the air above. The original one was still hovering near Mutsuko’s side, suggesting she must have prepared multiple ones.

The fact that they’d both been knocked out so easily suggested the drone had used a taser, or perhaps knock-out gas.

“You really ought to pay attention!” Mutsuko called.

As if in time with Mutsuko’s voice, the bearer of the fist from before climbed in through the window.

It was the wooden man, a practice tool that Mutsuko had developed. It was a simple humanoid form made up of logs, but it was extremely powerful — powerful enough to have taken out the oni Ibaraki when he’d tried to peep on the girls in the bath.

“Damn!” Yuichi knew from experience just how much of a threat it was.

The wooden man slid closer to him. Yuichi knew that there were wheels behind its legs, and it basically moved by skating.

It swung its arm wide, striking indiscriminately as it came for him.

This was really bad. Unlike a human, the wooden man barely telegraphed its movements at all. Its joint construction and range of movement also differed from those of a human; in other words, it was extremely unpredictable.

Yuichi used his natural perception and reflexes to dodge the attacks, but it still had him on the defensive.

“Hmm, just as I thought,” said Ende. “When Mutsuko’s on our side, Yuichi’s movements lose their brilliance... Well, bye. We got the right arm and the rib, so we’ll be going now. I guess next time we meet will be the final battle? The Evil God’s resurrection will take place in his sacred territory. You can ignore it if you want, but if you do, Hiromichi Rokuhara might get a pretty evil wish granted.”

“Hey, you! Wait!” Yuichi shouted.

While dodging the wooden man’s attacks, Yuichi watched Ende and the others go. They were walking leisurely away with the right arm and the rib in their possession.

Attempting to hurry, Yuichi just hit the wooden man with everything he had. If it was just a machine, that should be enough to break it.

But the wooden man was a training tool; it had to be sturdy, and it used a mysterious balance algorithm that Mutsuko had cooked up to restore its balance instantly.

The wooden man had always been ridiculously strong, prompting Yuichi to think that rather than using it for training, they would be better served sending it to fight in his place.

“And I still hate its stupid face!” he shouted.

The wooden man’s face was a truly half-assed portrayal, just three round holes for eyes and a mouth.

Yuichi suddenly remembered how the wooden man worked. “Wait, am I stupid?”

It was powered by electricity, which meant it wouldn’t be able to move this forcefully without a strong power source. That meant it needed external power, and indeed there was a cable to provide it trailing out from its back.

But it was proving hard to get around behind the wooden man. Mutsuko must have known that he would go after the cable, because the wooden man moved lithely, blocking Yuichi’s every attempt.

She must have programmed it to anticipate Yuichi’s behavior, as its movements seemed precisely calculated to counter his.

While he struggled to get behind it, he heard Natsuki’s voice. “Do you want me to cut this?”

“Yeah! Do it!” Yuichi shouted reflexively.

Natsuki had woken up and was still staggering, but she got around behind the wooden man. The cord was made very sturdily to prevent cutting, but Natsuki easily sliced through it with her scalpel.

“Umbilical cable cut,” the wooden man said abruptly. “Switching to internal power. Self-destruct sequence engaged.”

“Self-destruct?!” Yuichi yelled.

Perhaps because it was on internal power now, the wooden man’s movements had slowed greatly.

Yuichi took Natsuki’s hand and began to run away at full speed. He swooped up Yurika and ran out of the cafe. They kept running until they found themselves in the back alleys they’d been in before.

Some time later, he heard what sounded like an explosion.

Yuichi realized he’d left Ryoma back there, but he found he couldn’t care anymore, sinking to the ground in both physical and mental exhaustion.

By now, it was completely dark. Luckily, they were in a back alley between buildings with light streaming out from the windows, so they could still see.

“Are you okay?” Natsuki asked Yuichi, who hadn’t moved since collapsing.

He wasn’t okay at all, but he knew he couldn’t just stay down forever.

Yuichi looked up. “To be honest, I’m not.”

His sister had always been reckless, but he’d never thought she would join the enemy.

“Was she brainwashed?” Natsuki asked.

“My sister? She’d be the one doing the brainwashing. So it was probably her idea to join them. I just never thought she’d go this far because I didn’t want to get Soul Reader back.”

“I see,” Natsuki said. “I don’t know much about your circumstances, Sakaki, but is it possible she’s not really turning against you?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Maruyama and I are still alive,” she said. “You can’t use the Divine Vessels if their hosts are still alive, can you? He said something about not needing her pitiful power, but wouldn’t it make things easier for him later if he just killed us?”

Natsuki was right. There was no reason for them to let them live. If Mutsuko had wanted to kill them, she could have just detonated the wooden man.

“I guess it could be a kind of training?” Yuichi hedged.

Becoming Yuichi’s enemy to help train him did sound like the sort of thing his sister would do. He was starting to think it was possible. She’d never turned against him before, but she had nearly killed him several times, so maybe this wasn’t really all that out of the ordinary.

“Okay. Let’s get going.” Yuichi stood up.

Natsuki looked dumbfounded.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You bounced back so quickly, it shocked me.”

“I can’t exactly stay depressed forever.”

“I thought you’d beat yourself up until it was time for your big comeback,” said Natsuki. “So, what’s your plan?”

“There’s somewhere I need to go. Takeuchi, can you take Maruyama home?”

“Certainly, but will you be all right by yourself?”

“I think so.”

“I see.” Natsuki said nothing more and headed back to Yurika.

Yuichi continued down the back alleys, towards the entrance to the sewers they’d used the other day.

At the end of an alley was a manhole. Normally a person would need special tools, but Yuichi slid his fingers into the hole grips and lifted it easily.

Yuichi was just about to climb down when he heard a voice from behind him. “Do you have business with me?”

He turned to find a flashily dressed man with a kind disposition. It was the person who had arranged the Divine Vessels War, the avatar of the evil god Nergal.

“If you’re going down there to hunt monsters, I won’t stop you, of course...” the man said.

“I guess I do have business with you,” Yuichi said. “Your sacred territory is down here, right?”

Ende had said the Evil God’s revival would happen in his sacred territory, so Yuichi had decided he’d just go and clean things up there first.

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?! But I saw the altar down there!”

One level down from the sewers was a labyrinth of passageways, and further in was a dome-like space. There was an altar there, which Nergal had treated like his own, so Yuichi was convinced it must be his sacred territory.

“The altar is there for humans to revere their god,” Nergal said. “It’s a human realm, not the same as a sacred territory.”

“Then where is it?”

“Oh, come now. You think I’m going to tell you where my sealed body is?” Nergal asked, dumbstruck.

“Look, I don’t know anything about your sacred territory, and this is the first I’ve heard about you being sealed there,” Yuichi said impatiently.

“What are you intending to do, then?”

“Well, I was told we’d fight the final battle there.”

“I see. But the body of the Evil God will only revive in the sacred territory after all the Divine Vessels have been collected. In other words, after the war has ended.”

Which meant that even if Yuichi went there now, no one would be there.

“Fine, but where is the sacred territory?” he asked.

“I don’t see why I should tell you that.”

“That reminds me,” Yuichi said. “One of your subordinates attacked Takeuchi. You really need to get your people under control. Or are you the type who washes his hands of what his servants do?”

“Hmm. I try to give my servants a long leash, and I value their autonomy... but I won’t try to talk my way out of responsibility. Fine. The sacred territory is at your school. Is that good enough?”

“The school? Really?”

“Well, you should try to find the rest out yourself,” said Nergal. “I feel like I’ve done you a pretty big favor already.”

“I guess it was a little out of line to ask a sealed guy where he was sealed.”

“As a bonus, I’ll tell you that Hiromichi now has all of the Divine Vessels except one, and more than enough energy to revive me. So it’s more or less already finished, in more ways than one.”

If the war ended, the Evil God would revive and the world would end. It didn’t feel real, but Yuichi couldn’t afford to take it lightly.

“I know I asked, but should you really be telling me all this?” he asked.

“Well, to be honest, the main body and I aren’t connected that directly. I act on my own prerogative. And from a personal perspective, I like you quite a lot.”

“Even though letting me go could end up halting your resurrection?” Yuichi asked.

“If it happens, it happens. There’s always next time. Our lifespans are longer than humans’, so we’re quite patient.”

“Fine.” Yuichi had determined that he wasn’t lying.

I wonder what Sis and the others will do...

Yuichi was just thinking about what to do next when his phone suddenly rang. The number was unfamiliar, but he answered it anyway.

“Sage Mutsuko has gone mad!”

It was the voice of Chiharu Dannoura.

“...I don’t recall giving you my phone number.”

“It cost me a pretty penny,” Chiharu said. “The swine... they knew that I was desperate!”

“You bought it?!” Yuichi shouted. “Who’s putting my phone number up on the market? Who did you buy it from?”

“I may not tell! If you wish to know, you must prostrate before me and lick my boots!”

“Why are you giving me commands?”

“On second thought, having you lick my boots would be quite disgusting... perhaps you should not do it after all.”

“I wasn’t planning on it! So what do you want, anyway?”

“Ah! Sage Mutsuko came after me and demanded that I hand over my Divine Vessel! She wished me to hand over my Apocalypse Eyes! My Apocalypse Eyes, I tell you!”

“Huh? ...Oh, no! I forgot you had a Divine Vessel!” It had taken Yuichi a few moments to remember, the result of his trying to forget everything about the Divine Vessels War before.

“How can you say that?!” Chiharu yelled. “Have you forgotten our passionate first meeting?”

“Oh... uh, I’ve actually been trying hard not to think about you. So I’m sorry... I knew my sister was collecting Divine Vessels, and it didn’t even occur to me to tell you.”

“But how?! How could you forget your beloved?!”

Yuichi felt genuinely sorry. If Hiromichi was close to amassing all of the Divine Vessels, he probably should have let Chiharu know. If hers hadn’t been stolen yet, he could have warned her. He’d also forgotten that Chiharu was the only person he knew that could detect other Divine Vessels through resonance.

“So, what did you want?” Yuichi asked.

“Um... help, please?”

“What’s with the normal speech all of a sudden? And doesn’t calling her ‘Sage’ indicate respect? Why don’t you just do what she says?”

“The fact that she has sent a Crowman-like figure to attack me makes me a bit suspicious of her motivations!”

“Crowman? Who the... oh, Rokuhara, I guess... Where are you now?”

“The zoo.”

“Why were you going to a zoo alone at this hour?”

“Why do you assume I am alone?” Chiharu demanded. “You know that I have countless animals in my service! I am an animal lover, and thus I regularly check the zoo at night to see how they are doing!”

“So you’re on the run all by yourself, right? I’m impressed you can escape Rokuhara, though...”

The wings the guy had gained from the Divine Vessel should grant him very swift flight. It would be hard for most normal people to give him the slip.

“Yes,” Chiharu said. “I used a Dannoura-style Smoke Curtain Art to blind him, then used a Dannoura-style All-Direction Strike to send arrows flying in all directions, then used Dannoura-style Pickup Line Escaping to run away! They all appeared effective, so I believe I have held him off!”

“Um, what about the other people at the zoo?”

“Are you familiar with the legal term ‘emergency evacuation’?”

“You’d better start thinking of ‘official apology’ and ‘out-of-court settlement.’”

“’Twas a joke! The reason I came here is because this zoo’s popularity had been abruptly declining! I am likely the only one here at the moment!”

“This is no time to be joking. The zoo is in the next town over, right? I don’t think I’ll be able to make it in time... Okay. Just give up. Hand over the Divine Vessel and they’ll leave you alone.”

Chiharu’s Divine Vessel might be the last one, but there was nothing he could do about that.

“What?! You expect me to simply hand over my Apocalypse Eyes?” she screamed.

“If you don’t want to, that’s up to you,” Yuichi said. “You’re free to fight them to the end if you want.”

“But how am I to give my Divine Vessel away? It is an ability I came upon without realizing it. I do not know how to expunge it!”

“Given past experience, the vessel will be expelled if you’re unconscious. Can you knock yourself unconscious?”

“Yuichi Sakaki! How could you ask a young maiden such as I to render herself helpless before an enemy? Do you actively seek cuckoldry?!”

“I actually have no investment in that whatsoever, but... Hey. Can a person take out their Divine Vessel of their own free will?” Yuichi asked Nergal, assuming he would know best how the Divine Vessels worked.

“You can,” said Nergal. “Just wish for it. But even in that case, it still can’t be taken by a new host as long as the original host remains alive.”

“He says you just need to wish for it to leave you.”

“Indeed? HRRRRRAGH!”

“Shut up! Don’t shout into the phone!”

“It is out! It truly is out! It dropped from my eye in a startling moment!”

“Give that to them, then.” Yuichi hung up.

He was pretty sure that they wouldn’t kill her if she handed over the vessel. Chiharu’s power was the ability to see numbers over a person’s head. The numbers seemed to indicate something, but the ability still wasn’t especially useful, so he doubted they would go out of their way to get it.

“Incidentally, Hiromichi will now have all of them,” Nergal said.

It seemed Chiharu’s Divine Vessel was the last one.

“Okay, that figures,” Yuichi said. “But the Evil God won’t revive immediately, right?”

“Correct. There’s still a ritual to be held in the sacred territory, which means there’s still time for you to act.”

“You make it sound like you don’t want him revived.”

“That’s not true. The resurrection of my true form is my highest priority. I just don’t see any need to rush it; I prefer to take it easy.”

Yuichi thought that Mutsuko wouldn’t be in any great hurry, either. It was just a gut feeling, but he couldn’t imagine she would try to do it sneakily in the middle of the night.

He decided he’d wait until tomorrow to investigate the school.