Two fists thrust out.

A whirl of bodies switching places—a whirl of attacks exchanging with defenses.

Tatsuya was in the middle of his customary morning partner work with Yakumo.

They weren’t merely exchanging blows.

Their fists weren’t only thrust out straight—they carried out their assaults from above, below, left, and right with fists, chops, and palms. The other would evade, catch, and twist, parrying the tangled hands a hairbreadth away.

Tatsuya and Yakumo—now, at last, their skills contended evenly.

As one, they thrust their right hands out.

The opposing strikes flew past one another, and then they were back-to-back.

Tatsuya switched his weight to his pivoting foot, then took one step away from his position.

The elbow strike he expected did not come.

He turned around.

Yakumo, just like Tatsuya, had distanced himself.

He had predicted the same attack, taken the same evasive action, and in the end created more distance than needed. But he had no time to give a painful grin at the result.

Tatsuya took a step toward Yakumo with his lead foot.

Equal in martial arts.

Tatsuya’s advantage was in physical strength.

Tricks hadn’t amounted to much.

That meant Tatsuya’s only way to beat Yakumo was to stay on the offensive, not giving him time to use his wiles. This state, with more distance between them than necessary, was a disadvantageous situation that Tatsuya would have wanted to avoid. He stepped in and tried to fling out a fist, but a moment later, he detected a distortion in Yakumo’s presence.

Curbing his own impatience at his recent string of bitter defeats, Tatsuya cast an anti-magic spell that dismantled information bodies.

Yakumo’s body swayed and disappeared. Tatsuya’s Program Dispersion had nullified the man’s illusion art.

Revving his five senses up to full strength, he searched for his master’s real body.

Right or left? Even Yakumo wouldn’t have had the time to get fully behind him, so—

Tatsuya’s judgment was not mistaken.

His presumption, however, was.

Because Yakumo was in front of him.

But he was twelve inches behind where Tatsuya had aimed.

Tatsuya needed an instant to make the decision but swiftly continued with the strike he’d halted a moment earlier.

It wouldn’t hit at this range, but with Yakumo starting his attack motion, he’d decided to get in closer and bring this to a double knockout.

However, Yakumo’s body didn’t follow his own fist.

Tatsuya, lured in by a feint and an afterimage, flew into the air as Yakumo threw him.

“Boy, you sure had me on the ropes,” quipped his teacher, finally letting go of Tatsuya’s arm as he lay slammed on the ground from Yakumo’s joint-locking technique. His words didn’t necessarily sound self-effacing.

Tatsuya, unable to take the fall properly because Yakumo had one of his arms, had neutralized his momentum to barely avoid breaking bones, but couldn’t kill the impact completely. It took several coughs before he could go back to breathing normally.

“…Master, what was that?”

As Tatsuya finally managed to stand back up, Yakumo scratched around his temple with a hand to answer—probably a pantomime, pretending to wipe off a cold sweat. “Boy, I really didn’t think you would break my Cocoon Water Mirage.”

His behavior was ludicrous, but his surprise was the real thing. His feint, which had left an afterimage, had been an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment move. He hadn’t predicted that his art from a moment before it would be broken.

“Cocoon Water Mirage… That wasn’t one of your usual illusion arts, was it, Master?”

“You could tell that, too, eh?” Yakumo sighed, resigned, but didn’t fully hide the amused curling at the edges of his mouth—though he probably never intended to. “That odd ability of yours to read a spell just by looking at it is the definition of a threat to your enemies. But that doesn’t mean there are no ways to use it against you.”

“And that illusion was one of them?”

“Well, Cocoon was originally for deceiving the eyes of things not of this world. As for how it works… Actually, I’ll leave it to you to think about. I’m sure you’ll figure it out quickly.”

Tatsuya wanted to say, Stop putting on airs, but he didn’t. He felt, of course, that demanding that someone reveal the trick behind their magic was a breach of etiquette, but Yakumo had said something that piqued his attention more than that.

“Master?”

“Yes? Why do you look so serious…? Well, that’s normal. But why the scary voice?”

Whether calling his serious face normal was a compliment or an insult wasn’t quite clear, and Tatsuya couldn’t determine which it was. But he didn’t engage the man—he decided not to react.

Yakumo gave him a dissatisfied look for some reason, so he probably understood. And Tatsuya wasn’t in the mood to go along with his “jokes.”

“You referred to the eyes of ‘things not of this world.’”

“Oh, I see.”

He didn’t need to finish his question. The immediate reply made it seem like Yakumo had predicted what Tatsuya would ask.

“Humans aren’t our only opponents. It’s not rare to fight things supernatural.”

The answer was one Tatsuya had predicted from the context, but it also went against his background knowledge. “A friend of mine, an old-magic user, said that encountering actual demons was an extremely rare thing…”

It wasn’t about whom he chose to believe; Tatsuya wanted an answer he could satisfy himself with.

“You must be referring to the second son of the Yoshida. Well, he’s not wrong, but…that’s a surprising lack of follow-up from you.”

Yakumo paused for a moment. Told to think about it harder, Tatsuya sank into the sea of his own thoughts, and before long, arrived at an answer.

“What Mikihiko said isn’t wrong. But that doesn’t mean it’s completely right, either. Is that what you mean? It might be rare to randomly encounter real specters or goblins, but if it’s not a coincidence—if someone did it on purpose—it’s not rare?”

“You just barely get passing marks for that.” As his words suggested, Yakumo’s expression was far from satisfied. “Hmm… I guess it’s hard even for someone as knowledgeable as you to avoid the traps of symbolism and preconceptions.”

His remarks had gotten even worse. Tatsuya thought to himself that calling someone knowledgeable to their face was embarrassing (not that it would make him blush), and he wished his teacher would stop. Still, Tatsuya’s reaction was quite relaxed, since it wasn’t the time for compliments, even by accident.

But Yakumo’s next words blew Tatsuya’s relaxation out of the water.

“You’ve had experience yourself contacting things not of this world once or twice. What, exactly, do you think what you modern magicians call ‘SB magic’ uses as a medium?”

An “Oh” made it out of Tatsuya’s mouth.

“You get it now. Modern magicians call them spiritual beings—spirits, in other words—and those certainly aren’t of this world.”

Tatsuya had indeed overlooked that. He stared at Yakumo as the man continued his explanation.

“Yes, whether something is intelligent or not is secondary. Bacteria might not be intelligent or sapient, but they get into our bodies, interfere with how they work, and make us sick. Even viruses only have imperfect multiplication abilities. And even if, academically, they’re not classified as ‘creatures,’ nobody would argue that they’re not living things that damage a person’s body.”

“You’re saying there’s no doubt spiritual beings—these ‘spirits’ that are no more than independent information bodies cut off from phenomena—are things ‘not of this world’?”

“To be precise, they might be better called ‘things without life or flesh.’ Also, has anyone confirmed that spirits don’t have a mind?”

It took over a second for Tatsuya to answer this question. “…Nobody has. And I know someone who would say just the opposite.”

And Tatsuya had experience being somewhere with that friend as he remotely controlled spiritual beings. The spirits had shown autonomy in carrying out the commands given to them; rather than believing it was all built into the algorithms in magic programs, it almost seemed more logical to believe the spirits themselves had minds of their own.

“Master, may I ask one more thing?”

“Go ahead.”

“According to modern magic, spirits are independent information bodies created when information bodies described by the Idea along with natural phenomena disengage from physicality. And because they record the original phenomenon’s information, you can recreate that phenomenon from the information by defining a direction in a magic program. This is what we think of as spirit magic.”

“I think that’s correct, for the most part. Making such logical connections is something modern magic is one or two levels better at.”

“Then if parasites can feed off a person’s ethereal body and change the person’s properties, what information bodies would they be based on?”

After hearing what Mikihiko had said, Tatsuya had been thinking parasites might be information bodies that interfered with a person’s structural information. It seemed like Yakumo was substantiating that by using bacteria and viruses for his examples.

“Parasites, eh…? That’s a British expression. Unfortunately, I don’t know what information organisms they originate in. They interfere with people’s minds, though, so I’d think they’re based in spirit phenomena.”

“‘Information organisms’ originating in the mind…”

“I believe that humanoid specters and animal youkai might be creatures from this world that have been altered by wraiths, a type of information organism. And just as spirits originating in physical phenomena drift through a shadow world back-to-back with this one, the wraiths originating in mental phenomena might come from the shadow world back-to-back with our mental world. Our lack of encounters with them isn’t because they don’t exist, but because we don’t yet have the proper technology to observe minds. It might be an anomalous idea from the perspective of those in London, but that’s my own unadulterated theory.”

The title of old-magic authority isn’t for nothing, thought Tatsuya, for the first time in a while.

For the following two days, Leo was bedridden. He was in a severe enough state that a normal person would have been unconscious, so it was only natural he’d need more than three or four days before being discharged. It would have been more worrying if they did discharge him now, whether he forced them to or they gave up on him.

At least, that was how Tatsuya thought of it.

Of course, there was someone who didn’t think that way.

“I wonder if Leo is all right…”

Mizuki was the prime example of the type of person who didn’t think that way.

“He’ll be fine,” said Tatsuya. “Aside from the bruises, he wasn’t really wounded, and Erika said none of his bones were broken or organs injured, right? You’re not thinking she lied, are you?”

Incidentally, Tatsuya did indeed suspect that Erika, who wasn’t here at the moment, had lied.

“Well, no, but…”

Still, with Mizuki’s personality, no matter what she really thought, she could never call a friend a liar. Even though Erika wasn’t here—actually, precisely because she wasn’t here—Mizuki doubtless wanted to avoid talking behind her back.

Also, Erika wasn’t here—here being the classroom before school started—not because she was staying to look after Leo, but simply because she hadn’t arrived at school yet. Yesterday, she’d come running in just in time; she’d probably do the same today.

“Come to think of it, Mikihiko isn’t here yet this morning, either.”

His remark didn’t have any particular connotation. He was thinking about Erika not being there yet and then happened to notice Mikihiko wasn’t, either.

But that was all it took for Mizuki’s face to appear to draw back for a moment.

Tatsuya clamped down on the pleasant smile he felt coming up and wondered what to say to her—or whether to say anything at all. He was certain that whatever Mizuki was worrying about wasn’t true, but he couldn’t decide whether he should tell her or not.

“Morning!”

“Good morning, Tatsuya, Shibata…”

As Tatsuya sat at a loss, Mikihiko and Erika entered the classroom, the former with exhaustion lingering on his face and the latter with an air of ennui about her.

As soon as they took their seats, the start message screen appeared for the day’s first class.

During lunch break that day, Tatsuya’s group did something a little different than usual. Erika didn’t go to the cafeteria; she was slumped over her desk. When he listened closely, he could hear her snoring softly. It was probably because she couldn’t nap during the terminal-based classroom lectures.

Mikihiko complained that his head was pounding and went to the nurse’s office as soon as he finished eating lunch. He seemed like the type of person who got a headache rather than a fuzzy mind when he was tired. It was probably just exhaustion, so Tatsuya entrusted Mizuki to go with Mikihiko.

And as for Tatsuya…

“Sorry for calling all of a sudden, Shizuku.”

“It’s okay. What’s up?”

“Umm, Tatsuya says he has something he really needs to ask you.”

He had asked Honoka to give Shizuku a call.

“Sorry for calling so late,” he said. “I thought about sending you an e-mail, but it probably would have seemed garbled unless I told you in person.”

Modern communication systems, even on small, portable information devices, could display such clear video it was like seeing the person in real life. Shizuku, with whom he’d been reunited over the screen of his portable terminal, and who had used her own device’s calling function to respond, looked a little more mature than he remembered, despite less than a month having passed.

“It’s okay. It’s still only eight.” The girl on the screen narrowed her eyes slightly into a smile. As always, it was a hard expression to read, but they understood the smile was a pretty happy one.

Honoka and Miyuki stared hotly into their own devices. Unfortunately, Tatsuya had Shizuku displayed in his main window, and vice versa. The subwindows, even smaller on the already-tiny portable device screens, wouldn’t easily convey subtle changes in expression, unlike the main window.

“Anyway, what did you need?”

“Right,” he said. “I asked Honoka, but it looks like a vampire is making a mess of things over there, too. I wanted you to tell me if you knew any details about it.”

On the screen, Shizuku quirked her head to the side.

“…Shizuku?” said Honoka.

“…Oh, that. You mean a real vampire has appeared in Japan?”

“‘In Japan’…?”

“Right now, they’re still treating it like an urban legend in America. At least, the media isn’t reporting on it.”

Though they may have been different from the ones in legends and fiction, things called blood-sucking vampires—or spirit-sucking ones—did indeed exist. If people there were talking about the real thing, there must have been an incident occurring. In other words, the USNA still had a media lockdown on the whole thing. It could be a far more deep-rooted issue than Tatsuya gave it credit for.

“I don’t mind if they’re only rumors—I’d like to know any details you can give me.”

“Did something happen?” Shizuku leaned forward on the screen.

Tatsuya wavered over whether to tell the girl alone in another country the truth that her friend had been a victim.

“Leo ran afoul of what seemed like a vampire.”

But he immediately decided he should.

Of course, even he couldn’t explain why he did so. It was just an instinctive judgment.

…Though maybe it was because of some sort of premonition.

“Thankfully, his life isn’t in danger.”

“That’s awful…”

But he still hadn’t wanted to give her needless anxiety. He didn’t forget to follow up on what he said so Shizuku wouldn’t take too much of a shock, but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have much effect.

“No, he’ll be fine. Please, don’t make that face. Leo drove off the vampire personally. He just happened to take damage from their strange ability, and they’re taking good care of him in the hospital now.”

Tatsuya’s “consolation” certainly couldn’t be said to be skillful. For someone weak willed, saying he was in the hospital would have inflamed their anxiety even more.

“He’s really all right? That’s good…”

But fortunately, Shizuku wasn’t the sort to drown herself in pessimistic ideas. After seeing Tatsuya give a firm nod, she sighed in relief. This sort of communication could, perhaps, be called unique to videophones.

“I get it. That’s why you wanted to know what’s happening over here,” said Shizuku. It was not an interrogative but a declarative remark.

Tatsuya gave his affirmation again. “But it’s not absolutely vital.” And he didn’t forget to remind her of that. “Really, whatever you know is fine.”

“But you think America has some clues. Right?”

“Sort of. To be honest, I’m thinking the criminal behind the vampire incident came here from America.”

Shizuku wasn’t the only one who gasped. He hadn’t told this theory to Honoka or Miyuki yet, either.

“So I really want you to stay away from anything dangerous, Shizuku. Don’t cross any bridges you don’t need to. It’s not like information I can get from you is crucial.”

“…Okay, I won’t. So don’t get your hopes up waiting for me.”

“Just to be sure, you’re referring to information when you say to wait for you, right? I can believe you when you say you won’t do anything dangerous, can’t I?”

“Of course.”

Shizuku was neither an idiot nor fearless, but even after making sure a second time, he still felt uneasy.

To Erika’s knowledge, three factions were making an organized response to the vampire incidents, which were continuing to claim victims in the metropolitan area.

The first was law enforcement, with the Tokyo MPD as its main strength, followed by both the Ministry of Police’s Wide-Area Special Investigation Team (also known as the Japanese FBI) and Public Safety (which was also under the Ministry of Police’s jurisdiction).

The second was the Ten Master Clans’ investigation team, with the Saegusa family taking the lead and the Juumonji family following. With backup from the Cabinet Office Intelligence Agency and cooperating partially with the police, it was a part-officer, part-civilian group. In this case, though, unusually, the civilians were in the position of power.

And the third was a private retaliation unit the Chiba family had organized with cooperation from the Yoshida, an elite old-magic family. In other words, Erika’s group.

“Maybe we should have cooperated with our upperclassmen after all…?”

The Chiba’s unofficial but proper request to the Yoshida had abruptly made Mikihiko a collaborator, and this was exactly the tenth time since yesterday he’d asked that question.

It went without saying who he was talking about: Erika, his partner on this incident.

“I would think just getting to use the surveillance systems, like the street cameras and such, would give us a big efficiency boost,” he said.

“It wouldn’t matter,” remarked Erika. “The police can use them fully, and they still haven’t gotten any leads.”

“I still think it would have been better to have help, even if it meant relying on others.”

“That’s why we’re helping each other out, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean just us…” As Erika sped up her walking pace, Mikihiko stopped trying to give her advice. He trotted back up next to her. “I don’t think we’ll get anywhere just walking around for no reason, though…”

He was complaining to himself now. It was too soft for Erika to hear, and even if she could, she would have ignored it. After all, her stubbornness was the exact reason he was with her at the moment.

Shinto-type old magic was the sort passed down in the Yoshida family. They had a deep knowledge of divination as well, albeit not as deep as onmyoudou families. Religious traditions in Japan didn’t provide much of a barrier against other technology creeping in; you could see how unprincipled they were from the fact that they called themselves a Shinto family, yet used onmyoudou’s paper talismans as mediums.

After hearing from Toshikazu that their scientific investigation was at a loss, the Chiba family leader (in other words, Toshikazu and Erika’s father) had decided to use technology old magicians specialized in, opting to request aid from the head of the Yoshida, the old-style family they had the closest relationship with. The Chiba leader was so tone-deaf when it came to mysticism that he called himself a simple barbarian without magic technology, so maybe he was trying to fight occult with occult.

Which led to Mikihiko going along with Erika, not as a guide but as a “path diviner.”

“Which way, Miki?” asked Erika, stopping at a crossroads and turning around.

Sighing and wishing she’d listen a little more diligently, Mikihiko planted the rod he carried in the path. The rod was a little less than one yard tall—more precisely, it was three shaku. Incidentally, he’d given up on seriously arguing about the nickname when it was set as his default name by Lina.

The rod—more a slender wooden stick that happened to be straight—had tiny characters packed together on it, written in ink. Its cross section, though, had been processed to be almost a perfect circle. He held on to its tip, stood it straight up, then gently raised his hand.

Although he’d “planted” it there, the ground was paved. A mere wooden stick would never pierce it. Despite that, without any support from Mikihiko, it stood on the road.

He took three steps backward, then whirled around. As soon as he turned his back, the rod lost its invisible support and fell right over. It hit the ground with a dry noise, pointing right at the intersection.

“Okay, this way…”

Erika walked off in the direction the rod pointed. She didn’t wait for her companion; she didn’t even turn back to look at him.

Mikihiko gave a pained grin, picked up the rod, and followed her. But right before he got to her, he took his information terminal out of his inside pocket, suddenly remembering something.

Its transmission function was set to signal mode. After verifying that it was broadcasting an identifying signal and notifying the other terminals registered in their group of their position, he returned it to his pocket.

The pained grin had disappeared from his face. He could sense they were getting close to their target.

A step behind Erika, he slowed down, maintaining the distance and taking the terminal out again.

He called up the group list of people he was transmitting to. After adding a new destination, he put it away for real this time and walked up alongside his classmate.

A caped long coat and a hat pulled down over the eyes. Under the hat, a full face mask with a black bat depicted on gray fabric. Charles Sullivan, formerly a Stars satellite-class soldier with the code name Deimos Second, was using all his newly acquired physical abilities to run for his life.

But no matter how much strength he mustered, he couldn’t get away. Chasing him was not the hunters from Stardust, but an executioner given the code name of the star that shone the brightest in the night sky.

The red-haired, golden-eyed, masked magician following him. Several times he sprayed Lina, her form changed to that of Angie Sirius, with psionic noise. Her senses lost track of him each time, but…

“Commander, take a right at the next corner.”

The psion radar in the mobile base disguised as a television relay vehicle had locked on to where he was and wouldn’t let go. USNA was a step ahead of Japan with this technology—once one of these radars, capable of identifying psi-wave characteristics, pinpointed your psi-wave pattern, it was almost impossible to flee from it save by escaping its range. And since Lina was carrying a palm-sized, miniaturized radar relay antenna, getting out of range was impossible, too.

“Claire, Rachel, get in front of Sullivan,” called Lina into her radio. Those were pseudonyms: Claire for Hunter Q, or the seventeenth, and Rachel for Hunter R, or the eighteenth. Lina disliked calling people by their code names, and the ones she’d given them were false names for convenience. Claire started with C and not Q, but they were fake anyway, so Lina didn’t see it as a problem.

Signs of magical combat appeared twenty or thirty yards ahead. The two of them were slowing Sullivan down. For Lina, he was already in range. She had a perfect lock on his position.

It might have been night, but that didn’t mean there were no other eyes around. They didn’t worry about that, since they were playing their game of tag at motorcycle speeds. Ignoring the possibility of the police intervening, Lina took out a small knife—a dagger.

She was going too fast; it didn’t look like any pedestrians saw the dagger. The matte black blade wouldn’t stand out even in the sunlight anyway. Without trying to hide it, she flung her dagger forward.

It soared under the streetlights, then turned as Lina guided it.

This blade was an integrated armament CAD. Simply throwing it activated its movement spell, and it would follow a route set by the caster and pierce the target. The dagger she threw changed direction several times in midair before shooting at Sullivan’s back.

Sullivan sensed the blade flying at him right before it hit. Even the physical abilities of a vampire didn’t give him enough time to dodge it. But having recovered his psychic abilities, he judged that his own skill at influencing the trajectory of physical objects would be sufficient.

He concentrated on the weapon. When he turned around, the hunters he was currently fighting charged him. Friendly fire, he willed in his mind. The small blade flying at his front should have turned and struck a hunter behind him.

But a voiceless cry of pain slipped from Sullivan’s mouth.

His vector reflection spell had zero effect on Lina’s movement spell.

The difference in their levels of event influence was too great.

Realizing his own strength wasn’t enough, Sullivan immediately flung up his right arm. Lina’s dagger dug deeply into it.

Sullivan’s body froze.

Hunter R’s combat knife gouged his back.

If he were a normal human, it would have been fatal.

But Sullivan whipped his arm around in a sideways punch, sending the knife-wielding R reeling.

The masked magician showed herself then. Her golden eyes pierced Sullivan’s through his mask.

Lina now stopped, pulled out a pistol.

Suddenly, an electric attack was fired at her from the shadows of the trees on the roadside.

Neither Claire nor Rachel nor Lina had been prepared for it. It was a perfect surprise attack.

But the lightning merely flashed, vanishing before it reached Lina’s body.

She had disabled the vampire’s spell with a reflexively expanded Area Interference.

Meanwhile, her gun arm was holding steady.

The muzzle was aimed straight at Sullivan’s heart.

Lina pulled the trigger.

The information-strengthened bullet ignored all his defenses and crushed his heart.

Without basking in victory, Lina got off to another start.

Her eyes were fixed on the lightning-flinging vampire, who was getting farther and farther away.

After walking for about ten minutes and divining their path twice, Erika and Mikihiko heard two soft sets of running footsteps. Rubber soles—probably one making an escape and one pursuing.

They traded glances.

A moment later, without exchanging any signals, they began to run, Erika toward the indications of fighting, and Mikihiko toward the stir among the spirits.

With different senses, but the same hunch: They’d found them.

Erika took a slight lead, and Mikihiko followed behind.

As she ran, Erika took an unsheathed katana from the long, slender case hanging on her shoulder. Though it didn’t have a blade, its entire surface was engraved with spell seals—an armament device made by the Isori family. Kei Isori had given it to her as a gift, as a substitute for the Orochi-Maru, since the latter stood out too much in public. It might not have been as strong as the Orochi-Maru, but it had the ability to support momentum-control spells.

Meanwhile, Mikihiko, holding the rod two fist lengths down the shaft in his right hand, swung his left hand diagonally downward. What looked like a folding fan burst from his sleeve; he grabbed it with his left hand.

It was like an iron-ribbed fan, connecting long, slender strips of thin metallic paper to a fan-shaped frame. Each of those strips was a single paper talisman with an incantation or spell circle engraved on it. The ribs, molded to the strips, were lines through which the caster’s psions passed. A cord extending from the fan’s pivot was hooked up to a psion pattern oscillation unit hidden in his sleeve.

This, too, was a type of CAD. In order to reproduce old magic’s two-step activation process of talisman and chanting, Mikihiko had compiled ideas based on advice from Tatsuya and had a regular Yoshida family engineer create this: a new type of old-magic casting assistance tool.

After getting themselves ready for combat, the two of them chased the footsteps. Sometimes their rhythm would fall apart completely, probably because the people running were stopping intermittently to trade blows before running off again.

Even if they hadn’t been, Erika’s and Mikihiko’s feet were faster. They burst through a back road lined with midsize buildings, and in a small disaster-prevention park (more precisely, a damage buffer for natural disasters), they finally spotted their targets.

Two figures mingled. One hid its face and body under a hooded coat, and the other wore a mask that covered its eye area.

Both of them appeared female.

“Miki, you take the one with the coat. I’ll stop the one with the mask!”

Checking against Leo’s testimony, the suspicious one was the one with the hooded coat. But anyone hiding their face with a mask this late at night would always be suspicious. Above all, the large knife the woman held and the skill with which she swung it were powerful triggers for Erika’s sense of caution, even when seen from afar.

Without using self-acceleration—only seal magic to heighten her blade’s strength—Erika made a cut at the masked woman. Her slash, even without magical acceleration, was so fast that anyone with normal physical abilities, save for a handful you might call masters, would have difficulty avoiding it.

The woman’s knife-play was excellent, but not at a master level. Thus, even if she was able to parry Erika’s strike, she wouldn’t be able to avoid it—that is, if she’d been a normal person.

Light flashed.

Erika’s katana cut through air. Her target had moved three yards ahead.

The flash wasn’t physical light, but the psionic radiance that accompanied magic activation. Erika had perceived it just fine, so she wasn’t surprised that her slash had missed.

She was, however, surprised at the spell’s speed.

Erika was confident she hadn’t let the woman know of her attack until a moment before it had landed. It wasn’t conceit on her part, either: In the instant between Erika swinging the sword up and bringing it back down, this person had chosen a spell and triggered it.

The masked magician had moved right under a streetlight. Either moving into the light hadn’t been intentional, or she didn’t care if she was seen. Erika didn’t need to confirm which.

Something had been engraved in her eyes, in her mind.

It wasn’t the woman’s beauty, which she couldn’t hide fully behind the mask, and it wasn’t her balanced limbs, which could be seen even wrapped in thick clothing.

Under the streetlight, the woman’s colors surfaced. Inhuman, ominous colors.

Crimson hair, so deep it almost looked black…

…and golden eyes from behind the mask that drew you in.

“…Here I come!”

Her sword teachings, beaten into her so hard they were nearly reflexive now, severed those eyes’ gravity. Pumping herself up, Erika kept her eyes on her opponent and widened her vision, placing the masked magician’s entire form in her view. Pruning almost every preparatory motion, she dashed toward the woman.

She didn’t use motion support magic. Any magical support would have the opposite effect on this opponent; Erika intuited that it would only let the woman predict her movements.

Without using magic, but with magic-like movement and footwork, Erika pressed in toward the woman.

Hesitation leaked from behind her mask.

Regardless, Erika raised her katana.

A magical flash sparked from the masked magician. Not a self-acceleration spell, but a self-movement one.

Erika didn’t have the ability to instantly analyze magic programs. But in exchange, she had eyes fully trained as a swordswoman’s.

In the instant her adversary started to move, Erika perceived the direction and corrected her sword.

After following through on its reverse shoulder slash, it changed direction, going straight down and grazing the woman’s crimson hair.

Triggering a momentum control spell, Erika drew the katana back.

Still in a squatting position, the masked woman jumped horizontally. Erika stepped forward to pursue, but she suddenly forced herself to draw back, because—

A knife stabbed down right in front of her foot.

As Erika stopped, the masked woman stood up from her one-knee-down position.

Her crimson hair blew wildly.

Erika’s bladeless katana had cut the string tying her hair back, with the force of her speed alone.

The blustering hair reached down to her chest. Curly locks, fluttering in the wind, made the woman look that much more sinister.

If she had black skin, she’d be just like Kali…

Even as the idea popped into her mind, Erika didn’t let up, keeping an eye on her opponent’s movements. She looked ridiculous, but her skills were undeniably first-rate. In terms of magical technique, a mere glance let Erika say for sure she was even above that. Erika had had the initiative thus far, but her combat sense told her that if she was forced to go on the defensive, her odds of victory would be hopeless.

Letting a chance escape would be fatal.

Fortunately for her, the masked woman was impatient. Even during her fight with Erika, in the end, her mind was on the coat-wearing vampire.

This woman was acting independently right now, but Erika and Mikihiko were a team.

That would give them an opening to slip into, she calculated.

They stared each other down—the masked woman and the female swordfighter.

Behind Erika there was a thunderclap.

The golden eyes looked away from Erika.

Erika immediately rushed her, sword at the ready.

He heard the sound of slicing air behind him.

Mikihiko knew Erika’s skills well. He was never taught the ways of the sword, but old magic and martial arts, while not quite having an inseparable bond, had something close.

It was said Erika’s skills were second in the Chiba family only to the current head’s and her two older brothers’, and it appeared that this wasn’t hyperbole. Looking solely at her sword technique, she already rivaled her father’s ability and might even be close to her next-oldest brother, oft called a genius.

And her opponent hadn’t parried her slash—she’d outright dodged it. That simple fact meant her adversary was strong; Erika wouldn’t have an easy time of it. However—

She’s not the only one having trouble.

Backing her up was impossible.

The opponent he was facing looked the same as Leo had described: wearing a hat, a white mask, and a long coat.

The person wasn’t brandishing any weapons but might have been hiding some.

Aside from some scrapes and bruises, Leo had no notable wounds. No burns or cut marks. In other words, thought Mikihiko, the one Leo had fought wouldn’t use fire, electricity, or blades.

If they used a weapon, it would be a blunt one. If not, then strikes.

Their method of attack, at least for the moment, was just as he’d guessed beforehand.

If he’d miscalculated anything, it had been this enemy’s incomparable speed and power.

The female vampire—as Mikihiko dubbed her for convenience’s sake in his own mind—flung a fist toward him. The thick-gloved hand wouldn’t leave external injuries, but it would probably penetrate to his organs instead.

Mikihiko held down one of the ribs on his already-opened iron-ribbed fan with a finger.

Bridal Veil.

Psions flowing from his fingertip triggered his technique, willed but not spoken, and activated it.

A demon’s wind-cutting fist. The strike, holding unimaginable power, had such swiftness it almost reached the speed of sound.

Mikihiko had far higher physical abilities than normal people because of his rigorous ascetic training, but he didn’t have the speed to dodge a subsonic strike after his adversary closed in on him.

A compressed mass of wind flew at Mikihiko ahead of the woman’s physical fist—

—and Mikihiko’s body floated, pushed by that wind.

He went with the current, dodging the fist’s trajectory, letting the current pull him behind the fist and close to the arm. In modern magic, this event alteration would be accomplished by a compound spell: gravity blocking and inertial dampening, plus a relative posture stabilization. This old spell combined them all under one idea: riding the wind.

As Mikihiko, now to his opponent’s side, set foot back on the ground when the technique’s effects cut off, he also drove a blow into a joint in his opponent’s fully extended right arm with the rod raised in his own right hand.

He swung down meaning to break the joint, but instead, the rod snapped in two with a dry crack.

Half-conscious of and half ignoring the numbness in his hand, he let go of the broken rod.

A barrier? Or weakening?

Dodging a sideways hand chop by jumping as far back as he could, Mikihiko pulled a throwing knife from a hidden pocket. He hurled the small, slender knife with a nominal grip attached at his opponent’s arm as it passed in front of his eyes.

But the knife only tore a hole in her coat, bouncing away before digging any deeper.

A barrier!

There was no sign of any spell activating when he threw the knife. That meant she was covering her body at all times with a force field that would repel matter. Her punches and chops, intense strength ill-matched to her slender arms, had to be an effect of this barrier, he reasoned.

Well, then… Using his fingers, he opened the end of the iron-ribbed fan he’d closed earlier.

The talisman with the highest usage rate, placed in the easiest spot to get to…

As far as Mikihiko knew, you couldn’t construct a barrier that stopped both mass and energy simultaneously with magical techniques. There was a small chance she had expanded a multilayered barrier, but it was still worth a test.

Thunder Child.

Thunder Child was a spell that reproduced a small-scale lightning strike in a tight area. It was a degraded, scaled-down version of Invoke Lightning, a weather-control spell that created a thundercloud to emulate real lightning, but though its amperage was lesser, its voltage compared favorably.

With an explosive roar of electric breakdown, lightning fired from the source to other electrodes he’d set up in the air—at the crown of the vampire’s head. At the moment this spell activated, it was already sure to hit. A lightning strike traveling at two hundred thousand kilometers per second bolted toward her head.

A beast-like, piercing cry rang out. But that immediately changed into a shout more suitable for the voice. The flash of light, which should have penetrated his target’s body and disappeared, instead moved to the woman’s hands as she placed them over her head. Electric sparks crackled from her fingertips. The light had a stronger electric force than the lightning Mikihiko had created.

Emission-type magic!

Spells that extracted electrons from a physical body were basic techniques in one of modern magic’s eight types: emission. Because it pinpointed the information directly linked to the phenomenon of electron distribution and overwrote it, emission-type magic could generally output stronger electric attacks than old magic’s lightning-type spells.

Mikihiko flung himself to the ground, and an electric light buzzed over, grazing him.

Compared to old lightning magic, modern emission-type spells were superior in power but inferior in control. Because of that, he was able to dodge the first attack. But at zero range, he knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid the literally lightning-fast attacks forever.

Cursing his lack of forethought for unconsciously assuming his opponent would only use one type of attack, he hastily built a defensive spell. Then he called forth one that created a layer of air as a barrier, thick enough that no electric breakdown would occur.

However, his opponent was already using her magic. He didn’t know how that worked, but the spell activated without an activation sequence, and its effects didn’t seem to be waning.

Perhaps she really was a demon.

I won’t make it—

Mikihiko prepared himself for the worst, but the worst didn’t come to pass.

Like a gust of wind blowing out a candlestick flame, psion information bodies rammed into her, erasing the electric light from the vampire’s hands.

Erika’s down-swung blade stopped at the masked woman’s raised left arm.

With the sound of a dull hit, she didn’t feel the woman’s bone break, or even that she’d cut flesh.

She had probably stopped it with a protector of lightweight alloy bonded with cushioning material—in other words, with a gauntlet.

No matter that, even though Erika hadn’t swung with the intent to kill, she’d still not tried to hold anything back.

Before she knew it, a pistol was in her opponent’s right hand. Despite the nonsensical mask, she’d been trained to a high degree not only as a magician but also as a combatant. Warning signals flared in Erika’s mind, ordering her to muster even more energy from her body.

Knowing how to handle this position, with her katana sinking into—rather, digging into her opponent’s gauntlet—she pulled the weapon back.

Faster than she could bring up her gun arm, Erika wheeled around to the woman’s left side.

A moment before the muzzle was aimed at her, she slammed the katana into the barrel.

There was a gunshot, muffled by a silencer.

The masked woman’s right hand reached for Erika’s face. Her thumb and middle finger made a ring.

A small sphere of lightning danced on her opened fingertips.

The body moved, overtaking the mind. Erika retreated to avoid the sphere, and before the muzzle came completely up, she charged straight at the masked magician.

I’ve got you, Erika thought, just as she stepped into range and began to swing down her katana.

A moment later, a shock wave crashed up into her from below, sending her flying into the air.

She nearly lost consciousness from the shock for an instant.

But Erika immediately got back up.

And yet no follow-up attack came.

The masked magician’s left hand was holding her right shoulder. Whether by acceleration magic or movement magic, right before she’d knocked her opponent’s spell away, Erika’s bladeless katana had landed a firm blow on her enemy’s right shoulder. The masked magician, still holding her shoulder, directed her gaze toward where Mikihiko and the vampire were fighting.

More specifically, she looked past them—at a boy on a motorcycle pointing a silver CAD at the vampire.

She couldn’t see the boy’s face behind his helmet.

Tatsuya…?

Nevertheless, Erika’s eyes, through hazy mind and combat stance alike, knew the identity of that boy implicitly.

Erika, Mikihiko, and the vampire.

While keeping the enemy and his allies in sight, Tatsuya’s eyes pointed at the masked magician, as though her own golden eyes were drawing him in.

The masked magician leveled her left hand at Tatsuya. Her fingers moved as though typing, and less than a moment later came the sign of magic activating.

But that sign was dispersed before it could overwrite the world.

Confusion ran through those golden eyes.

She formed different magic programs three times, and three times did they disperse.

“Oh,” he heard someone say. It was Mikihiko. He didn’t need to ask why.

The vampire had started to run away.

Tatsuya’s eyes, hidden behind the shield, looked away from the masked magician.

It was only for a moment.

And in that moment, he didn’t miss what the masked magician did.

She hadn’t used a spell. Even if he’d looked away, his “vision” would never miss the magic.

Perhaps the masked magician had realized that.

The pistol, hanging limp at her side in her right hand, while aimed at the ground, fired a bullet.

Sparks flew at the shooter’s feet and instantly changed into a flash of light.

Five muffled gunshots came in succession, and the masked magician concealed herself in the flashes.

Tatsuya aimed his magical sights at the masked woman herself.

Aiming for her legs, he activated a partial dismantling spell—or tried to anyway.

But he couldn’t feel it hit her physical information.

The eidos, which should have been reflecting off her real body, were at the surface level only; they were empty.

Only the colors and contours had been recorded; all the information about material, mass, and composition was missing.

Tatsuya stopped his spell and lowered his hand.

When the flashing light disappeared, neither the masked magician nor the vampire remained in the park.

*   *   *

“Are you two all right?” Tatsuya asked. Pursuit abandoned, he got off his motorcycle and removed his helmet.

Mikihiko didn’t seem to have any particular wounds.

As for Erika, though…

“…Stop staring at me like that. You’re embarrassing me.”

“Right, sorry.”

Taking a cue from Mikihiko, whose face was red and gazing somewhere else, Tatsuya looked away.

It wasn’t as though he had seen her completely bare. He hadn’t spotted any damage to her underclothing, either. However, from the bottom of her outerwear to just below her chest were several cuts, giving him tiny glimpses of her body lines. It was almost like an extreme rock-star look.

Considering it that way, he certainly couldn’t say much skin was exposed. Maybe it was like how one would be fine wearing a swimsuit at the beach or the pool but be embarrassed wearing it on the street.

“…Hey, could you lend me something to put over this?” asked Erika, her tone implying she wasn’t finding them very considerate.

Mikihiko hastily took off his half coat and threw it to Erika. Tatsuya would have offered, except for the fact that his blouson was hiding a shoulder holster, which would have been problematic to reveal.

“Thanks. I’m fine now.”

It wasn’t like she’d been naked, or even half-naked. Tatsuya’s unadulterated impression was that she was making a big deal out of nothing, but maybe that was a kind of beauty of style. And certainly it was several steps better than having no shame about it.

“Erika, are you hurt?” He’d found out what he could from looking at her, but he decided to ask anyway.

“It was a good thing I wore an acton just in case. If I hadn’t, things would’ve been real bad there.”

Acton was another anachronistic term, with a further option being gambeson, but Tatsuya knew, by good luck or coincidence, that it was completely unlike what actons originally were. Rather than a thick garment worn underneath armor to soften impacts and keep the skin safe, what Erika referred to as an acton was underwear made of multifunctional synthetic rubber that served as armor against bullets and blades. Unlike thick body armor, it didn’t obstruct the wearer’s movement, and since you could wear it underneath your clothes, it carried the advantage of not drawing unwanted attention. In exchange, because of its materials, it was designed to cling to your body, so those wanting to hide their shape didn’t like them. Normally, since she wore outerwear on top of it, there was no reason to mind it, but this time, it wasn’t about the wearer; her companions had found the image of the acton clinging to her body tempting.

“It seems like wind blades were in that blast.”

“Looks like it… That masked jerk. Next time I see her, I’m making her pay for these clothes.”

“I think you hurt her collarbone pretty good.”

“That’s a completely separate issue!”

Like Tatsuya said, Erika wasn’t beaten one-sidedly—she’d gotten in a little going-away present. The hit had been shallow, but just before the shock wave blew her away, her katana had connected with the masked magician’s right shoulder.

Tatsuya hadn’t been there to see, but between the masked magician’s appearance and the way Erika’s clothes were damaged, he’d accurately deduced what had happened.

“By the way, Tatsuya, why are you here?”

He could tell by Erika’s face that she hadn’t suddenly thought of the question—she’d been itching to ask the whole time. Tatsuya considered several avenues of how to answer, but in the end decided to be honest—because he thought it would be most interesting that way.

“What do you mean? Mikihiko contacted me.”

Disturbance shot through Mikihiko’s face as he looked at Tatsuya as if he were a traitor.

“Really, now?”

But at the indeed highly unhappy voice, Mikihiko awkwardly shifted his gaze to Erika.

“And our savior came to rescue us just in the nick of time. That was a nice play, Miki.”

Her words were complimentary, and given what had led to this state of affairs, one should have judged the action worthy of praise.

Still, Mikihiko could only force out fragmented words like uh and well.

The volume of her voice entering his ears did not, in any way, strike him as a compliment.

“When did you contact him, by the way? I don’t remember asking you.”

“…”

Of course she didn’t remember asking him—he hadn’t told her at all. It was entirely his own decision to send their tracer signal to Tatsuya. And without giving him any other information, either. Even if she pressed him further, not even he would be able to answer what he was trying to do by doing that.

Erika’s cold gaze on him, a bead of sweat formed on Mikihiko’s temple. He was like a frog under a snake’s glare. Mikihiko getting out of this himself seemed difficult, so Tatsuya decided that was enough: “I know you both seem confused, but shouldn’t we move?”

Erika blinked twice at the voice addressing them from the side and took out her information terminal, which had just barely stayed safe.

“People are starting to gather, you know.”

Mikihiko, flustered at Tatsuya’s remarks, too, took out his own terminal.

Erika checked the time. It had been about five minutes since they encountered the vampire and the masked magician. It wouldn’t be strange for other teams to start getting here.

Mikihiko brought up his tracer monitor. The lights displaying allied search teams were approaching in random curved paths. It was easy to imagine they did so lest they run across any other search teams.

“You didn’t get the Clans’ permission, right?”

At the moment, there was no penalty set in stone just because they hadn’t participated in the official search team that the Saegusa family had organized.

But diving into combat while ignoring the Saegusa-Juumonji search team was the sort of thing they wanted to pretend hadn’t happened… Especially if the former student council president found them. Erika and Mikihiko could sense that would lead to all sorts of problems in the future.

As they worried over this and that, Tatsuya, without thinking about anything unnecessary, prepared for their escape.

“Erika, want a ride?” he asked, getting back on his bike.

“Yeah, please.” Erika bounded over, jumped into the tandem seat, and clung to Tatsuya’s waist.

“What about me, Tats?” asked Mikihiko, fretting.

“Sorry. That would be too many people,” Tatsuya answered, turning on the motor.

Mikihiko sucked in an affronted breath, then shouted: “You’ll get fined for not wearing a helmet!”

The protest met only Tatsuya’s back as he rode away.

(Additionally, in the late twenty-first century, there was no defined penalty for helmet-wearing delinquency. Instead, if a passenger was fatally wounded in an accident, a dangerous driving fatal wound penalty would be applied to the driver’s record.)

Mikihiko, coat taken and left behind, stood there in a daze for quite a while.

Lina—still in her Angie Sirius form—returned to their mobile base, which was disguised as a television relay vehicle, and ordered a withdrawal before she even sat down.

There was no question. That, in itself, was as she’d predicted. As she took her seat in the back, the mobile base began to move without a sound. But the vehicle was filled with a dubious air, a desire to ask the question but a fear of doing so. Her hair was a mess and her boots were dirty with the vestiges of flash bangs, almost as though she’d run away. But for Sirius, commander of the Stars, the term run away was an unseemly one.

“Major.”

The ceiling in the vehicle was high, but her two team members still had to bend over as they stood in front of Lina.

“We’re terribly sorry.”

Their apology was for falling behind during their pursuit. Lina had been fighting the vampire alone because her other team members couldn’t keep up with her movement speed.

“It doesn’t matter. There may have been unexpected third-party interference, but I fled as well.”

“…Thank you, ma’am.”

“Anyway, we’ve already dealt with Sergeant Sullivan, so I wouldn’t necessarily call this mission a failure. Have you recovered his corpse?”

“Yes, Major.”

“I see.” Lina nodded, looking relieved at the answer that came from behind where the two of them stood. “Please send the sergeant’s corpse for an autopsy right away. And did you figure out what I was chasing?” she asked, her expression immediately tightening up.

“I’m sorry, Major. We successfully extracted the psi-wave pattern this time, but it didn’t match any of the data.”

“Then either she isn’t a fugitive…or her psi-wave patterns have been altered.”

“I believe it’s likely the latter, Major.”

“All right. Trace the pattern we picked up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After hearing the answer and instructing the two in front of her to return to their seats, Lina sat back deeply in her own seat.

She brought her left hand to her right shoulder and applied healing magic to herself. She was able to keep a straight face in front of her subordinates thanks to her magic-based transformation, but her collarbone had completely broken after she’d forced herself to use her gun when it was already fractured. It hurt so much she wanted to cry.

Nobody told me Erika would be that strong! And Tatsuya used some crazy skill or magic or something to disable my spells… Are all high schoolers in Japan like that?! complained Lina to herself, leaving her own age aside for the moment.

“I’m sorry? Our aunt…?”

Tatsuya had left the room in haste a moment ago, after taking his terminal out of his breast pocket. Once he returned from that disappearance, Miyuki repeated back what he’d just said: the name of the woman he wanted her to speak to.

And after she said it, she was ashamed of her rudeness.

Tatsuya, of course, couldn’t blame her for asking the question like that, but even if he could, it would take more than that to make him displeased with her.

“I have something I’d like to discuss with her,” he repeated, asking her again to make the call.

Most of the Yotsuba family servants knew Tatsuya was Maya’s nephew. They also knew that, as part of the Yotsuba family, Tatsuya was nothing more than a tool—though few knew he was a weapon. Even if he called Maya, it was entirely possible they’d hang up instead of transferring him over to her.

Nevertheless, neither Tatsuya nor even Miyuki was allowed to know her direct number. Anyone who knew the circumstances would unanimously state that the Yotsuba family’s information controls were several levels higher than even the prime minister’s official residence, and that was no exaggeration.

“If it’s your command, Brother… Might you wait a moment?”

“Yeah… I’ll go get changed.”

Despite their blood relation, he couldn’t take the call in his normal clothes, nor could he cut the video feed—for the siblings, that was the kind of person their aunt (and her household) was.

“I apologize for the lateness of the call.”

“It’s fine. I’m just surprised you wanted to call me, Miyuki.”

As always, she featured age-indeterminate beauty and an indecipherable smile when she appeared on the videophone screen. Next to her was Hayama, wearing a perfectly fitted three-piece suit. Tatsuya thought to himself that having a butler sit in on a call between aunt and niece was a little lacking in common sense, but he was also standing next to Miyuki in a dark suit, so the road went both ways.

After they briefly exchanged regular greetings, tension hidden behind her calm expression, Miyuki explained, in an even more businesslike tone—it was probably hard for her to come out and say it—that Tatsuya had something to discuss with Maya.

“Tatsuya? Well, that’s another surprise.”

Not bothering to conceal the amusement in her smile, Maya allowed Tatsuya to make a remark.

“Aunt Maya, I actually have one thing I’d like to ask, and one thing I’d like to have your permission on.”

“You may ask away,” nodded Maya in good temper. On the surface, at least.

“Then, if I may… Aunt Maya, would you please tell me how the Kudou family’s Parade spell works?”

Next to Tatsuya, Miyuki gave him a blank, baffled look.

On the other end of the video, Hayama dexterously raised a single eyebrow.

Maya gave a laugh, as though she couldn’t help it any longer. “Oh my… Tatsuya, Parade is the Kudou family’s secret technique. Why would you think I’d know its mysteries?”

Laughing again, Maya gave him a no in the form of a question.

“There was a time when you received instruction from His Excellency. Wouldn’t you know the idea, even if not the magic program itself?”

Knowing she meant she couldn’t tell him, he used her question against her to stand his ground.

“Is the anti-magic spell Parade for duplicating and processing parts related to your own eidos’s outward appearance through the application of Information Boost in order to project a different appearance onto yourself? In other words, through masking or disguising eidos, one temporarily alters their physical appearance, while also substituting any magical interference aims with their own disguised eidos to block the usage of magic on the true body?”

But not only did he stand his ground—he added in his own deductions.

“…I had thought you, of all people, would be very familiar with the impossibilities of transformation magic.”

Maya didn’t express a direct answer to Tatsuya’s theory. That was enough for him to know whether his deduction was correct, but it still didn’t satisfy him.

“If all you want to do is alter your appearance, you can do it by interfering with light waves, though it’s not true transformation. The issue lies in that light interference can’t fool my ‘eyes.’”

“Brother, you don’t mean…” said Miyuki, surprise evident on her face. “There was someone who could keep their identity secret from you?”

“Not only that. It caused my Mist Dispersion to miss.”

Miyuki’s face paled, and she lost her voice.

As though her shock had been transmitted through the screen, Maya furrowed her brow into a scowl for a moment. Her smile quickly returned, but she was finished playing games.

“Even if Mist Dispersion didn’t work, Trident wouldn’t cause a problem, right?”

“Can you not deploy a two-layered Parade?”

Maya had given him “advice,” but she didn’t answer his follow-up question. Instead, she answered a different question, one he hadn’t asked aloud.

“I do recall hearing that the Old Master’s younger brother was more skilled than he was.”

“Thank you. Aunt Maya, this incident seems like too much for me to handle. I would like to request reinforcements.”

“Is that the matter you wanted permission for?”

Aunt and nephew exchanged looks over the display.

“…Very well. Things seem to be shifting past the scope of our expectations. I will permit you to contact Major Kazama.”

Tatsuya bowed, then withdrew from the screen.