Setting Entry 9: What Happened Then: Side A
Author's Preface
If possible, I think you'll enjoy this more if you read it side by side with the next entry, "What Happened Then: Side B."
It's a little difficult to do that on a smartphone, though……
[1]
The fragrant gunsmoke made the man's body, which should have been accustomed to smoke from cigarettes that had now become a minor luxury, reject it and send him into a coughing fit.
"Ahh, goddammit…… what a fucking mess."
[2]
Alone atop a heap of wreckage and rubble, the man pulled out a cigarette even as he continued coughing.
Apparently he'd dropped his lighter somewhere, and though he frowned and clicked his tongue, when he spotted the still-smoldering remnants of a fire nearby, he dragged his blood-soaked body over to it and lit his limp cigarette.
"Fffuuuuuh………"
Cigarette smoke was forced into lungs filled with gunsmoke and the stench of burning things, and only after finally driving out the chronic discomfort that had been gnawing away at his body did the man let the tension leave his shoulders.
[3]
"Whoa, whoa, whoa…… no idea if this thing'll still be useful at this point, but it's better than nothing, I guess."
Only once he stood did it become clear: though stained dark red with blood here and there, the matching top and bottoms had originally been camouflage.
The "thing" had been shot from inside the upper jaw straight through the top of its skull and was probably dead; the man pulled the bayonet-equipped rifle from its mouth, spent a while handling the gun to get a feel for it, then, deciding there were no problems, started walking with the rifle at the ready.
[4]
"The rendezvous point is…… tch, far."
After slipping into his jacket the device that went ping, ping as it displayed three points of light, the man started walking, trailing cigarette smoke behind him like an animal's tail.
A tower snapped off at its base and collapsed, enormous holes in buildings that clearly had not been part of any design, roads cracked so badly that an animal trail would have been considerably better, and scattered among all that devastation were the corpses of "those things," exposing their own deaths to the world.
What exactly should "those things" be called? In shape they resembled lions or wolves, but their surfaces were covered in smooth outer shells like plastic.
And where a mammal ought to have two eyes, it looked as though someone had blindfolded the creature and then hacked the blindfolded area to ribbons with a knife…… something vaguely beastlike, yet far removed from anything that could be called common sense for a living creature.
[5]
"Where the hell did Squad D2 go……?"
Reacting almost excessively to the occasional heap of rubble collapsing in accordance with the laws of physics, the man continued onward, onward.
The corpses of beast-things, rubble, flames. Through a ruined landscape that never changed, the man advanced one steady step at a time while maintaining the utmost vigilance.
And at last, the man reached it.
"The Visitor's Calamity Scar, huh……"
[6]
Even calling it wreckage would have been far too mild. The vast mass from the heavens had gouged into the earth, and the circular shockwave spreading from the impact had swept everything away.
It was nothing less than "destruction" made manifest; the vista spreading from the crater rim where the man stood…… the sight of that enormous "triangular prism" driven into the earth was enough to make even the man, who had understood and accepted it as information, feel a kind of fear, of awe.
CLANG!
"……!?"
"Vororororo!!"
[7]
It was not a sound produced by any ordinary physical cause, but the sound of rubble that had clearly been shoved aside by something other than the man striking the ground, and the man spun around with his rifle raised.
The next instant, the beast-thing that had leapt at him from behind slammed him violently to the ground.
"Fuck……! You... you half-dead bastard!"
The beast-thing, with half its face and two-thirds of its back gouged away, could hardly be called normal, and precisely because of that, as it tried to sink the half of its fangs it still had into the man while spraying matcha-green bodily fluid everywhere, it radiated a horrifying degree of murderous intent.
"Get off……! You goddamn monster!!"
Humanity's accumulated wisdom spat fire. A point-blank full-auto burst hammered the beast-thing's cracked chest, and it sprang back amid a shower of sparks.
[8]
"Goddammit…… clawing me up... however the hell you please……!"
Though the beast-thing had jumped back for the moment, no emotion could be read from that face so far removed from any living creature, but the way it packed strength into every inch of its body, lowered its stance, and growled conveyed that emotion to the man more clearly than words or expressions ever could.
"The weak point... in its head is exposed, sure... but it isn't shattered…… no wonder... the bastard's still not dead."
Perhaps it had taken a machine-gun sweep; exposed through the grotesquely blown-away half of its face was a sphere that, at first glance, could have passed for a gemstone.
No words were necessary: so long as that remained, the beast-thing would never run out of strength, even if it lost half its face along with half its head.
The man roughly wiped away the matcha-green bodily fluid that had splattered across his face when the creature pinned him down. Mixed with the blood already staining his sleeve, it turned a murkier color than gutter water, but he had no time to grimace at it.
[9]
Little by little, the beast-thing and the man adjusted the distance between them, maintaining their fighting range. A human, armed but frail as living things went, and a beast-thing with a powerful body but already half-dead.
The man and beast-thing, possessed of utterly different common sense, laws, and intelligence, had nonetheless arrived at the same conclusion.
"!"
"Vorrah!"
Namely, a short decisive battle: kill the other before reaching one's own limit.
Bullets chewed up the spot where the beast-thing had leapt sideways while spilling bodily fluid. With a click of his tongue, the man swung the muzzle after it and fired again.
The beast-thing kept moving at all times, quietly but surely waiting for the instant it could land the decisive blow.
And then came the hollow click.
[10]
"FUCK!!"
Out of ammo. Nothing in this world is infinite, and yet the first thing to reach its limit was neither man nor beast-thing, but the rifle that had spat out its last round.
And that single instant was the beast-thing's one chance in a thousand years, and the energy accumulated to its absolute limit was released.
Its half-jaw yawned open, and obeying nothing but the reason for its own existence, the beast-thing moved to cru……sh the "thing" before it.
[11]
『Identification Number V8-2, handler "James MacMiller"…… your arrival at the rendezvous coordinates is delayed. You are five minutes late.』
The beast-thing's certainty of victory was ground to dust beneath the heel of a gigantic high heel that came flying down from above.
[12]
It was an enormous giant of steel, yet it was no crude, lumbering thing like a boulder.
Rather, it possessed the grace of a heavenly maiden and the doll-like beauty of a form refined for battle.
Though scorched here and there and missing several weapons it must originally have carried, its silver-white frame was made all the more beautiful precisely because it was stained.
[13]
And that, despite clearly not being a living creature, turned a gaze carrying unmistakable will toward the man holding a rifle that had become nothing more than a lump of metal with a knife attached.
As though answering that gaze, the man threw the rifle aside, spat out the cigarette he'd kept in his mouth, and turned to face the silver-white lady.
"Unlike you, I had to get here on fucking foot, so take the hint, you clunker."
『I demand a correction. I am the Identity-Type Nephilim "Argent Agent," assigned to Nephilim Company's Third Branch "Kyokutou."』
[14]
"It's my policy to call anyone with a name ten characters or longer 'Clunker.'"
[15]
『Understood. I will use that as reference…… handler "Clunker."』
[16]
A brief silence followed the barb returned by a woman's voice that somehow combined the high, ringing tone of a rolling bell with an inorganic quality. The first to raise his hands was the man…… James.
[17]
"I give. You were one step above me there."
『My identity evolves day by day. If I were to make full use of my present specifications, I could even carve my name into history as the King of Comedy.』
"……Damn, that one was actually funny."
[18]
Such nonsense had become everyday communication between the man and the giant.
The silver-white giant knelt and held out a hand proportionate to its size, as though welcoming its sovereign.
The man stepped onto the giant's palm and was lifted up.
[19]
"Arge, what did the sweep turn up?"
『I conducted a detailed scan within a two-kilometer radius, but detected no responses. Possible explanations are: the coordinate beacon sustained enough damage to be completely destroyed. Or……』
[20]
"……'Puppet Concealment,' huh."
[21]
『All Nephilim assigned to Squad D2 are Non-Identity-Type Nephilim. I assess the probability as high.』
The man's body turned into light. Freed from the shackles of flesh, James was drawn into Arge…… the silver-white giant, and the moment every last part of him had been absorbed, the giant's eyes changed from blue to red.
[22]
"Keep screwing around with those bastards any longer and it won't even count as unpaid overtime. We're heading back."
『No objections. I request that the body be cleaned.』
"They're docking our reward to cover the cost of replacing the weapons, so I'm dropping the detergent down one grade."
『───. I. Strongly. Protest.』
"Denied."
[23]
Humans, giants, and visitors.
Even in a world that had plunged into new confusion at the end of that conflict, the blue sky welcomed the silver-white giant soaring through its unchanged vastness.
[24]
Cut to black.
Flames raced across the darkness as though burning away the shadows, bringing letters into view.
『VISITORS CRISIS』
[25]
More flames raced across the screen, revealing the true name that had been hidden until this very moment.
『Nephilim Hollow 2』
[26]
『Early next Fall.』
[27]
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