[AI ERROR / SAFETY BLOCK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]
“Yes. I don’t have enough of you, either.”
When Anju spotted Claude a ways off, returning from his phone call, she abruptly asked Dustin:
“Are you calling your mother regularly? I’m sure she’s worried about you.”
“Well, she probably is, but…”
A boy his age didn’t feel comfortable having his mother fuss over him too much. Except…
“You said I’m allowed to cheat a little…and that saved us.”
If she hadn’t said that, Dustin’s mother—a woman who’d emigrated from the Empire and had no influence in the Republic—might not have evacuated in time…and might not have survived.
“No big deal.” Anju smiled, but then she looked away from Dustin thoughtfully. “Though…you could cheat a little when it comes to me, too.”
Dustin stared at her, puzzled, but her sky-colored eyes didn’t meet his.
“You’re too pure, Dustin, so you don’t like cheating. So I wish you’d cheat a little and tell yourself you’re doing it for me. Before something happens and you go past the point of no return, I want you to stop and come back.”
She lowered her wavering gaze, remembering someone who never came back. Someone precious she wished would return to her but never did. And Dustin never intended to let her get hurt like that again.
“…If it’ll keep you from hating me.”
He didn’t want to become a total coward, but if it would keep her from being hurt, he could try.
“And you too, Anju. You can cheat a little and say you’re doing it for my sake. You’re not allowed to give up on coming back, either.”
“Oh, I think I’m quite the cheat already, you know? I’m fawning on you because you said I can.”
“Fawning on me isn’t cheating.”
She flashed an impish smile and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her. Her giggle tickled his ear, and hearing it for the first time in a month, Dustin smiled blissfully without even realizing it.
Frederica had decided—she would be her own sovereign, master of her own fate. And such a sovereign wasn’t allowed to look grim. If she was too occupied with her own troubles, she wouldn’t be able to save others.
And so—
“First, I must endeavor to resolve my own issues,” she whispered firmly.
“We kept you waiting, lads! A freshly baked pumpkin pie, piping hot and fresh out of the oven!”
“Mm-hmm, I have been kept waiting, indeed! I, too, want a piece!”
The supply squad captain, a first lieutenant, walked in with a large plate of pumpkin pie and was instantly swarmed by the Processors. Frederica gleefully charged into the group of hungry boys and girls for her piece of the pie.
When they’d parted ways, Lieutenant Colonel Mialona brought in all sorts of books about nuclear power and nuclear weapons, her deputy looking on at his commander with a strained smile.
“This is all way over my head.”
Shiden could understand the contents of the books, but she didn’t see any beauty in it. Lieutenant Colonel Mialona had asked her to taste-test all sorts of subjects, but sadly, this one didn’t suit Shiden’s palate. However, she had the feeling that if she did discover something she’d have fun looking into, the lieutenant colonel would be just as pleased.
She’d placed the books in their study room in the base, which resulted in some of the others reading them and one or two of themreading everything before asking the teaching staff for more, so perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Mialona’s efforts did bear fruit.
“Beauty, eh…?”
Shiden felt like maybe, just maybe, she did understand the lieutenant colonel’s words. Looking up at the faint clouds that hid the moon, shining brighter than the other clouds around them, Shiden found herself reaching out to the sky.
As the prince of a large country, Vika handled most of his personal necessities on his own. And while Raiden knew that, he never would have expected him to know how to cut apple peels into uniform ribbons or how to carve apples into rabbits. Raiden thought this as he watched Vika carefully cut an apple into the shape of rabbit ears.
And despite many having something like it on the front lines, he didn’t expect the prince to carry his own multi-tool knife.
“Aren’t you going to make rabbit apples, too, Lerche?” Rito asked.
“Hmm, well, Sir Milan, I’m afraid fashioning fruit is too tall an order for me…”
“I didn’t make her to be that dexterous. Same as how you wouldn’t ask your Scavenger over there to peel apples.”
Fido, which had been gazing up at the moon elegantly outside, approached the open window. Michihi handed it a fruit knife in amused curiosity, but…it seemed even the otherwise talented Fido, which was good at towing Juggernauts and plowing snow, had tasks it couldn’t perform. It tried picking up the knife several times but kept dropping it.
Raiden looked on as Fido dropped its shoulders in disappointment and Lerche placed a sympathetic hand over its optical sensor.
“Vika, we get it, you know how to do it, so stop peeling already. No one’s going to eat all of those.”
Vika’s Imperial violet eyes turned to Raiden in surprise.
“What?” Raiden asked.
“Nothing. I did tell you to call me that, but…I just thought it was unusual coming from you.”
“Well, you know,” Raiden said as he peeled another apple. “I figured calling you ‘prince’ is kind of heavy.”
A prince was one charged with the responsibility to save everyone and was required to take responsibility for it if they couldn’t. It was an endlessly heavy burden that one had to be ready to shoulder if they were to take on the title.
Vika remembered what he told Frederica, and the words the Republic citizens and the Hail Mary Regiment survivors shouted.Help us. Protect us. Save us.They clung, made demands, and followed blindly—a flock of sheep, driving both themselves and the governor girl who led them off the edge of a cliff.
So being a king—not one’s own king, but the king of many, of countless sheep, who both followed and drove one on—meant…
“I’m not one of your subjects…so you don’t need people like me, people who don’t follow you, to call you prince, too,” said Raiden. “At least, that’s what I figured.”
Even if it was a nickname with no loyalty or worship attached to it.
“I never thought it was heavy…” Vika tilted his head.
One’s social station was something one was born into, and it was as much a natural part of a person as their limbs, eyes, and ears. No one felt that their limbs were heavy, and in much the same way, Vika didn’t think his royal station was a burden.
He didn’t, and yet—
“…But yes,” Vika said with an amused smile. “You are not one of my subjects. And if you’re not going to speak to me with respect either way, I would prefer it if you called me by my name.”
Everyone else present exchanged looks, and Kurena was the first to nod.
“Then we’ll call you Vika from now on!”
“Yeah, thanks, Vika.”
“And honestly, you could be more laid-back with us, too, Vika. Call us by our names, for once.”
“Yes! Plus,Vikais kinda long, so how about we just call you Vi?!” Tohru raised his hand, getting carried away.
“Do you want to quite literally be placed on the chopping block, fool?”
“…Stop it, you seven-year-old. It was a joke.”
“Yes, I, too, was joking, Your Highness. I truly was, Sir Jabberwock, so please don’t be so frightened.”
Upon visiting Zelene’s crypt for the first time in a month, Yatrai raised an eyebrow.
“You’re in quite the pitiful state, Zelene Birkenbaum.”
As a Legion, Zelene had mechanisms in place that forbade her from leaking intelligence regardless of her will. Both the Federacy military and Yatrai were aware of that. And they also knew that there was no way of confirming if she was only pretending to be limited by those restrictions.
And that was why Yatrai ordered the intelligence personnel to have her tell them everything. They asked her whatever she might want to say, and all the questions the Federacy wanted answers to.
If she said she couldn’t answer a question, that, too, was a kind of information. It told them what the Legion were prevented from sharing, what the mechanical threat was trying to hide. All those things, when stacked together, served as hints.
Of course, the Legion were never meant to speak in human language, so doing it for too long strained her. And being subjected to questioning for days was a great burden. Set inside her restraining container, Zelene was no longer capable of sarcasm.
<>her electronic voice asked tiredly.
“Oh, I just came to give you a small reward. I can’t elaborate on the details, but we did discover evidence to support how rigid your prohibitions are. It was worth the effort of checking, because we’ve regained some speck of trust in you.”
The upheaval in the second northern front did allow them toformulate a hypothesis. The Legion didn’t attempt to recover the nuclear fuel. That meant that, if nothing else, the prohibition forbidding them from using nuclear weaponry was incredibly strict and firm.
This prohibition included dirty bombs. Perhaps the use of nuclear reactors and depleted uranium, as well as armor plates with depleted uranium included in them, were the sole exceptions. It was much like the funny story of how the restriction on their use of biological weaponry became so strict, they were no longer able to work alongside regular soldiers.
The Legion were made to replace rank-and-file soldiers, noncommissioned officers, or low-ranking officers on the battlefield. Such ordinary roles weren’t permitted tactical weaponry. In that case, perhaps, like nukes, the prohibition extended to the use of ballistic missiles, too.
“One more thing—and this is strictly out of curiosity. If you don’t want to answer this question, you don’t have to.”
He felt her gaze fix on him from the paper bag placed on top of her container, which had a face drawn on it. Yatrai spoke while gazing into the one cheap camera that allowed Zelene to peer into the world outside her container.
“Your ‘throne’ had a passage that leads into a lake of lava.”
[AI ERROR / SAFETY BLOCK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]
In the depths of the Dragon Fang Mountain in the United Kingdom, at the throne of the Legion commander unit called the Merciless Queen, there was indeed a passage that led into a lake of lava. It was an unnatural place to have in a commander unit’s residence.
“You dug a path underground that didn’t serve as an escape tunnel. Did you do it to have a means of ending yourself? In case no one defeated the Phönix and came for you?”
In case humankind’s defeat was set in stone and they never gained the key to shut the Legion down. Yatrai, a member of a warrior bloodline that had defended the Empire for a thousand years, cocked his head ever so slightly at the undying ghost of another warrior house.
“It doesn’t have to be now. But if you can no longer bear the shame of staying alive, we’re willing to dispose of you—the last descendant of the Imperial warrior house of Birkenbaum.”
This was a modest mercy he would extend her as a member of another waning warrior house, who had to feel the shame of clinging to life.
Zelene’s response was firm.
<<—No.>>
Yatrai raised his brow. It was the first time he heard Zelene’s tone take on a human intonation. Seeing his reaction, Zelene carried on. Yes, she did consider death for the moment all hope was lost. Indeed, death was the proper end for a mechanical ghost like her. However—
<>
Even now, they were still out there, fighting. So for as long as there was a chance any information she could give them would contribute to their operations, to their victory, she had a duty to watch their battles to their conclusion.
<>
Though they were given permission to leave the base, they had to do so in civilian clothes and with the military police following them.
I guess Iama Republic soldier…, Annette thought.
As she walked through the streets of Sankt Jeder, she saw the news being broadcast on the street television.
“…They’re reporting on it.”
Information about the “wiretaps” had finally been disclosed tothe press. The wiretaps were the source of the information leak to the Legion. Since the Legion could still be listening in on their transmissions, the army couldn’t afford to share that information soon after the arrest. It had now been quite a while since the roundup, and the exact dates of when it happened were cleverly left unmentioned, but there were no lies in the report.
The Republic used Eighty-Six children in an act that breached the Federacy’s faith.
“Yeah, that explains it.”
Annette felt hard gazes on her from passersby, probably because of the reporting. There were many Alba citizens in a multiethnic country like the Federacy, and when she was in civilian uniform, there was no immediate way of identifying Annette as a Republic soldier. This implied a general drop in the popularity of Alba across the country, not just Republic citizens.
She heard comments from the crowd like “Hey there, Weißhaare,” a derogatory term for the silver-haired Alba. The military police moved in quickly to block out their looks and insults.
“We’re sorry, Major. You’re cooperating with us, but our people say things like that…”
“Is it just around town, or do Alba soldiers get looked at like this, too?”
A soldier who spent most of their time inside the base likely knew how Alba were seen there. The military police officer made a bitter expression.
“I’m ashamed to say that they do.”
“Native Alba are treated this way, too, and volunteer soldiers from the Republic are seen as traitors…”
The news was full of debates that criticized the Republic, which only made the voices in the crowd all the more enraged. “This is why you can’t trust those weißhaare,” they said. “Cowardly Alba. We saved their lives, and this is how the traitors repay our kindness.”
“This is why those poor Eighty-Six children took revenge on them like that.”
Even comments like that went unsilenced. “The bastards in the Republic treated the children so awfully that they decided to collude with the Legion to take revenge on them”—so said one indignant voice in the crowd.
I agree, the Republic are bastards, but…, Annette thought with a sigh.
She had a strange yearning for another one of those paper cups of caramel coffee with a cute cat drawn on it.
“What, Theo, you one of those wiretaps, too? They put a quasi-nerve crystal in you, did they?” one colleague asked in a poor attempt at a joke.
“Not anymore, the Federacy took it out when they picked us up. Wanna see the scar?” Theo replied indifferently.
“Uh… Sorry. I didn’t think they really put one in you…,” said the colleague apologetically.
It wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t worth getting mad over, either. The colleague apologized profusely, but Theo shook his head, said it was fine, and then returned his ear to the mobile phone he’d been holding away from his mouth while conversing with the man.
During operational hours, using a cell phone for personal calls was frowned upon from an information-security perspective, but Theo was on break, and he was currently in an instruction unit’s base. He did need to watch what he was saying, but he was allowed to make the call.
“…Mister?”
“Oh, sorry, ignore that… How are you doing, Miel? How’s life over there treating you?”
He was speaking from Sankt Jeder to a boy who lived in a territory on the western frontier, one of the evacuation sites for Republic refugees—Miel Renard, the bereaved son of Theo’s old captain.
That’s right,Renard—“fox.”
It was only now, years later, that Theo realized this was why the man had used a fox as his Personal Mark. Incidentally, the captain’s name wasSylvain, so his name meant “forest fox.” His son’s name,Miel, stood for“honey”—“honey-colored fox.” Apparently, their entire family had some kind of affinity for foxes.
“Some stuff happened in a city where all the important people live, but my town is fine. The facility manager and the other Federacy soldiers are all nice. Oh, and…”
“Mm?”
“The food’s really good.”Young Miel sighed profoundly.“Real meat and fish taste so good. And eggs and milk and jam and cakes…”
Theo couldn’t help but smile. That was good to hear. “Once everything settles down, I’ll take you fishing. And we can make cakes and jam, too.”
“Yeah!”He could almost feel the boy nod excitedly and lean in over the phone.
But then Miel hushed his voice.
“Say, hmm… Is everything okay on your side, though, mister?”
“My side? Why?”
“There’re more scary people around there, right? What do they call them…? They have those really long names.”
What was he talking about?
“When the Republic lost in the last large-scale offensive, they said it was all your…all the Eighty-Six’s fault. They gathered around and protested that you didn’t fight hard enough.”
“…Oh.”
He meant the Bleachers. Theo didn’t remember their full name, either, but since their slogan wasreclaiming the pure white, Shin took that and started calling them “bleachers,” which caught on among the rest of the group.
“Those guys are only…wherever the Republic people are, so they’re not in the capital.”
“Oh, really?”
“But what do you mean ‘more’ scary people?”
Theo heard that after the second large-scale offensive, the Bleachers lost the civilians’ support and had a stark drop in their political power.
“Well, the important people who’d say stuff like that didn’t come back, but there’s more people bad-mouthing you. They say the Republic wouldn’t have fallen if the Eighty-Six fought right, and they should be fighting instead of them now.”
The leaders who failed to reclaim the Eighty-Six and didn’t save the Republic had all been driven out for their incompetency, but the people had still inherited their rhetoric of pinning the blame of defeat and military duty onto the Eighty-Six. With no one to lead or control them, these ideas continued to swell up on their own among the people.
“After we came to the Federacy, a lot of people had to go join the army. And now their families and the people who didn’t want to enlist are unhappy with that… They’re rioting all over the place every day.”
The Republic citizens who’d fled to the Federacy were scattered around several evacuated towns in the western-frontier production territory of Monitozoto, with their government functions being stationed in the wintry health resort of Laka Mifaka.
A large hotel in the city center was devoted to the government building, while the remaining hotels and the villas in its suburbs were allotted to Celena high officials and former nobles. Despite them being refugees who’d evacuated here, they lived in high-class residences. However, since the people related to the wiretaps were arrested, a strange tension hung over the area. The Federacy didn’t arrest just the low-ranking military officials operating the wiretaps, but also the high officials who’d given them the order to do so, as well. Whenever someone else was discovered to be related to the matter, the Federacy military police would show up to arrest them, too, and so the upper classes weren’t able to enjoy their luxurious lives.
The leader of the Bleachers, Primevére, was one person who was verymuch on tenterhooks over the possibility of the military police coming for her. She wasn’t involved with the wiretaps, but the lieutenant colonel who was arrested was a comrade of hers. Since she’d lost much of her influence, she was given a relatively small villa, and eventually, the military police would likely come to question her, too.
“…What?”
But that day, Primevére went pale for a reason entirely unrelated to the military police. The Federacy’s news programs reached Laka Mifaka as well. One of her colleagues saw the program and called her attention to it—a mugshot of an escaped Eighty-Six girl.
“The Actaeon survived…and escaped…?”
[AI ERROR / SAFETY BLOCK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]
Among the Federacy army, many soldiers only received minimal education and didn’t have detailed information about the nature of nuclear weapons. The vague news of the commotion in the second northern front’s 37th Armored Division was received by the rest of the northern front and the other fronts as well with a degree of misunderstanding.
A dangerous nuclear weapon nearly destroyed the second northern front, and it was the Strike Package that stopped it from happening. Or the Fleet Countries’ people summoned a monster called a leviathan that protected the second northern front from the nuclear weapon. Or nuclear weapons could destroy the Legion, but traitors tried to hide it. Or the Federacy was meant to win using this powerful superweapon called a nuke, but the leviathans got in the way. Or the traitors tried to cooperate with the Legion with the nuclear weapons, only to be stopped by the Strike Package.
Their stories didn’t make it clear what the Strike Package even was anymore, but they did know it was an elite unit of amazing Eighty-Six heroes. And so the soldiers continued embellishing and exaggerating their stories until what they said didn’t resemble the truth at all.
“—If they’re supposed to be heroes.”
Looking at the mire that spread on the other side of the Roginialine’s currents, Vyov Katou, an armored infantryman, whispered in shocked amazement. Despite having fallen back, the second northern front’s battlefield was still within the confines of the combat territories. Though many of its soldiers and field officers were former citizens of those territories, they weren’t from here specifically. Even so, the outcome the Strike Package brought to this place came as a terrible shock for the soldiers.
There was no flour to be grown in this sea of mud. No sheep or cows or pigs to herd here.
Many of the territories’ people were farmers. To them, the sight of the water and mud destroying this agricultural land and bringing it to a state that would take a long time to repair struck them as terribly cruel.
Vyov gritted his teeth. This wasn’t a solution. This wasn’t a success, or a victory. This wasn’t the future or salvation he was looking forward to!
“What the hell is the Strike Package doing…?”
They were heroes. Elites. Weren’t they supposed to save Vyov and the second northern front?!
“But you didn’t do anything! Aren’t heroes supposed to save everyone?! You good-for-nothings!”
It was sudden.
The faces of the boys who died before his eyes, young men just slightly older than him, their enraged expressions, and the sound of shouting wafted up in his mind like soap bubbles. It made Shin’s breath catch in his throat.
The memory resurfaced, still fresh in his mind. An outrageous and yet terribly heartfelt shout.
It was the memory of the moment when those young men were torn to bits by gunfire.
They all had the same faces. Even though they all should have looked different from one another, when they completely discarded their individuality and moved in perfect tandem, when they spoke the samewords, had the same thoughts, and were dyed in the same emotions—their faces all became the same to him.
It was a terrifying moment. People who couldn’t become masters of their own fate, people who harbored no fear whatsoever. Even people as powerless as that could still blame others.
I can’t. I won’t decide.They would say that and still try to place blame. They could still step over someone else.
They were different from the Eighty-Six who’d been made into Shepherds. People who, even through hatred, could not achieve anything. And for some reason, it terrified Shin.
Sensing Shin sink into thought, Lena blinked once.
“Shin? Is something wrong?”
“Huh?”
“Something upset you just now.”
“Oh…”After a moment’s thought, Shin shook his head.“No, don’t worry about it. I don’t quite understand it yet myself.”
“Well, if you say so…”
What’s wrong?As that thought lingered in her mind, Lena returned to the topic at hand. She was curious about that anxious, almost fearful silence, but if Shin himself didn’t fully understand it, there wasn’t much point in pressing him on it. She did know that, as he was now, Shin wouldn’t simply look away from a problem or try to bottle it up and take it solely upon himself.
“Halloween. I’m disappointed I can’t be there this year, but next year, I’ll definitely participate. And I want you to participate with me.”
“Well…I don’t mind, but this year, it’s mostly people wearing sheets to play around as ghosts, so a lot of people want to go all out next year.”
In place of a farewell party, the second northern front threw a slightly delayed Halloween party, but since it was difficult for the supply line to provide an entire brigade’s worth of costumes given the war situation, everyone had to improvise using their personal clothes and whatevermaterials they had handy. For the most part, that meant sheet ghosts, drawing stitch marks on their faces, using handkerchiefs to make werewolf ears, or putting on thick makeup to look like witches.
Lena paused to think. Sheet ghosts were easy enough to make, but they couldn’t very well cut holes in the sheets.
“Could they see what was in front of them with those sheets on?”
“Apparently not. Most of them decided to change classes to witches, werewolves, or monsters.”
One example that stood out for how simple it was: A few of the Orienta members, Michihi included, put paper talismans on their foreheads to pass off as Far Eastern ghosts—a pretty successful idea. Marcel also got a lot of credit for writing the wordghoston his forehead and walking around with it with a straight face.
“What did you dress up as, Shin?”
“…I put an eyepatch over one of my eyes, and they had me hold a mop, saying it was a spear.”
Like a chief deity and god of death from a certain mythology, apparently.
“That’s cool!”
“Rito, who came up with it, laughed, and Raiden, Anju, and Kurena all snickered at me, too… Rito had a pumpkin drawn on his face, and Raiden wore grease camouflage paint to look like a zombie. Anju used blue makeup to look like a snow queen, and Kurena put on red lipstick to look like a vampire princess. It felt unfair that they laughed at me.”
Shin grumbled tiredly. Apparently, he didn’t appreciate it.
“Yes, but I can understand wanting to take that chance to be cute.”
“What would you wear, Lena? Like, for next year.”
Lena paused and considered this. Being a sheet ghost didn’t seem too appealing.
“…How about that magical girl Frederica likes?”
“Does that count? That’s not really a monster, it’s just a costume.”
“I think it counts as a witch.”
“Isn’t it more of a fairy…?”
Lena thought it didn’t really matter. More crucially—
“How about you dress up as a werewolf next year? With well-made ears, not handkerchiefs.”
“Shouldn’t that be Raiden? He’s the one piloting Wehrwolf.”
“But I want to see you with puppy ears, so I can rub your ears. And a tail, too!”
She then concluded that black cat ears with a tail like TP’s would work as well, and if Raiden being a werewolf was decided, they could put fox ears and a tail on Theo. That way, she’d be able to pat everyone.
Lena’s excited suggestion, however, only resulted in a very disgruntled voice from Shin.
“Ugh…”
Hearing Shin heave an exasperated groan, unlike anything she’d ever heard him make in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, Lena burst into laughter.
Bölüm Tartışması
0 yorumHenüz yorum yok. İlk tartışmayı sen başlat.