SCREAMS erupted from the spectators at the sudden magic explosion. Torrential winds swept across the entire school. Several whirlwinds appeared without ceasing their violent tempest. The sheer wind pressure forced Azusa’s eyes shut. Less than a second later, her vision was filled with Youta’s wide-open mouth ready to take a bite out of her. Something smashed into Youta’s face and sent him flying before she could scream. Naturally, Kouya punched him and wrapped his arm around Azusa’s shoulder to protect her. Subaru narrowed his eyes beside them and assessed the situation.
“Is he after Azusa? It’s hard to believe an F would target a specific person, which increases the probability of someone pulling the strings after all. I guess the most believable thing is that someone took control of him after he happened to fall to F rank.”
“You could also say he narrowed down his target to the easiest prey, but it is not like he did not see Kouya with her, so your assumption seems the most likely.”
“Pretty high chance that Shiro guy is pulling the strings again… In other words, it looks like we have to think Tsukiharu betrayed us.”
“He did no—”
“Not likely,” Kouya cut off Azusa before she could argue with Subaru’s theory. Everyone looked at him in surprise. “I was with him when he learned of Youta’s fall. He lost his cool after finding out and pressed me for an answer on if there’s anything we can do for him. He didn’t look like he was acting. The man called Shiro might be involved, but he’s most likely going about it independently.”
“What? You were with him until now?”
“Yeah. He was pretty shaken up. He started shouting stuff about Shiro too, so I’d say he arrived at the same conclusion we did. On another note, he left to find Shiro.”
“Whoa. Are you seriously protecting him? What on Earth brought this on?”
“I’m not protecting him. I’m merely stating the facts,” Kouya answered with a conflicted frown. He wasn’t intentionally protecting Tsukiharu, but his comment sounded like it.
“Tsukiharu said he hasn’t seen Shiro lately! Plus, he gets along great with Youta. They’re good friends! He wouldn’t do this to Youta!” Azusa chimed in, taking advantage of Kouya’s prior defense of Tsukiharu.
“Uh…why does it feel like I’m the bad guy here? We can save that topic for later. Tsukiharu aside, I want to believe in you two.” Subaru turned his eyes from Kouya and Azusa to the fallen Youta. He groaned, a hint of panic in his voice, “But first we have to do something about this kid…”
Youta stumbled to his feet and roared.
✦ ✦ ✦
YOUTA was powerful. On top of his elite lineage, the fall to F rank removed any sense of reason from him, creating a monster that attacked at full power with no self-regard. Furthermore, whether it was due to Shiro controlling him or not, he didn’t know how to stop the tumult of usually restrained power erupting from his core.
The whirlwinds ripping across campus hoisted all sorts of objects from the ground and easily uprooted trees. Every object caught by the whirlwind turned to powder as if it had been dumped in a blender.
“Is this a scene from Twister?!”
“This is not the time for bad jokes…” Ichi retorted in response to Subaru.
Whirlwinds twisted toward them in succession. Azusa escaped by being partially held by Kouya.
They wouldn’t have been having such a hard time if they intended to kill him. But no one brought it up. Kouya didn’t want to kill him and the others didn’t want to have Kouya kill him nor did they want to kill him either. Kouya would surely suffer if he had to kill Youta with his own hands. His anguish wouldn’t lessen if someone killed him in his place. He wouldn’t have to be tormented by the feeling of his brother’s blood on his hands if they did, but Youta’s deformed figure being murdered by someone other than him would forever haunt Kouya.
The only way to kill Youta without traumatizing Kouya was to do it somewhere he wouldn’t have to watch, as Subaru originally suggested. They were in no situation to do that now though.
To make matters worse, should Kouya kill Youta there and then, he would be instilling fear in every child watching from the rooftop. What was nothing more than an urban legend would be replaced with genuine dread. He would be adding new and undeniable fodder to the contempt and gossip spread behind his back.
Everyone aside from Kouya was concerned about that, making it impossible for them to come to a decision. He was the one who decided in the end.
“Subaru, back me up. I’m going to kill Youta.”
“Kouya!” Azusa shouted.
Subaru snapped at him, “Are you insane? I’ll do it then! I told you, you don’t have to do this!”
“I’m fine. Ichi, can you take care of Azusa for me?”
“I can, but are you certain about this? He is your younger brother.”
“I’ve made up my mind.” Kouya took advantage of a temporary break in the wind to put Azusa down. He tried to hand her over to Ichi, but she clung to his arms like a disobedient child and wouldn’t let go. “Hey!”
“You mustn’t! Under any situation! You mustn’t kill Youta, Kouya! If you insist on going, I’m coming with you!” Azusa declared just as a whirlwind cut between them and Ichi. Everyone dodged in time not to get hurt, but Kouya was stuck sighing at Azusa who still hadn’t released his arm.
He pulled her into his arms and spoke as he dodged Youta’s attacks coming from every direction, “Shut your eyes and cover your ears.”
“I will not! Please don’t kill Youta!”
“Don’t ask for something I can’t do.”
“You don’t want to kill him either, right?”
“Of course I don’t want to!” Kouya snapped. Azusa’s determined gaze didn’t waver despite his anger.
“Then let’s find a way to capture him.”
“It’s impossible. I could do something if he was a little weaker, but trying to capture someone in his state will get us hurt instead.”
“Weaker… Will Youta’s power weaken if we free him from Shiro’s control?”
“Most likely, yeah… But we can’t do anything about it when we don’t know how Shiro is controlling him.”
“…Fleas.”
“Huh?”
“The first time I ran into Shiro he said he controlled the wild animals with fleas. He could be doing the same thing to Youta! We might be able to free Youta from him if we remove the fleas somehow.”
“How—” Kouya stopped midsentence to look up. Azusa followed suit and looked up too.
She shouted at the person who alighted from the sky, “Tsukiharu!”
“What a relief. It looks like you guys haven’t killed him yet. Don’t kill Youta. Got it, Akaoni?”
“……” Kouya gave Tsukiharu a dirty look. It was almost as if his eyes were saying, “Then what do you want to do about him?”
Tsukiharu snorted. “Shiro is skilled at controlling people with bugs. So Youta should be released from his control if we kill the bugs. The only problem is that I never heard what kind of bugs he uses.”
“Isn’t it fleas? I just mentioned that to Kouya. Shiro used fleas to control wild animals, so he might be using them on Youta too!” Azusa pointed out. Tsukiharu nodded.
“A flea may have latched onto some part of his body to control him. Okay, I’ll superficially burn Youta’s body to kill any fleas. Once he weakens, inflict heavy damage on him without killing him. And then you can capture him,” Tsukiharu proposed as he nimbly sidestepped one of the whirlwinds Youta sent at him.
“Can you do that?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? Don’t tell me you doubt the Ancient’s power now of all times?” Tsukiharu clapped his hands. He pulled his hands apart, creating a countless number of fireballs—every one of them burning with a bluish-white flame. “I wonder if this would be too hot.”
In a blink of an eye, the bluish-white flames simmered down to a bright-red. He changed the temperature of his flames.
“How about you, Akaoni? Can you get near Youta without being detected with Azusa in your arms? Why don’t you entrust her with that Ichi woman?”
“I would love to do that, but…”
“……”
“Fine, I get it. Azusa can do what she wants. Well, with Azusa around you won’t get any ideas about killing Youta,” Tsukiharu shrugged off Azusa’s glare. “We’ve got our strategy. All that’s left is to execute it, but we don’t want any casualties, so could you tell the other two dancing around whirlwinds over there to protect the students? They won’t listen if I asked them.”
He pointed to Subaru and Ichi. They watched them from a distance as they evaded the whirlwinds.
“No need to worry about them. They’ll take the best course of action based on our movement.”
“You trust them, eh?”
“They’re smarter than me after all.”
“Glad to hear it, but—whoa!” Tsukiharu staggered out of the way of one of the incessant whirlwind attacks and clapped his hands again, increasing the number of fire orbs. The orbs of fire encircled him like a living creature, seemingly waiting for their next command. “I’m not trying to make an opening for you, so you better find one on your own. You won’t come out of this alive if you screw up!”
“…And who do you think you’re talking to?” Kouya and Tsukiharu exchanged sharp looks, but their glares lacked its prior murderous intent.
Kouya kicked off the ground just as Tsukiharu released his wall of fireballs.