Until we take them all home someday
I raced up the stairs and finally reached the door at the top. I shot out the lock, then kicked the door down and stepped outside.
"—! Here too?"
The crown of the great tree had burst out onto the roof, covering the whole space with thick branches and leaves. Pushing my way through them, I made for the edge.
"Saikawa!"
When I looked down, I saw the enormous fruit clinging to the wall of the building a few meters below. From a distance, it had looked like a distorted semicircle, but from this angle, it was closer to a cross-section of a pomegranate. Saikawa and the other sleeping figures were surrounded by globules of dark red pulp.
Steeling myself, I jumped down onto the fruit—and luckily, it was sturdy enough to hold the weight of another human, because I managed to land safely.
"If I cut these stems…"
Thick plant stems were tangled around Saikawa and the bodies of several civilians; they seemed to be transporting nutrients, as if they were pipes. Pulling out the survival knife Ms. Fuubi had loaned me, I began to cut through them one by one. However, it was a process of trial and error—
"Give me a break already!"
A tentacle that had penetrated through the wall of the building reached toward me. It seemed to have grown out of the great tree that pierced the mall, and I guessed this was a defense system, meant to drive away undesirables.
"—!"
There was a total of three tentacles now. Hastily leveling my gun, I fired one shot, two…and realized I was out of bullets. I had no way to avoid the third tentacle. Not good, I thought—but then I noticed I had an incoming call.
"—You saved my butt, Charlotte."
A third bullet sliced through the wind and blew the last tentacle away. "As expected of you. You've got to be five hundred meters from here."
Guessing where she was from the angle of the shot, I spoke to her through my wireless earphone, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant building.
"That was nothing," she responded after a few seconds. "A first-class sniper can kill an enemy from two kilometers away."
She was tough on herself, as you'd expect from an agent who was training under the world's toughest boss.
"Charlie, are you okay? Ms. Fuubi didn't say a thing…"
It had been three days since I'd first heard that Charlie was in a coma, and Ms. Fuubi was supposed to call me if her condition changed.
"Do you think that woman would take care of me for three whole days?"
…That was disturbingly convincing.
"I'm not okay just yet, so this is the best I can do." She was laughing at herself. She still couldn't move as well as she wanted to.
"That was plenty helpful. But how did you get from the hospital to that building?"
"She brought me here."
Charlie was referring to Noches, who must have told her about Natsunagi and Siesta, too.
"I see. Okay, Charlie, you head somewhere safe as well."
"Kimizuka." Just as I was about to hang up, she said my name. "Take care of our companion."
It was a pretty common line. For anyone who worked as part of a unit or team, it would have been a totally natural exchange. However, coming from Charlotte Arisaka Anderson, the words probably carried several times more weight than usual.
"Yeah, I know." So, as I ended the call, I made sure my short reply had years' worth of feelings in it, too.
"Saikawa, it's time to wake up."
I cut the last stalk, the one that connected Saikawa to the fruit itself, and shook her awake.
"…Kimi…zuka…?"
Saikawa's eyes opened a bit. She wasn't wearing her eye patch, and I caught a glimpse of that distinct ocean blue.
"Yep, I'm one of the Kimizukas. Kimihiko, to be exact." I scooped Saikawa into my arms, princess-style.
"You came…to rescue me?"
"While getting rescued myself, yeah."
Ms. Fuubi and Siesta had both saved me from deep trouble. So had Charlie, just before. I still wasn't strong enough to protect everything that was important to me all on my own. Even now, I'd just happened to score the chance to play hero.
"…You haven't changed at all, Kimizuka." Saikawa gave a wry, mildly chagrined smile. "It's all right. You don't always need to have a punchline ready."
"You're saying it's okay to play the dashing hero every once in a while?" It had been a few days since the last time we bantered. We'd have to finish up this routine after we got down, though… After everything was over. Holding Saikawa, I prepared to jump.
"Yes, but you don't have to act." Saikawa clung to me, and… "You've been dashing as long as I've known you, Kimizuka." She murmured something in a tiny voice, but the wind carried it away.
The primordial wish
"Siesta!"
When I returned to the battlefield, I found Siesta a little ways from the building. She had shallow cuts on her forehead and shoulders, but she was steady on her feet.
"That didn't take as long as I expected. I'd assumed you wouldn't be back for another two hours." …As always, her opinion of me was way too low. I was maybe two minutes late. "And? What about Yui?"
"She's safe. …We sort of fought at the end, though."
Ultimately, I'd abandoned the idea of gallantly jumping off the building,
choosing to play it safe and climb back in through a window instead. Apparently her judgment of me had taken a steep dive. So unfair.
"Ms. Fuubi's taking care of her now, so she's in good hands."
On my way down with Saikawa on my back, I'd run into the redheaded policewoman, who'd attached an anchor-like tool onto the building's exterior wall. She'd asked me to rescue the other people who were trapped in the fruit, and she was currently making arrangements to evacuate Saikawa and the rest.
"So, Siesta. What's the situation here?" I took another look around. Most of the buildings were half-demolished and covered in vines, and the cracks in the ground had gotten worse. This place had lost all function as a city.
"I'd say we're headed into Round Two." Suddenly, Siesta sent a sharp look at one of the destroyed buildings. Soon, from the clouds of dust, someone appeared—
"Seed…"
Seed was swaying on his feet, and part of his armor had crumbled away. The Ace Detective and the enemy of the world must have been equally matched for those ten minutes.
"We rescued Saikawa," I told Seed, coming up to stand beside Siesta. "We'll never let you touch her again. There are no pseudohumans to help you out now. Seed, your plans end here."
I pointed my Magnum at the enemy. In the same moment, Siesta aimed her musket straight at him.
"—Yes, I know. And so I retrieved that seed a short while ago."
For a fraction of a second, I thought I saw a blue flare in the depths of Seed's colorless eyes. …He couldn't mean he'd used the fruit of the huge tree to extract the seed from Saikawa, could he?
"The vessel this body originally wanted is here."
Eight tentacles stretched from Seed's back, all reaching for Siesta. There were too many of them to repel with bullets, and on top of that, they regenerated fast. We hid in the shadow of a demolished building, riding out the enemy's attack.
"So that's how it is." Wiping sweat and blood from her forehead, Siesta added to Seed's remark. "He's taking another shot at what he tried last year. My heart is inside me now, and my body is undamaged. Seed's trying to secure me as a vessel."
"I see…"
One year ago, Siesta had died and lost her right to become Seed's vessel.
However, now that she'd come back to life, she was qualified again.
"You don't have to worry, though. I won't become a vessel." Siesta spoke firmly, and her expression was dauntless. "While you were gone, Kimi, I realized something."
"You did, huh? What a coincidence. So did I."
We looked at each other, then exchanged nods. I didn't know if we were both assuming the same thing, but we couldn't be too far off.
"Assistant."
Siesta pushed my head down just as one of the enemy's tentacles pulverized the exterior wall of our building. Using the clouds of dust as cover, Siesta sprinted toward the enemy.
"—I'd predicted that attack already."
Seed's eight tentacles writhed like snakes, trying to catch Siesta in the billowing dust, but she leapt from one to the next, racing through the air and closing in on the enemy.
"Siesta!"
Just as she reached the spot directly above Seed, the tentacles formed the shape of an open-mouthed carnivorous plant and attempted to devour this foreign invader. Surrounded by a solid wall of feelers, Siesta said—
"I'm too strong for you now."
She shot her way out, scattering fragments of tentacle in all directions. Plunging straight down into the enemy, Siesta blasted a bullet into Seed's neck.
" !"
Maybe even Seed could feel pain: His face twisted slightly. The neck armor Siesta had fired at fell apart, exposing the skin underneath. In addition to the gunshot wound on the enemy's neck, there was a gash as if he'd been slashed with a large blade.
"You're losing your ability to regenerate," Siesta said. She bounced back, light-footed in spite of the broken ground. "I heard you took a dose of full sunlight and sustained a mortal injury during your fight with Bat. It damaged your cells' capacity for regeneration. Moreover," she continued, revealing another conjecture she'd thought of during this battle, "in the process of sharing abilities with your companions, you've been weakening yourself."
It wasn't clear whether Seed was listening to her or not. His neck was oozing a thick, viscous fluid, and he staggered.
"So although he was creating clones, he wasn't simply replicating," I said.
Siesta nodded. "That's right. Seed makes clones by distributing his seeds with them. That means the more clones he makes, the more power he loses."
Seed had simply been transferring his power. As he shared his abilities with his subordinates and scattered seeds across the world, he'd been growing weaker. Siesta had noticed because she'd fought him several years ago, and then again here and now.
Even so, he should have been far stronger than the average pseudohuman, but that's where Bat's desperate gambit had come in: After getting hit with sunlight, Seed's body was having trouble regenerating. Now that the Ace Detective had resurrected, she could fight him as an equal.
"—I don't understand," Seed said. He bent his back forward, his face turned toward the ground. "Why must my power be taken from me and given to my clones?"
He wasn't trying to pull one over on us, and he wasn't playing dumb. He genuinely didn't understand.
"Because that's what you wanted, right?" I'd reminded him of the wish he'd forgotten. "Seed, your wish. That survival instinct—"
Then I gave him the hypothesis I'd formed inside that building. "Its real purpose was to help your descendants survive, wasn't it?"
Seed's tentacle flew at me. "...!"
Siesta stepped forward and blocked it, swinging her musket at it like a sword.
I couldn't see any anger on Seed's face. That attack had seemed more of a defensive reaction, though, suggesting I'd hit the nail on the head.
"You mean to say this survival instinct doesn't exist for my sake? That I have it merely so that those things will live?" Seed asked, temporarily breaking off his attack.
He was talking about Cerberus and Chameleon. He was asking himself whether creating those clones and leaving them on this planet had always
been his ultimate wish.
"And that's why I unintentionally shared my power with them? You're saying I did so with the knowledge that it would age me? Such self-sacrifice could never—"
"What's so strange about that? I mean…" I answered Seed's question for him. "You're their parent, right?" At that, Seed's unfocused eyes widened. "That's why you shared your strength and your emotions with your children." All this time, we'd had the wrong idea. It was true that Seed had no emotions now, but that didn't necessarily mean he'd always been like that. Seed had made an emergency landing on Earth fifty years ago and had subsequently infiltrated human bodies, studying their structure. Since he'd learned how to disguise himself as a human, it wouldn't have been odd if
he'd acquired human emotions as well.
As a matter of fact, I'd seen signs of it. A year ago, when I'd encountered Seed at SPES's hideout on that deserted island, he'd flown into a rage at Chameleon for interrupting his conversation. It had been a small thing, but it was proof that Seed did feel anger. Besides…
"Chameleon and Cerberus were born from you, Seed. If they had emotions, it's obviously due to their parent's influence."
Essentially, we'd been looking at it the wrong way. Pseudohumans didn't acquire feelings or personalities as they grew. They inherited them from Seed, their parent.
Now that I thought about it, Seed's tone and expressions really were flatter than they had been a year ago. Every time he'd given power to his children, he'd been cutting away his emotions. He'd sacrificed those parts of himself for just one reason.
"You didn't want to ensure your survival. You only wanted to leave your seeds behind."
For living creatures, that was a natural instinct. It was a primitive, inexorable emotion they developed: the desire to leave descendants superseded their desire to survive. However, Seed hadn't noticed that… Or rather, he'd forgotten. A year ago, at that laboratory, Seed had declared that he was going to bury this planet in his seeds, and he'd called it "our objective."
As he made more clones, he'd continued to lose his power and his feelings, and finally he'd even lost sight of his original goal. His bleached-out hair,
those eyes that held no hint of emotion—before he'd even noticed, Seed had lost his humanity.
"That's why, Seed," I continued. "You don't want self-preservation. You only want your children, your seeds, to survive on this planet."
That was the final deduction Siesta and I had reached for the story of SPES.
"I see," Seed said quietly. He was standing far away from us. "So that is my ambition. The goal I'd forgotten. My reason for living. The meaning of sowing seeds. My survival instinct—I see, so that's it. I understand everything."
Now, when it was too late, he understood. If Seed had enough emotion left to be self-deprecating, he would probably have spat out the words with a sad smile.
He'd just proved our hypothesis. For the first time, humans and the primordial seed shared a common awareness. We'd reached a mutual understanding. Even so, I quickly learned that this temporary stillness didn't signal the end of the battle.
"If this body's mission is to leave descendants, then I must not die here."
Sprouting one thick tentacle from his back, Seed stabbed it into his own abdomen. He immediately gave a brief howl but stood firm.
"Rise again, my comrade."
The fluid that spilled from Seed's stomach spread over a wide patch of cracked ground, soaking in. And then…
"—Gugyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
As if the gates of hell were rumbling open, disaster emerged from the depths of the earth. At first, the stuff seeping out appeared to be liquid, but it gradually assumed the shape of an enormous four-legged beast.
A huge black body: the biological weapon Betelgeuse.
The creature had nothing resembling eyes, but as it gave a loud roar, it definitely looked at us. My feet froze in place, but not because I was scared of this monster. Memories of a year ago were flooding my brain, and I couldn't stop them. On that island, this monster had taken Siesta and—
"Assistant!"
The voice that pulled me back to the present was real, not part of that distant memory.
"...! Sorry."
I looked up at the monster again. It was even bigger than it had been last time, and its body was covered with black scales I hadn't seen before.
"—Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
The beast had to be at least ten meters long. It mowed down a frozen traffic light, crushed an abandoned car underfoot, and charged straight at us.
"...!"
It really wasn't the sort of opponent we could ward off with guns. Siesta and I sprinted out of its way; unable to stop, Betelgeuse plowed into the building behind us. However, it promptly turned back and zeroed in on us again, as if it had picked up the scent of blood. If this kept up, it would wear us down.
"Assistant."
Just then, Siesta pointed up.
I heard the sound of engines coming from the sky. Reinforcements. Had Ms. Fuubi arranged for them, or was it the official military? A swarm of combat drones appeared from the far side of the moon, preparing to launch missiles.
"That's really nice of them, but…" "They'll take us out, too."
Siesta and I exchanged nods, then booked it out of there.
Within moments, we heard explosions rain down behind us and felt the heat of the flames. I smelled something burning. Then…
"Gugyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
The roar was so loud that it would have ruptured our eardrums if we hadn't plugged our ears. However, it was proof that the missiles had struck the monster. We dove into a mountain of rubble, shielding ourselves from the hot wind, and watched the thick smoke clear, but…
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
In moments, the monster was howling again. Maybe those black scales prevented any attacks from going through. Ignoring the vortex of flames, Betelgeuse shot out dozens of tentacles from all over its body, striking at the unmanned aircraft.
"If any of those crash over here, we'll be in trouble…"
Betelgeuse's tentacles pursued the fleeing drones through the night sky, smacking one then another into the distance.
"Now's my chance." Beside me, Siesta moved. "If I can just get this bullet
to penetrate it…"
A red bullet. It was the weapon Siesta had used against Bat four years ago. If that were to hit its target, Betelgeuse's tentacles wouldn't be able to attack her anymore.
While those tentacles were battling the last remaining drone, she ran toward the enemy again.
"—Siesta!"
Just then, though, I felt Betelgeuse's nonexistent eyes turn our way. Its tentacles automatically homed in… The beast's attention had been focused on us all along.
"...!"
Deciding not to run away, Siesta shot the red bullet at the enormous enemy.
However, the monster's scales repelled it. "Siesta!"
My feet were moving before I could think.
Or rather, by the time I yelled her name, I was already right next to her. "...!"
I covered Siesta, but there was no way I'd be able to shield her from the attack completely. I was ready to die when—
Skash.
It sounded like a big blade slashing something apart. I didn't feel any pain, though. That meant it hadn't been the monster's claws gouging my back. In that case—
"Don't you think you should be my partner after all?"
A girl in a black overcoat swept a glowing red saber to the side.
Her long hair streamed in the wind. Through it, I caught glimpses of her profile. It was the face of a girl I would have risked anything to see again.
"Yeah, that wouldn't be so bad—Hel."