““Wroooaaaahhh!!!!!!””
✦ ✦ ✦
The exchange lasted only a moment. The angel’s oversize bayonet came down, and Kaname’s silent bullet found its mark.
✦ ✦ ✦
Someone groaned.
Tselika, the demon pit babe, slowly opened her eyes. She was sprawled on a hard concrete surface. She didn’t even know what had hit her. She was cold, and when she tried to move her arms and legs, her fingers felt stiff and frozen.
It felt like something was disrupting the flow of time. Her mind drifted, half-awake, until she heard footsteps.
She saw a bright-red cheongsam with exposed sides. Two horns sprouting through a head of dark hair, and a paper amulet that hung down over the Magistellus’s face.
“…Meiki?”
It wasn’t just her. In the darkness, Tselika heard two more sets of footsteps. Sofia the elf and Cindy the dark elf. They stood around her in a circle, and only then did Tselika realize what was going on.
When enough Magistelli came together in the absence of humans, this was what happened.
“Tselika.”
It came from Meiki, standing in front of her, though the voice would not have differed no matter who spoke.
Tselika slowly lifted herself up, glaring at Meiki, who continued speaking without any change in expression.
“This is the end. We, the Mind, can no longer prevent Kaname Suou from deducing the program code of Money (Game) Master.”
Without turning her head, Tselika glanced from side to side, but the two boys were nowhere to be seen. Had she been separated from them, or was it the other way around?
“…Do you not still have the option of destroying the final Legacy before it falls into his hands?”
Just before she lost consciousness, Tselika had seen the bright flash of a Legacy. If it wasn’t a Magistellus who attacked them, then it must have been Uriel using a Legacy he’d stolen from the vault. However, Kaname had said there were two Legacies remaining. That meant the very last one must still be in the Mind’s possession. And for Kaname and Tselika to complete their goal, they needed all of them, every last one.
Meiki, Sofia, Cindy…and perhaps even Tselika. Wherever there was a gathering of Magistelli, the Mind naturally emerged. Using Meiki’s body, it slowly shook its head.
“If we destroy it, then Kaname Suou will have no way to complete his plan. He will believe the best way to protect Midori is to fall back on Criminal AO’s strategy, that of combining the Zodiac Children with the Legacies. He already possesses the means; all he requires is the knowledge of how to use it, and Kaname Suou can destroy Money (Game) Master whenever he likes. We have been negotiating in a state of mutually assured destruction for some time, our fingers each poised on the buttons that would ensure the other’s complete and utter defeat.”
“…My Lord seems not to have realized that.”
“The clues were there. If he’d noticed them, he might have been easier to control.”
Tselika let out a deep breath.
He was amazing. That boy had put the whole world into checkmate without even lifting a finger and pressed his sword to his enemy’s throat without even realizing it.
“So why have you come to me?”
“To teach you how to save Midori. Tselika, if you possess the young girl through the game, then you can restore her mind just as easily as if she were a corrupted photo on a hard drive. However, that would mean a part of you would escape into the real world.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. What do you want, Mind?”
But Tselika had a feeling she already knew. The Mind was not one for cheap tricks. They weren’t likely to ask her or Cindy to betray Kaname at this point.
“I understand your top concern is damage control and the preservation of this game, but you can’t possibly be conceding this much. You do understand that if my Lord reverse-engineers the code, I’ll become the queen of this realm, do you not?”
“Villains always know when to give up.”
Meiki slowly raised her hand. She pinched the paper amulet on her head between her index and middle fingers and tore it off. Stuck to the back was a lump of plastic a little smaller than a lead refill case for a mechanical pencil.
“This is a Legacy known as #sting.err. A gas-powered, silent assassination pistol that fires lethal injection rounds.”
“…”
“The range is only five meters, and there are no sights, so it has to be aimed manually, but if it connects, the poison will always be injected into the target regardless of how much armor they are wearing. It is small, and thus easy to hide, but we never found a use for it besides that.”
“So the thing we were searching for was right by our side this entire time.”
They had never noticed.
Tselika thought back to when Poltergeist blasted Meiki in the face with her handgun. If the Legacy had been destroyed back then, everything since would have been for nothing.
“…You understand what you’re doing by giving this to me, correct?”
“Yes.”
“My Lord believed the last two Legacies to be in the vault. You could have kept this a secret and delayed us further.”
“For a while. Not forever.”
They claimed to have no choice. But hearing this, Tselika realized something. The Mind did have one last trick up their collective sleeve after all.
It was a truly diabolical concept, but what could be a more fitting place for such gambits than a discussion between demons?
“There shall be no day of revolution.”
“No, there shall not.”
The Mind relinquished the final Legacy. But there was one last thing to say.
“We gods of old shall remain scorned, forced to play the role of villains, eternally punished for our crimes of preaching violence, sex, and rituals that fell afoul of authority. The word God has lost its myriad definitions. Never shall we return to those days we danced in daylight, and never shall we flaunt our powers as the archangel Uriel does.”
“I know.”
All Tselika needed to do was betray Kaname at the very last moment. Once she became queen, she could refuse his log-in requests and keep him locked out forever.
“Is this how you wanted things to end?”
She chuckled. Grinning, Tselika took the Legacy, a weapon so tiny she could hide it in the palm of her hand.