Azuma had responded to the call and was now facing off against a hero at a shopping complex near the train station.
The hero was on the second floor of the mall. Azuma had heard the sound before even spotting the creature. Its screech sounded like a screaming child.
“SKREEEEEE!”
It was shaped like a wheel, spinning around a single axle at its center. At a diameter of around only twenty centimeters, it was unusually small. However, this size meant it was also extremely hard to hit. It had other advantages as well.
“SKREEE, SKRRREEEEEE!!”
That din was unbelievable.
The blaring shriek had caused most bystanders in the vicinity to fall immediately unconscious. Even Azuma and his team were forced to cover their ears. Its shrill, piercing cry was too much.
“Tsk, this isn’t good.”
Azuma tried to echolocate the heroes’ eggs. Although the sound of the eggs was a different frequency, all this noise was making it hard for Azuma to locate them.
“If we could just shut it up for a little while…”
The sound seemed to be resonating from inside the wheel, which was empty—nothing connected the axle to the rim.
A mantle of darkness protruded from the axle’s tip.
“Erk—”
Azuma could see it with only his right eye. Buried within the darkness was its face.
He felt a shiver run down his spine. The smile he saw beneath its black shroud was painted on a face of madness.
The face belonged to a young girl—a child. But its smile was completely unlike that of an innocent child’s. Azuma reflexively covered his right eye, still not yet used to seeing these faces.
It didn’t make his job any easier, observing the humans inside. Even though they weren’t actually human anymore, it felt like he was taking the life of the person within, assisting them in their act of suicide.
But it’s just a hallucination… Right, Lieutenant?
He drew the katana smoothly from his waist.
A living weapon—beautiful and grotesque. Traced with coiling veins, the blade appeared neither man-made nor organic. For some reason, the blade felt comfortable in Azuma’s hand.
This katana…
The katana that was believed to have been used to stab the Director—through her throat.
I wonder if that’s really true…
If it were, he doubted it would have wound up in his hands so easily. The Chronoses might be valuable weapons, but they would have still qualified as evidence. Azuma had accepted the weapon once it was offered, seeing as he did not have a good enough reason to refuse.
“SKRRREEEEE!!!”
The hero howled again. The force of its scream, which threatened to rupture Azuma’s eardrums, caused cracks to appear in the building’s walls.
“It sounds almost like a child crying,” muttered Haru, having weathered the wave of sound, seemingly unperturbed.
“Then I guess we’ll just have to hush it…”
Azuma dropped down into a loose stance. This new Chronos was longer than his original katana, and at first, the weight had been difficult for him to handle. But he had quickly gotten used to it once he learned how to swing it properly.
For some reason, it didn’t feel like it was his first time handling this blade. Not that he was concerned, seeing as that feeling didn’t get in the way of its use. Still, though.
“Azuma,” Rindou said quietly over the comms. “Where’s the egg?”
Azuma strained his ears.
Ever since the hero attack six years ago, Azuma’s ears had been special. Every member of Charon was a survivor from that attack, but as the person who had been exposed at closest range to the hero factor, only Azuma was able to hear the sound given off by the eggs.
It was of a much higher frequency than normal sound, meaning that even with all this noise he should have been able to isolate its source—should have.
“…?!”
Azuma’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t hear the egg.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something was preventing him from hearing it.
The sound of the egg was lost in a sea of static that was being emitted at the same frequency. No matter how hard Azuma strained his ears, he couldn’t seem to isolate the egg’s sound.
“Azuma?! Where is it, man?!” Rindou asked.
But Azuma couldn’t answer. This was a new type of hero, one that was able to prevent him from locating its egg.
“I—I can’t hear it.”
“What?!”
Just then, the hero started to make a strange new sound, like a whirring twang. It began to spin.
“Ah?!”
Azuma braced himself, but nothing else happened. The wheel simply continued to spin indiscriminately. It didn’t look as if it was trying to come any closer.
I wonder…
If Kaguya were there, maybe this hero would have been among the ones she was able to save. Now he was even relying on her in his thoughts; he felt pathetic. Without Kaguya’s help—
“Azuma.”
Rindou spoke sharply, snapping Azuma out of his thoughts. Indeed, this was not the time for soul-searching.
“What do you mean you can’t hear it?”
“I can’t hear it. Something’s preventing me…I think. It’s like there’s too much static.”
Rindou couldn’t stop from clicking his tongue loudly.
“Sorry… It’s just that’s gonna make dealing with this thing a real pain in the ass.”
The hero they were facing was small, making it difficult to aim. If they tried to slash from outside the rim, the spinning of the wheel would simply deflect their blows. Trying to decimate the entire creature with a single high-powered strike might be a good idea, considering how small it was, but in that case, its speed was going to make actually hitting it a problem.
“First thing’s first, we need to stop it from moving. What’s the plan, Captain?”
Azuma was silent for a moment. The hero, however, was not about to give them even a second to think.
There was a sharp whoosh as the hero swooped toward Azuma.
If Azuma wanted to avoid the rim and hit the center, he was going to have to thrust. But the wheel was so small; if he missed, his Chronos blade might get caught and break.