Saturday, December 29: The day when Tatsuya—and, more importantly, Miyuki—would go to the Yotsuba headquarters had arrived.

After finishing an early lunch, Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Minami headed out shortly before noon.

The village where the Yotsuba headquarters was situated hadn’t allocated the residence a formal address, so unfortunately, they couldn’t use automated luggage delivery. This meant that they had to carry a considerable amount with them, but as they only had to walk to the cabinet station, it was doable; most of the luggage was merely clothing and toiletries and therefore wasn’t particularly heavy—just bulky. Especially because the formal kimono that Miyuki would wear on-site was provided by the household every year.

It took just shy of an hour to travel from their home to their destination of Kobuchisawa Station. They encountered no mishaps and arrived at the station right on time.

Tatsuya hadn’t forgotten about Mitsugu Kuroba’s demand, which was essentially an attack plan, but had decided that there was almost no chance that they would commit what would amount to an act of terrorism on the public transit system. It wasn’t the Yotsuba style to openly make an enemy of the government. If there was going to be an attack, Tatsuya thought, it would come after they’d left the station.

The car sent to pick them up was already waiting. Tatsuya recognized the driver, while Minami, who had worked at the main house herself up until the previous year, seemed to have some deeper acquaintance with him. He greeted her with a smile and a short exchange—although when he looked back to Tatsuya, his face became blank again, as though he was regarding the luggage.

After he loaded the suitcases in the trunk, Tatsuya led Miyuki into the car, since if she had seen the way the driver was looking at him, it would’ve caused needless hassle. For his part, Tatsuya simply wished the driver had been willing to keep up a bit more of an act in order to avoid pointless trouble, but any driver employed by Obara was likely to have been chosen for his skills rather than any propensity to dole out social niceties. Those skills wouldn’t just be at driving, either—the man could undoubtedly handle himself in a fight, so a certain lack of grace was to be forgiven.

There was another reason Tatsuya hurried Miyuki into the vehicle. As he’d expected, they were being watched—and it felt less like a watchful gaze over their party and more like the car itself was being surveilled.

If they had an asset within Yotsuba headquarters, or some other source of intelligence, it was entirely possible that they knew this car had been sent specifically to pick up Miyuki. Tatsuya had a hard time believing that they would really go so far, but whatever the reality was, his guess wouldn’t change it.

However, there were fewer eyes on them than he’d anticipated, which concerned him. It gave him the impression that their destination was known and an ambush was already lying in wait for them. If information had leaked, it wasn’t impossible.

And as it stood, there wasn’t any sign of imminent movement against them. It was illegal to employ magic for purposes other than self-defense, so since all they were doing was watching, he couldn’t use magic to dispose of them—nor could he do so nonmagically. The only course of action available was to get in the car and get moving as quickly as possible.

Minami ended up sitting in the front passenger seat. It had the best visibility, but when Tatsuya tried to get her to surrender it, Minami—somewhat apologetically—refused to budge, so he ended up keeping watch from the back seat.

He noticed movement as soon as they left town: A suspicious vehicle tripped Tatsuya’s warning net.

Miyuki noticed her brother’s guard go up even before he had a chance to say anything—normally their close communication sped things up, but in this case, it introduced a moment of delay.

“Brother, what’s…”

“It’s an attack!” Even just cutting off her question stole a bit of time. “Grenade rounds—two from the front, one from the rear!”

The target was the car they were all riding in. Minami began casting an anti-penetration and anti-heat barrier, but thanks to the disorder directed at them by eleven other people, her magic was incomplete and compromised.

The Cast Jamming effectively blocked Minami’s magic by mutual interference.

This was no accident, Tatsuya realized. This sort of coordination couldn’t be achieved with a day or two of practice. Creating a resonant state between eleven spell programs was something that had to be carefully calibrated—and therefore was clearly deliberate.

This was a way of using magic without using magic. It was as if the technique were made specifically for people who couldn’t use magic, a combat ability made for experimentally strengthened individuals who’d failed to become magicians.

“Minami, cancel your magic!”

“What? Okay!”

Without waiting for her reply, Tatsuya pointed diagonally up with his right hand. On his chest he wore a thought-activated CAD, and on his wrist was another one—a Silver Torus.

The grenade rounds disintegrated in midair, their silenced propulsion units shattering against the surface of the road.

Two, then three more high-explosive rounds followed, only to meet the same fate.

Their car slipped easily past a few small explosions. The fall had triggered the fuses of the high explosives, detonating them—but fortunately, since they were separated from the explosives they’d been meant to trigger, those remained inert.

Tatsuya waved his hand above his head as though swatting away an insect. The magic he activated was Program Dispersion, instantly interfering with the fixed-resonance magic that had been directed at them.

“Head back to town!” Tatsuya ordered the driver, taking no notice of Minami looking downcast and ineffective in the front seat.

But the driver merely glanced in the rearview mirror at a vehicle pursuing them, where a grenade launcher protruded from its window. He neither touched the brake pedal nor made the slightest motion toward the parking brake.

Heedless of Tatsuya’s words, he was preparing to force his way through.

“Please, turn the car around!” said Miyuki, echoing her brother’s direction.

“Understood!” The driver instantly followed Miyuki’s order.

“Minami, watch over Miyuki,” Tatsuya said, pulling a pair of heat-resistant, bulletproof sunglasses out of his breast pocket.

“O-okay!”

His features now obscured behind the wraparound sunglasses, Tatsuya spoke to Miyuki next. “Miyuki, I’ll see you at the station.”

“Brother?!”

Tatsuya opened the window just as the driver sent the car into a spin turn.

Antilock brakes were universally installed in virtually every vehicle by this time, making handbrake drift turns impossible by design, but since the car was equipped with four-wheel steering with a high degree of freedom, a skilled driver could turn the car in such a tight radius that it seemed to be spinning in place. The maneuver had come to be called a spin turn.

The moment the car spun, Tatsuya used the centrifugal force of the spin to leap from the back-seat window of the car. A combination of his inertia and leap brought him to the ground, where Tatsuya promptly disintegrated the weapons of the attackers behind the car, preventing any further attacks on the vehicle itself.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the attackers’ vehicle in mid-turn as it prepared to pursue Miyuki. Tatsuya targeted its wheels, which promptly fell off, and the air was filled with a high-pitched grinding sound as the vehicle’s body scraped against the pavement.

After confirming that his sister’s car was headed safely back to town, Tatsuya launched himself at the nearest attacker.

His opponent couldn’t have anticipated an attack coming like this, but he was quick to react. He revealed no confusion at the guns that disintegrated. He wore the uniform of a shipping company, and as Tatsuya charged him unarmed, he reached back and produced a hand-to-hand combat knife, with both a wide finger guard and a bladed knuckle-duster.

An enhanced National Defense soldier? No—an artificial psychic!

The man’s equipment implied the assumption that he wouldn’t be able to rely on firearms during combat. No ordinary soldier or criminal would carry something like this. Considering the deliberately constructed interference magic program from earlier, there was no doubt this man was an artificial psychic—an experimental subject who’d failed to become a magician.

The knife lashed out at him. He could “see” that the high-grade stainless steel blade was electrified. Even before he’d grasped that his opponent was an artificial psychic, Tatsuya had been using Elemental Sight alongside his regular vision. At this rate, even if he deflected the blade, he would take damage from the arcing electric charge stored within—and it wasn’t a nonlethal weapon like a stun gun. It would deliver a lethal amount of current.

Instead of barely avoiding the blade, Tatsuya leaped back, opening a large gap.

Sparks flew from the tip of the knife, arcing from the blade up the man’s arm. He seemed to be wearing protective gear of some kind, as he gave no sign of being affected by the electricity. He was shocked, though, by something else:

The man froze, realizing that his abilities had betrayed him, his powers having been activated against his will. Instantly, Tatsuya held his palm out toward the man, hammering the consciousness out of him with a pressure wave.

It had been simple enough to make the man’s knife discharge on its own. As he’d jumped back, Tatsuya had fired off a carefully constructed magic program that dismantled the magic containing the electrical charge. Modern magic had, after all, arisen from research into psychic abilities. It was common sense to Tatsuya that the two were fundamentally the same thing.

The man wore a construction helmet with a baseball cap–like visor low over his eyes to disguise his face, but it came off when the man fell—revealing the face of a boy perhaps fifteen years old.

Tatsuya didn’t have time to look carefully at his face. More enemies were approaching rapidly from both sides. They wore the same shipping company uniforms as the boy, with the same hard hats. It wasn’t a stretch to determine they were teammates.

Speed-wise, they were comparable to Erika, the fastest magician he knew. But when it came to their control…

Sloppy, he thought.

Two more psychics were coming at him, slightly offset in timing. If Tatsuya did nothing, the man to his right would make contact first; that was who he moved toward.

He didn’t counterattack, though—he only moved past the man. When he came to a stop with the man behind him, the man was still moving.

The psychic attacking from the left passed by the one coming from the right, and Tatsuya prepared to face him.

The knife came out.

Palm met head.

Tatsuya evaded the knife and maneuvered behind his attacker, rattling his mind with another pressure wave from his palm.

Did I kill him? Tatsuya wondered for an instant at the deeper-than-expected response he felt, but after sensing life signs from the man’s collapsed body, Tatsuya turned again to face the other psychic, who had now finally oriented himself.

Acceleration magic was active on the man’s body. Tatsuya didn’t sense any medium for inertial control. That should have resulted in g-forces beyond what the human body could endure, but the man’s combat stance was unaffected.

So he’s been physically enhanced. That settles it.

His opponent was a physically enhanced artificial psychic. These magic-wielding soldiers had been developed during the first half of the Twenty Years’ War but never completed. Germany had attempted to achieve useful results via genetic manipulation, while Japan had used drugs to make the enhancements.

But it was the thirty-centimeter range limit that had led to physically enhanced artificial psychics being abandoned as a failed project—they could only use weapons that stayed within that range of their body. They couldn’t maintain the magic programs necessary for physical effects at distances beyond than that—they could only project diminished psionic information particles, which were incapable of affecting the physical world.

That wasn’t entirely meaningless, though. It’s impressive that they managed to combine their incomplete magic programs in a way that interfered with other magic. Just goes to show there are clever people everywhere.

All that aside, if these really were the enhanced psychics from those experiments, they had to be over sixty years old. Evidently, their physical enhancements also slowed the aging process.

Those were the kind of thoughts that—if put into words—went through Tatsuya’s head in less than a tenth of a second. Meanwhile, he was moving to intercept the strike coming from his magically accelerated opponent, who was coming at him like a cannonball.

Although his speed made him dangerous, his combat technique was unpolished. He looked sloppy, to Tatsuya’s eye. Even taking into account that his immediate references of comparison were Yakumo or Yanagi, from a general perspective, the man’s technique was objectively lacking.

It wasn’t a lack of training. The psychic’s speed had been artificially enhanced, but his conscious mind couldn’t keep up with his magically improved speed.

Erika was the fastest magician Tatsuya knew, but there were any number of magicians faster than her when it came to simple movement speed. Yanagi was one, as was Kazama. If magical ability came into the equation, Miyuki, Mayumi, and Katsuto could also manage it. Masaki Ichijou, too, probably. But not all of them were at a level where they could use self-acceleration magic during actual combat—not because they didn’t need to but because they wouldn’t be able to control their own accelerated bodies.

It was only Erika’s natural talent that let her keep her balance while controlling both her body and her weapon at such speeds. There was no way to fake her ability—and because Tatsuya was facing exactly such a fake, this would be an easy opponent to handle.

What followed next was only natural:

Tatsuya opened both his palms in preparation. As the psychic swung the knife in a flat arc, Tatsuya caught the man’s wrist between his palms.

It almost looked like his opponent himself had wanted to be caught—the scene was practically identical to when Yanagi had fought the No-Head Dragon’s generator during the Nines Competition.

Tatsuya killed his own body weight and inertia and, after feinting an arm bar, sprang upward into a head kick. With his weight and inertia canceled, the motion took only an instant.

The unconscious man tumbled to the road, and Tatsuya spun in midair such that the moment he touched down, he was already facing his next target.

With his heightened senses, he counted twenty-eight remaining enemies. Of them, nine were artificial psychics. In addition to the eleven who’d been responsible for the disruption field, there was one more, presumably held in reserve in the car that had pursued them. Nineteen normal humans with no superhuman abilities appeared to be fleeing.

However, Tatsuya did not intend to let a single one of them escape unscathed.

Unfortunately, once the police arrived, Tatsuya had to leave the scene having only taken out twenty of them. He was careful to avoid any police attention, taking his time in making his way back to the station to meet up with Miyuki.

It was past 4:00 PM by the time he returned.

When Miyuki saw him, she flew at him from where she sat in the station’s waiting room drinking tea. “You’re safe!”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he offered, patting his sister’s head before leading her back into the waiting room where their live-in guard had been left.

“Well done, Minami.”

“Not at all. I’m glad you’re all right,” she said, standing up politely. Tatsuya gestured for her to sit back down, as he did across from her.

Miyuki, needless to say, sat next to her brother. Next to Minami was, instead, three travelers’ worth of luggage.

“Where did our car go?”

“I sent it back to the house,” Miyuki said. “Given that the attack will certainly have been recorded on traffic cameras, I made sure to specify he take an indirect route. Er… Should I have not done that?” She looked up to him uncertainly.

Tatsuya touched her cheek and smiled reassuringly. “No, you made the right call. Well done, thinking so far ahead.”

“Oh, thank you, Brother…” Miyuki flushed and looked down, as Minami regarded the proceedings with a look that said, Is this really necessary?

But the moment Tatsuya’s eyes moved away from his sister, Minami quickly regained her normal, unassuming expression.

Tatsuya regarded the woman skeptically, having been quick enough to catch the shift in her demeanor. Minami sensibly kept her discomfort to herself.

Fortunately for her, Tatsuya decided against anything as mean-spirited as staring her down and waiting to see how long her bluff would hold out. Instead, he returned his gaze to Miyuki as he removed his hand from her cheek.

“Aw,” she murmured, disappointed.

He set her feelings aside for the moment as he directed her to contact the Yotsuba headquarters. “We’ll return home for today and try again tomorrow, so have them send another car.”

There wasn’t any particular problem with arriving at the main house on New Year’s Eve. The reason they had tried today was specifically because of the possibility of an accident—or rather, a deliberate interference attempt.

The caution had proved unfortunately warranted, which was all the more reason not to push their luck today.

“Understood,” Miyuki said, taking out her portable terminal and opening communications with the main house.

It was the butler Obara who answered. He repeatedly confirmed Miyuki’s—and no one else’s—safety and well-being, apologized several times for the bungling of her transport, and emphasized that he would immediately send another car.

“…Mr. Obara, I would prefer to return home tonight.” Miyuki had finally reached her limit. Her voice wasn’t raised in anger; rather, the chill in her tone made it clear to all listening that her mind would not be changed.

“Understood, miss.” The voice that came through the receiver was so stiffly proper that one could practically see the man’s rigid posture.

Seizing her chance, Miyuki pressed her advantage. “Please inform my aunt that I will deliver a full report upon arriving home.”

“Yes, as you wish, miss.”

“Also, I’d like a car sent to meet me again tomorrow.”

“Certainly. What time should it await your arrival, miss?”

Obara tended toward exaggerated formality, but Tatsuya couldn’t remember a time when he’d been quite this stiff. It was off-putting enough that Miyuki hesitated in answering, giving her brother a look that wordlessly asked what to say.

Tatsuya input “10 AM” on his own terminal, then showed it to Miyuki.

“Ten o’clock in the morning, if possible.”

“Very well, miss,” came Obara’s immediate answer.

Miyuki wondered if it really was all right but then quickly decided that it wasn’t something she needed to worry about. “All right. We’ll expect you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, Ms. Miyuki. Please take care on your way home.”

There was something in his tone that Miyuki heard as resentment, but she decided that it was her imagination and ended the call.

Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Minami didn’t speak a single word about the incident until they returned home.

Leaving their luggage packed, they gathered in the living room after changing clothes, and only then did the tacit gag order on the topic lift.

Miyuki and Minami brought in black tea and coffee. Miyuki had brewed the coffee for Tatsuya’s benefit, while Minami had prepared the tea for herself and Miyuki. Having two people prepare two separate drinks seemed excessive to Tatsuya, but he had decided to keep his opinion to himself on this matter.

“Miyuki, Minami—good work, both of you,” he said by way of thanks. He noticed Minami heading to sit at one of the dining table chairs and gestured for her to join Miyuki on the sofa.

“Ah, you can sit here, too, Minami. So…about the people who attacked us today,” he began. “The soldiers were physically enhanced artificial psychics—a failed experiment of the National Defense Force.”

“Why would the National Defense Force…?” Miyuki’s question was about the reason for the attack, but she wasn’t disputing her brother. If Tatsuya said they were something, then that something was what Miyuki accepted as absolute truth. “And what are ‘physically enhanced artificial psychics’ anyway?”

“I don’t know the reason. The police arrived as I was neutralizing our attackers, so I didn’t have the chance to question them. And as for what they are…”

Tatsuya began to explain the development of artificial psychics. It was a topic he hesitated to broach in front of Minami, herself a second-generation engineered magician, but he ultimately decided it would be more insulting to patronize her by tiptoeing around her feelings.

“…And research into artificial psychics was halted over forty years ago. The experimental subjects are all over sixty years old. I’d heard they were in-house in the former Gunma and Nagano Prefectures, but apparently there were confinement facilities in Suwa and Matsumoto as well.”

“They’ve been confined for over forty years?” murmured Minami. “Just locked away, without being given any duties?” She squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears. “…But could the test subjects really ever be released from facilities like that? Even supposing they were all volunteers, they’re living proof of human experimentation. It might seem to us like after so much time, they should be freed, but the military might still want to hide them from the public—especially the media—forever.”

Miyuki’s eyes widened in shock at Minami’s point. “Could it be that it was a high-level military officer that ordered the attack on us…?”

“No, not possible,” Tatsuya said, flatly dismissing her fear. “If this were military espionage, they wouldn’t have sent such a mediocre force to face me. Even being willing to throw experimental units at us, they would’ve employed stronger assets. Most likely ones who were too powerful for even themselves to control and therefore disposable.”

In other words, if this really had been the work of the Defense Force brass, they would’ve planned to let Tatsuya dispose of experimental subjects that had gotten troublesome to handle, even if they couldn’t defeat Tatsuya himself. It was an all-too-plausible scenario, and thinking about it was unpleasant, so Miyuki quickly changed the subject.

“Yuuka knew that we were going to be attacked, didn’t she?”

“I imagine so. She was probably also thinking that if she’d been with us, we wouldn’t be.” Tatsuya sipped his coffee blankly. “There’s also the issue of Kuroba’s warning.” He’d told Miyuki and Minami about Mitsugu’s attempted intimidation from earlier. “I don’t want to believe it, but it’s possible that one of the branch families may have been pulling the strings behind today’s attack.”

“…Is this my fault?” Miyuki asked tremulously.

“No.” Tatsuya immediately shook his head. “At least not according to what Kuroba said. The guys that attacked us today weren’t only focused on you.”

In fact, there wasn’t any reason to believe that Miyuki hadn’t been the target. Tatsuya got the impression that on the attackers’ side, they hadn’t had much understanding of who they were attacking—but he had no reason to be so bluntly honest as to say so out loud.

Tatsuya put forth a reasonable deduction based on the background information he already had, plus the events of the day.

“Their motivation is presumably to stop you from attending the New Year’s celebration. But they’re probably not trying to stop you from inheriting leadership entirely. Rather, this is about delaying the announcement of the next head. If blocking you from becoming family head were the goal, it makes no sense for them to wait until after we departed Kobuchisawa Station. They should’ve attacked this house while I was away at FLT.”

“I…suppose that’s true. No, I’m sure you’re right, Brother,” Miyuki said, trying to convince herself.

Tatsuya felt a pang, but at this moment, easing Miyuki’s worries was his top priority. He knew he was only putting off the problem until later, but between that and saddling her with heartache, it was the more constructive option.

“Miyuki, you should call Aunt Maya soon.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

Tatsuya stood and headed for the dining room.

Miyuki stood directly in front of the camera, with Minami behind her to one side, operating the remote control.

On the screen, Maya laughed and accepted Miyuki’s apology and said she looked forward to seeing them the next day.

That evening, a young officer stationed at Matsumoto Base died after being involved at an incident near Kobuchisawa Station. In the newspapers the next morning, it was reported that he had wound up in the cross fire between two violent gangs and, in trying to stop their clash, had unfortunately lost his life.