That night.
A report of a hero sighting had come in. Charon was already on the scene.
The hero had appeared in Chiba, specifically in an area of reclaimed land along Tokyo Bay. A slime-shaped hero had apparently shown up at a private high school in a section where many schools were located—it covered almost the entire school building.
Fortunately, it showed up overnight at three in the morning when—save for a lone security guard already half asleep—not a single creature was stirring. The members of Charon infiltrated the school grounds, bringing Kaguya with them. She held her pistol low.
“If you start to feel unwell—”
“I told you I’m fine. What about everyone else? Are you guys all right?” Kaguya cut in as she turned to face the hero. The slime hero was a poisonous-looking purple and seemed to have enveloped nearly the whole structure. They could just barely make out the entrance below, lined with rows of shoe lockers, and the windows of the classrooms.
“SKRRREEEEEEEE!!”
A screech.
Reflexively, Kaguya pressed a hand to one ear. The shock made her knees go weak and left her numb to her core. The other squad members seemed to have been affected in the same manner. Koyuki, unfortunately, had both hands full and was forced to take the full, unmitigated impact of the noise.
“Koyuki! Are you okay?!” Kaguya shouted, but she could not even hear her own voice.
The screech had been so loud and powerful that it had caused a crack to appear in the school building and the asphalt to split. It was essentially a sonic attack.
Of course, the hero itself was unfazed, seeing as it had made the sound. It wouldn’t have made much sense for it to be damaged by its own cries. It extended a “hand” toward the immobilized members of Charon.
Thin tendrils of slime, like the twigs from a tree, split off from the main purple mass. For the first few seconds after splitting, they traveled at normal speed but then suddenly picked up pace as they charged toward the squad.
Azuma, Kaguya, and Haru had only been able to cover one ear due to the weapons they were holding. Koyuki, meanwhile, had both hands full and had taken the full brunt of the attack. The creature’s “arms” closed in on each of them.
The attack had taken no more than the blink of an eye to reach them. However, the tendrils suddenly stopped before making contact.
They weren’t about to waste this chance. They all hastily moved back. After creating distance, Kaguya finally realized why the hero had stopped.
“Ah…! Rindou.”
As the only one of them with two empty hands, Rindou alone had been able to defend against the sonic attack fully. Doing so had given him enough time to approach the creature’s main mass and deliver a powerful blow to it with his fists.
“Rindou!!”
“…!!”
The tendrils were headed toward Rindou now. The individually meager “arms” came together to form a single coil, now as thick as a man’s chest, which swung at Rindou. However, the creature’s movements were less than precise. The wild whipping motion left the hero wide open, and Rindou was easily able to avoid the blow. However, as soon as he dodged…
“Wha—?!”
A second arm of thick slime was waiting for him, like a trap. Rindou failed to notice it until it had already caught him by the leg and had begun to squeeze, tighter and tighter and tighter.
“Argh!”
The pressure threatened to shred his thigh to ribbons. Just as the “hand” was about to tear Rindou’s leg to pieces, a gunshot rang through the air. It was the slime’s arm that was shredded instead.
“Ah!” Rindou seized the opportunity. He retreated out of the slime’s reach, dragging his leg slightly as he went. “Thanks, Koyuki!”
“I just didn’t want to owe you one. That’s all,” Koyuki said with a wry smile as smoke rose up from the anti-materiel-class rifle in her hands.
The tendril of slime that had captured Rindou, the one that Koyuki had just blasted to ribbons, regenerated immediately.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
She fired again—this time at the clock on the school building, located over the main entrance. There was a loud crash, and the now broken clock, along with a chunk of the school building, fell, massively damaging the slime. Just as she was preparing to take another shot…
“Koyuki, wait!”
There was a pause. As Kaguya followed Azuma’s gaze, she thought she caught sight of a furtive shadow in a corner of one of the windows.
“You can’t be serious. There’s someone in there?!”
The slime was creeping in through the cracks in the building and looked like it might envelop the figure inside at any moment. The person ran through the school, desperately fleeing the slimy menace. They heard a voice, barely audible, from within.
“Help me…!”
Haru was quick to respond. She ran straight toward the school on her naturally fleet legs, planning to make her way inside. Azuma called after her as she went.
“Takanashi, do you know the way?!”
“I’ve got it!” Haru said, barely stopping to respond as she rushed inside.
She had spied the girl’s location and had already worked out the quickest route to get there. Step one, at least for someone with her physical abilities, was to enter through a window along the side of the building.
The hero didn’t try to chase her. Likely because there was a more pressing threat facing it at the moment.
Two such threats, in fact.
“Captain Azuma,” said Kaguya, who was one of those two threats. “I heard you aren’t able to locate the eggs anymore. Are you sure you’ve got this?”
“It’s fine. I noticed a spot it was trying to protect during Rindou’s and Koyuki’s attacks earlier.”
Since the egg was essentially a hero’s heart, the creatures naturally tended to defend that spot on their bodies more than elsewhere, even if only unintentionally.
“Kaguya,” Azuma said as he stood next to her without turning his head. “Let’s go.”
“Okay!”
With Azuma in the lead, they rushed into the slime together toward where the egg must be located. It was a strange feeling, like running underwater. And yet it was easy to breathe. If anything, it almost felt pleasant.
“There! The second-story window!”
They had only been running for a few seconds when they spotted it right there in front of them. A spot where the slime was thicker and far less transparent than anywhere else.
It was a desk located next to a window on the school’s second floor. Azuma suddenly grabbed Kaguya, and before she knew it, they were leaping through the air. He was able to cling to the windowsill without much difficulty and bust out the window with a single jab of his elbow. The egg was right there…on top of the desk.
The desk, which was visible even through the slime, was covered with all sorts of messages that had been written directly on it. A vase had also been placed on the desk, symbolizing death. The egg was delicately enshrined within that vase.
The resistance of the slime suddenly increased, and both Azuma and Kaguya found themselves unable to move. They couldn’t reach the egg—the interior of the slime began to spasm. If anything, it felt like they were being pushed away.
“It’s so thick…!”
“It seems like it really doesn’t want us to touch that egg.”
Rather than allow himself to be ejected, however, Azuma placed a hand on the hilt of his katana and shifted his center of gravity ever so slightly. With his hips low and a finger on the sword’s guard, he withdrew the katana with a quick slashing motion—too fast for Kaguya’s eye to see. There was a soft ting, like the sound of a tiny bell, as a small section of the slime was sliced open.
It was like Moses parting the sea. Kaguya somehow managed to thrust herself into that opening and point her gun. But even now the slime continued its attempts to reject them.
“I know…”
Whoever it was in there, they didn’t want to go back. They wanted to stay. To sacrifice themselves to their ideals. They didn’t want to be dragged back to reality.
Kaguya understood exactly how they felt.
There were some things that only she could do—that no one else could take off her shoulders. Things that were necessary if she was going to save the heroes.
But Kaguya wasn’t going to carry it all alone and attempt to remember everything anymore. She could pick it up, let it touch her, and then let it go. Without letting herself become bogged down in it. Without letting it become a curse. She had to. And when it came to the memories that truly needed to be remembered, she would remember them, but she would share them so that they could belong to everything. So that she didn’t wind up hoarding the burden.
“Let’s go back.”
They could rest easy now.
“I’ll take it on for you. I won’t forget. But then—”
There was more. More to it than just remembering.
“—I’ll share it. So you can rest easy knowing that you won’t have to go alone. We’ll all be there.”
The final blow came like a gentle touch, a soft embrace. Like the warm mercy of a saint.
Kaguya will probably attempt to save the hero once we get there…
Azuma swung his sword in a flash, positioning himself so as to protect Kaguya. At the current moment, he was situated next to the window, cutting through the hero’s body as it attempted to envelop her from all sides.
…and she’ll probably bring the memories back with her…
The slime was difficult to cut through, but Azuma managed to do so easily.
…but…I don’t think she’s going to try to keep them all to herself anymore.
He sliced through a tentacle as it reached for Kaguya’s shoulder.
Kaguya entered the hero’s world, and Haru got the schoolgirl outside to safety at almost the exact same moment. The hero—a boy—barely had a second to exhale and register that he was still alive when Kaguya woke up.
“Kaguya!” As Azuma shouted her name, a smile slowly spread across Kaguya’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Captain Azuma… I’m perfectly fine,” she said, her expression tranquil.
Azuma breathed a sigh of relief. “I see. Well, good then. It looks like we’re almost done here.”
He could see the hero’s body beginning to crumble apart. The school building, which had almost been swallowed completely, was free again beneath the quiet night sky.