V
V
Ultimately, only the young novice who'd come to deliver lunch was left alive out of the adherents who'd occupied the workshop. Everybody except for her had died instantly—their hearts gouged by a wire pick—or rather, a small edged weapon fastened to the end of a wire that flew at them.
"Bwah hah hah! Hello, miss!" said a man. Peering down at the apprentice sister who'd fallen on her butt and was smeared with about twenty people's blood, he twitched his lips vulgarly. His appearance was inhuman: He was unusually short, his build was roly-poly-like, and the body peeking out from beneath his cassock had a dark sheen. There also was too much space between the eyes on his misshapen face, which made him look like some kind of fish.
"Can I ask you something?" proposed the man. "You see, I'm looking for the missile you people stole." He pointed to the center of the workroom with his slick, blood-soaked pick, where a pool of dark water containing a leak of hazardous liquid fuel was spreading outward. On the worktable set up in the center, a pencil-shaped object about sixteen-and-a-half feet in total length lay on its side. "Is that it?"
"Y-y-yes," the young novice replied, nodding her head vigorously.
Suddenly, the monster's thick lips arced into a smile. "BINGO! Yeah! After all, God is the ally of the righteous! Whoo!" He emitted a laugh as grating as newspaper crumpling together and clapped both hands. Silently bathing the girl in his lingering gaze for a few moments, he said, "Thank you, miss. To return the favor, I'll kill you painlessly."
"Eek!" the nun screeched.
As he watched the girl's face contort in fear, the man licked his lips and slowly raised his arm. Using both hands, he forcefully thrust down the pick toward the novice, but the result was a high-pitched, earsplitting metallic noise. "What are you?" he asked.
The novice fainted and her eyeballs turned back in her head. The vicious weapon that had swung down had grazed her blue hood and dug into the floor.
The small man began to feel increasingly suspicious as he pulled out the weapon by its wire and asked, "Are you an ally of these heretics?"
"I'm AX Agent Leon Garcia," responded the figure. As he twirled the chakram on his fingertip, the giant shrugged his broad shoulders. "I came to disarm that missile. Did you interfere, brother?"
"What, you're an ally?" asked the man. After ascertaining Leon's identity, he felt relieved and offered his hand to the agent who entered the room gracefully. "I'm Brother Philippo from the Bureau of Inquisition. Nice to meet you. Well, no need to say that, is there?"
Suddenly, Philippe's demeanor changed dramatically, and like magic, his hand pitched forth the pick with the energy of lightning. Hit directly in his windpipe, Leon's huge body fell head over heels into the pool.
"Bwah hah hah! Critical hit!" Philippo gave a high-pitched laugh as he watched a tall geyser of blood gush from Leon's neck. Performing an impromptu backflip, he clapped both hands as if he couldn't have been more pleased. "Serves you right, hairball! Interfering with a person's enjoyment—you should writhe around in macho hell forever!"
All of a sudden, an unexpected guttural voice echoed from behind Philippo, putting a damper on his victory dance. "Hey, round eel," said Leon. "What do you mean by all this? You'll die in accordance with your answer." The half-naked giant, whose cassock floated atop the pool's surface, stood threateningly right behind Philippo.
The next instant, Philippo spun with a swiftness that was out of character for his fat body. "Sorry! Please forgive me! I was super carried away!" He groveled with so much energy that he made a noise when he threw himself on the ground, and then he put his forehead to the floor. "It's a joke—a joke. It's only a joke, heh heh. I'm such a prankster."
Leon peered at the back of Philippe's head with bloodthirsty eyes as the small man squirmed on the floor like an annoying pest. However, Leon seemed to have reasoned that it wouldn't be a good idea to kill the inquisitor. Jutting out his jaw, he said sullenly: "Disappear—and don't show me your ugly face again."
"Yes! Thank you very much!" Philippo replied. With a dexterity that seemed as though it were enabled by witchcraft, Philippo retreated to the floor, still groveling. He was about to leave the workroom when he noticed something. "There!" he shouted. As Leon's attention refocused on the missile, Philippo sprang onto the unconscious novice on the floor. After he picked up the girl with superhuman strength inconceivable for his small body, the inquisitor threw her into the pool.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Leon roared angrily.
The unconscious girl's body caused a huge splash and sank to the bottom of the water. Without hesitation, the giant jumped into the pool.
"Now's your chance!" Philippe said, and with a flutter of his hand, he sent the wire pick in a straight line toward the giant holding the girl's body in the water.
"Knock it off!" shouted Leon.
Without looking, Leon ricocheted the wire pick off the back of his hand. He pulled the girl out of the pool and placed her on the floor, and then got out himself, extending his hand to the edge of the pool. "Getting carried away, you fat eel? I'll kill you after all!" said Leon.
"Kill me?" asked Philippo. His triumphant expression hadn't changed even though his weapon had dropped into the water. Still holding onto the wire from the pick, his lips fluttered. "Do you think you can kill someone as beautiful and strong as I am, hairball? You're the one who'll die!"
Leon's hair literally stood on end. The wire pick had fallen into the water, and as it still was attached to the inquisitor through the wire, a dreadful electric current had attacked Leon's body. The giant's heart jumped and the muscles in his body twitched spasmodically as they received irregular signals.
"Bwah hah hah hah! Yahoo! Critical hit! You shouldn't underestimate me, agent. Whoo!" shouted Philippo. From the tens of thousands of electric generation cells grown throughout his body, this fortified human could perform high-voltage electrical discharge to a maximum of three hundred thousand volts. Brother Philippo laughed, holding his stomach as Leon barely opened and closed his mouth, gasping as he received an electrical attack strong enough to instantly kill a horse.
"Ohh, you're still alive. You have more life force than a cockroach! Amazing!" Philippo quipped. After doing a backflip, Philippo laughed and clapped his hands. "It's time to say goodbye now! Please die quietly!" The boisterous inquisitor fingered a console next to him. As soon as his round ringer pushed a button among the experiment tools, a dark rectangle opened in the pool of water, and the sound of a chain ringing echoed. The emergency water evacuation port began to drain out the water with a roar.
"Oh ... doh ..." Leon muttered as a huge whirlpool began to swirl around him. His body paralyzed, and his four limbs trembling in the current, Dandelion was swept toward the water evacuation port.
"H-huh?" gasped Philippo from near the console. Suddenly, a tremendous force began to drag his short body toward the pool. "Wh-what is this?"
Club. "You're . . . com ... ing with ... me, you round . . . eel," said Leon, still submerged in water and struggling to speak. The giant's hand grasped the wire pick Philippo who hurled in earlier. Seeing that the wire was firmly wrapped around his wrist, the inquisitor’s eyes bugged out.
"Y-you poor loser . . . Eeeeek!" shrieked Philippo. His legs slipping and pulled by the weight of Leon's body, Philippe's body rolled into the water.
As soon as the water in the reverse-spinning whirlpool covered Philippe's body, the conduit of the water evacuation port sucked in the men with a rumble. They continued to call each other names through the entire process.