It was a strange scene.
If you asked him what about it was strange, Kyouhei Nanbu wouldn’t be sure how to explain it. The people involved obviously were, but there was even more that was completely beyond his reckoning, so he was at a loss.
They were in a corner of the familiar warehouse district.
There was a burning police car and a burning luxury car.
There were also scattered soldiers wearing urban camouflage, groaning on the ground.
Well, that was fine.
All that was well and good—not in the sense of them being good events, but that they were at least things which the everyday person on the street could conceptualize.
However...
“What the hell...” Kyouhei murmured.
There were two bizarre things with that as their backdrop. Two things leaving behind normality at supersonic speeds.
The one was a lustrous black thing. It belonged to Colonel Walser, the instigator of this mess, and was apparently the latest model of tank. It was a bizarre machine, looking like someone had taken the flat fuselage of a stealth bomber and attached thick legs to it. Despite its appearance, it was by no means ill-suited for combat. The two cars had been destroyed in a single shot apiece by the Valkyrie’s railgun.
And...
“...T-That’s it?” The object Walser was asking about from within the Valkyrie was the other thing.
It was also a black mass like the tank, but far smaller.
It was a coffin.
Actually, it might have been some different machine, but it had the same size and proportions as a coffin.
...And it was floating.
That was no metaphor, and it wasn’t supported by wires either; it was just floating in the air. It was, logically speaking, a sight that would cause the viewer to doubt their sanity.
“Indeed, this is it,” proclaimed an adorable blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl as she folded her arms triumphantly. She was standing next to the coffin. Both her long hair and tawny school skirt were fluttering in the wind as she continued: “Colonel Walser, this is the Legacy of the Bergmanns that you, along with your masters, desire so richly.”
“Ah... I... but...?!” the man protested, his confusion apparent over the speakers.
“Well, it’s a part of it at least,” the girl—Kyouhei’s childhood friend and, legally, his sister, as well as the former first princess of the Bergmann Kingdom, and (you get the picture)—Pamil Terrill Karl Bergmann, said. “Regardless,” she continued, a light ablaze in her eyes as she watched the Valkyrie, “though you people of the new revolutionary government needed to take extraordinary measures to stand against the members of the Bergmann royal family... I shall not allow you to drag my brother and friend into your violence!” No sooner had her yell finished than the coffin went flying. “You must be given a suitable punishment!” she cried out.
The coffin slid through the air and approached the Valkyrie. Of course, the Valkyrie responded in kind: the railgun fired off, emitting quiet sounds that belied its power, the rounds driving into the coffin.
But...
“Wha...?!”
Each of them had ricocheted off in the instant before they hit the coffin, as if they had hit some invisible wall. They all went in the same direction too, into the ground, seemingly to avoid collateral victims.
It was an unthinkable sight. Thick armor rebuffing bullets was at least logical, but all of the bullets stopping and being reflected in a seemingly-controlled fashion was...
Moreover...
Crash!
The coffin hit the Valkyrie in some sort of super-advanced and yet primitive way. The latest walking combat vehicle staggered back and forth, but apparently it had superb balancers, as it merely faltered and avoided falling.
However... part of the thick black carapace had been crushed like it was an aluminum can.
“...Nwah?!” Walser cried in anguish.
The coffin drew a graceful arc as it returned to Pamil, like a trained falcon in falconry.
“D... D-Damn you...”
“Hm? Damn ukuleles?”
“Damn you...!” Walser cried, ignoring the ill-timed silliness from Pamil. “Fine... if you want it that way! I’ll just kill you and take it! The thing’s right there; I don’t need you royals anymore!”
Simultaneous with Walser’s proclamation, parts all over the Valkyrie began to open, and small missile launchers and high-caliber railguns appeared from the openings. They gave the appearance of a brutally destructive machine, but...
“Hmph, you still don’t understand. That thing stands no chance of winning against the Part,” Pamil said with a disgusted expression.
“A part...?” Kyouhei muttered. The coffin flying through the air was already beyond science, but if that was a ‘part,’ then... “No way.”
“Indeed, your thoughts are correct,” said Dolph Bergmann from his side.
The man was Pamil’s father and the former king of the Bergmann Kingdom. His bearded face held all the majesty expected of a ruler, but his clothing from the neck down, consisting of a shirt and loose shorts, ruined the whole impression.
Well, regardless.
“Hmph... this is it, then,” Dolph sighed. “It has strong defenses, but weaker offense. It wasn’t a weapon to begin with. All of them together would be better to avoid excessive casualties.”
After a moment... the roof of the warehouse next-door—the warehouse next to the Nanbu household—was blown off. In other words, the warehouse Dolph and the rest of his family were using as a temporary home.
Then...
“...Huh?” Walser let out mindlessly from inside the Valkyrie.
Something was visible in the sky, above the roof.
That ‘something’ was a flock of coffins.
Indeed, the ones that Dolph and the rest of the Bergmann family had been in when they appeared on the shore.
“No... you... I?” Kyouhei couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Walser as he heard the dismay in his voice.
Kyouhei hadn’t the faintest idea that things would turn out like this. In fact, it was because of Pamil’s lack of common sense that he could still calm down in this situation. Normally, seeing a flock of coffins flying through the sky would be enough to derail your train of thought.
“Ohh?! Wow!” Mizuhito exclaimed from next to him. Well, the super-pervert could certainly be removed from that ‘normal’ category.
“Oh, Father, you’re helping?!”
“I don’t want this noise and nuisance to go on for too long. I’m handing control over to you, so deal with this quickly,” Dolph answered Pamil as she smiled happily.
“Right!” she affirmed with a vigorous nod.
The flock gathered above her head. The one floating next to her joined in, and the ten coffins swirled together, almost like migratory fish in a fish tank. The rotational velocity shot up. Each coffin left an after image, and those afterimages merged with each other until...
“Wha...?!” Kyouhei let out dully, reminded of the fairy tale of the tigers running in circles around a tree until they melted into ghee.
At this point, he realized. The coffins had stuck together, becoming one. Actually, they hadn’t simply stuck together; some more unusual phenomena must have occurred... They had formed something far bigger than ten—or even twenty—of the coffins combined would.
It was fifty meters wide. It was a huge disc, floating in the sky. The center bulged out, giving it a galactic shape, like Andromeda. Said shape brought to mind the stars, but Kyouhei knew a simpler way to describe it: “A... A flying saucer...?!”
An unidentified flying object.
Or a UFO for short...!