There’s something I’m missing.
The Director hadn’t been able to get that thought out of her head.
“A conscious hunk of meat, huh…?”
She understood now that these hero cells, as well as the Chronoses made from those cells, possessed a consciousness, but she hadn’t been able to figure out more than that. She could observe changes in their emotions by immersing them in liquid, but despite having managed to kill that sample the other day using a Chronos, she had yet to find a fundamental method for breaking down their physical substance.
“If I could apply a more powerful force…for instance, nuclear, maybe then it would be possible.”
But they had already succeeded twenty-five years ago. Could something possible in the past really be so impossible now? Especially with twenty-five years of progress in between?
This problem was like a maze, and the Director had stumbled into yet another dead end.
“And what do you think…? Oh, that’s right, you can’t talk, can you?” said the Director, speaking listlessly to the hunk of tissue sitting on the table before her.
Naturally, the flesh did not respond. At the moment, it wasn’t even immersed in liquid, so it really was just a piece of matter.
Too bad. If it could talk, maybe it would be able to tell us something, thought the Director, starting to feel tired.
Come to think of it, what about Kaguya…?
She was the one person capable of exchanging words with those creatures, even though they couldn’t speak. Maybe, next time, she should get Kaguya to help—although she knew how Kaguya felt about heroes.
Actually, why do heroes even possess mental worlds to begin with?
If all its actions, its attacks, were part of a reproductive behavior carried out through humans, why would it need such mental worlds in the first place? It would make more sense to destroy the ego and turn the person into a rampaging puppet.
Suppose a hero were to reject the process on their own, without Kaguya’s interference? The Director didn’t think anything like that would actually happen, but it was a possibility that left room for failure.
Biological workings—at least when it comes to leaving offspring—should be as logical and efficient as possible.
For instance, immobile plants emit sweet scents from their flowers to induce insects and birds to carry their pollen. The flowers may be beautiful, but they are only beautiful in order to attract such creatures, never beautiful simply for the sake of beauty.
But when it comes to Goddesses, there seem to be flaws—or more accurately, if all they wanted to do was propagate, there would be no need to leave the human will intact.
Furthermore, the Director had these mental worlds inside these heroes and the existence of sentient weapons to contend with. The Director highly doubted the two were unrelated.
She wasn’t sure if heroes and Goddesses had come from nature, or if they were artificial, but something smelled fishy. It all seemed too cut-and-dried for weapons with hearts and minds.
It’s unnatural. Almost as if they existed solely for that purpose.
People twenty-five years ago shouldn’t have known that heroes had egos. By extension, they shouldn’t have known that Chronoses were sentient, either.
So why had production been stopped? Because the weapons had been failures?
Under normal circumstances, you would expect the presence of rebounds to lead to more research, rather than less, in an attempt to eliminate those rebounds. Instead, they had halted experiments entirely, as if such experiments collided with some sort of taboo and needed to be hidden.
“A taboo, huh…? You would think they would be long past such concerns by the time they embarked on creating weapons as horrendous as these.”
Of course, the Extermination Bureau probably hadn’t known the truth about Chronoses at the time. The Director had already submitted a report on the matter. Technically, she was required to report on what she was doing. If she didn’t, she would have Inspection breathing down her neck.
The very idea behind the development of Chronoses was approaching blasphemy. Chronoses were created from the enemies—the heroes. People relied on the enemy in order to defeat the enemy. A highly warped arrangement.
Guns and whips, things created by people, are required to hunt creatures such as tigers and bears, as well.
But those weapons aren’t made from the hides of tigers.
Not to mention…
Even if Chronoses were developed thirty years ago, development couldn’t have started right after heroes appeared. Only children could see them, after all.
According to what she had been told, the Extermination Bureau was just a collection of volunteers at first. They couldn’t rely on adults.
This would mean, at the very least, they must not have been able to put up much of a fight against the first heroes to appear. Considering how much difficulty the Director was experiencing, it had also probably taken quite some time before the first Chronos was successfully developed.
So how on Earth did they manage until—?
Before she could finish the question, a thought suddenly occurred to her. A new hypothesis sprang like magic into her mind.
“What if…it happened the other way around…?”
It only took a few seconds. The Director’s genius was unmatched. A new possibility, one that should have been impossible, to undermine every theory she had ever formed until now.
“Hold on, that would be a pretty big leap… If that were true…”
Why had no one noticed until now? Or…why had no one been allowed to notice?
“Of course… That’s where the name comes from.”
The Director stood up from her chair with a start. If her suspicions were true—Kaguya might be in danger.
“She’s out on a mission now, I think. I need to contact Mirai quickly.”
As the Director was about to leave the lab, striding quickly and with purpose, the door suddenly squeaked, moving slightly. But the Director hadn’t touched it yet. Someone had placed their hand on it from the outside. Someone was there.
“Who’s there…? Mari?” asked the Director, her face stiff. She already knew the answer.
Mari knew better than to enter without knocking. And, at the moment, the Director and Mari were the only ones stationed at Technical. That meant it was an outsider.
“This place is supposed to be off-limits. Who is—?”
The Director froze, mid-sentence. She had caught sight of it, with her ebony black eyes. A piercing gaze, cold and impersonal, was pointed her way. And, equally piercing, the silvery-white blade of a curved saber.
That instant the blade swung through the air, as it pierced her throat with a wet and meaty slash spraying blood everywhere—that millisecond of brutality, her own death…
“…Ha-ha…”
The moment burned itself into her retinas as she laughed, half in self-contempt, half in contempt of the person now standing before her. Her thoughts were growing muddled, but she already knew this was the end.
“You wanted a katana, didn’t you?” said the voice, heavy and low. “Well, congratulations. Your foolish curiosity has been rewarded.”
Of course—I drew too much attention—
The Director cursed herself. Why had she submitted that report? At least she had only put her name on it. That meant there was still someone left who knew that Chronoses were sentient.
My life doesn’t matter. This was unanticipated, but Kaguya and Mari will carry on in my place.
The Director had two talented disciples, two stunning vessels to carry on with her work. If anyone should despair, it was the other side.
Those fools. They have no idea what they’ve done.
With the Director’s death, she would investigate and take action. She would get to the bottom of why her former boss had been killed. Once Kaguya Shinohara sunk her teeth into something, she never let go.
I just hope Mirai will forgive me.
Mirai and Yuuna had long been friends, the kind that could trade barbs and quips—something that was hard to come by.
They had promised to get lunch together. The promise had been made three years ago, and with everything on their plates since, Mirai had probably forgotten—but the Director remembered. She always thought there would be plenty of time. But now…
I’m sorry. I broke my promise. Yumi, my sister—
Through a red haze, the Director could see the figure point the tip of their blade her way. Their face was expressionless. She saw the coldness in their eyes. That moment when the figure placed the blade between her brows was seared into her vision.
It was the last thing the Director of Research and Technical, Lieutenant Colonel Yuuna Arimura, ever saw.
Copious volumes of blood flowed from Lieutenant Colonel Yuuna Arimura’s skull. The blood of the deceased woman poured out almost entirely onto the chunk of hero flesh resting on the measuring table behind her.
That chunk of flesh, no bigger than a fist, had been cut free by Captain Azuma from the hero once known as Sakura Arakawa.
Once the flesh was almost entirely concealed within that pool of blood, there was a sudden thump, like something throbbing.
The piece of flesh atop the measuring table sank further into the copious volume of blood. There was so much that, even if the Director somehow survived her wound, the blood loss alone would have surely been enough to kill her. In exchange for the loss of that single human life, reinvigorated by the blood of the dead, the piece of tissue suddenly took shape.
Into a beautiful bloodred tempered katana—into a Chronos.