Book 9 Chapter 6
The Noble Ingot fire had been extinguished.
Not all the microplastic snow had been cleaned up in the city, but it helped a lot that no more was falling. A ton of dump trucks had come from outside Kukyou City to carry away the snow.
“They’re called the greater wax moth,” said the forehead glasses Class Rep. “Their larvae actually eat plastic. They were saying on TV we can introduce those here if shoveling the snow isn’t enough.”
There were a lot of animals that you had to wonder how they ever evolved that way. And didn’t the greater wax moth infest beehives?
With all the confusion still ongoing, school wasn’t going to start back up for a while yet, but I doubted it would be all that long now.
Once back home, I found Ayumi lying on the living room sofa.
“Fugu. Everything on TV’s so boring. What they’re saying sounds reasonable enough, but none of it actually solves anything.”
“What are they supposed to say? If you can’t find a culprit, then you have to rule it an accident. And on TV, they can only say what has been confirmed true. Even if someone is clearly dead after being eaten by a croc, they can only say they’re ‘in cardiac arrest’ until a doctor has declared them dead.”
“You’re as bad as them.”
“What do you want from me?”
My clumsy older sister had been shoved into the ocean at the end there and she was asleep in her coffin right now since it was daytime. …But I had a feeling she wouldn’t emerge even once night fell unless I apologized.
“Fuguu. But we worked so hard to fix this, so I hate seeing them act like they know what they’re talking about.”
“We can’t go public with what happened and you know it. If you’re bored, go help mom.”
That mom, Amatsu Yurina, was folding the laundry in a corner of the living room while humming along with the TV’s background music. She must have been ecstatic that the power was back on and at her age that apparently meant she wanted to do some ironing. The way she was acting, she might not be willing to give up the work even if you offered to help.
JB.
There was no mention of that name on TV or online. There had been no crew aboard the Noble Ingot, but the ignorant people had all reached their own conclusions, ranging from ‘it was a ghost ship’ to ‘the crew fled after screwing the pooch so bad’.
You want to know what happened with Hotaruzawa Kezuri and the uncontrollable goddess Hecate?
We gave unconscious Umikaze to that god of witches, but we still have no idea what Hecate wanted with her.
But that must have satisfied her in some way because, the next thing we knew, she was gone and the limp Scylla was all that remained.
Hecate had not seemed interested in the mysterious JB and she had not even tried to take that blonde girl away with her.
She lent people her power for fun.
On a whim.
When she felt like it.
We had not been able to leave Umikaze Speechia or Hotaruzawa Kezuri with the normal police. Because the “previous JB” had been shot by another member of that group in a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department holding cell after that incident.
But I only knew one place with better security than that.
“Mom.”
Absolute Noah.
The actual ark had been more or less destroyed and the group really only existed in name only now, but I didn’t know any other group with roots hidden all over the underside of the world.
Where had Hecate gone?
Like I said, Umikaze was still with us and Kukyou City was not flooded with witches. Also, there had been no motorboat out on the ocean. She may have chosen some deserted part of the world to go on a secret journey.
But anyway…
“Sorry about throwing this trouble in your lap.”
“It’s fine, Satori,” she replied cheerfully.
Yes.
She really did sound like it was no problem at all while she was down on the floor folding my pajamas.
“So, Satori. What do you think JB will do about us holding those two criminals?”
“Eh? Well, they won’t be able to do what they did last time, so won’t they be at an impasse?”
“No. They will come for them no matter what it takes. If they didn’t want the police to learn about their group, then they really won’t want us to,” she stated quite plainly. “And that actually works out really well for us. I am thankful for this, Satori. If I told the others we needed to start a war ourselves, I might get some complaints from our own weary people. But if JB is attacking us, we have no choice. We have to defend ourselves, right?”
“Wait a second, mom. What are you talking about?”
“We have feelings too. Remember Charlotte the Echidna? Do you know how much JB’s appearance affected her and others like her? But if we hunt down JB, they will be drawn back to Absolute Noah. No matter what happened, our power will all return to where it belongs.”
No.
Wait.
That wasn’t why I had left Umikaze Speechia and Hotaruzawa Kezuri with her.
This wasn’t meant to start a new war!!
“Absolute Noah may have stopped functioning, but that doesn’t mean the Calamity is gone. We did discuss this a fair bit, but we never did find a fundamental solution, so it can’t hurt to hold onto the ark. I want to get the ark back up and running as soon as possible and that requires excellent personnel and funding. And I’m sure JB needs that too. I don’t know what exactly their jailbreak entails, but I can imagine they need a lot of skilled personnel. …So the two groups will now be fighting over anyone they can use.”
She had said she was thankful.
So was it me?
Had I dumped new oil on Amatsu Yurina’s fighting spirit that might have been fully extinguished given enough time!?
“A war is beginning.”
Her words were frightening and inexcusable, but she sounded somehow refreshed while speaking them.
“And we are not up against a natural or manmade disaster this time. This is a battle between organizations.”
Step 01
Shall we begin the war?
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(Clicking continue qualifies as agreement. Your choice cannot be changed later.)
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