That evening…
Hanabi lay in bed, stroking the cover of the book in her hands—a biography of Suzuka Hachishiki called Portrait of the Hero.
Hanabi was well aware that Kuon was hiding things from her.
She was glad he’d come to see her. She’d asked Rin not to tell him what hospital she was at, but he figured it out anyway. She felt bad for making him jump through hoops. She just…hadn’t wanted to see him and have it be awkward.
Hanabi knew why the Heavy Magic Engine stalled during the Fukuoka Gate Battle a week earlier. She’d told Tooka as much the day before.
As the bullet was about to swallow up the Queen Jave, she was certain she heard a voice…
“Queen located! Two o’clock above us!” Fuji shouted.
As soon as the Kiryu fired, Hanabi turned its head in the direction he indicated. After vaporizing the Queen’s tentacles, her next shot struck the wall of flesh. The Queen screamed as skin and muscle and bone burned, melted, and evaporated.
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeescreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The Queen let out a roar that hit the pits of their stomachs and made them want to clap their hands to their ears. It was an inhuman, ugly, revolting noise that pulled up Hanabi’s memories of the Capital battle and her childhood trauma, and made her thoughts and body freeze—but the magical lines connecting her to her squad reminded her that she wasn’t alone here, giving her courage, and she let out a roar that shoved aside everything worming its way under her skin. Infected by it, Kuon and Fuji and Rin all screamed with her, their spirits and vigor rising. The voices of the friends riding behind her gave Hanabi’s quivering back the push it needed. The whole team’s hearts were one, and the bullet she fired ripped into the Queen’s massive bulk, about to eliminate her entirely…and then Hanabi heard a single word echoing in her mind.
Wrong.
A moment later, the engine stalled. It was over in a moment. She couldn’t do anything.
Hanabi realized what she’d heard now. That was the Kiryu’s voice. The will of the Kiryu, born within the Heavy Magic Engine. She did not meet its approval and knew exactly why.
The one thing connecting both the Capital Battle and her childhood memories—the Hero—gave her pause. Could she really put her faith in the Hero? Could she really trust him, even as she merged her strength with his? Deep in her heart, a tiny, tiny part of herself was whispering, planting the seeds of doubt. Her link with the Kiryu transferred that, and it did not approve. The Kiryu’s goal, its reason for existing, was to kill as many Jave as possible.
Tooka had seen a strange waver in the Kiryu’s data and agreed with her hypothesis. The control systems had an AI Device of the same type as En, and if they added speech functions, it might start talking.
It’d probably give her a piece of its mind. It was mad at Hanabi. Really mad. It thought she was an idiot.
“In the middle of a battle, I lost faith in my companions, lost focus, and nearly killed us all.” She said it out loud to drive it home.
How horrible.
Tooka had said, “I’ll discipline it for not obeying its rider’s instructions,” and she certainly would. Even if the problem with the weapon was fixed, Hanabi’s problem remained. If she couldn’t eliminate her doubt, she’d make another blunder someday.
She should have just asked. Just put it out there. Are you the Hero? Plain and simple.
“Kuon-kun…”
She buried her face in her knees. Hanabi simply couldn’t find the courage to ask that question.