Kiriko
KIRIKO stood dead still in the middle of the Prime Body Storage Room with all four of Heaven’s Gunner’s revolvers trained on her.
“Torah Lord… Why did you do it?” she asked Spinoza, who stood blocking the exit.
“I told you why before. I’m still a Rabbi, even if the people whose orders I follow aren’t. I was the only one left who could continue Grinzam’s dream.”
“Was it worth accomplishing at the price of countless innocent lives? Are fulfilling the wishes of the dead that important?”
“Of course it was. Granting his wish was a world of difference better than making some worthless automatic weapon for the Church and military to sic on people. All your hard work paid off for me.” A distant look twinkled in Spinoza’s eyes as he went on, “Doesn’t it just remind you of the days when we all stayed overnight at the Church discussing what was right and wrong with the design until morning? We created Prime Body after Prime Body for tests and conducted experiments on top of experiments… I thought everything would go smoothly some day soon.”
He tilted his head down, slightly lowering his gaze. Dark shadows fell over his face, making his expression unreadable. He was a shadow of the man she knew.
“Why are you so obsessed with those cubes?! They are a washout. They can’t be controlled without inputting the Restrictor not to kill people!”
“You just don’t understand the potential the cubes have. You’re looking at things on a superficial level. The life created by the cubes isn’t even a Golem in the first place.”
“They’re not Golems? You mean they’re just Berserker Golems.”
“No, there is one other thing they could be. What else leaves the control of its parents the moment it’s born, and acts according to its own will?”
She gasped. “You don’t mean to say that—” Kiriko knew what he meant.
He nodded and answered her right out. “Humans. Those cubes are capable of turning puppets into humans. Or to be more exact, they transform them into something similar, but different.”
Kiriko had vaguely considered the theory four years ago. But it was wrong. It should have been wrong.
“…We certainly created a monster back then—a Golem with the same intelligence as a person,” she acknowledged. “We could grant memories and emotions all we wanted through the Engrave Incantations.”
“……”
“But is that really creating a human being?! A human soul can’t adapt to find its home in a metal body! Can you really call something without a soul, without a real body, human?!”
“You’re absolutely correct. But doesn’t that just make the problem finding a body they can adapt to?”
“What are you implying?” Kiriko didn’t understand what he meant by that. Spinoza eventually sighed.
“…I’ve said too much, Kiriko. Let’s end this now.”
Heaven’s Gunner cocked the four guns, about to fire, when the window behind Kiriko shattered. She looked over her shoulder as an amber beast landed beside her.
“KIRIKO!” Ouka shouted from Dram’s back.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Kiriko leapt onto Dram’s back behind Ouka.
Spinoza howled, “OUKA!” and Heaven’s Gunner fired.
“GUAH!” Ouka moaned, nearly falling off Dram. Kiriko held him up with both arms. He reoriented himself on Dram’s back and sent him charging at Spinoza.
Spinoza and Heaven’s Gunner evaded, splitting to the left and right of the exit. Dram zoomed through the gap and charged right through the corridor window into the garden outside.
“COME BACK HERE, OUKA!”
Bullets whizzed by Kiriko and Ouka as they galloped through the front quad. Dram cut across the stream of bullets and took cover behind a building a slight distance away.
Relieved to be out of the path of hailing bullets, Kiriko looked at Ouka. Blood was gushing from his side.
“Ouka! Are you all right?!”
“It’s just a dinky scratch. It hurts like hell though.” He forced a smile to reassure her, and it eased her fears a bit.
Bullets fired in the distance while they shared their sweet moment. They didn’t know who he was shooting at, but the gunshots came closer with gradual precision.
Ouka quietly whispered, “I’m going to have Dram leap on Spinoza the second he shows himself. Back me up when that happens, Kiriko.”
“Okay…!” Kiriko gripped her gun. Time inched along as they waited, tension hanging thick over them, gnawing at their feet. But then it was broken by the sound of Cliff’s voice.
“Ouka!”
Startled, Kiriko and Ouka looked in the direction of the voice. They spotted Cliff and Lovel running toward them from the main gate.
“Hide! Right now!” Kiriko shouted. The children hesitated, but ran over and hid beside Kiriko.
Spinoza must have spotted them, because his voice boomed out, “Hah! Looks like all the lead actors of this play have gathered in one place!”
Kiriko searched for the owner of the voice. Gunshots rang out whenever she peeked out from behind their cover and she quickly pulled her head back.
Lovel took one look at a stray bullet and raised her voice in shock, “Somebody’s shooting at us…?!”
“Torah Lord Spinoza is,” Kiriko answered.
“Huh? Why’s he doing that?! Wasn’t he on your side?!”
“No…he’s our enemy. He has been since four years ago,” Kiriko said with a self-derisive laugh. They could no longer return to the past. She was well-aware of that, but it still hurt and saddened her nonetheless. She could sense it had come to a definitive end. “…I have no reason to capture you now. You have been…acquitted.”
Relief washed over Cliff and Lovel, but their expressions instantly hardened.
“Being captured is the least of our problems at this point…!” Cliff retorted, and Lovel nodded.
Ouka snorted before yelling, “Spinoza, is this what you wanted?! Were you trying to turn the Church into a graveyard?!”
“It’s an inevitable sacrifice for righting this archipelago from the path it has strayed to,” Spinoza replied. They heard his voice continue from somewhere close. “Don’t you guys find the archipelago’s system strange too? He thought so, eight years ago, when Catalina died.”
Lovel’s face tensed at the sound of that name. She shouted at him, though he was out of sight. “Hold on, Spinoza, how do you know that name?! Who are you?!”
“You don’t remember me, do you? Well, not that it matters. That person chose it to be so.”
“What are you talking about…? We should’ve met for the first time during the questioning at the Church…” Lovel’s face clouded with unease.
Not following what they were talking about, Kiriko cut into their conversation. “What is all this about?! Who is this Catalina?!”
“She’s the woman who started it all. Well, I suppose I’ll take the opportunity to finish telling you of the past before I kill you, why not…” Spinoza set the stage and began retelling the story. “Seventeen years ago, there was a prostitute who came to abandon her baby at this church. Grinzam convinced her to change her mind and raise the baby herself instead.”
Kiriko had already heard that part of the story, but she knew there had to be more to it—an atrocious, appalling hidden storyline waiting to be retold.
“The mother and child found happiness, and Grinzam seemed happy as well. But then some years later, the mother died. She suffered all her life with the inability to make Golems, just to die miserably in an accident at the hands of a Berserker Golem.”
Kiriko scanned the area for Spinoza as he spoke, tracking the sound of his voice to pinpoint his location. Bullets sprayed the wall whenever she tried to stick her head out for a look.
He continued telling the story to his captive audience. “The woman’s name was Catalina Sinclair…the mother of Lovel, who you have hiding with you there.”
“Seriously?!”
“What?!”
Kiriko and Ouka cried out in surprise at the same time.
“Grinzam enrolled Lovel into the Academy dormitory using his savings,” Spinoza said, piling on more surprising details. “And then he tried to use the cubes to revive Catalina. But the Church wouldn’t allow the cubes to be used for anything other than Sephiroth, without question. Grinzam put this charge to the elders:
“‘If people are starving in the streets, you do not feed them. You levy exorbitant fees on the usage of Golems on an archipelago where it’s impossible to attain even a decent standard of living without a Golem. Seconds ago, a woman who lived a tragic, miserable life because she couldn’t make or afford a Golem just died. She’s neither the first nor last of her kind. Yet, you use Sehem-hamphorasch on a Golem meant to kill people; but you won’t use it to help people live. Is this the Church I’ve devoted my entire life to…?! You have no right to use Golems or Sehem-hamphorasch!’
“And so Grinzam took the cubes and fled with his disciple Jair. The Church’s greatest Golem, a puppet of a man, went berserk for the first time on that day…” Spinoza narrated, his voice quiet, solemn.
Lovel strained her voice against his. “But Grinzam is long dead, right?! Why’re you still obsessed with his dying wish?!”
“He died…?” Spinoza repeated, his voice hollow, vacant.
“He did! Grinzam’s already dead!” Ouka joined in. “So why did you leak the cubes and disclose our classified secrets to a dormitory custodian?! What are you really after?!”
A roar of laughter erupted out of nowhere. Spinoza was laughing at him.
“Wh-What’s so funny?” Ouka asked, flustered.
Spinoza answered through his laughter, “You think Grinzam’s dead?! He ain’t dead!”
“Are you for real…?!”
“Lovel, wasn’t there a man with Jair when you woke up four days ago? He’s the man you call the Mastermind! He should have told you the whole story, including things only those involved would know!”
Lovel frowned before the shock hit her like a ton of bricks. Tension tightened across her face, drawing her beautiful features into an uneasy expression. “How? …It can’t be…that person can’t be…!” she rambled, her voice trembling.
“You still don’t get it, Ouka?!” Spinoza taunted, sensing the confusion rising in his prey. “You’ve already been face to face with him! You’ve had a nice little chat with him!”
Realization flashed through Kiriko like a lightning bolt. Is it possible?! But what other answer could there be?! Various strands of information connected in her mind, revealing the image of the full picture.
Why had the condemning black file been in his possession? Why had the information been leaked to him? What happened eight years ago? Grinzam was—
“It can’t be him…!” Ouka said, his voice taut and stressed. He seemed to have come to his own conclusion about the identity of the man who had pretended to be another for eight years.