MAIN.11 “<Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.>” Singing an absurd song to herself, a girl spread fresh crimson blood all over Baggage City. Right now, she was in the city’s garbage disposal facility. The water-heating pipes and passages ran through here, too. In fact, they reused the heat from burning garbage to work their water-heating facilities, so this place was essentially the core of the whole city. Baggage City had several keys to unlocking hot water, such as thermal power stations and oil refineries, but if they lost all of them, it—and its people—would be dropped into a negative twenty degree Celsius hellscape. Indeed, the main battlefield was shifting like an amoeba. It had begun in the circular arena, set up for safe competition, and now it had come to the single garbage disposal facility in the world with so many lives riding on its continued operation. While it was difficult to tell, given the mass-produced red color signifying aggression, the girl was actually committed to the facility’s defense. Silver braids. Dark skin. Red-framed glasses. Her overalls-on-bare-skin look was a little odd, whether for walking around town or traveling through a region with heavy snowfall. She had a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other, both made of gold. Generally, while pure gold was resistant to corrosion and oxidation, it was relatively soft—too soft to be that good of a metal for bladed objects. That was what textbooks would say. But textbooks didn’t apply to this dark-skinned girl. Her golden tools severed steel, crushed concrete, and “modified” other humans in very psychedelic ways. She was an official member of Gremlin. A dvergr living in modern times. Marianne Sringeneier. Her movements weren’t all that fast. She was slow, in fact. As slow as a normal girl killing time on her way home. However… “Roar, roar, woof, woof.” Muttering randomly to herself, Marianne shoved her golden saw into the wall. For some reason, it went through and lodged itself there. She let go, and as she did, the saw raced toward the enemy formation as fast as a car. The assassins sent from Academy City, so sure they knew how far a saw could reach, went stock-still in surprise, and… …then the blood splattered. “Gah?!” “Argh!” “It’s the grease?! The blade’s going along the grease spread all over the wall!” “Too late.” The golden saw leaped off the wall; shot off at a complex, winding trajectory; and shaved apart several of the soldiers all gathered in that one place. But a moment later, all their limbs—and heads—were attached again. There wasn’t even any blood. “What…what happened?” “Hmm? For that, you’ll have to pay attention to your hands and feet.” Marianne grasped the saw as it came back to her along the wall, then twirled it around before pointing the weapon’s tip at the soldiers. “Doesn’t it look like they were hastily reattached? Like, say, a bunch of jigsaw puzzles mixed up into one?” “No… It can’t be…” “And I didn’t even screen you for transplant compatibility! If you don’t do something quick, your immune system will start to reject everything. Don’t want to die? Guess you’ll have to steal your own body parts back from the others.” “Rgh… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh?!” It wasn’t actually clear whether they wanted to fight one another. But they responded nonetheless. The “unharmed soldiers,” infected by the strange mood in the air, began to believe that the others would definitely do it. They began to believe they were all enemies. And they began to spray one another with lead bullets. “Such a tragedy,” murmured Marianne, using her escape from their terrified stares as an opening to close in on the soldiers who were still alive. But then something happened. One of the attackers—he’d been playing dead amid several corpses—suddenly thrust a gun in her face at close range. Marianne didn’t even glance his way, though. She just swung her golden saw. A moment later, both of the attacker’s hands were gone. But she hadn’t cut them off. She’d replaced everything from his wrists down with a golden faucet—but only one. It was like he was handcuffed now. Perfectly normal arms that ended in a perfectly normal faucet. It was an utterly grotesque sight. Human modification. The technology of the dvergr had escaped the realm of surgery and made it into the realm of battle. “Ah, ah…,” the attacker moaned, dazed, as he looked at what had become of his hands. Marianne patted his shoulder. “You tried your best,” she said with a smile. “But you didn’t get results, so I’m gonna have to give you a zero. So sorry.” Without hesitating, she turned the faucet. With the whooshing of liquid, the dark red, life-maintaining fluid began to rush out of his body with the utmost ease. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” “You could always turn off the faucet—oh, but it looks like your hands are tied. Too bad for you, huh? Now, I forget how much blood a person can lose before it’s fatal. Whatever. I’m sure a bucket’s worth will be enough to—Huh? Wait, you passed out already?” The attacker spasmed as he sank into a pool of his own scattered blood. Marianne turned her attention away from him and started walking again. “…I’m not actually meant for battle. I thought I’d have a harder time, but oh well. Baggage City’s really getting turned inside out by guys like this? The Guardians are such a letdown. At this rate, I won’t even need to ‘buy time’ or whatever.” Her tone was annoyed as she pointed the golden saw’s tip at the floor. Before the hidden attacker could pelt her with rifle shots, the floor caved in. The soldier was barely breathing, though, so she did a little work on his throat. Immediately, there was a scream—a soprano, like a small child’s—that exceeded human vocal range. A screaming baby. The frequency humans hated the most. As the other hidden attacker froze up at the ear-splitting noise, Marianne strode straight toward them with large steps. Then she swung her golden hammer like a baseball bat. “Time for a grand slam!” The attacker’s torso was gone a moment later, a cannonball of human flesh now rocketing off. It slammed into another attacker a short distance away. “Brgh, urgh—” “Still not dead yet, eh?” Marianne scratched her head. “If only you’d died. Then you would have gotten into your grave looking all right—without me messing with you.” She strode toward the other attacker, who had been struck by his colleague’s torso, as though a piece of a toy that had broken off. He was still on the floor. Giving up on the rifle he’d dropped, he tried to pull out his gun, but she stomped on his arm, crushing it, then brought the saw through his legs in one clean stroke. His two legs became two wheels. The attacker screamed, horrified at the painless transformation. Marianne whispered to him like one would a lover. “It’s a straight line to the compost tank, babe. Hope you suffocate in all the raw garbage!” “Gyah, gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!” He tried to dig his nails into the floor, but he was too late. He was dragged along the floor at a superhigh speed, eventually vanishing deeper into the passage. It made Marianne think of a disaster film where a giant shark drags its victims out to sea. “Is this it?” she complained, twirling her golden weapons around. Then she noticed all the noise had stopped. Silence dominated. The attackers hadn’t been annihilated—only one-third, perhaps even only one-fourth, had actually died. But even the people still in possession of all their own limbs had now fallen to their knees at the miserable sight of the corpses she’d created, of the utterly modified human flesh, and had dropped their guns. A fate worse than death. A cliché quote from movies and books but seeing it like this caused the basis of one’s thinking—the desire for life and avoidance of death—to collapse out from under them. When that malfunctioned, their other thought patterns would fragment. “Is this seriously it…? I’ve heard so much about Academy City… I’m a little disappointed, to be honest. How did you all actually win World War III?” Everyone was holding their breath, desperately trying to hide even their heartbeats. But their tiny exhalations caused Marianne’s eyebrow to twitch in displeasure. Wielding her golden saw and golden hammer, she killed some and swapped the limbs of others for objects. Even as she did, the remaining assailants couldn’t bring themselves to move. Their hearts were completely and utterly pacified. Nobody was brave enough to run—or more accurately, to put themselves squarely in Marianne’s attention. So Marianne didn’t hesitate. If they resisted, she would pursue them and kill them. If they didn’t, she’d mow them down like weeds. She sighed. “It really would have been easier if you’d just fought one another… But I never end up actually fighting in these situations. That’s why I don’t get combat experience. Hmm… I’m a little worried about my diet.” Reaching one hand inside her overalls to scratch her belly, Marianne used her other hand to swing her golden hammer around languidly. She would pinpoint internal organs, harm them, and then immediately close up the wound. With the internal bleeding causing the soldiers to inflate like water balloons, she went on killing them, all without making a mess. Once the noise was gone and Marianne had some peace of mind back, she suddenly heard the creaking and groaning of metal. “?” “Ohh? This place… Oh my. Where in the world am I?” It was a woman wearing pajamas. She was in a wheelchair, so she must not have had freedom of motion in her legs. A button device with a wire extending from it rested in her lap. Maybe she was a patient who had checked into a Baggage City hospital and had escaped during the chaos of Academy City’s attack—not that she knew where she was going. The woman’s expression was meek. Probably because she hadn’t seen the things Marianne had just created. “And who are you?” asked Marianne. “Oh, you… Is that really what the garbage disposal facility uniform looks like?” “No, the furnace I use is a little smaller. Though it just produces high heat—that’s all.” Marianne scratched her head with the hand holding the handle of her golden saw. “If you’re looking for an exit, just turn around and head two hundred meters that way. There should be a door. And you might want to be quick. It’s a little dirty in here.” …While her actions were very much grotesque and hard to picture, as Marianne had said before, she was a defender of Baggage City. At least for now. So she didn’t have any reason to modify someone who lived here. Meanwhile, the woman in the wheelchair bowed. “Oh my. Well, thank you… Hmm? Oh, I’m caught on a floor cable? There’s an elevation difference… Ohh?” “Ugh, geez. What a pain.” Marianne casually went over to the pajama-clad woman and stepped behind her wheelchair. She gripped the rear handles, then used her body weight to get her wheels over the thick cable. “Ngh… Your wheelchair is pretty heavy,” she said. “Is it a power chair?” “Partially, yes. If I don’t move at all, I’ll get weaker very quickly, so I set it up so that it’s not too easy. See? This box here is the controller.” “I can see that. I’m an indoor type myself. Then again, I do work with hammers. I’ve got biceps. If I wanted to, I could really make them stand out.” “Are you a carpenter?” “Close, but no. I’m not into building castles,” explained Marianne as she pushed the wheelchair. “By the way, isn’t it hard being in a wheelchair all the time?” “I suppose. But it means I can experience the kindness of others more often. Like yours right now.” “Right. So here’s my question. How did you get your wheelchair all the way through this garbage disposal facility when there are so many cables and differences in elevation?” “…Ohh?” “It’s very strange, you see. It seemed to me like you got stuck on a cable on purpose. Like you were waiting for me to come over.” “……” Marianne narrowed her eyes, channeling her strength into her grip on her golden saw. In response, the pajama-clad woman kept smiling. Krr-sheeeeng!!!!!! A moment later, the shrill clang of metal against metal echoed. Marianne had done something simple—she’d swung her golden saw downward. It wasn’t clear exactly what the pajama woman had done. The wheelchair handles suddenly bounced out of Marianne’s hands, and the whole wheelchair spun around one hundred eighty degrees. That much, she could figure out. But that was all. Something had batted her saw away, and she had no idea what it was even after the fact. She found herself careening away, then smashing into the wall back first, as if to crush the machines along it. The pajama woman’s wheelchair had left a perfect circle of skid marks on the floor, and it was faintly smoking. She grabbed the wired box on her lap and pressed a button. The next instant, armlike submachine guns came out of the back of her wheelchair, their barrels (cannons?) big enough for a human arm to fit through. How had she stowed that away? Where? Did this thing even obey the law of conservation of mass? Engraved on the side of each of the barrels were English letters. Made_in_KIHARA. “Oh no. You’ve… Well, you’ve found me out, haven’t you? You leave me no choice!” Blam-blam-blam-blam!!!!!! The guns thundered so loudly, their sound alone might have ruptured internal organs. A storm of steel danced through the air. Marianne, buried under the broken devices, seemed to collapse. Her upper body became a spray of bright red fluid. And as for her lower half… “Come on now. Is this some kind of popular one-off joke in Academy City?” “?” She heard the voice come from that lower half. No, that was wrong. There was another Marianne there, stooping at the feet of the ruined one. And that still wasn’t the proper perception. The pajama-clad woman using the “Kihara” swiftly brought her gun barrels—cannon barrels—back around. “Is that the real one?!” she cried. “That’s a decoy, too, idiot.” She heard that voice from right beside her. Before the pajama woman could turn to look, a third Marianne, this one stark naked, swung down her golden saw, the tool she’d used to seamlessly create a girl out of one of Academy City’s strong soldiers. However, just like before… Graaack-graaack-graack!! …the wheelchair moved so fast it blurred, and some kind of machine caught Marianne’s saw, sending orange sparks flying. More tire tracks were on the floor now, smoking from the heat of friction. Marianne made a conjecture. The woman could probably win a fencing competition in her wheelchair, though it wasn’t clear if she was actually using a saber or not. Ugh. This is why I hate freak shows. I keep saying I’m not cut out for combat! As if she had them lying about all over, Marianne grabbed a new pair of overalls from behind a nearby machine and put them on. With little squeaks, the wheelchair backed away, seeming not to care one bit about the height differences or the cables. The movement was almost scarily smooth. Setting a glare on the ever-smiling pajama woman, Marianne murmured, “Well, look who it is. Someone pretending to be sick. You don’t even have to stand up to kill.” “I, Byouri Kihara, am an expert at giving up. I’ve given up on plenty of things myself. I’ve even made plenty of others give up on things. I think you should give up, too, Ms. Gremlin.” “Hmm, yes, I see, I see. Must be an easy life for you.” “Well, I don’t think it’s all that strange really. In fact, I think most people have faked an illness at some point in their lives. The whole of humankind giving up—doesn’t that sound like a monumental ambition to you?” That was how Byouri Kihara fulfilled her duty to uphold order. She made terrorists give up on plans to destroy Academy City. She made people give up on trying to bring information on Academy City tech to the outside world. She made people give up on negative innovations, such as the development of new kinds of weapons of mass destruction. She made others give up, give up, and give up… The accumulation of those resignations was Byouri’s trophy. She twisted, she broke, and she crushed, building a mountain of debris from the ambitions of others. Of course, that was nothing but the result of trying to fit Byouri’s original characteristics into society—Byouri herself giving up on things. As she gazed at the wheelchair, hard-coated in lies, Marianne licked her lips. “Kihara, was it? There must be more of them. Like a procession of ants coming to be squashed.” “I’ve given up on poor Ranny. But En is with us, too, after all.”
Chapter 63
15 min read