She was trying to tidy up her clothing. Naturally, she was going to have a hard time, however. I noticed when I lifted her up earlier, but the hook on her skirt was broken. It must have happened after the explosion.
“A-and don’t think this makes up for what you just did to me! That was an indecent assault! A distinct criminal offence!” Aria glared at me with her crimson eyes through the hole of the vaulting horse.
“…Aria, that’s an unfortunate misunderstanding,” I said, slipping off the belt around my pants and tossing it inside the vaulting horse. “Please understand. That was completely out of my control.”
“O-out of your control?!” Aria jumped out of the vaulting horse gripping her skirt, which was held up by my belt.
Landing on her feet with a lightness that attested her small figure, she stood in front of me. She…was standing, right? She was so short that I doubted it for a second. Even if you took into consideration the horn-like hair ornaments holding her twin pigtails in place, she couldn’t have been more than one hundred and forty-five centimeters.
“Y-you…undeniably…” Aria was glaring daggers at me with that bright red face of hers. She then clenched her fists and must have been expending every effort to get the words out because when she was able to open her trembling rose-pink lips, she stamped her feet at the same time.
“W-when I was unconscious, y-you were trying to t-t-t-take off my clothes!
If it’s that embarrassing to say, then just don’t say it.
“N-n-not only that, but you were staring at my b-b-b-b…” There she goes stamping her feet again. Does she have some sort of grudge against the floor?
“You were staring at my breasts! That’s a fact! I caught you in the act of assaulting me!” Aria grew so red I thought steam was going to come shooting out of her ears, which were also red.
“What exactly were you planning on doing?! Y-y-you’d better take responsibility!” Her stamping became even more erratic.
This is certainly a fine way of stomping on one’s feet. And what does she mean by “take responsibility”?
“Okay Aria, let’s calm down. Listen to me. I’m a high school student. A second-year high school student at that. There’s no way I’m going to undress a middle school student. There’s too much of an age difference. So you don’t have anything to worry about.”
I explained it as clearly and kindly as possible, but Aria opened her mouth wide and raised both of her fists into the air. I assumed that the reason no sounds were coming out of that mouth is because she was at a loss for words. But then tears welled up in her eyes as she glowered at me.
“I’m not a middle schooler!!”
Crack!
The floor upon which she was stamping finally gave way and scattered wood chips around her feet.
This isn’t good.
My attempts to convince her of my innocence end in failure. It looks like I only succeeded in making her more furious by mistaking her age. Women are creatures with a tendency to become angry when they are thought to be older than they actually are. And this girl in particular was rather violent. At this rate, there’s going to be a large hole in the floor of this storehouse. It would probably be best to follow up with something to calm her down.
“…Sorry about that. So you're an elementary school student who came here on an internship, right? To be honest, I figured that was the case ever since you helped me out back there. But you really are something, you know that? You’re such a–”
I was about to say, “brave little girl” when Aria abruptly hung her head downward. The upper half of her face was covered in shadows and I was unable to discern what expression she might have been wearing. She then swiftly placed her left and right hand on each respective thigh.
Now, what is she up to? Busy girl, isn’t she?
“You are so… You are so… I never should have saved you!!”
Blam, Blam!
“Whoa!” I paled at two bullets, which buried themselves in the floor inches away from my feet. This girl shot at me! With both pistols!
“I’M…A…SECOND-YEAR…HIGH SCHOOOL STUDENT!!”
Out of the fire and into the frying pan—yet again.
“W-wait a sec!” I jumped at Aria, who had brought her pistols even closer to me, and pinned her thin arms underneath mine, forcing her weapons behind me.
Blam, blam, blam! Clink, clink!
Aria reflexively pulled the trigger, and the sound of bullets lodging themselves in the floor resonated. That sound was all I needed to hear. I could tell both pistols had run out of ammunition. It’s a good thing I’m in hysteria mode. If it were just the plain old me, I’d be writhing on the floor, riddled with bullets right about now. For a short while, Aria and I were locked together in that position.
“Ngh! Yaaaaaaah!” Aria yelled.
I was surprised to find my body had turned itself around, only to realize that Aria performed a maneuver similar to what’s known as a spring hip throw in Judo, and sent me flying, despite the large difference in our size.
“Whoa!”
This girl can fight empty-handed as well? She’s damn good at it too.
Barely managing to perform a break fall, I used the momentum to roll myself out of the gym storehouse.
“You can’t get away from me! I’ve never once let a fleeing criminal escape! …Huh? Wha-? Huh?” screamed Aria as she fumbled with the inside of her skirt using both of her hands.
Most likely, she was looking for the magazines with which to reload her empty pistols.
“Sorry about this.” I lifted up the spare magazine that I took out from underneath her skirt when she threw me and flung it over a distance too far for her to be able to recover any time soon.
“Ah!” she cried.
Aria watched as the magazine fell into some far off bushes and shook her now useless pistols up and down in frustration. Her movements seemed to be saying, “Now you’ve done it!”
“You’re in for it now! I won’t forgive you even if you get on your knees crying and apologize to me!”
Aria returned her pistols to their holsters and thrust her hands underneath the back of her blouse. And from within that blouse she pulled out not just one, but two katanas! Firearms, hand-to-hand combat, and now katanas?! I was dumbfounded. But that didn’t stop Aria from pouncing at me with the leg strength I would have thought humans were incapable of. Those katanas, not as long as traditional Japanese swords, were zeroing in on my shoulders like two shooting stars. I managed to roll backwards and narrowly avoided losing my arms.
“You molester! Give up and– Uwaaaah!” Aria, who had charged at me, let out a cry like a new breed of wildcat. She then fell over backwards as if some invisible person had grabbed her from behind and performed a back suplex. Spread around her feet were bullets I had taken out of her magazine. I scattered them on the ground when her attention was on the magazine I threw.
“W-why you– Uwaaaah!”
When Aria tried to get up, she stepped on another bullet and fell back with such force that her legs practically went straight up into the air. It was like something you’d see in a comic book. While she was still on the ground, I decided to take the opportunity to get out of there as fast as I could. Aria has fighting abilities far greater than those of an average person. But at this moment, anger and shame were causing her to lose composure. I, on the other hand, was in “hysteria mode.” I would have been able to escape even if there were a hundred FBI agents targeting me. That’s what I was thinking to myself as I left Aria behind, paying no attention to her outbursts.
“You coward! I’m gonna open a giant hole in you!”
Such was the first encounter between me, Kinji Tohyama, and the demon Butei feared by criminals worldwide as “Aria the Scarlet Ammo”, Aria H. Kanzaki—filled with the smell of gun powder and a complete disaster.