Kitakyushu, Moji Ward. 7 a.m. Yu Ichinose, Ein, Takamaru Ijuin, and Natsuki Hatano had arrived at the city from Nayuta by boat, and the plan was to proceed to Fukuoka via an electric car they’d brought with them on the ship.
“Weird, not having Aliya around,” Ijuin commented.
“We’ve all been together so long,” said Yu.
Two weeks had passed since the trip down to Jakarta and the floating city. Ein had returned, but Aliya Todo was still hard at work experimenting with the Mark VIII Asura Frame. Apparently, things hadn’t been going very well, and she was still in the trial-and-error testing phase.
May had turned to June, and that meant the rainy season was approaching. The air was getting hotter and more humid with every passing day.
Natsuki grinned idly. “Didn’t expect to get an SOS this soon,” she said. “Wonder what the deal is with that fire Anomaly that’s givin’ ’em trouble.”
“You don’t think it’s the same as the one in Jakarta, do you?” Yu thought back to the ifrit and how powerful it had been. “Those things were really giving the Mark V’s Devicer trouble.”
“Please, you have Natsuki and me,” Ein declared proudly. “I don’t want to trivialize potential danger with levities, of course, but remember you do not fight alone.”
“Yeah, we were pretty much screwed without you!” Natsuki laughed.
“The Asura Frame’s connection to the satellite doesn’t drop unless you specifically reset it, right?” Ijuin said, taking the passenger seat of the car. “That’s good, ’cause hell if I know how I’d manage to do that again.”
Natsuki plopped into the driver’s seat as they spoke while Yu and Ein sat in the back together. The vehicle was a roomy SUV with enough space for a five-person family.
“Well,” said Ein as Natsuki pulled out and started on their way, “I technically could have connected the Asuras to Avalo before I left.”
Ijuin whipped around towards the back seat. “Seriously?!”
“I was interested in seeing the next step in your awakening, so I neglected to mention it.”
“Okay, next time, maybe keep the curiosity to yourself!” Ijuin hollered. “I’m perfectly satisfied with my level of awakeness, thank you!”
Ein smiled placidly. Yu glanced at his beautiful partner, regarding the grace of her expression.
“Nadal was saying some weird stuff before we left, huh?” Yu remarked.
“Ah, his request to ‘use the opportunity to advance reconnaissance efforts in the region.’ Doubtless he expects results from our nano-abilities.” Ein thought for a moment. “It seems Nadal suspects there’s already an Asura in Fukuoka.”
“But that can’t be possible,” Yu said. “People would be talking. There’d be rumors, and no way the government wouldn’t be propagandizing the whole thing.”
Yu wasn’t convinced. Ein, however, frowned. “It’s not as far-fetched as you might think. What if announcing that Japan was in possession of this particular Asura were to be politically dangerous? The government wouldn’t want to risk losing what little foreign aid it still gets over an international incident.”
“That’s making a lot of assumptions, though.”
“Think of it this way,” Ijuin interjected. “Say a Devicer gets wounded in battle, and Japan’s Defense Force rescues them. Now say they die under the knife. What then? Who’s responsible?”
“I guess that could happen,” Yu said. His friend’s logic made a certain amount of sense. “They’d want to hide it, and then they could just keep the Frame for themselves.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time Japan’s brushed a few inconvenient truths under the rug,” Natsuki added.
They were exiting the harbor and coming into downtown now. The decision to make the trip by road had been a purposeful one. Traveling over water or with the Asura Frame made it difficult to really see the state of the world, and they wanted to witness it with their own eyes.
Ijuin rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “Definitely not as waterlogged as Kanto or Kansai,” he remarked. The streets of the coastal city were deserted, as were its buildings. “Shikoku and Kyushu still got their normal coastlines for the most part. Scenery doesn’t even look much different, and the roads seem pretty clear.”
“I’m glad we’re not dealing with a mess of knocked-over trees and power lines like up in the mountains,” Natsuki commented.
“Why’s no one living around here?” Yu wondered. “I figured there’d be people, considering how Fukuoka’s apparently crammed with refugees.”
“You’re sort of on the right track. Guess where all the food and supplies got hauled off to?” Natsuki replied. “The provisional government sent what they had left of the Force to run around Kyushu, Shikoku, and the closer parts of Honshu and snatch up anything they could grab. With guns as a bit of an ‘incentive’ for the locals to cooperate.”
“Guns?!” exclaimed Yu.
“Of course, it’s kinda hard to live on your own after all your junk gets stolen. Long story short, that’s why everyone wound up in Fukuoka.”
“That’s straight up robbery!” Ijuin shouted.
The kabukimono samurai girl shrugged her shoulders. “That’s one of the nicer ways of putting it.” She had supposedly been all over Kansai, so she had a better grasp of the situation than Yu or any of the others who’d been trapped at Maizuru. “Once they get to Fukuoka, though, they find out there’s not enough food to go around. Granted, I hear the folks in charge call it ‘rationing.’”
“Is that not what it is?” Yu asked. He had a feeling he knew the answer.
“Well, okay, so, this is just what I’ve heard,” Natsuki said, “but this guy I knew said he meets with the government every now and then, and some of the folks in charge there have mouths as big as their egos. He told me he heard someone talking about how much easier things’d be once the refugees started to starve.”
Ein folded her arms. “Hm. It sounds to me like a select few in power are living like kings at the expense of those deemed less deserving. Does that sound about right?”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself. Way I hear it, folks in the military especially have it made,” Natsuki said.
Yu breathed a sigh. They were just rumors, but none of it was hard to believe. It seemed that no matter where they went, the ugliest sides of humanity were always there waiting.
The road from Maizuru to Osaka had been littered with fallen trees, utility poles, and other debris, forcing them to stop dozens of times along the way. Northern Kyushu’s highways, however, were comparatively clear. Even the smaller streets outside of the urban center weren’t too bad.
So when Ijuin asked to stop the car, it was not out of necessity. Only frivolity.
“Hey, guys, so we’ve got these lunches,” he suddenly spoke up suggestively. “But since we’re finally on land again, whaddya say we get ourselves some meat? Ein’s got that rifle!”
“I suppose I see no harm in making use of the opportunity,” the designated huntress said.
The one with the gun had made her decision, so that was that. They pulled over on the side of the road and hopped out of the car. They were still in Kitakyushu city limits, just a ways out into the country.
Parting shrubs and bushes, everyone headed into the forest adjoining the street.
“If I were a deer, this is definitely where I’d be,” Natsuki said. “Saw a monkey earlier, so we’re bound to find something.”
“Large game will weigh us down,” Ein replied frankly. “A few birds would be perfect for our purposes.”
The Replicant girl skulked through the woods, eyeing the tree canopies carefully. A Type 20 assault rifle hung from a belt slung around her shoulder, but she moved as if the weight were nothing to her. Yu followed her from behind, unarmed, careful not to alert her prey. He didn’t need a weapon if he was going to Fukuoka as Devicer Three, after all.
And then a shriek pierced the air.
“Help! Please! Someone!”
It sounded like a young man. Yu and the three others exchanged glances.
“Natsuki! Ein! Let’s go!” he said. “Meet up with us when you can, Ijuin!”
As Yu kicked into a run, his unathletic friend’s voice trailed behind him. “S-Sorry!”
The girls were already ahead of him. They swerved around trees and tore through the undergrowth as they awkwardly sprinted along the mountain path. When they broke through the treeline and came to a clearing, the group found a man who looked about thirty cowering beneath what Yu thought was a bear at first. Whatever the beast was, it was covered in thick fur and taller than any human, but it had the face of a horned owl. Its mouth was pointed into a beak, and two long ears poked out of its head like antlers.
“It’s an Anomaly, Ein!” Yu exclaimed, quickly armorizing. But not his entire body. This time, the black and gold nano-armor covered only his right forearm—a feat he’d learned how to do somewhat recently.
Ein readied the Type 20 with perfect form and pulled the trigger. The bullet sank into the back of the owl-like creature’s head. Yu held up his armored hand and fired a volley of calcium bullets from his fingers with the hyper-compressed air gun. Each bore deep into the monster’s body.
“My turn!” Natsuki cheered.
The ex-high schooler, also unarmed, leaped into the air towards the bear-owl thing, spinning as she did. Carried by momentum, she slammed her leg into the creature’s thick neck, and a gruesome crack resounded as its cervical spine instantly shattered.
The Anomaly was summarily neutralized.
Ein approached the dazed young man on the ground. “Excuse me, would you mind if I asked what you’re doing out here?”
While his partner handled the talking (which she was better at anyway), Yu discreetly de-armorized his arm. He’d made sure to fire from the man’s blind spot, so his secret was safe. Devicer Three’s identity could not be revealed.