Heaven's Door (Trigun Maximum-Blue Archive)

- HEAVEN'S DOOR -

Spoiler

All credits reserved to:
Trigun Maximum, by Yasuhiro Nightow
Blue Archive, by NAT Games, Nexon

---------------

In the yet to be seen distant future—
In a place beyond reaches…
The song of humanity continued to be sung—​

---

​

The air was hot and dry. Well past afternoon, the horrifyingly clear blue sky meant the almighty twin-sun’s baleful shines would glare down on everything to the point of cutting one’s shadow to right below their feet.

The few who would go outside were those who needed to go to some places, or those who had no choice but to bear the sunlight on their backs as they went around with their business. Well, the rustic town had seen little changes, but it was for better or worse life. In the arid wasteland of a planet people had come to call as No Man’s Land, everyone needed to pull their own weight one way or other.

“Get out! Get out, you dimwits!!”

A burly body was thrown out of the saloon doors. Following after him was a slightly shorter one, lanky in form. They wore ripped clothing that received a whole new sandy coating on them, and they scrambled to their feet. If there was one way to describe them, it’d be reaching the wits’ end that reason had all but vanished from their pinprick eyes.

“You bastards—!”

Before the gunmen drew their weapons, ten different barrels glared back. The bigger one gasped, the shorter one turned around only to stare blank-faced as another dozen barrels pointed at them from the other side of the streets. It was an honest mistake on their part. But who’d have imagined their attempt on dine and dash ended up threatening them with a fate worse than pincushion?

“…d-damn it…! What the hell are you all, acting like you’re united as one!!”

They scrambled to their feet, but instead of lashing back at the world, they turned their tails and hastily ran out of the town. Away from the mad town they went, leaving the spectators a little bit speechless. Well, it was nothing unusual here or in other places. Death’s omen was something people had to accept and consider in their daily lives.

After all, who knew when would their precious Plant come offline. It was nothing short than miracle that this town had managed to grow this far after over 150 years, but such was the tenacity of human spirits. In the face of adversity, only the most determined could carve out a path for everyone else to follow. Some of the men tipped their hats to each other. Some went back to their games and hobbies. Of the remaining leftovers, they turned to gossips, smokes and drinks; nothing too strong lest Lina would knock them down by a peg.

“What’s this? I though I saw a commotion, but it seems nothing happened.”

Then a youth entered the saloon. His voice was tinged with confusion, though there was a different emotion mixed in it. He seemed like he had a backbone, so it was only natural that he’d draw attentions. The moustached bartender, the owner of the humble establishment, raised an eyebrow. Seeing the apparent young man with a travel bag over his shoulder, he dipped his head in greeting.

This boy means no harm, move on everyone.

“Nothing big,” the old man said. He had grown some more wrinkles over the last few years, but his spirit of service did not diminish. “Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. You smell of grease and hard cleaning agent, though.”

“Hah, yeah.” The youth in a worn out overall cracked a smile. “I’m a novice sandsteamer mechanic. Winds up here since I got led by the temptation of fine and chilled refreshments.”

Somebody made a sound. From his seat, the man in a coat and cowboy hat pulled up his gaze from the card games on the table. “Oh! The train is here already?”

“Come on, you forgot already? It’s been there since last night!” One of the other card game players remarked.

“Hah ha! Sorry, sorry. But man, you’re young! Must be good with your hands, eh?”

A round of laughter erupted. It was neither loud nor quiet. The young mechanic somehow followed in suite, turning around the stool he sat in.

“It’s an honest work,” the youth said. “And the train is precious. Can’t have her be treated wrongly, or she’ll throw tantrums.”

The mood was pleasant. It was good. Life here was not always all bad, but this might be a good turn of event after the earlier annoyance. The bartender softened his gaze as he finished preparing the requested drink.

“Oh. Thanks, old man.” A big gulp, followed by a pleased sigh. “Yeah, that hits the spot.”

“Only the best for the earnest.” The bartender went over to the sink, turning the faucet to wash dishes. “Got any story to share? That glass is on me.”

The youth’s smile turned a little sly. Still, he turned back to rest his arm on the counter, his shoulders relaxing. It was then that the radio sparked to life.

[Here’s to another hot day! No Man’s Land Broadcasting is here with breaking news only to your viewing!!]

Oh, brother. It seemed the timing was simply unfortunate. The old man turned off the faucet, but as the typical jingle flowed into the air, the young train mechanic shook his head. Well… fair enough.

[Today marks a new development in Octovern! The Ark Dome has seen further expansion, and reconstruction effort is almost done!]

A crowd of noise filled the saloon. Some looked up with lightness in their gait, others chuckling snidely. The smell of cigarettes wafted out of the windows, and so people’s attentions fell back to their own matters. The bartender glanced at the mechanic. The boy shrugged.

“Well. Looks like we’re back on schedule,” the youth said. “The hubbub from the Ark Incident has died down a lot. We’ve got more clients than ever, but the sandsteamer isn’t really a cargo vessel.”

“Oh, your kind are getting government works?”

“Not to say we’re moving up the ladder.” The bitter smile on the youngster’s face told it all to the owner of the establishment. “Those bunches from Earth are kind of intense, but thanks to them, we received priority medical check-ups and topline security for our fair lady.”

The elderly man tending counter paused. He wiped dry the glass and placed it in the right shelf. Sometimes he forgot that a lot of things had changed. Was it for the better, or was it for the worse? At his age, you wouldn’t expect yourself to have the flexibility to adapt, but the miracle of that day was hard to dismiss.

“…when he appeared, my life turned upside down.” The mechanic wistfully looked to the side. From this position, he and the bartender could look past the windows and at an enormous, curved wreckage with an equally massive light bulb hanging onto the corpse of a colony ship. “Yours is also looking good, feels like she’s loved.”

“Yeah, well… I suppose we have granny and little Lina for that.”

“Don’t know who they are. Must be some really good folks.” The mechanic put down his glass. The ball of ice crinkled in the half-empty container. “It’s a good sight, anyway. Even if only cared recently, the fact that she’s still running up to this point must mean you guys treasure her.”

“…you’re a flatterer, you know that?”

The elderly huffed. It made him feel a bit heckled, seeing a youngster talk so passionately like that. Almost reminded him of… no, that didn’t matter. He and the rest of the town ratted that guy out in spite of all that he had done for them. It wasn’t his place to talk as if he was fond of that man—

[This is NLBC, coming right up with a notice posted by the council of Octovern!]

The mechanic perked his head up. The announcer’s voice had changed, from energetic young woman to a formal-speaking man. Even the regulars noticed, and needless to say, so did the bartender.

[Tomorrow is the day where the first moon will be seen in her brightest, fullest form! A sight for sore eyes, a good companion to have over a drink with your loved ones, or maybe a traveling partner…! But most of all… it is a day for mourning.]

There was a clink. The ice had melted.

[Stardate: 7/21/0104. On that day, a legend started. On that day, a nightmare awakened, clad in crimson. On that day, a mark was forever etched on this sand-blasted planet… The past is the past, but everyone. On behalf of the lost souls, we shall pray for Lost July.]

The mechanic lifted his head. Somebody dragged down his hat. Some stood up and left the bar, scratched coins and crusted paper moneys on the table. The elderly gazed at the air, and so he inevitably recalled the faint smile of that man. He who had once met little Lina and became a part of the town’s daily lives.

Love, and peace… That was his motto, but it sometimes felt like a curse. Could it be that he believed in it because he wished to believe, or was it because he had no other choice except turning to those words as a form of absolution? Him, the blonde-haired man of legends. Only time will tell, I suppose…

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The two bandits had escaped the Sheriff. It was just their luck that the knave actually got up and saw a reason to chase them down, the bastard.

However, there was no sand ostrich, no motorcycle, and no expensive things like automotive for the sucker to use. Obviously, it didn’t take long before the filthy bootlicker with a rotund body lost the two, and now they found themselves out in the wasteland proper, away from the nearest civilization with the rocks and cacti serving as occasional landmarks.

“Goddamn it, that’s a missed mark.” His partner-in-crime muttered. More like an underling and a weakling, he still packed a mean punch with that large-caliber shotguns on his back. Perfect to blow off the heads of those happy-go-lucky civilians spoiled by their momentary fortunes. “How many times does this make?”

“Come on, boss. It’s nothing big. Next town will be the hit, I’m sure of it!”

The man was easy to trick. Gullible to a fault, even. He never noticed the increasing amount of loot shares that never went into his pocket. Although, when all things were said, this so-called partnership wouldn’t last for long. The lankier of the two hummed inwardly, wondering if he could make for a quick escape after scattering this loser’s brains across the dune—

“…hey, look. That’s a person over there.”

What? The mind to the brawl whirled his head and indeed, they were seeing a person collapsed right there down the hill. It was difficult to know if the poor bastard was still alive, but a mark was a mark. Even if he had no pretty penny, no solo traveler would bring only clothes on their back. An easy picking, at last…!

The two outlaws exchanged looks. They smiled wickedly before rushing down the sloped sand dune, arriving with clouds of dust trailing behind them.

What lied at their feet struck them speechless.

They thought it was a person, but no, it was a creepy wooden puppet. Dressed in a silly suit, almost looking comical and overly fancy. What the hell?

Their surprise didn’t last long. When the buried neck creaked, the pair of outlaws froze over and drew up their weapons. Instinct and experiences, no matter how rough and improperly taught, were still a semblance of skills. However, not even their whole lives of perils, killing and looting prepared them for a wooden puppet with two heads.

The puppet creaked as it came to life, the motion and audiovisual petrifying the outlaws in fear. It rose up, first taking out its heads that were coarsely drawn with childish drawings of a face that instead made it all the more terrifying from the sequence of motions it underwent. It propped its arms, rolled its shoulders, lifted its upper body, and finally stood up on its own two feet.

There was no mechanical machinery attached to it. As thin and form-fitting suit it wore showed an unreal sense of organic movement, the noise of groaning wood and creaking joints could hardly be heard coming from a living thing. This thing… whatever it was, did not fit within the frame of common sense seen throughout No Man’s Land.

"Ah, I can sense it. The "mark" of a legend. The raw wound of emotion emanated from this place." The double-headed wooden puppet with no face except rough black lines on its heads lurched its upper body forward. "But alas. The legend, the sublime, is not here. Only residues remain, but meaning? Yes. Meaning can be derived from those very residues."

His partner clucked his teeth. He had the dreadful premonition of him losing to his nerves and making a choice that the two would forever regret, but then—the puppet “looked” at them. Properly, as if the creepy drawings on its faces were meant to be some sort of functioning face. It stared at them and petrified them in place like an awe-stricken audience of a concert.

“I bid you apology, travellers. Alas, I lack the necessary paint and brushes to represent the meaning I’d like to simulate from you. There is no appropriate canvas suitable for you gentlemen.” With awkwardly open arms, the wooden puppet seemed as if it was saying “as you can see” to their faces. “And so, I shall bother you gentlemen no longer. You could neither be my ally, nor could you be an enemy with some sort of significance to bear.”

He didn’t get it.

What the hell was this thing talking about? What the hell was it trying to convey, and what did it see in them to give such a judgment. However, the anger that should have been flared up in his belly did not appear. No, in truth…

There was nothing. The fact that he couldn’t sense anything, feel anything, and show even a twitch of expression… Alarming. Dreadful. Madness. And yet, he and his lousy but burly underling could only chatter their teeth. As the thing that felt like a puppet but not at all one walked past them, the growl and creaks of its wooden structure became an impression forever etched in the back of their heads.

It walked. It walked. And then it walked.

It headed past them, to a direction that could lead it anywhere with wobbly wooden feet that sank deep into the sea of dirt. Its presence, heavy and draining, gradually faded from view. When the pressure in the air all but vanished, the two outlaws fell to their knees. They stayed in that position as if for eternity, as the terrible sun shifted to the west to paint the bright blue sky with a tint of orange.

What… exactly did we just come across to?

He didn’t know. His cowardly minion definitely wouldn’t be able to tell, either. In the end, the otherworldly nightmare passed by them, and tall tales disappeared beneath the rolling sands of this blasted planet.

It was just how life worked.

---

A/N: Hello. Halo. Hola. Have a seat, folks. Yet another new title from yours truly.

Well, being honest, this story has been worked in the background for quite a while. I'm a fan of Yasuhiro Nightow's works (Kekkai Sensen, Trigun), but there was an empty feeling from having read a finished story, yeah? Then come Blue Archive, as well as a friend who got roped in to deal with my bouts of madness-driven idea exchanges. Boom. That's how this story's conception came to be. Guns, Vash, chaotic hubbub, and all-around nonsense like two peas in a pod. What do you think? I feel like Kivotos pairs well with the high-tension funky comedies of No-Man's Land, and Kekkai Sensen is similarly no slouch when it came to random zaniness.

I'm still writing the other stories that I have by the way, just... not in the same rate I usually do. Writer's block is a bitch, but my case can get particularly bad sometimes. I'm sorry for that, by the way.

Also, the art is personally drawn by me. I got consumed by the story I had outlined to the point it set me off to draw lots and lots. It's a nice inspiration, at least. And it keeps my hands and brain busy, which is a plus in my book.

 

--- Episode 2: Ballad of Stories ---​

The dim lighting flickered again before the power grid stabilized. Usually, low rumbling could be felt here and there, but dinner time had long passed. It was just the occasional night owls or overtime workers who would linger around the maintenance corridors now.

“Paranormal activity? Now that’s one hell of a garbage to hear around here.”

“Come on, it’s a true story! Even some of the elders saw it!”

Oh, is that so…? He’d say that space colonization and the reality-altering property of Plant were no different than fantasy stuff. As he turned the wrench clockwise, he found it awfully hard to budge. Gritting his teeth, Brad threw all of his might in it for one last spin. He who could now call himself a real adult pulled himself out from the machinery, the flashlight on his safety helmet tilting while his brows were slick with sweat, oil and grime. He felt like taking a hot shower. Where’s my towel… right, it’s on my shoulder.

After he wiped his face, it was a good time as any to get a smoke break. Taking a cigarette and a lighter, he bit on the former and ignited the latter.

Hah… nothing beats nicotine polluting your lungs after a job done well… “What’s with that look?”

“Brad, you sure is acting like a punk these days. Not that you have ever been anything but that.”

The man with a pompadour scowled. “You picking a fight or something, huh?”

His fellow mechanic raised a hand in a half-hearted sign of surrender. Brad clicked his tongue, though his tempers went down as fast it had appeared.

“I mean, this whole region is kind of always in a lockdown state.” His peer threw up a dramatic shrug. “The gravity plant helps protect us from bandits, keep ourselves invisible, but it makes things eerie when night falls. Not even insect-variant sand worms could approach the area.”

And what does that have to do with a dumb ghost story? “Didn’t know you’re into superstition bullshit like that.”

“Oh, shut up. At least let me finish.” The guy cleared his throat, even as Bradwick gradually and surely losing interests in the topic. “Ever since the Ark Incident, we’ve got a more stable line with Earth. The colonies stranded in this forsaken planet can be saved, and even if it’s impossible to return because of what they said about cultural shifts and mores… There’s still the treasure trove of knowledge and advanced technology to fix up all the plants that we have.”

“Right…”

“So, then. That’d mean opening up closed off sections.”

Bradwick groaned. This was getting nowhere, and he had longed to hit the bar more than two hours ago. “Can we get to the goddamn point already?”

The slacker had the nerves to complain when he didn’t even once do much beyond talking about all the things everyone that lived in this colony ship knew as good as the back of their own hands. Thankfully, the tasteful flavour of the cigarette helped distract the head mechanic of the ship. Just a tiny bit.

“Ugh. I can’t believe you, Brad.” The slacker grumbled. “Fine, have it your way then, absolute killjoy.”

Finally...! As Brad refilled his lungs with smokes, he leaned his back against the cold iron plating walls. He tuned out half of the things that entered his ears from right to left, but even as he lifted his chin, he could hardly see the colours of the skies. His team were particularly deep in the lower sections of the colony ship, close to the missing portion he had once ejected to dispose the grotesque “masterwork” of that son of a bitch. Bastard should already be bone powder down there—

“Whenever the gravity plant is powering down, there’s just this strange… figure of a headless man in a coat holding a photo frame to his chest.”

Huh… a headless man in a coat, hm? “Oddly brutal. Just where do you even sight that kind of thing around here?”

“The cryogenic chamber and the… uuh, think it’s the Plant hangar.” His underling shrugged from his bored look. “Also, one of the high-definition cameras sighted the ghastly thing at the bottom of the valley, too. Right next to the section you ejected some years back.”

…oh, is that how it is? Somehow, Brad found himself incapable of getting surprised, though he harshly sucked in more smokes than ever. The cigarette quickly was spent and a load of smokes drifted in the air. Amidst the haze scented with old oil and rust, memories evoked only to come apart. Well, people like that rarely die in peace.

It was his just desert, he supposed. While Brad could age and die surrounded by his kin, the bastard down there would wander around this planet for eternity. He deserved that for killing the old man and so many others.

So long, sucker.

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The night was cold. Even worse with the absolutely hopeless climate of this sand-blasted planet that lied deep in the corner of the universe.

From the balcony made from repurposed cabin of a voyager age’s colony ship, the moon waned past midnight. Rough winds blew from the dead tree-like wreckage which formed a radio communication tower.

It made her coat taking the brunt of the cold night air. Utterly noisy.

The radio tower was set to be dismantled this weekend, and in its place would stand a cutting-edge telecommunication array taken from a fallen Super Destroyer ship of the fleet she was associated with. It was something else, indeed.

What usually took half a day of construction back on the Sol System nearly took a year to build in this far-flung deep space zone. For some reasons, it made her realize how tough living was for the colonists and their descendants. Respect… well, that was reserved for the first generation who had managed to eke out their roots on this wasteland. The later generations, though?

“Mixed bag at best, downright infuriating at worst.”

Chronica took a sip of her coffee. As part of the latest generation, her constitution barely required effort and energy to keep on working. That said, her superior could be a bit too considerate for his own good. It wasn’t bad, just a bit… well, like having a doting uncle of some sorts. In any case, the last-minute fine-tuning was her personal touch, so hopefully they could make contact with Earth for minutes absent of noise tomorrow. It took times to launch enough satellites that could catch and ping back signals from the Sol System.

Next step, requesting large-scale humanitarian aid...

The resources that survived their fleet’s crash landing had quickly dried up after the situation stabilized. Hundreds… if not thousands of quirks followed up as she saw witness to the greatest union of Plants history had ever recorded.

The dome set a fair distance below was slowly turning off most spotlights meant for work construction effort. When only several remained to highlight the broad shape of the Ark, workers traded places with security and the area was cordoned off, the site getting closed for the next few days-off. Many of the fleet’s soldiers were equipped to the teeth, yet they lacked much information of the local. As such, teams were made with a native advisor assisting in the workflow. It wasn’t the best setup, but it wasn’t like they could complain much. Besides, their crushing defeat had made for a low morale, so the city council suggested the fleet crew to work across the region.

“Not the right season for stargazing, don’t you think?”

Ah, there we go. A familiar face. A familiar voice. The tall stature of her direct superior appeared from the catwalk. With thin-rimmed glasses on his nose, a neatly shaved beard, and with solemn dignity in his posture. The familiar human let out a white breath that quickly dissipated in the roaring winds; his tattered coat fluttering in a futile resistance. The Plant raised an eyebrow. Does he ever replace that coat?

“It’s been several years,” she started. “I didn’t expect you to hang on to that thing for so long.”

The man blinked. He pulled at the collar of his coat and chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t look bad on me, does it?”

“Among the rest, I didn’t expect you to take in the local culture so well, Captain.”

“Hah. Yes, I suppose that’s just how human adaptability goes. Though, it looks almost as if time has come to a standstill only for you.” A short silence. “I was out of the line for that… I apologize.”

“No offense taken.” Chronica shrugged. It was their usual byplay. The fleet commander was the honest sort, maybe a bit blunt and willful even. In the way that the illustrious Stampede refused to take lives, her superior was one who could not hide his thoughts and conviction. Him expressing his fascination with Plant kind had been duly noted since their first meeting. “It’s been a while since we last talked outside of work matters, Captain.”

“True enough.” The man approached. He stood next to her, his hands resting on the railing. The place he had set his gaze on was the unimaginatively named dome containing much of the colonies’ old Plants. “What do you make of life here, then?”

Chronica glanced to the side. His profile, weathered from age and experience, was stern as stone. At the same time, he always raised the right questions. In the right time, in the right position. Sometimes, one could do more just by meeting specific criteria in a very specific situation. The folks from Central Government could learn a page or two from him.

“…well,” the Plant in the shape of an adult female human muttered. The warm drink had started to cool down. Still passable, however. “Our food, gas and water are strictly rationed. The late military chief was at least diligent with internal management, so the adaptation procedures managed to come through just fine…”

Chronica paused, a topic suddenly coming to the forefront of her mind. She spun her head and threw a thousand-yard stare at her direct superior.

“Right. Tell the masses to get off from the goddamn dome.” She grumbled, “I don’t give a damn how grateful they are. Religious fervor are too radical of an influence for brats who haven’t even finished forming their sense of selves.”

“N-now that came right out of nowhere…” The Captain blinked dumbly.

“Who. Cares. If you can’t scatter them, stop them from coming over every goddamn week! My work keep on piling up with all the freaks and cultists barging in!!”

“C-Chronica, calm down…! I’ll bring it up in the next council meeting, so watch your step!! This isn’t exactly the most stable platform!!”

Good, then! Common sense, at least, had yet to entirely vacate the Captain’s head. His pride might have taken a harsh beating from having been thoroughly outwitted by Million Knives, but he was not so inflexible of a person to keep on bashing his head against the wall. There are times and places for every approach.

Bullheadedness was best reserved for the absolute buffoons. She’d rather not have more overpowered Independents that swung between the two extremes of moral compass. Too many unknown. Too many variables to count. Too little ways to assure herself that everything which had worked elsewhere could be applied in this godforsaken planet.

Chronica clicked her tongue. “I also have other complaints—but that’s not the answer you’re looking for, right? Captain.”

Taking his silence as her signal, Chronica rolled her shoulders. She lifted her chin, slowly adjusted her vision, and gazed upon the night sky. It was vast. Much too vast than back on Earth.

The wasteland stretched in all directions. The ribcage of the colonization ship’s corpse became jagged claws that crawled towards the heavens. As if praying. As if hoping. As if they were the beaten fingers of a penitent seeking for salvation. What did the people, hopeful for a new start, think upon landing in this dead planet? What did they see, what did they feel, and what did they say as they looked towards the empty horizons?

This remote star system only answered with the baleful blazes of the suns and the frozen light of the moons.

“A hopeless place, is one thing.” Chronica was a little surprised by the somberness in her own voice, though maybe it was a given. Children. Adults. Men and women and those weird insects alike. This sand-blasted hell wanted nothing more than to prey on those who were frail enough to expose their weakness. “A sad, dark and merciless prison that people ended up sealing themselves in.”

She had scoured the records. 150 years of stasis… nay, perseverance. More than a century of scrapping things back up together just to create a semblance of a livable human habitat, poor and destitute by modern Earth standard. The spaceship wreckage became shelters from the scorching twin suns, Plants were unearthed, then technology proliferated to redevelop civilization. Little by little, little by little…

That fine, delicate balance broke with the first drop of bloodshed.

Human malice had won out.

She hadn’t gotten much more than fragments back on Sol System, and what little thing she had salvaged from her access into her dear friend’s last will drowned in the flame of vengeance. Now that she had to live with her failures, she recognized and accepted the reality of it all. The cruelty of man. The twisted obsessions that bore fruits to unending wickedness. The unimaginable suffering of her distant relatives… Independents—

Chronica blinked, tiny dots of colorful light spread across the sea of darkness far below on the surface.

It was a distraction. A crude show of colorful lights that portrayed the night life in this post-apocalyptic world. The sight just so happened to catch her eyes, and the distance and height allowed her to scoop up a sea of artificial stars amidst the hollow darkness. Obviously, she could hardly tell if those bright lights were just the lights of lamps, or the flashes of gunshots and grenades.

“Chronica?”

Chronica smiled, wan like the moonlight. The woman heaved a sigh, her spirit a little down from losing a bet. “It’s like that gunman had said.”

Give us a chance. You wouldn’t want to regret it.

…

“I hope he eats shit.”

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Standing on the side, the Captain pushed up his glasses. He secretly shelved away a fairly worrisome report for later dates. His co-worker really needed a break, from the looks of it. Or maybe he could just force her to take the vacations she kept on skipping under the excuse of being built different.

Yes, that sounded good…

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Hundreds of miles away. Past the ghost towns, occasional small settlements eked out a degree of life. As hardscapes that dotted the wasteland, the starlight began to grow faint. The scarred moons began to descend, their soft lights fading into the old night. Jet-black shadows melded with the world, disguising the movements of armed people who had been observing one small town from distances away.

The darkest hour was always before dawn.

Their steps were quick yet steady. The lead bullets in their holsters weighed their every footstep, the mechanical modifications adorning their bodies aching in the scattering sand particles across the dead land. In the cold of night, they arrived, a band of guns for hire; fast approaching a town targeted by a slob that cared only for the splendors of gold and the seduction of dictatorial authority.

But who cared about that? They all had been doing this gig for years, decades.

Even after the craziest incident in the history of mankind, you still needed money, water, food, and cravings. No matter what reason there might be, the world was ran by multiple different forces which hardly made any sense to anyone of them. Truth and flowery words could hardly fill their stomachs.

So, they went back to their old job.

To hurt, maim, kill, pillage, or even rape. It wasn’t like they could turn back the clock and redo their whole lives anyway. It was much easier to stick with what they were familiar with. Nobody was free from sins. Nothing personal, right?

“Hrm~ huhuhh…”

A strange voice moaned out from the darkness.

An awful sound, like the murmurings of a drunkard. The murderers stopped in their tracks as a tall, lanky man with a tilted cowboy hat stumbled out of a dark alley. A pair of guns belted behind his waist. The red-faced loser was clearly out of it, but an inebriated gunman was always a nice spoil. They could start with this one, and those looked like some damn good gears he had…

“Oh, whoops!”

A gust of wind. An awkward upward swing of arm. The gunman tripped and suddenly reality stopped making sense. A pile of thrown up dirt replaced the drunkard, not a single trace of his figure on the scene.

The guy at the front felt a heavy, solid object pressed against his neck. It came from behind, but when he tried to rotate his head, he felt the barrel of a gun pressed deeper into his skin. The ghastly, impending premonition of death claimed his being then and there.

“W-what…!?”

“Whoa, there. Buddy, let’s not do this, yeah?” A cowboy in tattered cloak that barely covered half of his rugged frame tipped his hat. The gunman was… a young man with a disfigured side to his face. His looks pissed him off, all smile and smelling of alcohols. But the gun he toted was real as can be. “There’s only respectable citizens toiling for honest living here. A Plant sustains this town, so everyone will quickly fade into dust without it.”

Is he threatening us?! The guy could have smeared his brains out any moment and he spent his chance with negotiations?! Did he feel himself so lucky? Did he think of himself an agent of justice, huh?! What nerves!

“…now that’s quite a bloodthirsty look.” The sounds of clicking hammers, the swish of gun barrels, the rolling belt of bullets. A full dozen set of guns of all kinds aimed at the hero-wannabe, yet the drunken haze must have killed the naïve kid’s survival instinct. “I guess you lots don’t care about your friend? Not even a single sense of camaraderie between you all, wow.”

The mercenary saw his chance. He lowered his hips, turned around and raised his revolver. “Die—!!”

Suddenly, a wall of blinding orange blocked his vision. He felt his retinas burning from the zero-distance contact with the curtains of light. Glints of silver and black flickered in the storm of light, and it was with loud sounds that threatened to rupture his eardrums that he suddenly felt a heavy impact slugging all of his limbs.

It burned. It burned! It hurt!!

The mercenary wailed, screaming as his body hit the ground. When his elbows flexed, his muscles screamed from horrific sensations. The rustic scent of blood wafted in the air along with gunpowder smokes. Pain assailed his whole body, but why was he still alive? His arms… his legs… his hands…! Tears spilled along with saliva and snots, his vision clearing out only to see the other fools groaning in the same state. Wounded. Disabled. Crippled.

Only one person stood before them all. His mercenary gang… had been neutralized by a measly gunman sloshed in liquors!!

“Y-you…! Fucker…!!” The leader of the operation gasped. “You’re not getting away with this…!!”

“Yeah, well. I heard that a lot,” the dual-wielding gunman airily said as he picked up his hat. Patting away the sand off it, he wore it as if he had won the battle! How much was he looking down on them?! “So, how about this, then?”

The mercenary gasped.

Instead of the coldness pressed against his neck prior, it was a smoking hot gun barrel lingering dead center between his eyes. The maw of death waited upon him, glowing red after shooting a whole magazine of bullets at his gang.

He was going to die. He was going to die! Why, why, why would this guy stand for a bunch of spineless weaklings…!?

“Now,” the gunman said. A ghost of a cackle drifted in the air. He locked eyes with the bastard—and saw intent oozing from the guy’s left eye. “You want to try that again, or do you want to have a taste of molten lead? I don’t give a shit about your scores.”

Insanity.

Murderous intent.

A trip of death.

This guy was dangerous. Way too dangerous! He needed to get away! Get away get away get away get awaygetawaygetaway—!!

“Aaaasss if!”

A silver flash slammed down. His skull rattled, the blow so strong his pupils rolled into the white of his eyes. The mercenary’s consciousness fell into darkness.

+-+-+-+-+​

Hmph, small fries. The lot of them.

There, there. Livio chuckled, hoisting himself up now that he was finished with rounding up all the hoodlums in one spot. Crowds clamoured a short distance away from him, citizens woken up by the obvious sparks of a shootout. It was just an instance, but life here was so harsh that people had grown sensitive to gunfire and threats of bloody murders.

And you’re soft as always, Livio. Come on, where’s my excitement?

“Well… it’s not like I can help you with that, Razlo.” He tipped his hat, a habit he had grown accustomed to these days. “I still need to get some information about the client who hired these good for nothings.”

We aaaaaall know who that is.

Right… that was true enough.

At the core of it, many people had a hard time in changing their own tune, and this was one common example of it. One guy with too much money and too little thoughts to figure out what was best for himself. It started out with a simple brawl escalating into guns for hire. Going for the drastic measure just to claim one Plant indicated extraordinary obsession that refused to be let go.

Past history? A long-time grudge left to fester? Feh, that could be for later…

“Mister Gunman? Sir?”

Brought back to the present time, Livio blinked before dipping his head. Meeting the half-perplexed visage of the local sheriff made him smile wryly. It was out of reflex, all thanks to his timid personality. However, he also couldn’t lie that it helped him remember his dearly beloved, and hellish past. The moustached old man pushing past the regular age for a peacekeeper talked about imprisonment and bounty issues over the hired thugs.

It was with a great deal reluctance on his part. There weren’t enough space to contain the heaps of criminals until military police could come over.

Not enough food. Not enough hygiene supply. Not enough facilities and able manpower to confine cybernetic-enhanced outlaws far too willing to pull their triggers. Not enough time for the federal officers to come over and take these seeds of troubles before they rioted. A remote town which could only barely get by tended to live on a tightrope balancing act of resource management, so this was just the natural outcome. Livio’s smile faltered. He could see one ending for these bandits, and it wasn’t a pretty sight…

“Eek! One of them escaped!!”

Wait, what? Livio and the sheriff snapped their gazes at one guy who had somehow broken free of his restraints, prancing with unbalanced gait to his feet which showed glints of iron. His veins bulged and he panted and wheezed as if the demon was hot in pursuit. Enhancement drugs, and fake legs—!

Just as Livio took aim, the roar of an engine swept in. From the shadow of a building rolled out a large passenger car boarded up with a satellite dish. It plowed through wooden barrels and racks, barely missing the building only to commit a sharp turn into the perimeter. The vehicle spun from left-to-right until it swung its side straight at the fleeing thug. With the solid sound of a hard object impacting a bulwark, the latter soared to the sky in an arc which made Livio wince and half-commit to a prayer.

That guy would live… sort of. All the implants meant the thug was harder to kill.

And then there was the car… Well, more like a van. Its wild rodeo spun it around for several times, which was quickly followed by a terrible growl. The tires screeched, the engine bucking like mad, and the van pounced to do a front wheelie that scared the crowds. It rapidly swerved which caused the townsfolk to scatter away, the gobsmacked Livio a bit late to realize it was coming his way.

Oh shit—

His alter ego’s thought mirrored Livio in that exact same moment. The iron beast did another wheelie, this time on the side, and then it slid across the paved ground with a terrifying acceleration. The thugs cried for their lives. The sheriff cried for his life. Livio felt his heart jumping out of his mouth.

“DoryaaaaaAAAaaaaaAAAAHHH!”

In the last second. At the very last moment, a hair breadth away from getting himself turned into a human-shaped dent on the van, the vehicle screeched to a halt. Its whole frame stood on its right tires, mere degrees away from toppling on him like a boulder at the cliff’s edge. As the iron beast groaned, it slowly tiled back to the other side. Finally, the van parked then and there, dead and silent to the world as if its earlier rampage was just a fever dream.

…

...ah, ain’t that logo…?

Livio blinked. Once. Twice. When he gazed upon the scratched logo with blown up N, L, B, and C letters, memories resurfaced to the forefront of his skull like a runaway sandsteamer. The passenger door then powerfully slid open. What appeared next was familiar… way too familiar to the point of anxiety-inducing.

“Geho! Keho!! God… I’m still alive, thank goodness…” A tall lady with light-blonde hair limped out from the van, gripping on the dented door frame as a crutch to push forward. Her smile was easy, caring. However, beads of tears from having been thrown around by the van’s wild maneuvers, dribbled down her cheeks. That strange mix of emotions made her out to be oddly childish and frail in spite of her larger-than-average stature. “Uuugh, Meryl… That was totally horrible, come on…”

As if that served as the next cue, the driver’s door flew off its hinges. The whole thing bounced off the ground and crashed upon the rounded up thugs which elicited yet another round of miserable groans and squeaks. Livio traced a pair of boots, black tights, a white dress, and a two-toned cape with a neat design to it. Unceremoniously climbing out of the half-totaled van was a petite black-haired young woman who bore an impressively sharp gaze.

“Blah! Phwee!! Got some sand on my tongue, geh…” Patting herself off the dirt and grime, Meryl Stryfe shook her head before promptly looking up. “...ah.”

...ah, indeed.

“Nope! Sorry, you’re not the scoop I’ve been aiming for!!”

What.

The woman… Meryl crossed her arms. Her cheeks were puffed and she merely gave the crushed thugs behind a cursory glance before tapping the ground in annoyance… What the hell?

“Hey! That’s rude to say when we haven’t met each other for months, Meryl!!”

The woman in white turned her half-lidded gaze to her partner. Rather, she looked like she was utterly done for some reasons. “Milly, we’ve been seeing this guy for so many times it’s not even funny.”

“Still… Mrrrgh.” Grumbling all the while, Milly gave up arguing and walked up. An apologetic smile graced her face. “Sorry about that, Mr. Livio. Good to see you again, yeah.”

“Hm? Uhh… yeah, likewise.”

Livio scratched his cheek awkwardly. Man, this was yet another of those weird turn of events he still couldn’t get used to, even after all these years.

...on hindsight, maybe that was just the way their dynamic was. Fine by him.

+-+-+-+-+
​

Some years ago… a story began. One so grand and ridiculous and fantastical beyond the wildest imagination. It was a tale which resounded throughout this sun-baked planet, engraved upon its surface forevermore. The magnitude as well as weight of that fairytale-like story remained in the hearts and minds of all who were still alive to this day.

Livio had been a part of that story. In the tail end of that legend which stretched over 150 years.

A bad guy through and through, his meek and timid self shrouded itself in the aegis of misguided faith and overly relied on his other self. He lost sight of himself, of others, even his own family. But well, that was now a story of the irreversible past. Presently, he made a living from hunting down bounties, prancing around as a busybody whenever possible, and also acting out the duty of a tradesman in some small capacity. No-man’s Land never lacked thrills and excitements, so he just somehow… took up the last one as a side-side hustle.

Livio still didn’t pick up a lighter to this day.

Does it even matter, anyway? He smiled wryly at Razlo’s remark. Yeah, that was a good point. Did it even matter? Stop that damn soliloquy then, it’s maddening.

Livio huffed with a sniffle. Morning had swiftly arrived, but the town bustled with chaotic activities. Tensions were palpable, emotions running high and only slightly restrained from flying out of control. He believed there was a brawl or two happening, but nothing irreversible had happened just yet. The townspeople seemed to be cut of some good cloths, rather unusual but might be the norm when you lived so far out from larger settlements. The former Eye of Michael sorted his thoughts together and addressed the subject at hands.

“Well,” he started. “Didn’t think you would chase down news all the way out to the boonies like here.”

“Excuse me, we do try to get by.” Meryl drew away her glass from her lips, sitting across the round poker table repurposed for dining. She fiddled with the badge on her white dress only to let out a long sigh, “we’ve been following the latest rumors, but that turned to be a total dead end.”

Right, right… that must be it, then. “Still looking for Vash? You sure are tenacious with your Typhoon Interview corner.”

Though she puffed her chest in pride, smug and all, that didn’t stop Meryl from deflating soon after. The news she covered revolved around the biggest, most elusive celebrity of No-man’s Land. It was a respectable work ethic on her part to chase after Vash the Stampede’s footsteps and successfully cornering him for a live interview times and again, but knowing that her livelihood depended on her TV program made her motive feel a bit smudged.

It was still infinitely better than turning to crimes, though.

“Hmph. You’d think the guy will eventually show up like a passing by storm, but he’s improving himself only on how to scurry away like rat.” Meryl lowered her eyelids and grumbled. “His bad habit is absolutely incurable.”

I think that has to do more with you outing his privacy to the public…| “Well, I don’t really get it, but I’m guessing I’m your next lead, then?”

“Really?! You know where Vash is?!”

This woman swings her mood around like a goddamn pendulum, holy smokes. Livio had to agree with Razlo on this part, though he’d never be caught dead saying it out loud. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, yadda yadda. Pushing his hat from below with an index finger, Livio smiled, hapless. Milly in the meanwhile was completely indulging herself with her favorite drink. Wow, they’re total weirdos.

Livio promptly refrained from calling out the pot. That way lied a reign of chaos.

“...nah, not really. Haven’t seen him for months either.”

“Whaat? Stop getting my hopes up.” Meryl slid back to her seat.

“I figured he’d be doing something special though.” The gunman rubbed his stubbled chin. “The national mourning date for Lost July is today, right?”

Vash had no choice but to live as a wanderer. He originally had a mission to fulfil, a vision to realize, and a promise to keep. All that and some more reasons he picked up along the way eventually led him to the Lost July—formerly known as July—a flourishing city the Humanoid Typhoon held so dearly in his heart.

That city had vanished from the map overnight.

“Ugh. Now that you mention it…” Meryl sighed.

Yeah… logically, he’d go there, right? Logically, that is…

All three people on this table knew all too well the kind of person Vash was. The man would never stop moving if he had a goal to fulfil, a vision to realize, a mission to accomplish, and people to save. He’d mourn for the dead and regret his mistakes, but the past was the past. Moved by purposes he sometimes didn’t even truly understand, the kind man had to keep on walking and fighting; away from the irrecoverable past, forward to the uncertain tomorrow. No matter how dark and scary the night was, Vash the Stampede had to—

“Here you are, kiddo! Breakfast’s on the table!!”

Livio’s nose twitched. From the kitchen, a wonderful aroma brewed up in the air, and no sooner after that, the friendly and burly cook walked out with a mountain of dishes on her hands. Even Milly and Meryl stopped drinking, drools leaking from the corners of their lips as dishes after dishes were laid out on the round poker table.

The ladies’ eyes glinted. Like hungry cats, they immediately grabbed for the forks but the moment they launched their attacks—

“Mine!” Faster than his thought could perceive, Livio suddenly took the backseat as Razlo assumed direct control of his body. “All mine!!”

Oh, come on, Razlo…!

“Shut it! You don’t get a feast like this often, Livio…!” Razlo held up the plate of stir-fried meat and vegetables and shovelled it all down his throat. He inhaled rather than ate the meal, the empty plate tossed aside in a blinding speed ungratefully. At least savour the taste!! “Shut! Next one…!”

“W-why, you…!” Meryl cried out, either aghast or infuriated judging by her pale white face. “Hey, stop! We didn’t even eat dinner last night, you psychotic alternate personality… aaah, Milly!? How could you!!”

Indeed. Somehow, Milly had also stolen one of the dishes and consumed it all on her own initiative. That was the second plate down, and now there were only less savory dishes on the table. Livio could feel the muscles on his face twisting, an arrogant smirk thrown at the black-haired reporter courtesy of Razlo.

“Ugh…! Mghgghghgh…!” Meryl ground her teeth together, veins bulging around her temple. “That’s it! Have at it, then…!!”

And so the three-way war for food commenced itself. The tranquil bar immediately overflowed with the noise of forks and spoons fighting against ceramic plates.

The occasional howling and hollering of humans who had devolved into ravenous animals, however, needed not be mentioned. Livio wasn’t even sure who had blubbered out like a monkey tasting its first chocolate bar, but he guessed that human dignity had ignobly died in this table. Its defiled corpse probably didn’t even want company. Then again, no matter how much you tried to rationalize an excuse, hungers were hard to beat.

It was at this moment that a functioning brain began to act up…

“Say… doesn’t that mean Mr. Vash is at July right by now?” It was at that moment that the happy-go-lucky Milly stopped nursing her drink. “You know how he is, right? He’s easily swayed by sentimentality, so going there seems like a matter of course.”

Livio would have agreed on that sentiment, but he remembered another piece of news which had reached his ears a while back. Was it since last year, or was it six months ago? Either way…

“Isn’t Lost July a restricted area?” Livio chimed in, smoothly regaining controls of his body now that Razlo had gotten a bit distracted from filled stomach. He sensed a click of tongue from the depth of his subconsciousness, but his other self relented all the same. Probably off to sleep, how carefree. “Something about the previously opened Gate there being done in an extremely crude way that the local physical laws wildly fluctuated as a result… was it?”

That notification came about around a few months ago, he believed. Weirdly not from the main channel, and wasn’t even using the national line shared together with NLBC. Normally speaking, official news went through all channels and transmission station, but matters related to Lost July tended to drown out in the wake of humanity’s irrational fears of the unknown.

It was, after all, nothing but a crater now. Not even bloodstains remained in that empty burial ground.

“To this day, I still can’t get used to the two of you switching back and forth like that…”

Livio raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “You’re saying that after all the time we’ve seen each other?”

“Well, it isn’t like your eccentricity takes the cake, but…” Meryl stared with narrowed eyes, hummed, laid her chin on her hand, and then nodded as if seemingly convinced by something. “Yeah. Life must be hectic with a voice in your own head like that, Livio.”

Before the only gunman on the table could think up a response, Milly awkwardly cut in; completely used to the byplay. “Maybe the ban’s lifted up, now?”

“Hmm. Reconstruction efforts for all big cities should be almost done, but I heard only vague rumors when it comes to Lost July’s progress.” Meryl suddenly brought up what everyone was thinking about. “Today’s an auspicious date, so there’s nothing wrong with unveiling a national monument or two. Even I, a novice reporter, can think up a flimsy excuse for publicity stunt like that. How is it we only heard so little, even from the federal government?”

“Aside from it being the marks of a living legend…” Livio hummed. The broadcast by NLBC announcing the mourning for Lost July abruptly appeared yesterday, even though there could have been plenty of times for it long before the due date. It felt a bit fishy, but he also couldn’t dismiss the chance of it caused by the big wigs dismissing Lost July as… well, utterly lost. Nevertheless, something about this felt a teensy bit off… “Huh. Maybe it does bear some investigating.”

Milly smiled. “Aha! So we’re moving out? Like old times!!”

The atmosphere happened to be just right for that. Lost July was a long way from here, but it wasn’t impossible to run across of him in the way. Knowing Vash, that man would somehow pop out in the weirdest place; caught in some complex problems he shouldn’t have minded. The man was too kind for his own good, but that was why he shone so bright. Regardless, there wasn’t much better things to do, except for…

“Well. Can I finish my business in this town, first?” Livio coughed, much to the dismay of the other two women. “Oh, come on! I need to earn some pretty pennies too, alright!?”

Meryl stuck out her tongue. “Fine… but I’ll get some exclusive scoop from you! I need money to fix my car, dammit!!”

That’s all on you for breaking the thing in the first place!!

---

A/N: The opening might be a bit slow-paced, but we're getting there. Then the real fun will start.

 

--- Episode 3: The Train's Leaving ---​

An old satellite orbited the planet. In the form of a mechanical seahorse with a chrome-colored shell, the scope of its observatory device extended far and wide-reaching; a testament to the might of the hyper-advanced, space-faring human civilization.

Even now, it continued to observe the arid wasteland, watching over the lives of the first colonists’ many descendants. As decades passed into centuries, its energy generators had started to fail, forcing it to resort to gradual recharge through inefficient solar panels. Its communication array could hardly maintain a stable line with the surface station too, but its duty remained the same. To observe, keep records, and deliver its findings back to the ones who had launched it to space.

It was a tireless job. A duty with no real deadline.

Until the day its structure collapsed and the planet’s gravity pulled it down in a burning death, the century-old satellite diligently and faithfully captured movements in the surface. However, seven months and nineteen days ago, it had detected a unique anomaly. In a certain coordinate, a blueish white sphere appeared from the heart of a dead city, slowly spreading like an oasis that spilled out from deep within the planet’s hallowed gut.

The computer onboard of the satellite judged that it was a tiny miracle caused by how the Third City had been destroyed.

[Recovering past data analysis…]

Once upon a time, a rapid twisting of local spacetime fabrics, followed by extraordinary gravitational pressure which ballooned out of control, completely wiped out the Third City from the face of the planet. The burst of energy was similar to the birth of a star, but it could also be likened to a vacuum triggered by the death of one. In any case, its highly erratic nature resulted in the total pulverization of July like throwing a toy ship into a whirlpool. For flesh and blood humans, the pain would be non-existent. At most, only brief glimpses could be seen of the city’s last moments before organic matters completely disintegrated.

[Past record retrieved. Identifying observation target as Lost July. Registering new observational record… file name, X3-07A0027. Beginning data comparison…]

Even though the planet designated as No-Man’s Land was so very far away from the sol system, the observatory satellite was in possession of classified information all the way up to the early space migration era. Still, the program knew not of the energy emitted by the blueish white sphere which it had found to be slowly covering the Third City.

[No change to local fabrics of space and time detected.] The satellite readjusted its scope pointed straight to the surface. [Confirming no distortion of light particles for the next hundred of miles surrounding the observation target. Atmospheric pressure within acceptable parameter. Gravity force at normal values. Detecting no sign of radioactive waves.]

It judged that the blueish white film blanketing the city to be harmless. However, as of this month, bundles of white began to surface. They roiled like waves influenced by the cycle of moon, bubbled up, receded before roiling again, and eventually formed a dome-like structure which enveloped the crater of a city. Once again, the satellite identified the subject in new light, yet still it found no critical need to alert the surface.

The blueish white sphere that started this so-called “infestation” did not possess radioactive activity, and neither did it have the peculiar “magic” of a Plant.

It was as if something was there, but it also wasn’t there. A paradoxical mirage capable of tricking the hyper-advanced optic lens of the old satellite was, perhaps, a completely unknown scientific phenomenon. Normally speaking, it was a cause for celebrations for the humans living on the surface. Thus, the satellite’s main computer deduced that the optimal course of action was to keep on recording the results of its observation.

Out of habitual behaviours it had imposed on its program, the computer carried out a diagnostic analysis of the Third City. It began with presenting today’s date.

[Stardate 0117, 4th moon, 9th day. 10:49 AM.]

...what came first was a general overview of the layout of the land.

[Checking first heuristic level… cleared.]

...next was the chemical compositions within the grounds.

[Checking second heuristic level… cleared.]

...afterwards came the atmospheric pressure, water moisture, wind speed, etc.

[Checking third heuristic level… cleared.]

...the second to the last check involves a scan of inorganic matters.

[Checking fourth heuristic level… cleared.]

...the final check. Organic matters scan.

[Checking fifth heuristic level… error.]

The satellite detected something. It sensed the heat signature of a living being. Where did the living signature come from?

It shifted to its telescopic lens and maximized the zoom in feature. Like an eagle surveying the earth, it caught him. A man estimated of 27 years. He clad himself in red cloak that billowed in the winds. Portions of his body were riddled with steel parts, likely cybernetic implants and prosthesis. He walked in a stride that never broke, heading straight towards the city’s outskirts.

His steps did not falter. Why? Did he not see the state the Third City was now in?

[Beginning query…]

Could it be that the man was blind? No, that was not the movement of a blind and disabled man. He was perfectly well and aware. His brain waves were a little bit different to the normal signatures, but it was still within the parameters. A human species walked alone into the breach, seemingly unaware of the abnormal changes which had been enveloping Lost July and the areas that extended past it.

[Why?]

The computer self-diagnosed itself. It queried, queried, and queried. At the speed of light, untold amount of parameters were calculated and filtered away. It asked itself innumerable questions as many as the grains in the stars above and beyond. So many sequences that would have driven a man crazy. It didn’t even notice its own circuits had burned away, flaking and recompiling themselves into something new, something different which couldn’t have possibly suit its original specifications.

[Detecting… detected. Reporting…]

As the man disappeared into the white void, the lens of the observatory satellite flashed an eerie crimson glow. Its transformation complete, a letter of a long dead language glitched in and out of its monitor. The symbol of the divine one as proved by ten sacred letters.

[...query.]

In the brink of assimilation by this “error” which had devoured its codes in no less than a microsecond, the last of the old satellite’s original program started with an inquiry.

[Who… art thou?]

+-+-+-+-+​

The migratory bus service had unfortunately dropped him off a few dozen miles away from his destination.

When a city died, the satellite towns around it began to decay and wither away. The first thing those towns faced were the loss of local businesses, things like trading posts which breathed life into the wheels of economy. As lack of revenues worsened to the point not even medical facilities could operate, no bandits would bother targeting these dying towns. The last thing that would die off was the postal service, but it bear repeating that these towns could hardly do much to save themselves.

It was just his luck that this was the last bus service. Only the old and stubborn would insist on sinking into the sand when it came to these ghost towns. The blind elderly living on his lonesome at least seemed to think that way. What a hassle.

“Hmph. I’m not so weak that a youngster needs to crow over me.” The old man with a cane stepped away from his rocking chair, hobbling his way to a cupboard. His hand lingered over several cans, but soon he decided on one and opened the lid. A faint aroma of cheap tea wafted in the dry air. “Besides, I should be the one asking a fool like you who’d dare travel all the way out here. Nothing exists past this point.”

Yes, nothing, not even a grave remained.

The guest knew. He was painfully aware of that fact. Even as he gazed towards the windows, he could hardly hear the sound of people. The town was empty, save for this one particular old and rickety house. Lost, abandoned, and then forgotten. However, the journey he hastily put himself through all because of that radio news had an even lonelier destination. He felt his grips over the steel mug tighten if only for an instance.

Seeing was believing. I know that… there’s nothing waiting for me.

“...hmm. Sounds like you’ve got a reason to go, huh?” As if his silence had become too much to endure, the old man droned on. “Unfortunately for you, give it up.”

The guest looked up. Spiky black hair waved, and he saw orange shades staring back at him from a broken round mirror hung on the wall across of the room. The elderly man hobbled to seat himself down on a nearby stool; and as he folded his arms…

“A few months ago, was it? Either way, a convoy ran past this checkpoint,” the last inhabitant of the ghost town muttered. His eyes glassy and unblinking, yet light did not seem to exist within them. For a moment, the guest wondered what thought and feelings did the elderly man have over a world devoid of light. “Big. Rugged. Long, heavy and tightly packed with leads and gunpowder. Spooked us greatly, that they did.”

The elderly man lifted his wrinkled hand, scratching his chin from which a roughly trimmed beard hung upon.

“But of course, that’s how the military should be.” The owner of the house nodded, sounding like a man who had matched two similar pictures and coming to terms with the result of his own investigation. “Top-of-the-line gears. Militarized vehicles. A chain of structure with plans and backups. Only a few could mess around with those pompous bunches, though they at least deserve their uniforms to some degree.”

The guest sensed it.

Something was amiss. It felt as if there was some contradiction looming ahead. He had always trusted his instinct, his ability in reading people honed by his long, very long life experience on this wasteland. The curiosity tinged with confusion he once had now bled away, replaced by an odd sense of apprehension.

“But those bunches that passed by here were different. Far too cold. Too heavy, too clean and inorganic.” The old man dropped his cane, making a loud thud that rattled the drink in the traveler’s mug. “There was nobody alive in that army. Tanks, helicopters, trucks, ballistic arrays and what-not. No soldier among them all. No, it was something way too much for us who were merely enjoying our last days here.”

“Way too much… but what sort of military personnel do they…?”

“Robots, I mean. Those mechanical wastes of space.” The elderly huffed. He was completely disgruntled, but his voice implied frustration and… and anger. “Robots aren’t good, they will never be good. Nobody wants to talk with a voice recorder face-to-face, but suddenly we’ve got a whole slew of iron puppets equipped to the teeth.”

The guest almost dropped his jaw. Shock reeled his focus, words failing to form at the idea of a fully-automated mechanized army. It was absurd, a complete detachment from the thin veneers of propriety human soldiers would have. Of course, robots existed in some capacity even out here. This was No-Man’s Land, a planet in which some of the space-faring human species had crash-landed on. Their lowest level technology could still restore civilization to that of the Wild West era.

But that’s precisely why this autonomous army defies all logic and senses.

A mechanized army fully composed by extremely advanced combat programs made absolute no sense in terms of cost-effectiveness. Especially one deployed all the way out here where not a single town had a decently maintained Plant meant to keep their oils slick and their gears free from sand particles. This army of drones were even left to their own devices for months. Months. Judging from the old man’s story, this armed force of clandestine origin had built themselves an enclave, a military outpost, and confined themselves there doing god-knows-what.

A whole slew of hyper-complex and precious resources diverted to produce such things…

He could only believe by seeing through his own eyes. Whether it be the result of lost technology from the far-flung past or a splintered faction of the space fleet from Sol System, he now must make sure of it. Already, his intuition was warning him, sending his body to high alert status. However, today was the fateful day. He had hastily travelled while ignoring all thoughts and feelings that threatened to burst out of his chest, and to turn around just because he was facing an army of steel would be… it would be...

That’s too much cowardice, even for me…

He couldn’t run with his tail tucked between his legs. He just couldn’t. He had a hand in the destruction of July. He couldn’t bear the thought of letting their graves—those warm people’s memories—disturbed, no matter how much the city had been reduced into a hollow grave, empty with nary a coffin or husks resting beneath it. Vash the Stampede would never be able to face his benefactor and his brother if he were to do that, so—

“...hey.”

The traveller stopped. Luggage over his shoulder and a foot stepping past the doorway, the voice of the elderly reached out to him like a clear knocking on a wooden door. He couldn’t help but to glance back, only now realizing that he had been so absorbed in his own thoughts that he had left his body on auto-pilot.

“...it’s a good thing that I can no longer see bloodshed,” the elderly said. It turned out the wrinkled man was putting his hand on a photograph resting on a cupboard next to the stool he had been on. “When you get as old and useless as me, it doesn’t take much to keel over. Easier to endure if you just forget all the bad things.”

Or at least, that’s what I tried to convince myself. That unspoken line, left to linger in the ennui, seemed to reverberate like no other.

“I heard it before. That voice of yours, somewhere and sometimes ago.” The old man remained standing, supported by his cane. “I kept on telling you. If you’ve got the time to mope around, grow some spine in your voice, Stampede.”

…

...oh.

“Hold your head high.” The old man slowly turned around. With a smile that seemed to have been carved on granite, rugged and covered with scars, the last inhabitant of the trading town huffed. “That’s not the sort of face you should wear now that you’ve fulfilled your promise.”

The revolving doors swayed with keening squeaks. There was only one person living in this dead town, now. As the wind blew across the vast wasteland, the elderly huffed and resumed his task, shaking his head at the child-like action of his final guest.

+-+-+-+-+​

The night was cold and windy. With clouds scattered across the heavens, starlight dimmed and the moons only managed to show specks of her serene visage.

Multi-layered fences, thrice as tall as an adult man, stood against the winds. Electrified and barbed, complex security measures had been established to barricade the place formerly known as July. However, the city proper was actually still a few miles away. It felt as if these fences served to contain something inside from escaping instead of intimidating any would-be trespasser.

And those turrets… the heck are they?

Even though they had the stature of a mounted heavy machine gun, they rotated on their own, red dots beeping and flashing once in a while. They felt like automated defence system, but the man had never seen such a thing freely deployed like this. Not only bandits would want to run off with them in tow, these rotating turrets seemed a bit much of an overkill against human opponents. What was the intent behind their placement, and what sort of enemy did they have in mind to bother with placing them?

Those calibers and range are excessive…

Well, the night was young. He also knew this area well. Moving across the wasteland, the tails of his red coat fluttered in the darkness. Swift and steady, he gradually made ways through the shadows cast by the few rubble and hardscape dotting the wasteland. Sometimes he crawled on all four like bug, sometimes he hunkered down and walked slowly on his toes so as to advance as quietly as possible. In any case, he managed to accomplish the easy part while keeping his presence on the down low. Now came the hard part...

His vision blurred momentarily, the image of a beaten road overlapping with the soulless steel plates stretching into the yawning abyss waiting in the horizon.

“...I thought homecoming would feel a bit more pleasant,” Vash the Stampede murmured, his eyes narrowing at the distant edifice he knew had never once existed even in the depths of his memories. A strange, out of place thing which rose up from the center of a giant crater carved out by his Gate. Laid out before it, in difficult-to-see spots, were block-like objects, decorated with bulky shoulder pads and elbows connected to what could only be anti-material rifles, bazookas and missiles. “Is all this for war…?”

Spread in twelve directions, these giant sentinels were further attended by rows of robotic soldiers, each and every one of them bearing heavy weaponry to win over a small village or two. The soldiers numbered in the low hundreds, but there might be more lying in wait, ready to be activated for the sole purpose of ruining somebody’s day. They also looked to be wearing desert camouflage patterns on their sleek mainframes. Indeed, these were not run-of-the-mill mercenary company, much less a bourgeoisie merchant’s private army.

An army. A real, professional army. Except they were all automated and programmed to exercise lethal termination of anything deemed as their targets.

“Yeeshh… I don’t think I can get past them.” His .45-caliber custom Long Colt now looked like a children’s toy in comparison to the scary things up ahead. There were guards, oversights, command units, and definite reinforcements. Hell, he even saw tanks nursing up thick iron shields—shields!—on their front and back!! “How am I supposed to go further…?”

He was just a sack of blood and meat, while these hunks of iron could stand around till their backup batteries died. Vash really, really must have gotten ahead of himself to commit a frontal infiltration attempt like this… but what else could he possibly do, he was just a single man lacking any prospect for youthful sprite!!

Dammit, now he felt like crying. Fine, fine, fine. He would just do things his way now that it came to this. And I mean by making gaps to exploit!!

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In the dead of night, winds billowed only to die down. Dense clouds cast random deep shadows over the region, and all was quiet.

Clink, a metallic glint flashed. An oil drum resting by an ammunition hangar suddenly burst into flames. The others sitting by it followed the same blazing fate, rupturing and spreading as red snakes which ran across the paved grounds and into the nearest stacks of mortar shells. In no time, secondary explosions followed by enormous detonations of heavy ordinances swallowed a not-so-insignificant area of the military outpost. Some droids were blown away while others caught by falling wreckage, and the chaos had only just started.

As command chains moved in response, counteroffensive measures built up with the sounds of loaded guns and ignited engines. Tanks rolled out, the giant robots shifting with cold red radiance in their optics. Sirens blared loud enough it’d wake up the dead while spotlights flipped on to pierce the dark of the night.

Bang-bang-bang!! The lights didn’t last. Several rounds shot out from the darkness and right into the spotlights, disabling them. Before the mechanical soldiers which manned the watch towers could process that, an explosion shook them from their very foundations, keening screeches of metal melding with the ensuing chaos.

In spite of the frantic noise, the army reorganized themselves swiftly. The bulk of the infantry charged headlong into the directions from which the bullets had appeared. It would have been a grisly sight to behold, but the culprit cloaked in red had already moved away from the location, nano-wires cut off from his prosthetic arm.

One of the gigantic robots almost three-story tall rotated its upper body, the advanced red mono-eye it had gleaming over its white and yellow painted chassis. However, the red shadow fluttered as it jumped over a falling crane and landed atop the main cannon barrel combined with the block-shaped torso of the giant robot.

It was an adult man, taller than average with spiky black hair that seemed to dissolve into the night sky. The man clad himself in a black outfit and a fancy red coat with long, tattered tails which danced from his momentum. Reddish orange shades covered his eyes, and the moon hanging overhead painted confusing shadows, disguising the man’s intents. The human estimated to be 25 years old then pressed a revolver against the robot’s main camera.

“Sorry about this—!”

A singular gunshot sound followed in the wake of a three-round-burst. They aimed in one spot, hammered each other to dig past the bulletproof glass, and passed through the scope to embed deep into the camera’s processor. Smokes and electricity, mixed with sparks and burnt out circuit board created one nice recipe for a flowery explosion that destroyed the giant robot’s head. A droid soldier could be seen ejecting from behind it, but it stumbled for a few steps before faceplanting as the intruder in red hopped onto his back with a knee drop.

The man pushed forward, though he felt like he heard a pained grunt from below.

Well, he didn’t stop by for pleasantries. He charged forward, a storm of leads chasing after his trails. The tanks were too slow to spin their turrets, while the giant robots were set in a fanned out position. It’d take time for the infantry to return, and so the wanted man broke through the encirclement without a scratch…

“Huh—what!?”

Like a wild animal, the man reacted a step ahead. As he dodged to the side, a missile spiraled down to earth and detonated. Smokes which smelled of gunpowder rose up, while dust clouds billowed. The beating noise of helicopter rotors and fans soon dispersed all that visual obstruction.

“Armed helis!? What the hell, anything goes at this point—nnuuooooooaaaa!?!”

The man exerted tremendous energy to flee even further. It was actually amazing if one did not see the expression he had as he sped away from the horrible fate of death by quench gun and rockets. Well, human body ordinarily would turn into perforated chunks if their aim was true, but the intruder stood in a league far beyond the average bandits and armed vagabonds.

"Just a little bit more," the man huffed. “Come on, make iiiiiiiitttt!!”

With a well-timed jump and coordinated reflex, he leaped over the final fence to breach into the core of the military outpost. At once, gunfire stopped chasing after him. When he looked back, he saw the army of robots halting their movements with forced stilt to their frames, seemingly held back by an emergency order. A dragonfly-like shadow passed over him, which made him turn his head upward, but rather than wasting his chance by gawking away, he decided to return his focus to his original objective.

The strange edifice was right up ahead. No less than a few hundred meters away, the shape looked like a mangled skyscraper without a top floor. Barren, desolate, with chipped off-white paint and dirt-ridden windows.

“Will it be a demon or a snake…?”

Vash the Stampede pushed his shades up the bridge of his nose. Slinking back his gun into the holster, he walked into the dark tower riddled with mysteries. All the while unknowing of the sand that blurred and erased the footsteps he had left behind him.

+-+-+-+-+​

A sound of distant thunder roared—

+-+-+-+-+​

Vash blinked, feeling a stiffness to his shoulders.

His consciousness regained itself after a sudden whiteness filled his head. Like waking up from a dizzy spell, the man found himself standing before a small cubicle separated by a sterile, white-tiled wall. Inside the cubicle was a person, a stranger he knew nothing about, writing something on a worn out book lined up like a schedule book.

“Err… huh?” Vash couldn’t help but to speak out his mind.

What had happened? What was he doing here? Why was he standing around like a client waiting for the bank teller to finish a request for withdrawing deposit? Well, that was horribly specific, but this little ole Vash had no such thing as bank account. He was a man on the run, a fugitive, a wanted bounty worth of sixty billion double dollars.

In other words, he was a good for nothing criminal. That might be a bit depressing to segue away…

“Right, here you are.” His attention was soon stolen away by the voice of the person inside the cubicle. He wore a dark blue uniform with white shirts and checkered necktie, a hat reminiscent to that of those serving for commercial services owned by the federal government. However, he hardly possessed firearms. “Hey, you. I don’t have the time in the world to entertain you. Either take this or go back, you doofus.”

What, what, what?? Vash was confused, to say the least. Even so, his awkwardness ended up causing him to accept the thing extended out from the cubicle. It was a small piece of paper, neatly trimmed and clipped on one end. Uuh… this is—?

A blank ticket.

“...huh.”

Something was off. He felt like something had nearly clicked inside his mind. But even for the great him, he had unfortunately failed to remember. His mind a white haze, his body then staggered to the side, pushed one-sidedly into the building by a sudden rush of crowds. Vash cried out, looking back and past the many people he could hardly recognize. The cubicle far in the back had already been swallowed up in the sea of man. Pass a gateway made of delicate machinery, climbing a staircase with hollowed out hand rails, and then arriving in an open space sheltered by an unnecessarily tall yet barebone ceiling of mixed iron plate.

Splitting the massive, cavernous platform in twain was a pair of train tracks.

It was crowded. Dizzying. Nauseating. Vash couldn’t tell where he was, even though it also felt like he stood out for having such a bright red and tattered coat on his person. All of the rush of movements and standing stock still from an abrupt stop had made him feel… nervous.

“Hey,” somebody called out from the side. “You look pale there, buddy. Need some refreshment?”

Somebody, a kind somebody, had offered him a drink. It was a transparent plastic bottle containing clear water inside of it. Unusual, since water easily dried up or grew mold inside with that type of container.

“Err… aah, thanks.” The black-haired man rubbed his head, bowing slightly along the way as he and his helper stood side-by-side. But more importantly, he accepted the gift of kindness and took no moment to relieve his thirst. “Phew… that hits the spot.”

“Hmph. You sure look like you’re in a bind.” The stranger nearby said, “what, did you get lost or something? Were you hoping to go somewhere and do the right thing with that sort of look in your face?”

Now that was uncalled for. He was trying to… that was right. He was trying to close another chapter of his past. He was fulfilling a promise, making amends, redeeming himself, and then… and then, maybe he could settle down.

Yes, that sounded good. Settling down, resting in laurels.

He had no more reason to keep going on. Fulfilling his obligation, ending his legend, and then fading away from the annals of history. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to live an idyllic life somewhere out there, far from conflicts, chaos and bloodshed. A retirement life fitting for an old veteran like him. If he could just lie low, he was sure that people would eventually forget about his notoriety, his name, and his footsteps…

After all, painful things were painful.

“Cat’s got your tongue?”

“Shut it.” Vash couldn’t help but to blurt out. This was starting to get annoying, especially with that stupid snicker from the side. “What’s this all, anyway? This is… a train station? Where are these people heading to?”

Vash heard him muttering “now that’s a hard question…” in the bustling noise. His focus was strangely fixed on the train tracks, so he ended up throwing sideway glances every then and now. The helpful stranger wore a worn out dark suit. From the bottom, he’d have made for a respectable impression until your eyes moved to his opened chest and coarsely ironed shirts.

It made him look like a good for nothing that tried too hard to look sharp. Heh.

“Well,” the stranger muttered. Seemingly unaware of the insult that hardly escaped Vash’s cranium, a clear voice tinged with casual weariness reached his ears. “You can never tell, when it comes to people. Where do we come from, where are we going? I think, therefore I am. Or so some great person a long time ago would often say.”

That’s… not an answer.

“It is what it is, but does life need an answer to all things?” At his silence, the strange man grinned. Lop-sided, a bit smug, and maybe tinged with mockery. And then, the faint sounds started to enter the train station. “There we go, no real right or wrong answer to it all, eh?”

Gatan, goton. The occasional thudding, followed with the sliding sounds of wheels on iron tracks grew louder. Before long a humongous iron carriage came into view. It roared with the arrival of deafening winds. However, it didn’t seem to be stopping. Vash could see figures within the train carriages, different in shapes but serving a similar purpose in transporting people to their desired destinations.

It was elegant in a simplistic way. Busy in its lack of comfortable spaces to stretch out your legs, no sleeping cabin in sight or even a dining hall. He had once heard that trains meant to cover short distances prioritized purpose over comforts above all else. A bit of a difference to the Sandsteamers, compensated with the fact that it needed not the utilization of a Plant as its generator.

...it somewhat felt a bit lonely.

“Your train should be arriving next,” his helper said.

Vash looked long at the track. His train, huh? Didn’t he ride on a sandsteamer too, some times ago? Where was he heading before? Augustus, he believed. But after that… after all that had happened… here he was, wavering for the umpteenth time.

“Cheer up,” then the stranger said. As the faint sounds of another train about to arrive, a rough slap on his back rained down once, twice, and thrice. “You’re heading out there, so might as well get a whole story out of the trip. Sides, it’s not like you to look down and lose your smile like that, spikey.”

"...huh?"

The train arrived. Silver and light gray, it was lined with many doors and windows. From his vantage, he could see red seats and dull metallic sheen to the interior compartments.

The door opened. He turned his head around, only to receive a kick to his butt. He stumbled past rows of people, trotting and wobbling until he crashed headfirst into the train carriage. Vash quickly got up, but the door was closing.

But it was right there.

He was right there.

That man, that cross. That cigarette.

“You—“

The tradesman smiled alongside the other people. Startlingly familiar people who had left behind only their vanishing footprints in this sandy planet. The dead man then shrugged, the giant cross wrapped in white cloths on his back letting out a dull crinkle.

“Bye, Spikey.” Nicholas Wolfwood waved. “You’ve still got a long way ahead of you.”

The door closed shut, and the train departed.

---

A/N: Old-time readers would probably notice the many slips of references, but most of them are only fun tidbits I like to have because this is the realm of fanfiction. Next up is the real starting point.

 

A/N: Spring is here, at last.

---

--- Episode 4: Aoharu ---​

Vash stared blankly at the closed doors. As a vibrant whistling rang from above, the train compartment lurched forward. It jerked, hisses of hydraulic and brakes pulled back for the engine to resume its work. The train’s acceleration was a smoother experience than the Sandsteamer, a magnificent invention built by an engineer with a dream and hope in his vision.

He was dreaming. He dearly hoped, against all odds, that this was all a dream.

The frontal confrontation he just had with an army of heartless machines paled in comparison to this whole phenomenon. The steps he took as he delved further into the train, marching to the beats of the track bumps, was awfully heavy and slow. At some point, he felt his thoughts fleeing away from him. The same empty compartments and cabins, of mixed steel flooring, walls, doors and ceilings. Rows of empty seating coaches, posters and routes written in a language foreign yet all too familiar, and a knot sitting in the depth of his gullet.

The ray of sunlight abruptly blindsided him.

Vash stood looked to the side, seeing an expanse of blue as white sand receded away. He approached the windows, gazing upon a watery surface that reflected the starlight connecting with the heavens far beyond the horizon. From the firmament, a rain of white light descended, one after another, then a dozen followed by hundreds and thousands. Second by second, moment after moment—the world became a fantastical, silent theater which went on for as long as it was capable of.

A vista like no other which didn’t exist in the place he came from decorated the flitting scenery. Electrical posts which leaned or stood upright, some half-drowned train tracks, and sometimes an empty flat island or two. He felt a brief twinge from the corner of his mind, his heart seemingly to drown in the passing by landscapes that stretched to no ends.

And then, he found a person.

It was almost like catching a glimpse of a squirrel in a narrow alleyway. You wouldn’t notice, most people wouldn’t, especially for a person of tall stature like Vash. And yet, the pale blue, nearly translucent hair that streamed like waterfall paled in comparison to a ring of light hovering above the person sitting on the train coach as if sleeping.

Ah—

A youthful face with a hint of maturation. The halfway point to adulthood. The girl of mysterious origin seemed to murmur something. Soft, faint, and yet clearly heard.

“...oh.” The lightshow outside seemed to have bedazzled his ability to see the girl’s face in full. However, a droopy, innocent smile flourished from pale lips. “You’re back, sensei.”

Vash’s eyes widened.

Sensei. Teacher. A label referring to a person of respectable position, someone Vash had known before yet counted among the many others he had failed. And yet, this unknown girl referred to him with that labeling. Admiration was in her voice. Adoration sweetly fell from her word. And then… unconditional trust.

Vash couldn’t remember her. He couldn’t recognize her. He didn’t know her.

Even so… in this world of beautiful light, still he saw the uncaring shadow of reality. He approached, his boot landing on a puddle of rich red liquid. Tiny drops of crimson regularly fell from the seat under the girl. He languidly stared at the fresh bullet wound on the left side of her chest and sat next to her; the train background reduced into the backdrops as he sensed last bits of life’s brightness draining away.

A few milimeters away from the heart. The bullet, likely of medium caliber, cleanly yet brutally broke through the ribs and punctured the lung. A fatal wound without advanced medical treatment. Even then, a girl of her age was prone to infection. Specialized and sterile area, not to mention the immense blood loss in need of urgent transfusion.

It was… already too late.

“...sorry about that,” Vash said. He forced a smile. He always did that. He knew. But, it was something he couldn’t help but to do. Even as he flexed and intertwined his fingers, he felt a sorrowful de ja’vu from this situation. “It took some time to get here.”

If there was god, why couldn’t he find the answer?

“It’s alright,” the girl whose name he knew not replied. The white dress, a uniform that neatly wrapped her limbs and flowed in a long skirt refined her image. A halo, a kind voice, and a warm smile. It might be presumptuous of him to call her an angel, though. It felt rude, this was their first meeting. “I think I’m getting used to waiting. Even though it was never in my style… there’s some joy in feeling time’s passing, now.”

He glanced down. In the small space between the two of them, a small gloved hand caked in blood lay open. The little exposure of skin there had a pale coloration. Paler than white, almost blueish. Gently, Vash rested his right hand atop the delicate hand.

It was awfully cold, yet lacking in fear.

“...it was all my fault.”

The dying girl tilted her head. As the dark blue heavens shed rains of stars, Vash stared long into the faraway horizon. All he could do was to listen, now.

“The decisions I made… and everything they caused.”

The small and dainty fingers twitched. Even though there was no trembling, that seemingly trivial was a defiant challenge against all living being’s inevitable destiny.

Death was a lonely and painful thing, that was why people avoided wanting to get hurt.

“It all had to come to this for me to finally realize that you were right all along…” The girl whispered, a forlorn smile on her face. “Still. It might be presumptuous of me to ask for your help at this point, but…”

The angelic girl craned her chin up. Beyond the windows of the train cabins, the stars continued to rain; one after another. Again and again. The scenery carved a deep impression in Vash’s heart. Melancholy fogged his vision, his mind dyed in white.

“Sensei.” In the white void, what remained was the lukewarm sensation of his present companion, sensing a visible weight leaning at his shoulder. The girl rested her head as if falling into a slumber. “You may end up forgetting these words, but even without your memories, you will likely make the same decision.”

Was it? Was that truly the truth?

Vash prided himself in his ability to judge other’s characters, but that did not mean the choices he made would always be right. He had traveled long, endlessly wandering to bridge a connection amid roiling waves of malice. He used his everything he got, borrowing on the wisdom of others and a small promise he had made in his heart just to keep on going. A show of faith in a place where it was the first thing to die in a ditch.

Still, he didn’t want to make excuses. Therefore, Vash held on tight to the fading warmth in his hand.

“I’ve spoken of responsibility before.” The girl’s voice guided his consciousness. It was a heavy word to use, but he couldn’t help himself from listening. “I didn’t truly understand it back then, but now I believe I do.”

The train track echoed. Somewhere, in the distance, at some time.

“Adulthood, responsibility and obligation, the choices you make which extend beyond those ideals.”

In the white abyss that surrounded him, fragmented images surfaced. At first it was a series of landscapes. From an urban jungle of concrete, glass and steel to the deep snow burying houses and streets in a lonely night. Sprawling from the center of a gigantic city was a white tower that shot up a blue ray of light to the canopy of the world like a beacon.

“I even understand the meanings behind them.”

Even though he had never once seen such a beautiful, orderly yet chaotic structure like this, it all brought forth a deep sense of nostalgia. It was a shame that his consciousness was further slipping away, but he sensed golden glows brimming with warmth suffusing his existence.

Yet again, he was shown another series of fragmented images. This time of people of varying age, height and appearances.

“As the only adult I can put my trust in…”

Of a group of children wandering the streets. Of friends and classmates hailing from the same educational institution. Of web of connections that seemed bright, gentle and full of happiness. Spending days at leisure, sometimes frantic, but fulfilling all the same.

“Only you can free us from this twisted, distorted fate.”

And then rain fell. The sky was gray and bleak. The ruined portion of a building jutted out from the corner of his vision, and looming above him was an ashen-haired woman with a gun pointed towards him. A tablet lied next to him, drenched in the rain, riddled with bullet holes and violent scratch marks.

“And find the choices that will lead us to a new reality.”

The woman clad in black dress frowned, but Vash knew that look. He had seen it before, in many places and across the age. An empty gaze which has given up on everything, turning away solely for the sake of cursing the world. Twisted lips, trembling as if silenced by the hatred of people’s malice. A name suddenly crossed his mind, of a quiet Nameless God who had tragically awakened her Mystique to the side of Terror—

“So, Sensei. Please…”

Alas, Vash’s eyelids fluttered shut. And then his consciousness was no more.

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As night gave away, morning arrived. A bright blue sky greeted a city.

It was a promising start to a brand new day. Or, well, it would have been. However, the thing called “tranquil peace” was not something people consciously understood until the day that seemingly ordinary concept shattered into pieces. What one thought was an infallible system suddenly crumbled, and then the many denizens who had taken it for granted fell into the maws of emotional outbursts. In this maelstrom of chaos, the true form of wickedness would naturally be given the opening needed to sink its poisonous fangs and ruin everyone’s efforts for the foreseeable future.

“Reporting, another train-jacker at the Uminami route! Requesting for backup!!”

“Again!? That’s the 7th time this week!!”

“We don’t have the manpower! Send the request to other department!!”

“The remaining force stationed in DU tower is under Chief of General Security!! Also, we don’t have the clearance to mobilize forces outside of our own department without the president’s executive approval!!”

“Where do you think the president is, huh!?”

“Make it work, somehow!!”

“I’m not a miracle-worker, dammit!!”

“Mind your tongue, hey!”

Nanagami Rin rubbed her forehead, feeling headaches forming even as her eyelids drooped down once more. It was already a struggle to keep on working in an exhausted state like this, even with the few breaks given by Momoka and Ayumu. Still, the city’s conditions had further deteriorated. The office floors below hers were all turning into cages full of crazed beasts, and the streets were infested with armed delinquents drunk in illegally-attained powers. Public safety had never been at an all-time low like this, and as a knock-on effect, so did the citizens’ faith in the General Student Council’s ability as the supreme authority ruling over Kivotos.

Any day now, the black-haired girl felt like the city would implode on itself. Just… where are we supposed to go from here?

She honestly didn’t know. Even so, she didn’t have the time nor patience to keep on sulking away. The option to sequester away was never on the table, and so Rin gritted her teeth, working through the pressure threatening to crush her office. What was worse…

“Where the hell is that “guest” she mentioned…?”

Her finger tapped against the surface of her desk. Stacks after stacks of documents filled the space it provided almost to the brim, but Rin was anything but untidy. Her direct subordinates were capable as well, though they had their own idiosyncrasy. Mostly Momoka, who was still throwing chips into her mouth and standing nearby an unattended computer.

“Well, his arrival is supposed to be today, if what the letter said is true…” The pink-haired girl tilted her head, crunching and grinding down her snacks at leisure. Rin always frowned at that since the papers submitted by her always ended up with oil splotches, but as expected, even that sort of issue was mild in comparison to the ensuing problems. Furthermore, Momoka was the type to work hard and play hard. Her work efficiency rate was second to none and therefore greatly appreciated. “But seriously, this sure fits the president’s character. First is sudden disappearance. Then a cryptic message declaring the formation of a new club attached to ours while bringing in a total outsider.”

“Umm, Momoka, isn’t it rude to talk of a person behind their back…?”

“It’s fine, Ayumu.” Rin acknowledged the concern given off by the Executive Office’s secretary with a nod. And, even when she looked to Momoka, it was not with a gaze full of displeasure. “Everyone’s become cagey. That is understandable. The centralized governing of the president worked to a degree because of her ever-present role in managing the city. We never had this sort of crisis before, so it never registered in our minds that the system we have is not infallible.”

“Mhmm. Frankly, everyone’s at fault for not noticing the sand castle below our feet.” Momoka scratched her curved horn, groaning all the while as her tail flitted about behind her. “Still, this is a bigger crisis than even my wildest expectations. Didn’t somebody say it before? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?”

Rin narrowed her eyes at that. An idiom that was well-known, but not exactly the sort of thing the Chief of the Transportation Office would bring up. In a way, it was the girl’s way of providing assistance when warranted. And by her words…

“You meant to say that the previous system had never worked as intended.”

“As expected of Rin-chan, the talk goes fast.” Momoka flashed a sly grin only to replace it with a solemn, sobering look. “It’s the only way to explain this bursting dam thing. In any case, we need to close the leak, even with duct tapes, or pray and hope for nothing.”

Easy for you to say, but… “I suppose we do need to focus on finding our guest…”

Rin exhaled. She didn’t make a show out of herself, but she still dipped her shoulders and cast her gaze down on the documents lying on the center of her desk. A white envelope the size of formal document marked with the symbol of a halo and a targeting mark, struck in the middle by a thin crosshair—

“Pardon me…” The office door opened, letting in a member of the GSC who seemed to be hailing from a different department. Well, each department actually had their own office and floor, but for convenience sake, all business had to be done in the vice-president’s office for the moment. “Errm, I have a report to deliver to Chief Yuragi…”

“Huhm? What’s up?” Momoka perked up. Unfortunately, the student seemed to be a bit more than shy, so the pink-haired and twintailed girl had to walk away briefly. Rin looked long at the interaction, but the way Momoka blinked and widened her eyes seemed to indicate that something was afoot. “Eeh? Is that for real…?”

Now that was new. Rin had known Momoka not as long as some others did, as the girl was a first-year who jumped to position because of her prodigious talent. However, Momoka now looked like she was swallowing a particularly sour but not at all sweet lemon candy.

The Chief of Transportation Office wholly in charge of the traffic laws, routes and trades done through the city’s veins walked back with a haggard gait. She had a piece of paper in her hand—which she unceremoniously dumped on the desk.

“This is…” Rin blinked, processing the report of arrest and criminal records of… a person suspected to be a vagrant squatting and illegally using train service? Not exactly something that warranted the executive office’s consideration, but the fact that it reached all the way up here suggested thorough reading, and according to the document… “Red, tattered trench-coat as if riddled by bullets. Outlandish and dirty outfits. In possession of a heavily-customized large-caliber gun with no permits. Hairs that stand on all ends. A few ear piercings, potentially juvenile delinquency records. Taller than average stature with a lanky built and absolutely no civilian credentials or home address. Approximately a male adult bearing the visage of a twenty-five years old?”

…

“...oh.” From the side, her diligent secretary murmured, “is that our esteemed guest…?”

Oh, indeed. And he got arrested and was currently confined in a police box at the train station of Shiratori Ward. What in the...?

+-+-+-+-+​

Vash had never felt so tired like this. It was like he had been running through the night only to get unceremoniously dumped to the roadside in broad daylight.

Well, actually, he did run through the night, but everything else after that was seriously fuzzy that he only had vague feelings at best. How did he end up here? Had he been dreaming the whole day away, and that his fight against the droid armies was actually a figment of a drug-addled imagination? Well… not really.

It was one thing already to see a mechanical man with television display for head and mic for ears, but the fact that it—he—was dressed in a uniform that screamed expensive top to bottom before the man apparently in charge of the train station dragged him off to what counted as a police box alarmed Vash a great deal. There was an absurd telltale of minute motions in that gesture, of reactions and actions and intelligence paired with a level of emotional state that exceeded even the most advanced AI back home.

Yes. That robot man was definitely alive in every sense. Sentient, sapient. Like Plant, but of entirely different origin and all-in on the mechanical aspect.

It was a discovery like no other, but Vash had quickly found himself with a bowl of piping hot rice bowl served by the local security… cop, police? Well, one would have expected a gruff old man too done with zaniness, but imagine it be a pair of children—girl teenagers with deep black and flat white hairs—that were questioning him in a contrasting dynamic of enthusiasm and laziness. The guns the two of them carried made him pause, but as he received a rather flimsy attempt of interrogation, he needed to ask…

“What was it did you call yourself, again? Valkyrie’s Public Safety Bureau agents?”

“Yes indeed, sir! Officer Nakatsukasa Kirino, at your service!” The white-haired bundle of energy bright as the sunshine saluted. Dressed in a white and gray canvas which was outlined by black belts and gold-colored emblems, the girl certainly had the air of a civil servant, or in other words, a policewoman on the lookout for petty crimes. “Now, eat up!”

Eat up… Vash stared long and hard at the bowl of rice topped with fried food and thick sauce which smelled really good. It seemed the sauce was made from a bunch of condiments, the thick and gravy texture likely a product of a culinary technique that clearly spared no effort in its process. It looked way too good, too luxurious and special for something served to a criminal suspect, not to mention the timing… I-I don’t think I’ve ever seen food cooked this fast and turning up with this result…

“Wow,” the black-haired sidekick of the spirited Kirino murmured. “Mister, you must have absolutely zero idea what the food means, huh?”

Vash snapped back to reality. Fighting off his grumbling stomach, he wiped his face from any drool possibly leaking down the edge of his lips. That-that was dangerous…!

“Whatever do you mean…!?”

“You’re raising your voice by half-an-octave at the end of your sentence there, sunglasses-wearing Onii-san.” The awfully short girl wore a lopsided smile. Wait, step back for a moment there. What was that thing she just said there…? That weirdly raised his heckles. “Ah, go ahead and eat that rice bowl. It’s just a reheated convenience store meal, but those sold here are to die for compared to those sold in the outskirts.”

Hrrk. So this was the best deal among many others…?

“Personally, I prefer my donuts. But anyway,” the cranberry red hue in the shorter girl’s eyes lazily stared back at him. “Is that coat of yours bulletproof? Made from composite armor?”

Vash stared owlishly, this time from surprise. How… did she figure that out?

“Ah, knew it. The chair’s been creaking there, even though we already confiscated your gun and luggage. You’re really tall by the city’s standard, but Mister, your figure don’t impress much weight on your person.”

And now he was being openly insulted… It wasn’t like he had a choice when it came to living the way he did. He was a double-S threat in the whole planet; a big shot and a public menace to common people’s safety. He had to live by subsisting off other people’s kindness or honest-to-goodness hard labor. Well, when put like that, he really was living in a pitiful state, but it was what it was. Besides, life on the road wasn’t all bad either.

“...wait.” And then the white-haired girl interrupted. Kirino had a strange look on her face as she stared down at the person sitting next to her. “Who are you and why are you so cooperative? Fubuki, have you been drinking espresso earlier?”

“Eeeeh… come on, Kirino. Even I have my own whim to work around,” the girl now known as Fubuki pouted. “Sides, this adult isn’t gonna be our problem for long.”

“Hueh—?”

The cubicle’s sliding door rattled open. As warm sunlight streamed in—of which Vash had particularly noted to be way cooler than the sunlight in No-Man’s Land—a tall young lady walked into the police box. She wore glasses, her icy blue eyes giving a sharp sweep over the place before focusing precisely on him. She was well-endowed, with a hint of immaturity in her facial structure. The way her chest heaved up and down seemed to point a mad rush she had done to reach this place, but what was up with that?

That said, all the trivia Vash had noted was overpowered by the professional demeanor she carried to the point that authority was oozing from her being. He felt like he had done something wrong. She was seriously glaring at him. Like, really, really glaring. Almost as if she was trying to drill a hole in his skull with an hour-long sermon. Also, that was a very long hair it even almost reached her ankle, there.

“I… see. So you are the one.”

Having finished scrutinizing him from head-to-toes, the much older girl dressed in a classy white uniform coughed into her fist. Her gaze flew off him, much to his relief, and sat on the two Valkyrie students. One of which froze up, her back straightening up. Words would have leaped out her voice box if not for the initiative stolen by the mysterious person.

“Excuse me, you two are…”

“Ah, madame Vice-president. Greetings there.” Fubuki lazily waved. She did not deign to remove herself from the chair, instead sending a greeting as casually as could be as if calling out to a work colleague. “Bout time you got here. Guessing you’ve got serious business with Mister Outsider here?”

“Heeh!? Fu-Fubuki, you mean this adult here is…?”

Fubuki shrugged. “I mean, his fashion is out-of-place. Then there’s his equipment. Did you see that caliber? A bit much for use inside the city’s limits, no? Security camera also didn’t catch anything, and there was nothing in the radio network even though he’s this conspicuous. Then there’s… nah, never mind. Anyway, here’s your catch, miss VIP.”

The Valkyrie girl handed out a paper onto the table. The newest addition in the already narrow police box trained her gaze on it before closing shut. As tension visibly melted away from her shoulders, the young woman sighed.

“Very well. Thank you for your continued dedication to the city’s service.”

“Heh he he… Then, can I ask for our office to receive a regular supply of donuts?”

“This and that are two different matters. Also, that counts as bribery attempt so I shall file a legal complaint to your direct superior later for dereliction of duty.” The so-called Vice-president paused. “A very minor complaint. Now, let us be off—“

Vash’s stomach growled.

Silence ensued. Kirino drew a blank expression with her lips forming a triangular shape, while the glasses-wearing lady twitched her eyebrow. Only the lazy-looking high-efficiency female cop snickered.

“Right, right. Why not eat while on the go?” Fubuki suggested with a sly smile on her face.

“That is only applicable for snacks and bread!!” Kirino yelled out. “What if he suffers a stomachache!? It’s unhygienic with a risk of accident in public space! Not to mention setting up a poor example for the younger children! It’s bad for education!!”

...you know what, that’s all a valid reason to not eat while walking. Well, without further ado, Vash began to chow down a very late and heavy breakfast.

 

​

A/N: Might get busy in the next few days.​

---

--- Episode 5: Hello to Halo ---​

Nanagami Rin heaved a sigh. Out of relief, mind you. The General Student Council’s work was critical, but she had given herself a temporary pass to welcome the enigmatic guest from the Outside World. She of all people knew how strange that might seem, but beggars could never be choosers.

“...haah,” the girl once again let out a sigh. She didn’t want to stay in the police box since it was too narrow, though staying outside and leaning her back against the wall of tiles warmed by the sunshine allowed her to collect her thoughts together. ”Should I be glad that there hasn’t been much issues around here?”

Perhaps she ought to. After all, the Shiratori Ward was a strategic point directly overseen by a branch school of Valkyrie. Not only it sat close to a Sanctum Tower, the rail station controlled by this ward was a hop, skip, and step away from the city’s center, at which point one could find any train route to reach the entirety of the city.

There was also a pier, a business tower, and other economy sectors abound. The Shiratori Ward in truth held quite an importance.

Rin paused her thoughts, wondering if she could make use of the Valkyrie to safeguard this ward rather than letting them scramble in response to emergencies. Certainly, it would be better than letting precious manpower and resources blown away by the armed delinquents upgraded with tactical equipment from the black market, but on the other hand… the Valkyrie was limited in more than a few things. As if they could handle the many chaos bringers rampaging through the city; not with their level of training, armament, and pretty much everything else that they had.

Ugh, there’s no end to the problems. “Without the President’s approval, the alternative is hardly useful, either.”

Just as Rin was about to let out a sigh for the umpteenth time, a cold cylinder suddenly pressed itself against her cheek. The Acting President squeaked, quickly glaring at the red-clothed interloper—wait, since when was he there?

“I’ve been calling out to you, but it does seem like you’re a deep-thinker.” The black-haired man who stood tall like a tree smiled. It was an easy, almost carefree smile. In his right hand was a canned coffee while his other hand held a worn out rope tied to a large luggage slung over his shoulder. “Here you go, a freebie from those kind girls.”

Those kind girls… oh, the Valkyrie students. Rin wasn’t quite sure what to make of them, but judging by their white jackets, those two must be with the Public Safety Bureau.

“Friendly, aren’t they?” The mysterious adult crinkled his eyebrows. His earrings glinted from the late morning sunlight, but the way his orange shades drooped allowed her full view of his face. His blue-green eyes exposed much humanity, almost to the point of reflecting only the transparency of his intentions. It was a very comfortable stare, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing people would often direct to her, whether it be in official or off-the-clock capacity. “You do look like you’ve got a lot of things going on. If you can’t have a lunch break, at least have a cold refreshment.”

“Well…” Rin glanced at the chilled canned drink. Pushing the rims of her glasses up, she held her thoughts from overflowing and accepted the gift. She had been offered, so there was no reason to reject it. It wasn’t like there was any harm in accepting a gesture of kindness, even if it came from underpaid civil officers that would have needed a dose of caffeine more than her. “I understand. Thank you, erm…”

“Vash,” the man introduced himself. “Just Vash. I get called a lot of things, though I guess the name Vash the Stampede means nothing around here, huh?”

Rin hummed and shook her head. She certainly had never heard of him. Setting aside the actual name, which sounded normal enough, Stampede sounded more like a moniker than a proper last name. The naming convention the adult used clearly differed to this city’s system, but that at least confirmed his origin as an Outsider. The content of the letter was genuinely written without any falsehood or cryptic koan, as it turned out. Rin pursed her lips a little. Even though she hadn’t been around, somehow, she could easily feel her voice reverberating at the forefront of her mind.

Oh, this is almond coffee… no, wait, that doesn’t matter. “Well met. My name is Nanagami Rin. Please just call me which way you are comfortable with, as we will no doubt be in each other’s care for the foreseeable future.”

“Rin, then? Got it. Nice to meet you!”

“Well...” That is unexpectedly direct. Was this man just that naturally spirited, or was he simply the type to go buddy-buddy with others? “Shall we go, then?”

“Right… you do look like you know where we’re going.” The black-haired adult rolled his shoulders, quickly following after her trails. As they left the train station behind them, she kept on hearing sputtering and odd sounds from him. “Whoa… now this looks different, alright.”

What did he mean by this? Rin frowned and threw a look over her shoulder. The adult was now swiveling his head around. It felt rather immature, as if he was touring a new place rather than moving out of a sense of duty. The fact that he frequently stopped by a storefront and gazing bewilderingly at the numerous trinkets, goods and clothing brands had quite simply ruined her initial impression of him. Was this really the reliable help the president believed in?

Rin breathed out, “there will be time for sightseeing later, sensei.”

“Hm? Ah, eh. You mean me?”

What…? “What is with that response? You are the teacher vouched by the General Student Council’s President, no? Did you not receive any word from her?”

The older man adopted a thoughtful pose. As he rubbed his chin, he looked sideway and hemmed and hawed. Out of irritation, Rin sharpened her glare. The man called Vash shrunk away by half-a-step with a troubled smile.

“Well, uh. Excuse me. I guess I’m in a bit of culture shock.” Vash lifted his chin, staring past her and towards the distant scenery ahead. “These all just don’t seem real to me.”

“Huh…? What do you mean by…”

“This city,” Vash elaborated. As the adult put a hand on his waist, light reflected on the lens of his dark orange shade. There she noticed the visible scratch lines on the accessory, seemingly indicating a journey of poor maintenance if not hardships. “It looks prosperous, and really well-designed. It’s a total change of pace compared to where I came from. I’m honestly shocked, envious even.”

Envious…? The Shiratori Ward certainly had its own attractions, but it wasn’t like it could be said as the city’s pride. Many School Districts other than those in this place had facilities that far exceeded this ward; some even boasted to be completely unique to the point that no other districts could hope to mimic them. Although, thinking in reverse, would that mean that the esteemed guest came from a remote place?

“Is your homeland that far out there?”

“Yep! Full of sand and sun-scorched all year round. Not much entertainment when you go away from the big cities, there.” Vash emphasized with a strong p to the yep. The way he barely changed his expression felt a little unnerving. Did he not catch her sarcasm? “It has a lot of downsides, but the few upsides there are actually make them stand out like no other. As a well-storied traveler, I can guarantee you this city makes everything back home pale in comparison.”

“I… see? Well, if that’s so, I suppose there’s no helping it…” Rin wasn’t quite sure what to make of that confidence. He made it sound like he hailed from Abydos, but even in its twilight years, that school district still had enough modern facilities to accommodate their citizens with the necessity needed for its district to operate safely. “The many Schools occupying this city contributed to the city’s current state. Although, we of the General Student Council command express authority when it came to managing public facilities as well as services.”

“...oh? Is there no government body ruling this place?”

Rin sucked in air. Slowly, slowly… she needed to be a bit more patient. They were about to reach the nearest Sanctum Tower, soon. This slight detour was going to end and they could finally get down to the real business. Plus, it did seem like the president hardly gave the adult a primer even before sending him here. He was also being extremely cooperative and civil so far. Thus, the blame lied not in him.

Should I say I’m surprised, or not… If she could see her again, she’d make sure to give an especially thorough sermon. Being cryptic was her forte, but in other times she’d just play by her own rule and ignored everything she had to say. A burning question over how could this city still remain intact under her reign remained a mystery Rin would likely never know the answer of, but anyway! That is for after we stopped Kivotos from imploding on itself—

“Right. Apologies, it seems that I misunderstood a few things.” Clearing her throat, Rin straightened her back. “I shall start over from the very beginning then. This is on behalf of the executive office’s responsibility for having failed to inform you beforehand, and it should hopefully aid your effort to stabilize the city’s public order.”

Let’s see… yes, should we begin with the city itself?

“As I have introduced myself before. My name is Nanagami Rin, a General Student Council officer of this academy city, Kivotos.” Rin closed her eyes briefly. The streets from here on out were extremely familiar to her. Even if the unexpected happened, she could pretty much deal with with it. “This mega-city is comprised of hundreds… thousands of academies privileged with self-autonomy rights. You could even say that this city is built from the grounds up as a living palace of learning.”

“A palace of learning… a city so large it can house thousands of academies…?”

“Indeed. Kivotos is mainly inhabited by students and managed by students, with the General Student Council holding the supreme authority on behalf of the non-academy members and the general well-being of all students.” Rin paused, once again looking back to see if the guest was following her. “The rest of the details can come later. You may simply recognize that you have been employed here at the president’s request to act as a bridge connecting the city, the student council, and all those schools.”

“...huh.” Vash looked like he wanted to say something but refrained from doing so. “The more things change, I guess…”

...did he truly understand? Rin was a fair bit skeptical. Sure, the adult was conspicuous like no other with that flashy-looking trench coat and large-caliber gun, but the little things she had been seeing did not impress her much of reliability. Should I… try to indulge my curiosity just a bit more than usual, then?

“Do you have any question, sensei?”

“Well. I get the gist of it, at the very least.” The older man rubbed the bridge of his nose. Oddly, his left hand looked to be covered in dark iron plates. “I’ve been living quite a long life, so that makes me a teacher by default. But are you doing okay, Rin?”

“Ah, well… I’d be lying if I said that I am not doubtful, but…” Rin exhaled. Right, he was a helper delivered by the President. A teacher and an adult… The thought of it made her have fuzzy feelings. School curriculum had entirely moved away from the outdated teaching curriculum into one which placed much responsibilities and respect onto the students’ own initiatives. Whether they passed or failed tests were all up to each student’s capability in following the classes provided in the format of recorded audiovisual discs and textbooks. As a result, adults and lecturers from the Outside only appeared under special circumstances such exotic research presentation. “We don’t exactly have the privilege to look at a gift horse in the mouth. You are, after all, vouched by the president…”

“No, not that. Not at all like that.” Vash chuckled. “You’re an upright kid, aren’t you? I get the importance of my job here, but what I want to know more isn’t that.”

Then what is…?

“I’ll help out as much as I can, but are you doing okay, Rin?”

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It was only for the briefest moment. Perhaps it was nothing more than a tiny chink in her armor, but it was still a thing.

Vash softly smiled. So many things had been launched at him from the get-go that he was still feeling disoriented, but the helpful person before him was at least clear as day.

Nanagami Rin’s lips shivered. Casting her gaze downward, it took her a few more seconds until she could recollect herself. He patiently waited, as he sensed gears turning inside of her mind, and before long, tensions evaporated from her shoulders with a slow droop, a tired sigh leaking out from her lungs while the glasses she wore tried their best to hide away the instability of her psyche.

“...though you may be an adult, a teacher with whom I have barely interacted, you are holding me quite at disadvantages.” Rin’s gaze fell and turned forlorn. Bitterness seeped out from her words, yet there was resignation, vexation, and quite possibly acceptance deep within her eyes. “In truth, I am not doing okay. Some times have passed ever since the president’s disappearance. As vital functions of the city ceased to work, public order naturally worsened with each passing day. However, in such a short timespan, the city is now on the brink of total anarchy, while the symbol of authority we once held all but crumble away like a sand castle swept by the ocean waves.”

Ah, there you go. It was quite something to witness dark clouds gathering up above somebody’s head… especially with consideration to the dimly glowing patterns hovering above her crown. The way she shifted from exhaustion to impotent rage, to the way she ground her teeth and clenching her fists told him the amount of stresses she had been powering through. And yet, contrary to most kids her age, Rin complained in a clear and concise manner; delivering proper complaints directed to things that troubled not just her, but also others. Man, she really is a serious, no-nonsense person.

It was almost precious how she expressed herself. Still, there came a point where one should just forget about all the bad things. As it was, Vash had one ultimate weapon he could use to coax children, and so he approached Rin who had remained still as she threw expletives over one thing after another. He raised his right hand, casting a long shadow over the girl’s face. When she snapped out of her reverie, he had already rested his hand atop her head.

“S...sensei…?” Rin hung her mouth open, seemingly taken aback.

Ignoring her, Vash proceeded to rub his hand horizontally, combing the nice and smooth bundle of black hair as lustrous as it was neatly done up. He also had black hair now, but that hardly mattered right now. There was a child who had shaved off her free time and privileges for an obligation fit only for old people like him. With that in mind, how could he possibly tell her off simply for not acting the way she ought to be?

“Good work, Rin.” Vash beamed a smile. “You’ve done well holding out for so long.”

The girl shook. Well, more like a tremor running over her whole body. That little lapse of control over her own composure, however, told him more about the girl called Nanagami Rin, and being honest? He felt a bit more than justified for giving her a genuine praise for job well-done. If nobody acknowledged, much less praised a child for doing the right thing, that’d be such a sorrowful thing to remember as they grew up. Vash could vouch for that, and he’d say many people could have turned out for the better had they been in the right company, but that sort of thing sometimes could feel like a miracle in the distant end of a dark, narrow tunnel.

“...Sensei,” Rin eventually called out. A short time had passed, not enough to make one feel sore on their feet, but still long enough that Vash had started to wonder why was there no reaction coming up. “This is not the time nor the place for that.”

O-ooh, looks like this girl’s got a stick right up her… no, wait, that’s sexual harassment, and against minors at that.

As Vash drew back his hand, however… he saw the glasses-wearing girl sighing. The tension riddling her face and shoulders were nowhere to be seen, now. Well, Vash didn’t have the heart nor mind to point that out.

“...nevertheless, I appreciate your care. It seems that the President did not choose you out of mere whims.” Rin glanced down, specifically staring at his… oh. “And I suppose you are armed for the occasion.”

“Uuuh…? That sounds like you are alright with carrying firearms?” The police officer duo from earlier are also armed, but they are cops, so that checks.

“Yes. One other thing about Kivotos is that all students employ firearms of their own choice, many among them tailor-made to best suit their individual abilities.” Rin turned back to walk away, giving Vash no time to process the shocking statement. “The physical durability we Students innately possess led to the usage of firearms to be the best way in sorting out our… let’s just say combative nature.”

That’s extremely concerning—

“The problem children of Kivotos tend to go overboard, so I suggest you to not count on your lucky stars too much.” Rin glanced back, a solemn gaze directed at him in such an unfamiliar way. The more rational side to him berated him for his lifestyle being at fault, but well… genuine concern for his personal well-being was not something Vash the Stampede had often received, especially from a total stranger. “If you ever feel yourself to be in danger, just stay in the back, sensei.”

Haheeh… who’d have imagined a youngster to worry about my safety…?

Vash scratched his cheek, troubled by the very bold statement. He wasn’t even sure he could believe what Rin was saying. He still trusted her, she was the one who helped him from getting arrested as a vagrant and squatter. Still, seeing was believing. Well, the girl did have those glowing patterns atop of her head, and the two girls in the police box shared the same feature, though not the design. On top of that, Rin was part of the city’s higher-ups, the closest thing he could call as the ruling governing body of the wondrous place that was Kivotos. He supposed he could heed her advice and only move when things went dire.

Although… surely there was nothing else that could surprise him, by this point?

+-+-+-+-+​

The girl had been counting the clock ever since she had heard of the Acting President’s signs of appearance in the Shiratori Ward. Of course, other renowned neighboring Schools had happened to catch winds of that. United by a common goal, she and the other school representatives reached the Sanctum Tower post-haste… only to find themselves unable to catch the tail of any higher-ranked staff of the city’s supreme authority.

The first floor, the reception lobby, seemed to be deserted. Not as many students affiliated to the General Student Council were in sight, while what few there were didn’t have the clearance to summon their superiors.

So one of the rumors is true, then. Hayase Yuuka of the Millennium School had tried to reach out to the GSC since several nights ago. Of course, her call rarely connected, and even in the off-chance it did connect, she was greeted by the haggard response of disposable peons unfortunate enough to be slotted for HR department. It was suspicious. Way too suspicious that she had a hard time convincing herself that it was just the Acting President being the same, unfriendly and terrible person who only cared about the truly important things. But if GSC truly has lost control over Sanctum Tower functions, that’s an entirely different matter.

Yuuka could sort of sympathize, sort of.

Her own school, Millennium, had its own shares of problems, after all. Nevertheless, she also had the duty to protect her fellow schoolmates’ daily lives. The wind generators loaned by the GSC were by no means insignificant, as they provided power to many vital sectors needed for the school to run itself. Once again, the treasurer of Seminar felt the realization that backups were always required, but a replacement power grid would far exceed the school’s current budget. Seminar also had to gather more funds to continue the construction project for the long-awaited new multi-purpose transmission array tower…

“Oh, is that…” and then, somebody raised her voice.

Yuuka immediately zeroed in her gaze to the entrance. As a tall figure clad in white walked into the reception lobby, there was no mistaking her sharp gaze, the long black hair with night blue undertone, the pair of pointed ears, and the Halo made out in an elegant ring vertically crossed with three four-pointed stars. Indeed, that was the Acting President of the General Student Council, Nanagami Rin. Her actual role was the Vice-President, but her involvement and declaration to serve as Acting President, even temporarily, could only mean that the great President of the General Student Council was…

“Huh? Who’s that behind her?”

“An… adult man? Oh, he’s taller than even Hasumi-san…”

“Seems like a friendly fellow to me.”

Well, there’s certainly a lot of first impressions thrown out. Even Yuuka was surprised by the older man who was smiling with the carefree attitude of one perfectly content with the world and everything. He was a total stranger, a person she had never seen across Kivotos, and yet he followed behind the terrifying Acting President as if it was the most natural thing. That said something as Seminar had a good track records of having invited lecturers from the Outside for collaboration projects or workshops, but this person standing behind Rin was… more than just unique-looking. A red trench coat, walking with a slight hunch and slinging a huge luggage over his shoulder… and what’s with the old-fashioned sunglasses?

“Urgh.” Nanagami Rin squinted her eyes upon landing her sight ahead of her. Her glasses glinted under the artificial lights, while her lips twisted as if in displeasure. “This timing is rather inconvenient, much to our displeasure, I do believe…”

Et tu!? The way the GSC vice-president dropped her polite facade was as lightning fast as it was frustrating. Even Yuuka herself had no desire to meet the Acting President if not for the nature of her current issues. Fine, be that way, then!!

“Your acquaintances?” The adult chimed in. His timing was impeccable, as it drew away the ire from the Acting President who glanced sideways. His voice was rather frivolous.

“...yes. Well, they are guests—if you could even call them that—who represent neighboring academies’ student councils, disciplinary committees, and those with too much times on their hands.”

Yuuka growled and gnashed her teeth. As unfriendly and intimidating as always. It also felt a little bit more clipping than the usual. Who was really at fault, here?

“That so…” The man with hair so spiky it all stood on end pressed two fingers on his chin, his gaze sweeping over her and the other representatives. “Well, why not hear them out first?”

“Sensei, that’s—“

“Finally, someone who gets it!” Yuuka immediately jumped on the opportunity. Ignoring the withering look she had garnered from the Acting President, the member of Seminar stepped up to the front, placing a hand on her chest. “Thousands of academies are all in panic right now! Heck, even our school’s wind generators have shut down since a few days ago!! I demand a meeting with the president of General Student Council!”

While the Acting President clicked her tongue, the adult in red muttered in a thoughtful sound… except then he tilted his head.

“Wind generator? Does it produce a lot of power?”

Nha…!

“There’s a lot of types when it comes to power generators across Kivotos.” The vice-president of General Student Council bobbed her head down. “That said, Millennium which that noisy girl belongs to consumes extraneous power at the daily compared to the rest of the schools out there.”

“Hoh… so you girls don’t use just one thing to supply the grids, huh.”

“...I think there’s a morbidly fascinating topic to discuss here. The implication of your words means a lot of things, and none of them seems to be good, sensei.”

Hey! Don’t just advance the talk on your own pace like that, agh!!

Rin pushed up her glasses and unilaterally looked past Yuuka. That irked her greatly, but her next words coaxed her somewhat as it seemed the adult’s words had managed to convince the infamous vice-president of GSC to not kick any of them out from the Sanctum Tower for righteously exercising their rights and obligations to their respective schools.

“As for you, representative of Gehenna’s Prefect Team…?”

“Yes, well. We have received rumors that notorious repeat offenders meant to be held under the Federal Correction Bureau’s strict confinement have all but escaped.”

“Outlaw students…?” The older man looked bewildered. What, was that look? It was like he had never heard of the concept of juvenile detention before…

“Notoriously so.” The yellow-eyed girl with red glasses and dirty blonde hair sighed. “Culprits to massive collateral damage, terrorism, and downright unrepentant.”

“...hopefully none of the victims are injured too badly.”

“Hm? Well, they are ruthless in their own right. It took the mobilization of SRT’s ace squad to even put them behind the bars, after all… but the victims are at least never in any state so severely debilitating it’d extend their hospitalization period to months.”

At that, the adult suddenly patted his chest a few times, letting out a relieved sigh all the while. What the heck? What was up with him, anyway? He somehow managed to casually interrupting times and again, interjecting with random questions, too…

“Good to hear! Then, you two are…” The black-haired man crinkled his eyebrows. An odd glint in his eyes, yet his everlasting soft smile remained etched on his face. “Oh, those are nifty, almost nostalgic even, but never mind that. Since the logo on your uniforms match, guessing you two hail from the same school?”

The pair of black and silver students glanced at each other. That was before the latter closed her eyes and the former nodded in suite as if in acceptance.

“A pleasure to meet you. I am Hanekawa Hasumi, of the Trinity’s General School.” The red-eyed and black-haired girl with dark wings politely bowed. “I serve the Justice Committee of our school and act as its vice-president. This girl here is Morizuki Suzumi, a member of the Vigilante Corps.”

“Quite peculiar titles…” The adult mused.

“The Justice Committee functions as Trinity’s Disciplinary Board.” Hanekawa Hasumi smiled, a tiny bit of expression gracing her delicate frame. “It might be a tad bit pretentious of a name, but upholding ourselves to a higher ethical standard and conduct will hopefully lead others to better behave themselves. Alas, incidents kept on occurring, with general estimation of nearly two-thousand percents of increase to the smuggling activities in the black markets.”

“Likewise, the Vigilante Corps exists through volunteer system.” The gray-haired Suzumi placed a hand on her waist, staring up at the older man. “Though in our case, there’s been a radical increase of thugs who attacked students on the way to and from school.”

“Yessh… that’s certainly about right when everyone’s losing their marbles.”

Okay, that’s enough. Yuuka huffed and crossed her arms. “You are certainly trying to be relevant in the conversation, but this is our city’s issues. Or rather, who are you? Why is an adult here?”

The smiling man blinked twice. He pointed at himself and chuckled.

“Right, guess introducing myself is right for the occasion.” The man extended his right hand forward, his face lighting up like a midsummer sunflower in full bloom. “The name’s Vash the Stampede. From today onward, I will be working here as a teacher! Nice to meet’cha!!”

...huh!?

 

--- Episode 6: Colorful Mess ---​

Rin clasped her hands together. The crisp sound reverberated through the barren reception lobby and brought all attentions to her. Her smile was sweet, albeit not at all reaching up to her eyes. Vash shuddered at the silent, roiling wrath masked by a calm facade likened to a sagely hermit if he didn’t squint his gaze at it.

“It seems everyone is now on the same page.” The girl with black and deep blue dual-toned hair pushed her glasses up. “No better time to deal with all the hassle. Sensei, I’d like you to take these loons—I mean kind neighbors—out for a mission, as we needed a few things first before we could put the city back in order.”

...I doubt arguing is on the table. “Right… so, what do you need me for?”

“You are to lead an extracurricular club designed by the missing president herself.” Rin’s words apparently possessed quite a gravitas to them. The ripple of reactions were not what he could call subtle, but he decided that paying attention to Rin’s explanation was much more important for now. “The letter left behind in the wake of her disappearance dictated us, the General Student Council, to recruit your aid as a teacher-advisor for a freshly created federal club. To be frank, it is an extrajudicial organization created with the goal of managing, investigating, as well as solving cases sent up to the General Student Council. As its conception had been personally approved by the president, your words and authority stand equal to our organization. Thus…”

“Who, wait. Slow down, please!” Vash raised both hands. “I’m not good with all the complicated things. Basically, I have my own office and my job is to deal with the chaos plaguing the city… right?”

At Rin’s slow and deliberate nod, the only man in the room scratched the back of his head as he threw up an apologetic smile. Okay, he could work with this… As long as he could articulate his words properly and go straight to the point, then—

“So… what I mean is…” He glanced sideways to the stunned onlookers. “I can just, drag these girls off to deal with said troubles?”

“Simply put, yes. Your command means law. Regardless of the time and place, it is within the rights of your organization—Schale—in recruiting helpers from all schools across Kivotos. It is no different to the power wielded by the president.”

Yikes, yeah, that’s totally dreadful. Absolutely scary stuff, one could say. Day one of his work and already he obtained absolute power with nary but words from somebody he had never once met throughout his life. Who on earth was this President, and why was she entrusting him with so much trust as if he could do infinitely better than her? He might be great, awesome, super ultimate marksman there was to ever exist, but he was still a lone individual. I’m just a layabout with a price on his head, you know…?

Ah, well. There was no other way around it. He just had to roll with the punch.

“And the mission is…?” Vash suppressed the desire to groan upon catching Rin’s droll look, already sensing things having gone way to the sides.

“As of just now, a nefarious terrorist who commands a bunch of delinquent underlings armed with tactical-grade black market goods has… occupied Schale’s club room.”

...pardon moi?

“The first step for Schale to establish itself is to own a base. So to speak, a club room as befit a school club. That place which lies in the city’s outskirts is where most of the tools useful for Schale’s functions are stored in, and the last phase in finalizing your club’s creation is for me to directly participate in the handover.”

“...that sounds incredibly dubious. Actually, having the missing president employing an adult from the outside, mysterious handover, and then this strong-arming—”

“Dear representative of Millennium, I have no problems with reordering your school’s emergency to be set in the bottom of the priority list, if that is what you’d like.”

“Agh! This is tyranny!!”

Oh, that poor girl… Vash wished he could coax Rin to settle down a little bit, but she really looked to be high-strung as could be.. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that she wanted things to go right just for once, and so she was willing to do anything to achieve that goal. Well, her threat was fairly cute compared to the barbarian savages in his homeland, so he could tolerate this much. Plus, the show needs to hit the road, preferably sooner than later.

“So, if the… teacher of Schale? Managed to reclaim the club room, everything will go back to normal?” One of the Trinity girls chimed in. “I feel quite skeptical, but this mission is an VIP escort-type mission, then.”

“At the very least, there are no efforts that will be unrewarded.” Rin shrugged. “From our side, a chopper has been prepared to drop you all on-site. As well, there are medical supply and ammo you can liberally use throughout the duration of this mission.”

“I see… if the Chief Commander said so, that is good enough as any reason, then.” The tallest among the four curved her lips into a small smile. Her eyes were rich red, almost deep crimson, yet the slight coloration to her cheeks made her out to look graceful instead of cold and uncaring. “We shall follow your lead, Vash-sensei.”

“...I suppose there’s no other choice.” The girl with dirty blonde hair and red-rimmed glasses exasperated, though she looked up to him all the same with rapt seriousness. “As I am a licensed medic, please leave support to me. Sensei, do be sure not to leave my side because there are limits to my range of protection.”

“Whoa, oh… right. Right.” As expected, he couldn’t get used to this atmosphere. These children were definitely teenagers, but each and every one of them had the bearings of trained and learned gunmen. It was actually worrying him a heck lot, but the way they all behaved reminded him of… of… Huh, I didn’t think I’d remember the energetic reporter and camerawoman duo… am I getting homesick already? “Pleasure to meet you. I didn’t catch your name earlier, but you are…”

“Oh, my apologies.” Pink dusted the blonde girl’s cheeks. Clearing her throat with a few coughs, she then steadied herself. “My name is Hinomiya Chinatsu. I am affiliated with the Gehenna School’s Prefect Team. As the Disciplinary Board’s members have all scattered all over the autonomous districts to lay down the laws, the responsibility of representing our school ended up on an unimportant logistic officer like me.”

Whoa, now, that’s just uncalled for. “No need to put yourself down like that, Chinatsu. I may not be the person to look for when it comes to really complex stuff, but I know enough that soldiers alone will not keep a country afloat.”

“Uhm… that is, fair enough.” Chinatsu stuttered. “Still, as I am a medic, I won’t be able to contribute much in battles.”

Vash grinned. “Saving lives is also a battle in its own right. I respect your choice to help people instead of injuring them. Honest.”

Somehow, that cranked up the blush by a notch. He wondered if this girl was the same type as Rin; unused to hearing compliments because nobody appreciated their work—

“...I see that sensei is the type to easily throw around praises.”

“Errhmm…? Feels like somebody’s gaze is boring a hole on my back…” What, what did I do wrong this time… wait, scratch that, the girl with pigtails is now glaring at me too?

+-+-+-+-+​

Hayase Yuuka decided that her skepticism had twisted into a mild prejudice. It was not often for her temper to be tested like this, but the goings-on really made her grind her teeth in utter vexation. She just couldn’t accept the way things developed.

And this all because of… what, a letter with dubious content?

Honestly, her rational side had been jabbing here and there for a lot of times. Not only did her opinion of the General Student Council dropping to an all-time low, she also couldn’t believe herself for having gotten roped into cleaning after their mess. She wished she didn’t take up this job, but the absences of half of Seminar members hammered in the cruel tragedy of her fate.

Maybe she ought to take a break after this side-job, provided it somehow managed to work out which didn’t feel like the case at all.

“Touching down~” The helicopter pilot announced. Her voice was full of merriment which befitted the diminutive stature of the Chief of Transportation Committee. However, the chopper landed a bit away from the Schale club room. “Sorry about that, but with ole Crusader-chan out there, the transportation service can only get this far.”

Crusader… a heavy-armor battle tank!? Yuuka’s blank amazement could hardly be hidden at this point. How did a bunch of ragtag delinquents manage to acquire a tank!?

“...hrm. If it’s the Type-1, then it must have the same spec as the one we have at school’s museum… which means this one is an antique or a replica of it.” The member of Trinity’s Vigilante Corps opened the door and hopped out of the chopper. Immediately taking a point, she lifted her assault rifle as she swept the surrounding streets a once-over to scan possible enemy threats. “Clear. Time for deployment, ladies.”

“Thank you, Suzumi.” The largest member of the impromptu task force was the second to leave the transport heli, her wings flexing before spreading out and wide. Amid the scattering black feathers, the Justice Committee member flipped her sniper rifle around in a circular ring, catching it and quickly loading up a bullet. “Would you mind doing the honor of working as our point-woman, Yuuka-san?”

Ugh, sounds like Trinity’s got their own information network.

The Seminar member certainly did not anticipate this development, though perhaps she shouldn’t have gotten so riled up in the first place. It was already bad enough that they were escorting a VIP through battle zones. It seemed one of the notorious fugitives was also taking up residence in a heavily fortified building which promised an ugly melee.

Right, game face, Hayase Yuuka!

“I get it. I get it! Make sure to follow close by!” Yuuka all but leaped out of the chopper and swiftly turned around. “As for you, sensei! Don’t you dare get into the lines of fire, got it!? I take no responsibility for any foolishness!!”

The tall, black-haired man in a red coat simply smiled. Broadly. How was it that his mood did not change for the slightest even after entering a battle zone? No, wait. He pushed his sunglasses all the way up that his eyes were now obscured by them. That didn’t look right for Yuuka, as gunfights generally turned into a chaotic mess. Could he even see things properly when they entered Schale’s base?

“I shall keep a close watch behind us,” the member of Gehenna’s Prefect Team announced, a handgun in her hand and a medical box slung over her shoulder. “It is also quite reassuring to have the Acting President at our back, though I must confess worries over our winning prospect.”

Well, now that’s the one-million-credit question. Yuuka shared the sentiment, though she didn’t dare to voice it out. Sure, sweeping thugs off from the streets and crushing a stolen Crusader tank would be a simple, albeit exhausting matter, but the real threat in this operation was a fugitive who had broken out of the Federal Correction Bureau’s confinement. We have no idea which one of them managed to escape, so either we ended up with the Phantom Thief, or…

“Hm. I noticed a lot of helmeted students holding explosives.” The adult suddenly notified with a pointed finger at the barricaded and damaged roads bridging their position and the Schale club room. “Seventeen normally equipped grunts. Six grenade holders judging by the bandoleer. Three snipers. And that sleek tank in the far back.”

...what?

“You managed to survey the battlefields even through the ride, sensei…?” Hasumi’s eyes widened, seemingly at a loss for words. “I… I only managed to count half the numbers you’ve said.”

Suzumi looked back, gun barrel lowered to face the grounds with her index finger away from the trigger. “Sensei, you must have the eyes of a hawk. Hasumi-san’s range is second only to Mashiro-san, the ace sniper of Trinity…”

“I am ashamed to admit that I can’t put myself in a proper sniping posture…” Hasumi looked embarrassed for once, but that wording… really could be interpreted wrongly.

Nevertheless, all four students turned their attention to the chopper. The pink-haired, horned girl threw out her head from the cockpit, while in the passenger cabin the vice-president chewed in her cheek as she stopped typing on a laptop.

“Yeah. He got it right, amazingly enough.” The Chief of Transportation Committee glanced sideways. “Rin-chan-senpai just did a double-check, even.”

“…please drop that combination of honorifics, specifically the middle one. But yes, Vash-sensei got the numbers right, down to the exact digit.” Rin breathed out, unknown emotions stirring in her throat. “I think we can surmise, by his words, that the fugitive assaulting the Schale club room as Kousaka Wakamo.”

“Ah, because of the explosives?”

To his inquiry, all Rin could do was to nod. “That bomb-addict have the penchant for flairs in the form of multi-layered explosions. Only she would choose thugs who can produce terrible havoc, which also happens to narrow down these bunches’ goal as district-wide arson and pure, unbridled wanton desire for massive collateral damage.”

“…how on earth did you manage to contain someone like her in the first place?”

“We have our own way. Well, had.” Rin said simply and thusly. “In any case. I might be repeating myself, but you must prioritize your own safety first, sensei. Students won’t easily go down, but adults such as you are much too frail…”

“Alright, stop right there, Rinny.”

Yuuka wondered if she heard it right. There was a strange sound squeaking out of the Acting President’s lips, but the adult took the center of her attention as he extended a hand like a stop sign.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. With a soft, confident smile on his face, the teacher who called himself Vash the Stampede formed a thumbs-up. “Running away when it’s inconvenient is my specialty, after all!! My infamy as Humanoid Typhoon is not just for show!!”

…

...ah, this city’s done for.

“Rin-senpai, wanna have a bet on how many tries will the team take to recapture Schale club room?” The pink-haired girl snickered. “I’m betting on five.”

“Momoka, I’m confiscating your snacks if you say any more word.”

“So cruel!?”

+-+-+-+-+​

The 4-man team plus one pushed through the ruined streets. Barricades had been moved to obstruct civilian vehicles, while stores lining up the roadside had signs of trespassing and looting, as well as in utterly deplorable state. It was a nightmare and a half to imagine the effort needed to restore public order here. It led her to ponder if her favorite cake shop was still doing alright as of this moment…

“Stop there, Hasumi.” And then, the adult’s voice carried through the air. “See the glint at two-o’clock, seventy-five meters ahead? Aim there.”

Hasumi did not visibly nod as much as she stepped up to a half-damaged road barrier, rested the barrel of her bolt-action rifle battle rifle on it and took aim. In the same breadth it took for her to lower her eyesight into the crosshairs, she glimpsed the shine of reflected sunlight from a gun barrel peeking out next to a bent sign post. Target locked—fire!

“Gweh!?” The distant shriek of the delinquent confirmed the hit. Hasumi could hardly believe her aim being so accurate that the bullet disarmed the enemy sniper, but the command given by the teacher of Schale surpassed her expectations. “Hii—stop! Stop! I surrender, ouch ouch ouch!!”

After the coming barrage from the frontline members, Hasumi went around the road barrier and joined back in. However, she didn’t miss the glances thrown behind by the representative of Millennium. The dark-haired Seminar member twisted her lips in utter distaste, but her gaze was full of grudging respect. It took no time at all even for the skeptic to recognize that the adult invited by the General Student Council’s president was extremely competent.

Heck, they even hardly needed any further assistance from the Commanding Chief. The guidance of Vash the Stampede turned the table against the deluge of assailants pouring out from the Schale office.

“Eyes on the road, Yuuka.” The teacher smiled. “Do you need some healing?”

“Ugh…! Please don’t treat me like a doll! I’m not that fragile, okay!?” The girl with pigtails huffed, even as she brushed away the soot sticking on her cheek with her sleeve.

“That so… didn’t you vehemently protest over JHP round leaving marks?”

That she did… even though hollow-point rounds aren’t considered illegal. Hasumi suppressed a giggle from forming at that recent memory. The initial phase of this battle operation was eventful from start to end. Especially among them all was the many faces the adult had worn. Sensei’s reaction when he saw Yuuka getting shot on the forehead was quite a… hmm, should I say comical?

“S-shut up!” Yuuka turned back around, resuming her advance as the point-man. “We’re almost there, everyone!! Be on guard!!”

Right. The Schale club room was right up ahead. The last bulk of the enemy’s force resided in an open plaza littered with barricades and makeshift walls. Of course, they were all strewn about haphazardly, causing the single greatest combat force they had unable to do much except to face forward. The Crusader Type-1 was a heavily-armored tank with outdated armaments and engines to it. Even if it was a remodeled unit, or one pawned off to the Kaiser PMC, the tank didn’t have much beside firepower to it.

...perhaps it’s time to leave the rest to us.

Suzumi’s flashbang was their ace in the sleeve. It was all about timing, and voice command would be redundant for an all-out brawl. Hasumi would say that… wait, why was the tank rumbling like that even though it was hardly moving—?

“Oops. Sorry about that, Chinatsu.”

Hasumi widened her eyes. She whipped her head to the back and saw the teacher having rolled into the blindspot provided by a road barrier. Under him was Chinatsu, who had been sticking close to the teacher in an effort to protect the team from behind alongside escorting him. A few meters away from them was a pothole on the road which sizzled with smoke and… that angle came from the tower’s upper floor!!

We have to make haste!

Hasumi suddenly realized the timer had turned into a countdown. The initiative had been stolen away from them. They couldn’t afford to take cover, as the tank would just blow them away along with the barriers. However, ignoring the sniper would also ruin their battle rhythm. The only option was rapid suppressive fire, but they lacked the brutal firepower to match and push back, so the only real option was—

“Suzumi! Flashbang!!” Hasumi yelled out.

“On one…!” The main member of the Trinity’s Vigilante Corps committed herself into a practiced throwing motion. The gray can sailing through the air crossed over the multitude of barriers and landed atop the Crusader Tank. “Look down and charge!!”

“Hey! I’m supposed to be the point-man here…!”

In the blinding light that followed a reverberating keening noise, all three vanguards moved into action. Hasumi leaped over the barricade, her wingspan knocking over a delinquent as she turned to fire on another helmeted mob. The snipers on the ground were the first to be downed, while the grenade holders were meticulously taken down by the dual-wielding Yuuka. There were still several mob left, but the tank remained the greatest threat, with the mysterious sniper from above the second.

I have to take care of the sniper then!

Hasumi went down on one knee. As she righted her gun barrel upward, she heard a rumbling sound approaching. At once, her blood froze over.

The Crusader is… oh no!!

Hasumi felt her heart thundering. The tank locked on to her, likely because of her large figure and her specialization in dishing out precise shots. The Crusader must have deemed her a bigger threat from a tactical standpoint… a blessing in disguise. Yuuka was the actual team leader.

I can take it… if it’s just one!!

It would hurt. She’d get blown away. Then there was the sniper. She must accomplish her duty even if it meant incapacitation. Could she make it? No, she had to make it…!

“Found you…!” The thin shadow behind the slightly opened window on the fourth floor of the Schale club room. There was no mistaking the sniper rifle, the rich red halo, and the triangular ears of the Fox of Calamity. As Hasumi’s Mystique invoked itself, energy drained away from the top of her body and flowed into her rifle. “Shoot through—!”

Hasumi pressed the trigger. Her body shuddered as the bullet left its chamber, singing a melodious tune as it soared towards her target. Through the orange sparks and smells of gunpowder, the smokes obscured her vision for a split second while the roar of the tank’s cannon overwhelmed her hearing.

In that moment, three things happened.

A bullet flew from above and struck her in the shoulder. Hasumi felt the immense pressure grinding against her body, but honed reflex and wits allowed her to jump back, letting the momentum bringing her away from direct hit by the tank’s shell. Flapping her wings, she might as well reduce the incoming damage to tolerable level instead of a serious battering that’d leave her inches away from fainting.

Her bullet, on the other hand, shattered the windows and ricocheted. Amid the falling shards of glass, the masked fugitive dressed in a daring red and dark kimono pulled herself into the building, retreating deeper into that which had become her nest.

And the third thing to happen was a man in red soaring through the air, arriving right in front of the flying tank shell with a raised foot. The plated boot struck the enormous shell and sent it upwards. With just enough force, just enough momentum, and just enough calculation… he deflected a cannon shell in such a way that he ended up spinning in mid air; the tail ends of his worn-out coat fluttering.

“Wha—!?”

As he somersaulted for one last time, Hasumi witnessed a curtain of orange spark. The burning hue of a full-metal jacket launched from the adult’s side and flew into the tank through its cannon barrel. Not even a second had passed as her mind started to catch up with reality, but what happened next was truly simple.

The outdated tank, its drivers, and the turret blasted off to the blue sky. As smokes and cinders rained down, flame consumed the tank’s skeleton. What remaining ammunition it had carried popped and exploded successively, leaving a rather smoldering spectacle in the center of the plaza. Finally, heated winds violently spread throughout the whole area—and the blasts of airs sent the adult careening right into a thick green bush lining up the roadside.

“S-Sensei…!?”

“Sensei! Are you alright!?”

Hasumi got up with a slight limp. However, faster than even her who was the closest to the bushes lining up the roadside, the Millennium representative leaped past her, splitting the hedges apart. Her swiftness rendered Hasumi speechless, even as the reckless adult’s face came into view with a few sticks and leaves stuck in his hairs. Yuuka remained panicking however, her gaze going all over the place as if to check for injuries visible and whatnot.

“Okay, calm down! I’m okay, really…!”

“Stop acting tough! Chinatsu, help me out here!!”

“A-ah, yes! Please hang on!!”

Hasumi let out a sigh. Well, now. It didn’t look like they’d be going into Schale club room for now, not that it was such a bad thing.

“Looks like the first phase is done,” Suzumi’s voice chimed in. She glanced to the side, but Hasumi’s shake of head made the member of Vigilante Corps to shrug. “Understood. How shall we spend our small respite?”

Hmmm, that’s a good point. “How about the teacher’s ability. Would you be able to accomplish a similar feat, Suzumi?”

“I am not competent, nor blessed enough to achieve that.” Suzumi did not sound at all offended by the inquiry. The two of them looked over the hectic scene between the adult and students before them. “It’s a matter of timing for us, however.”

I see… In other words, what Vash the Stampede had done was not only reckless, but exceeding past the boundary of normalcy. There should have been a sting to her pride, knowing full well that it was her job to fight and get wounded all in order to escort him, but after that close-call, Hasumi felt… how could she put it? Like a gallant knight rescuing a damsel in distress…

She wasn’t a kid anymore. She knew that she wasn’t in such a trouble that she’d need saving, though that tank shell would have roughed her up to an extent that she’d need to avoid particularly intense consecutive battles. Still, Vash’s flashy stunt did make her heartbeat flutter. Just a bit.

“So that’s an adult…”

Suzumi glanced her way, a short giggle leaving her lips. Was something on her cheek or something? “A very peculiar, enigmatic existence, indeed.”

---

A/N: We're about to be caught up with my edited and proofread drafts by next chapter. Release schedule will become 3~4 days per chapter, and hopefully I can keep it up.

 

--- Episode 7: Mischievous Step ---​

Vash rubbed his stiff shoulder. Man, he really was getting old… or maybe that was because he hadn’t done such a wild stunt for a while. He refrained from taking off his coat though, not exactly a sight he’d want children to see.

“Sensei, are you sure there’s nothing off anywhere?”

And now, I’m making the medic worry over me… He wasn’t a stranger to attentions. It just didn’t feel the same when the one who carried the license for medical practice was much younger than him. Hinomiya Chinatsu was a soft-spoken, compassionate girl. She had pointed ears, bright yellow eyes, and red patterns floating above her head. I still have no idea what those are, now that I think about it.

Setting appearances aside… “Yeah, I’m fine. See, I can still coordinate my whole limbs.”

He did a skip while raising both of his hands and flexing around the finger joints. The blonde student looked a little perturbed, but the frowns softened to neutral position. It didn’t seem like she was entirely convinced, though it might have to do with the fact that they were about to storm into Schale office which had turned into the nest of a sniper-using terrorist. It was like entering a tiger’s den… one with a preference for obscene amount of explosives, apparently.

“Speaking of which…” Vash glanced back. He didn’t think he’d see the day where people could somehow make it out alive with only singed clothes and some light bruising and pinkish skin after getting caught up in a tank’s detonation. “Yessh… I really didn’t expect that to happen.”

The defeated delinquents had been rounded up by the GSC members who chose to stay behind and coordinating with some local Valkyrie students. The highlight of the day was, of course, the drivers of the Crusader Tank. They wore radical outfits for being delinquents, with exposed front or midriff and painted face masks. Though they were injured, they were still the picture of health in Vash’s humble opinion.

He still felt bad for them. He didn’t mean to take out the tank in such an irresponsible way, but when Hasumi chose to focus on the sniper instead of retreating, he suddenly found himself moving out to the front. Still—

“I thought Rin was exaggerating it, but you girls really are tougher than normal.”

His voice had carried over to the vanguard, it seemed. Hasumi was the first to look back.

“Sensei must have come from a faraway place,” the black-haired girl said. Her wings, her height, and just about her everything were large to him. And yet, her smile was a soft and small one. “We, students, can take quite a beating. Compared to adults, I think it is safe to say that we far exceed your imagination?”

Vash had little else to do other than to nod. That was indeed the case, but it wasn’t all there was to it.

For example, Hasumi’s quick-thinking and decisiveness was not one that could easily be replicated even back home. She was a sniper who fought in the frontline, yet she still managed to reconsider the wider tactical decision upon encountering an unexpected element in the field. There was also the physical feats exhibited by Suzumi and Yuuka, the former fighting through clever positioning while the latter marched ahead to lure in the enemies for easy picking. Had these girls spent their whole lives learning the ins and outs of gunfights?

No, their general behavior perfectly match their battle temperament, so they only learned marksmanship simply because it’s just common sense to them?

The fact that no blood had been shed likely played to this unique worldview. As a result, these girls needed not carry the heavy burden of drawing a line on the sand in which one’s life must be weighed down and chosen over the other. Kivotos, albeit one hell of an outlandish place, stood diametrically opposed to No-Man’s Land. It was a completely insane place, and yet… it was also peaceful, and harmless to the point of playful. To these odd children, gunfights must be a clean solution to all conflicts if compared to the bloodiness of fistfight.

In other words… “I really am in a different world.”

+-+-+-+-+​

Morizuki Suzumi wasn’t particularly skilled in anything. Well, saying that might seem like she was demeaning herself, but it was more like she had no problems with any given task in the battlefield. There was no terrain she particularly took issues in, yet there was also no place she genuinely had a full grasp over as if it was the back of her hand.

In short, she was a generalist. And so were her fellow teammates.

Hrrm, things may get rough from hereon. According to Hasumi’s brief observation, the mob leader occupying the Schale office was undoubtedly the Fox of Calamity. Known as Kosaka Wakamo, she was a problem child hailing from the industrious Hyakkiyakko Tourism Academy. Her school affiliation explained her ability to recruit so many delinquents to her cause, and her specialty in spreading massive collateral damages through bombs and stuff meant… In an enclosed space, the effectiveness of her explosives will more than double, and should she focus in one target at a time…

Suzumi decided that things wouldn’t do at the rate they were going. She tapped her squad leader on the shoulder, prompting a glance over the shoulder.

“What is it, Suzumi-san?”

Hayase Yuuka. A member of Millennium’s student council, Seminar. Her calculation was fast, her tactics and strategies bound with exact precision. Though she seemed to have a fiery temper when beset with problems, she had shown off that her real self was one of a caring and thoughtful persona. The teacher’s decision to put her in the leadership position certainly wasn’t wrong, and now…

“Can we go over our plan in taking down Wakamo, once again?” The gray-haired girl tilted her head. “A refresh will help solidify our next course of action.”

“Hurm…” The girl with pigtails furrowed her eyebrows together. “Certainly. What we must first do is to take out her line of sight.”

“Explosives? Smoke grenades? Flashbang?”

“Smokes. She wears a mask, we do not.” That made sense. Yuuka certainly had thought things through. “There’s not much else other than direct confrontation after that. None of us here have experiences in fighting off the infamous fugitives of the Federal Correction Bureau. Their combat power is largely unknown, and we are ill-equipped unlike the elite squads of SRT. Well, even if things led to a breach operation, I will still ensure everyone is under my protection. You girls should come out only after my signal.”

“I see… that’s a commendable spirit, Yuuka-san, but I hope it won’t come to that.” A lull appeared in the air. “It’d be nice if we could have the building’s blueprints.”

“Unfortunately, we are running out of time. Can’t really let the fox tags explosives on the building’s foundations, can we?”

That’s also true… Getting buried alive was a frightening prospect like no other. Durable their Halo might be, it wasn’t like they were invincible. Plus, we do have a VIP with us, and the Acting President following right after us.

Speaking of which, the back line had been oddly quiet. Suzumi turned around, looking past Hasumi, Chinatsu, and…

“...huh?” The red-eyed girl blinked owlishly. “Uuuh, girls…?”

“Hm? Is something the matter?” Hasumi inquired.

“Where… did the teacher go off to?” Suzumi pointed with her index finger at the empty air next to the representative of Gehenna.

“...eh?!” Chinatsu immediately stopped walking. She turned her head left and right and then to the back, seeing not a single presence or tail of the extremely conspicuous dashing red trench-coat. “Huh!? Sensei? Sensei…!?”

“Hinomiya-san, weren’t you conversing with sensei just a minute ago?!”

“I did! I only took my eyes off of him for five seconds…!!”

Suzumi could hear a slapping sound coming from nearby. A cursory gaze allowed her to identify a gloved hand pressed tightly against the face of one Hayase Yuuka. As much as she wanted to prevent the angry volcano from erupting, words would more than likely fall on deaf ears, and her following thought certainly did not need to be spelled out for the sake of everyone in the room.

Well… I guess, no plan survives first contact…?

+-+-+-+-+​

A guy with hairs standing on ends looked up to the concrete ceilings. Somehow, he had a feeling that somebody was screaming in impotent rage just now.

“That sounds almost like Meryl…” Vash paused and shook his head. “Yeah, nah. That can’t be right.”

He must be feeling homesick. It was natural, after that bout of enlightenment over his place in this strange new world. He did still have a few things even back home, and he missed all the people that he had come to know and care there. Were they doing alright, even without him around to liven things up? Had they manage to change for the better, living while adhering to a kinder ideal instead of swimming down the currents?

“...actually, they might still be doing fine. With or without me…” The man hung his head low at his own depressing, but definitely accurate assessment of himself. “Argh, let’s just stop thinking. Now, where was I?”

Since there wasn’t a time to look for building blueprints, the right way to explore every nook and cranny would be by splitting up. He knew, he knew. There was definitely some flag-raising thing there, judging from the empty hallways, locked rooms, and dusty floors everywhere he went. The power was barely on, so he figured out that the building had been set to run on emergency mode. At least it looked relatively functional and regularly maintained to top form; the kind of deathtraps a mangled, abandoned ruin of a colony ship tended to have in store was…

Yeah, this is definitely way better. “Not that I know where I’m going by this point…”

Well, he could at least theorize a few things. According to Rin, she needed to hand out some things directly to him in order for this Schale organization to start functioning, meaning there were valuables stored somewhere in this building. Since the General Student Council ruled over the city, that also must meant these important items had quite an oomph to them. Something that good would need safekeeping, so it couldn’t possibly be in an easily reachable place—much less one visible to naked eye.

Conversely speaking, not all hiding places must be set in secret spots either. The last place people would expect there’d be something hidden would be…

“Hmm, yeah. This looks about right.” Vash chuckled at the surprisingly not hidden staircase leading down to a basement. It was right behind the reception desk on the ground floor, easy to miss when all you wanted was to walk past the unhelpful receptionists in search of the lift leading to other floors. There were also some empty flower vases made out of ceramic, so the staircase was cleverly hidden away from prying eyes in such a natural way. “As expected, I’m a genius.”

He felt proud of his super intelligence. Yes, he really did.

However, he couldn’t find the others. Seeing that there wasn’t a presence in the lobby, he widely shrugged before going down the staircase. His footsteps echoed in the dark and narrow passage, the way underground turning to be a sharp spiral which only lasted for a minute and a half. Vash could guesstimate that he was about two floors below the surface, so the place he landed in would usually be counted as basement floor. In the old books about earth’s modern architecture, here would be where cars get parked in.

“Interesting… it looks pretty much like an office floor. No windows, though.” Ventilation, air-conditioned, and though the air felt a bit dry and stall, the slight tingle on his skin told him of functional airflows. The hallway lit by luminous blue lines on the wall led to a door without hinges, handles, and levers. It was a white, spotless door. “This is… no way, could it be—“

[Biometric identified.]

Uh… Before Vash could think much on it, the door slid open with a serene hiss to it. It was, without a doubt, an automated sliding door. A technological mechanism remarkably familiar to him who had been raised in the colony space ship. It was even fairly thick, capable of withstanding high-quality dynamites. Just what lies past this point—?

“...ara?”

Right past the door, a teenage girl clad in a fancy dress was on her knees, fiddling some kind of device next to it. She wore a white mask that vaguely resembled a fox and in possession of a long dark hair slightly tinged with reddish tint. A flower-shaped pattern glowed above her head, surrounded by a red ring with spiked on four cardinal directions.

Probably, this was the so-called nefarious terrorist.

Probably, that thing she was fiddling was an explosive packaged with movement sensor for when the door opened by whoever would come in after her.

Probably, the beeping sounds coming from the block-shaped bomb must have indicated its activation.

…

...oh, shit! Faster than even the girl who was already getting up, Vash wrenched the bomb installed to the doorframe with his bionic left arm. He threw it into the corridor behind him, all the while stepping into a catwalk leading down to a featureless room situated lower than the corridor. The terrorist girl didn’t have the space needed to retrieve her rifle slung behind her, but she still tried to retreat only to bump her back against the railing; they were still in blast radius. Dammit, get over here…!

Vash lowered his center of gravity. He snatched the girl up after bumping his shoulder into her belly, eliciting a surprised gasp from the other party. With her in tow and slung over his shoulder, he jumped over the railings and dropped down upon a sofa. The furniture, naturally, did not take kindly to the sudden impact weighing two persons doubled by their speedy fall.

As a sound of shattering broke out underneath him, a powerful but suppressed noise of explosion erupted above him. In the next second, the several inches thick door sailed through the air above him, impacting the wall on the other side of the room before finally landing on the floor; bent and crumpled like a crumpled piece of paper.

“Owowow…” Vash groaned, feeling his legs numb and his butt fortunately not a pile of cracked messes. The sofa cushioned his fall, but he did fall in an awkward position. It was a bit hard to stand… and now the barrel of a rifle pointed down at him. “Aaah… whoopsie, guess my help wasn’t appreciated, huh?”

The thin clouds of sawdust and dirt were starting to dissipate. As he raised both of his hands in surrender, Vash smiled awkwardly. From his angle, the fox mask gave a twice-as-frightening menacing look to it. Well, there was the rifle, but…

“I beg to differ. All you did was just giving me… ara?” The masked girl suddenly paused. She tilted her head, even while her rifle remained in place, always ready to give him a quick ride straight to afterlife. “Ah? Arara…? You’re… an adult?”

...uh, huh? What was with that delayed response? No, wait. Don’t be a fool, Vash, you’re still in mortal peril right now!

Just nod and smile. Nod and… smi—

“...uh.”

“...uh?”

“Uh… Huuuh…” The girl, suddenly trembling all over, took a step back. A two. Then a three and a half… “E-excuse me…!!”

She suddenly squatted and leaped up. Within that single action, she had somehow managed to reach the upper platform of the catwalk and rushed into the corridor where he had come from. There was a large thud, some “gyah!” and “Kyah!?” along with the tell-tall rolling sounds of some objects. Eventually, the hubbub of chaos faded from his hearing range, leaving behind an awkward air hanging around. Also, he swore he just heard a very distant sound of explosion or two.

…

...what was that all about?

+-+-+-+-+​

All things said, the conquest of Schale office had been done and dealt with. One student in particular had decidedly forsaken any shred of decorum in favor of choking an adult by his collars like a classic debt collector, but that was a story for another place and time.

“Don’t make me out as some maniac! How many times do I have to tell you that it’s our job to escort you to safety, sensei!!” Yuuka screamed out her lungs. Behind her, Chinatsu rested a comforting hand on the pigtailed girl’s shoulder like a nurse worrying over a patient diagnosed with hypertension. “Stop wandering around by yourself! Are you a child who can’t even memorize instructions at the school field trip!?”

“That’s an oddly specific example…” From the side, Hasumi murmured bemusedly.

“I have to admit that the comparison is quite apt, however.” Suzumi nodded.

W-well. In any case, the formalization ceremony had been moved to the reception lobby as a result of the basement having been damaged by a bomb. Although…

“Say,” Vash started. “Is it fine not inviting the others?”

“There’s not enough manpower to guard the perimeter. It couldn’t be helped, and at least we can trust the neighboring school representatives when it comes to integrity.” Rin crossed her arms, huffing all the while. “Sensei, if there’s one thing you can believe in, it’s that the majority of students are horrible when it comes to deception.”

Aah, so it’s like that, huh… “Honesty and sticking to a decision once made is the exclusive privilege of the young… is it?”

“You may take it that way. Well, I must first congratulate you for your stellar record in resolving one crisis plaguing the city.”

“Oh, right. Things got really hectic, ah well…” Vash rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s not just because of me, though.”

“Indeed. The representatives will be properly rewarded for their assistance,” Rin noted out, a rectangular object in her hand which she seemed to fiddle with her thumb. “I will also ensure their issues be regarded with top priorities, as well.”

“Ouh. That will definitely help them, thanks.”

“Furthermore, the matter generation chamber is left unscathed. Another mercy, though I question your decision of rescuing a terrorist from karmic retribution.” Rin let out a deep sigh, both of her eyes closed while her hand deftly pushed up her glasses from the side rim. She had definitely done that a lot of times it had become a habit—and what was that about matter generation chamber? “The facility blueprints, teaching manual, as well as starting budget for Schale had been placed in your office. If you would so kindly offer your hand now, Vash-sensei?”

“Right…” When he did so, a thin tablet was placed in his care. It was remarkably slim, with a display and no sign of battery or cooling attachments to it. What was this thing supposed to be? It had a stylized character on its back. “This is—?”

“The final item I am handing over is called Shittim Chest, a device entirely composed by lost technology.” The GSC’s vice-president took half a step back. “It may seem like a normal smart tablet, but its origins are a mystery. Its manufacturer, operating system, program structure, and components are completely unidentifiable. With it, you will be given the authority to command the Sanctum Tower… provided you can activate it.”

Vash hummed, no thought whatsoever crossing his mind over the item handover. At this juncture, any further world-shaking, logic-defying revelation would not register in his mind for the sole reason being a severe lack of context over it all. He lifted the tablet with his right hand, feeling its weight which didn’t even seem much.

“...it certainly looks rather familiar,” he uttered out. “Feels as if I’ve been holding this for a long time, even.”

A glint appeared in Rin’s eyes in that moment. “Do you… recognize that device?”

“No. Not at all.” Vash turned his lips into a wry smile. The Shittim Chest clearly had a connection to the missing president of the General Student Council, yet Rin still decided to part ways with the only physical proof that could lead her to the truth. It’d be too cruel to lie and leave her hanging. “I don’t have any clue what this thing is about. If I were to explain it, I feel a… deep impression about it carved somewhere inside me.”

I don’t forget easily, but even if I do, feelings could still remain. It was a cheesy thing, coming from him, but Vash wasn’t new to amnesia. The topic brought him back to that faraway place, the city of July where it all had started. Even when he lacked memories surrounding it, the deep wound carved into the void within his mind yawned with horribly insurmountable wall of regrets. Those warm lives, scattered in the deafening roars of destruction unleashed by my own hand…

“Sen...sei?”

“Hm? Ah, sorry. I was reminiscing a bit,” Vash chuckled. That wasn’t a good showing he had just made, perhaps. As an adult, he needed to get a grip. Just a bit was fine; it wouldn’t do to leave Rin hanging. “Anyway, I’ll be sure to inform you if I figured out some things from this tablet.”

“I… I understand.” Tension remained on the black-haired girl’s shoulders. However, she decided to set her personal feeling aside. Really, this girl was way too serious for her own good. Nobody would fault her for pushing for more, right? “Thank you for your consideration, Vash-sensei.”

“Hey, now. I haven’t done anything worth a dime, no?”

“...even still, I am grateful.” Rin gave a respectful bow before lifting her head back up, meeting him in the eyes with a look of renewed determination. “Now, then. I must return outside to coordinate with my subordinates. I will leave you to your privacy, sensei.”

“Hmm? Are you sure about that?”

“Yes. The president’s letter advised me to give you some space after the handover.”

Heeh, that mysterious girl sure is prepared for anything. Well, Vash did have a strong feeling that he must do something with this odd tablet in a very specific way. It’d have been for the better to have Rin nearby… But from the short time he had spent with her, the respectable girl would undoubtedly refrain from pushing against the boundary. I should give her a real, nice break in the near future.

Yeah, that sounded great. Vash waved at the vice-president who had already walked off outside, leaving the whole floor all for him. Glancing around, he decided to settle with sitting on the empty and dilapidated receptionist desk. The chairs were all too short and small for a tall guy like him, and folding his legs too much would just leave him open to surprise assailant. Well, fixing his habits, no matter how useful they were in saving his own skin, could be for later.

For now, let’s see… ah, there’s a button on the side of this thing.

A cheerful chime sounded out from the tablet after giving the button a long press. The screen turned to life, bright and pale blue background mixing with pattern painted in darker or lighter saturation of color. In the middle of the screen was the same symbol that was imprinted on the back of the Shittim Chest, but the way the symbol transitioned into focus felt incredibly smooth and…

“Wow, this thing is advanced. Absolutely way ahead of the era I’ve been living in.” It was a genuine surprise to see what could only be said as the equivalent of a computer getting miniaturized to this extent. The tablet was lightweight, slim, and quite robust for an electronic gadget. It would certainly be worth a small fortune back in No-man’s Land, but above all else, the processing power this device had in it was utterly astounding… nay, ground-breaking. “Rin said this is a smart tablet… I have no real clue about it, but I bet the spec of Shittim Chest dwarfs even the local garden variety.”

Well, that was enough gawking, though. He returned his focus to the screen and saw a string of sentence appearing together with an empty box. A… password input?

“Hm, now I’m feeling itchy again…” Vash held the tablet in his right hand while he used his left hand to scratch his right sleeve. This was the sort of thing that appeared when his memories of July got prodded by certain keywords, back during the time where he had lost any recollection of it. Hence, the more he thought about it, the stranger this whole situation became. It almost seemed as if he had been in this situation before, as if he had once experienced a life lived in this wondrous academy city. “Oh, to hell with it. I might as well let things run their course, for now.”

Giving up on thinking, he touched the empty text box, causing a keyboard layout appearing in the bottom screen of the tablet. Vash then let his instinct guiding his movement, the feeling of de javu growing stronger with each character typed. It was a password that was incredibly lengthy, unique sounding, and certainly something that he had never known about until he was done typing it out.

—We thirst for the Seven Wailings

—We bear the Koan of Jericho

Two passages that didn’t make a lick of sense. To Vash the Stampede, it might as well be a riddle in its own right, nonsensical and sounding philosophical all at the same time. He had a feeling it meant nothing, but a part of him believed that there was something important about it. There was some paradoxical value he had ended up placing in those two passages, but any confusion he had disappeared as he pressed the enter button.

—Welcome to Shittim Chest, Sensei.

“Hrm…? Well now…” There he saw the screen transitioning away, ushering a wallpaper of… a half-destroyed classroom drenched in water? “This looks weirdly realistic, as if it’s got depth and width to… oh, wow.”

Wait, this wallpaper did have depth and width to it. Clearly, it was a… a… what was it called again back home? Some sort of virtual environment made entirely in 3D, the fanciest of the fanciful features only seen in the colony ship. That sounded about right, and this so-called smart tablet had no problems showing that kind of interface without heating itself up to the point of meltdown. Even for a high-spec model, Vash was beginning to suspect the Shittim Chest to be a real black box..

Also, looking at it closely, there was a character in the 3D environment. It looked like a child… no, wait. It was indeed a child, a girl in her early teenage year who sported bright blue hair and a white ribbon. She wore a school uniform dyed in skyblue color, the design indicating a simpler rendition compared to the ones worn by Suzumi and Hasumi, one which also happened to elicit a completely brand new terminology in his mind.

Sailor uniform? In any case, this girl had the bearing of a student, much the same as those he had come across to in Kivotos. That being said…

“Wow, she sure is sleeping soundly…” Vash tapped at the screen. Curiosity had completely taken over him and drove him to action by this point. He also saw no harm in interacting with this funky gadget of no known origins. He tapped, slowly and quickly, then ran his finger across the screen. Unfortunately, the blue-haired denizen of the digital realm refused to wake up, instead murmuring about strawberry milk, shortcake and other sugary delights. “Hmm, the water rippled when I tapped it, so clearly this isn’t a video recording.”

Out of a simple whim, he shook the tablet horizontally. Suddenly, the chairs and tables and the water inside the screen were thrown around.

[Uwah!? Aaaaaaarrreeeeeeee~~~!!?]

Splash, krash, klink, klank, thoom! Vash winced, completely not expecting the terrible chaos he had just invoked. The classroom was a complete mess, and there was the tiny girl in a sailor uniform whimpering with her butt hanging over a table which had fallen on its side…

Oh, she suddenly disappeared into empty air—bwah!?

[What was that!? What was that all about!? How dare you disturb the slumber of the great Arona…!?] A blown-up adorable face of a girl whose left side of her face covered by her front bang filled the tablet’s screen. Her lips were drawn up into a sharp upside-down U, and a deep blue eye glared at him through the screen. [That’s not how you wake up a lady! And that’s not how you should treat your belonging! How could you do that to poor me! Do you have any idea just how precious my living space is, youuuuuuuuuuu—wahyah!? S-se-se-se-seseseseee….!?]

Oh shit, did I just break some codes?

[Sensei!?] The girl suddenly yelled out. In the next instance, her figure dissolved and she reappeared at a more respectable distance from the screen, drawing up to her thigh into focus. Well, she looked incredibly flustered too, but that was the least concerning matter in this moment, as she vanished yet again. This time, she reappeared behind the pile of trashed chairs and desks. [Hey, you can’t do this! Our story’s not even started yet and now the order of events are all broken, geez!!]

The girl went on an incredibly long tangent afterwards, her eyes spinning and darting around as she threw out weird words Vash had troubles following. In the end, he tuned out the stream of stuttering and shouts of complaints, opting instead to gaze long at the ceiling in search for the right word to spell out his current mood. Yes, maybe…

Kids these days sure love to use difficult words… makes me feeling my age, ow.

---

A/N: And we're caught up. Next update will be on the weekend. Please wait warmly.

 

--- Episode 8: Connected Sky ---​

“Right. So lemme sum this up…” Vash lounged around, nibbling on a hard biscuit he still had in his coat pocket. Didn’t expect it to have survived all the chaos he just had gone through recently intact, but it was a small blessing. “Shittim Chest is a super awesome, super amazing device that can be used to access all sorts of devices, manage a huge bulk of data without even a milisecond of lag, mainstream and coordinate files taken from active battlefield in real-time, and countless other stuffs… ”

[That’s right! And I am the system manager of Shittim Chest! You may call me Arona, sensei—ah, please don’t touch the screen with the finger covered with biscuit crumbs!]

Well, sure. It would be inconvenient if the screen turned smudgy…

[Regrettably, I just found out that my favorite snacks have overinflated prices…!] The girl who named herself Arona went cross-eyed, her lips twisted in complete frustration as she made her complaint known. [Please don’t tempt me with tasty treats like that, sensei! I only have limited weekly allowances given to me for any work related to the Sanctum Tower…!]

...never mind, she’s a child through and through.

Man, it sure was amazing how far technology could advance. Having a normal conversation with an artificial intelligence was already way out there, but with every sentence exchanged, Arona kept on proving that she was as soulful as any other person.

“Let’s have a nice, long chat with snacks and tea later.” Vash smiled. “For now, it looks like there’s troubles with the Sanctum Tower. The vice-president of GSC thinks the Shittim Chest can do something about it. Since I can access it, what should I do next?”

[Hmm? Has that much time passed already?] Arona tilted her head, her eye blinking with a curious but confused glint to it. Vash wasn’t quite sure what to make of her words, but the halo hovering above the girl in blue shimmered, its hue turning into leaf green. [Very well, then! This mighty Arona is still looking small and in need of lots of upgrades, but I can give you the administrative right for managing Sanctum Tower! Ah, but we first need to finish the biological authentication process!]

Huh. The smart tablet certainly possessed a robust defense system. The former was a given, but the latter tended to be a hard one to crack while being exceedingly rare. Not to scoff at it, but defense arrays that still used biometric scan were often found in a faulty state or badly damaged by the planet’s extreme climate. Of course, most bandits would never care about going through security the proper way when looting the ruins of a colony ship, but those folks would also naturally eat lasers to the face from the bugged out defense grid.

[Alright… preparation is done. Here you go, sensei! Make sure it’s your bare hand that touches the screen!]

Arona’s chime brought Vash to look at the Shittim Chest. The girl had adjusted the room perspective all on her own, enabling for an extreme close-up shot of her face. Next to it, however, was her index finger raised towards the screen. Honestly, this reminded him of a very old, ancient film made on Earth, but what was it about again?

“Is this a first contact moment?”

His reaction triggered her badly, apparently. Arona looked aghast, but that gave ways to a totally upset look. Her eyelid even lowered by a notch, staring dully at him.

[That’s rude of you, sensei! Arona is an amazing, super competent AI secretary that can do a lot of extraordinary stuff!!] The blue-haired girl pouted. [Besides, that retro alien doesn’t even look the least bit adorable! Even sir wave cat is still infinitely more handsome than that creep!! That makes my cuteness on a realm of its own, sensei!!!]

“I think some folks out there would have a huge issue with your take, but I guess it doesn’t endear well for girls your age, huh.” And what was that about the last line, narcissism much? Well, that ought to count as normal behavior for normal kids. A bit of uppity arrogance is fine once in a while. “Since you said bare hand, my right hand should work, right?”

Receiving Arona’s enthusiastic nod, Vash removed his glove and bracer. He nudged his nose and paused. He probably needed to switch his wardrobe later today. He did see a lot of stores in the Shiratori Ward earlier, so maybe he could go there tomorrow and see what the locals had in display. However, he doubted double-dollar currency could work in this city. Borrowing money… no, that didn’t sound right. Especially considering Rin being much younger than him.

He might be a scum, a coward, and a frivolously petty man with a high ego to stroke, but Vash refused to abandon his dignity as an independent adult. Doing that would just make him the laughingstock of the century. The moniker Humanoid Typhoon would change into Humanoid Debtor, a total downgrade. The lamest kind of downgrade even!

“There we go.” Vash pressed his index finger on the screen, right at the spot Arona’s finger was at. A moment passed, several seconds passed, and… “Uhh, hello? Arona?”

[Eh? Ah, yes! There we go! Authentication registered, stored, and approved!!] Hurriedly, the digital girl stuttered out, [You can pull back your hand now, Vash-sensei!]

Vash hummed, only half-convinced. There was a weird delay at the end there for some reasons, but he didn’t notice any sort of shock or ghastly look. What did Arona see?

Well, I doubt there’s anything fancy going on with old me. At this point of time, Vash was nothing more than a slightly skilled human. He was an ordinary person through and through, a passing by good samaritan with zero threat level. The thought that he was finally the same as everyone else took a long time to sink in, but Kivotos made even that thought blown away in a relatively short order. Now I feel a bit inadequate for being unable to do more.

When he thought about it, maybe that was just people’s nature to never get satisfied with what they were given with. Kind of a sad thing, really.

[Then! Let’s start with switching on the Schale office’s clean-up crew!]

“Hm? O-ohh—?”

Suddenly, the man sensed a slight shift in the air. Power thrummed beneath him, the electrical grid coming to life to enable the lights hanging from the ceilings above him. All at once, the building which had been silent “woke up” like a gentle beast roused from a long, peaceful slumber. Vash looked around when he heard a quiet whirring sound, many disc-like objects crawling all over the floor in the dime dozen, while machines with four rotors floated in the air.

“Are… are those automated cleaning robots…?” Vash hung his jaw, staring blankly at the rows of advanced devices working out a cleaning schedule with no difficulty whatsoever to their self-assigned tasks. “Whoa… I guess janitorial is no longer available as a job field, here.”

[I don’t think you need to worry about that, sensei.] Arona chimed in, [Cleaning drones may be available even in your nearest mini-market, but it adds up to electricity bill in the long-run should you need multiple of them. Plus, establishments still prefer a personal touch to market themselves.]

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense. If it’s all automated then why even bother going out.”

[The drones utilized here are lent by GSC,] the blue-haired assistant further explained with a smile. [It’s a privilege Schale can use freely as a federal club. Ah, but don’t get it over your head, okay? They still need maintenance, so it’s best if you check on them once a month and register any repair invoice as work expenditure. Otherwise…]

Otherwise…?

[...the repair fee will have to be taken from Schale’s monthly budget. Sensei, your wage will end up cut by halves and some more if you don’t manage your office properly.]

Now that’s just terrifying. Arona even looked menacing with that thousand-yard stare that had no light in her eye. In any other circumstances, Vash would have negotiated for hard labors in exchange for favors owned, but that sort of trade only worked in a distant and underdeveloped frontier dotting the surface of No-Man’s Land. Wait, does that mean I am legally employed, now?

Had he, somehow or other, managed to snag a cushy pencil-pusher job through landing his butt in a completely different world? Didn’t that mean his dream was coming true?

[Of course, you can also request student assistants if they are able to fix up faulty facilities, sensei! Schale has the authority for such thing.]

“Doesn’t that count as power-harassment?”

[Connections can give you some leeway, sensei! So long as you compensate your students properly, it’ll make everyone happy!]

Well, can’t deny that’s also how the world works… “I suppose that’s fine, then. Free labor isn’t what I consider a respectable thing.”

[Only large corporations that intensely engage in backdoor dealings could get away with that, but they are exceedingly rare.] The helpful Arona lowered her eyebrow as if in an attempt to warn him. [For example, the Kaiser Corporation is a multi-franchise, multi-dealing conglomerate that has their fingerprint on many industrial sectors. They employ mechanoids in their real ranks, while forking off grunt works to haphazardly recruited part-timers and interns with minimal amount of work security. There’s even rumors of them lording over the black market as war hawks!]

Eesh, that sounded pretty shady. That sort of commercial monopoly frequently had really messed up pastimes with equally petty ambition. Some things never changed no matter what world he was in, huh? Vash wasn’t sure if he ought to cry or laugh, though he decided to commit the corporation’s name to memories; just in case he crossed path with them, just in case… no one could tell these days, right?

[Oh, yes! I almost forgot,] Arona suddenly shouted out. Did he just see an illusion or was there an exclamation mark above her head? No, wait. The girl was a digital assistant, why wouldn’t she have gimmicky add-on to her program? [Since the Sanctum Tower is operational again, what’s the next thing to do, sensei?]

That was… a fairly good question. What was he supposed to do? Rin had described Schale as a federal club with extrajudicial authority to it. The details were lost to him, but starting from the basic would be nice…

“What’s the Sanctum Tower gotta do with Schale?” He asked his first question.

That apparently did not look to be a question Arona had expected. She blinked a few times before pondering for a full sixty seconds. She then slowly rolled out an answer from her soft-as-pudding-looking puny lips.

[Well, the Sanctum Tower is the heart of Kivotos. Basically, it’s the most integral part that keeps the city alive.] Arona raised an index finger, a blackboard suddenly sliding into view behind her. The colorful chalks stuck between her fingers drew very simple shapes, but though they were very messy, Vash could somehow get the gist of things as various symbols surrounded a tower. [Without it, automated public facilities such as economy-class trains and freight ships could hardly navigate without causing major traffic accidents. Furthermore, the Sanctum Tower also manages the many unmanned production factories, ranging from power grid to water and gas lines.]

Interesting… so it’s pretty literal when you called it heart of the city. Vash could draw some parallels between Sanctum Tower and Plant, but from the scenery he had seen in the transport heli, the sprawling jungle of concretes, steel beam and glass extended further than even the most developed city back home. It was quite baffling to imagine a single facility to have this much administrative power, but in this case… The Sanctum Tower must be built from the same materials and makings as the Shittim Chest.

He had no other hypothesis as of this moment. He was just running things based on circumstantial evidences, but he had a feeling his hunches were close enough.

“That makes things simple, then.” Vash rubbed his chin with two fingers. With a carefree smile plastered on his face, he spelled out his answer. “Arona, can you transfer the management rights to the General Student Council?”

[Eh?! Are you sure about that, sensei!?]

“Now, now. I didn’t mean anybody in the General Student Council, there.” Vash bobbed his head, glancing away from the smart tablet and to the front entrance. “It has to be the General Student Council.”

The girl in blue made an O face at his emphasis. Once again, it seemed the answer surprised her, though it was in a rather unexpected angle.

[H-huh. Doesn’t that mean everyone of the student council will have to gather around and play by votes? Hmmm, but I think I get why sensei wants things to be that way, but if every little thing needs a general consensus, then…]

“Is it no good?”

[Not at all!] A sparkling light suddenly shone bright in Arona’s exposed eye. He didn’t know why she chose to cover her other half of her face, but well, things moved at such a rapid pace that he probably could pry on that later. [Well, can I suggest some revisions to the decision, then? This needs to be properly recorded in the Sanctum Tower database, sensei.]

“Sure, go ahead.” Already having her own initiative, nice response! Vash couldn’t help but stretch his grin, expecting only great things from Arona. “I’m still a novice, here. Having an advisor at my beck is a godsend.”

[Okay! How about this…]

And then she explained at length about her decision. It would be unfeasible for the Sanctum Tower’s system to run well at all if it required the complete gathering of the GSC board members every single time a revision must be made. Therefore, leaving the many redundant tasks that micromanaged the city’s innards and organs be, only major change to public infrastructure could be done through vote for confidence.

On papers, this meant that the Sanctum Tower was managed by GSC. In depth, the tower itself required a united will to significantly change or shift its function. A single person would never be able to intrude into the system and assert direct control like this.

[It’s rough and I can’t say with confidence that things will be alright,] Arona swayed to the left and right, an arm held behind her back. [But even though it’s only just activated, Schale will get to be included in any future meeting if the agenda has to do with significant revision to the Sanctum Tower’s vector. Joint ventures between departments will also likely be a more frequent thing in the near future.]

Hm. That’s good enough for us. “The tower is critical to the city. I know that Rin is reliable, but there are only so much a person can handle.”

[Ah! So you’re trying to lessen her burdens by splitting the management right to all board members?] At his nod, Arona looked positively glowing for some reasons. That was certainly the face of someone who had known a person since way back. [Thank you, sensei! I’m sure she will be happy… ah, but it might take a while before everyone could adapt to this new policy…]

“That’s where Schale comes in, right?”

The girl in blue smiled wide like a flower blossoming in profusion. [Alright, then! This mighty Arona will be transferring the management rights of Sanctum Tower to the General Student Council!]

After a short jingle from the smart tablet, he saw a progress bar box floating in the middle of the screen. A deformed shape of Arona wearing a yellow safety helmet popped up above the bar, swinging a wrench at two gray boxes lined with colorful buttons and slots to their front-facing sides. Once the progress reached 100%…

[...there we go! Transfer of authority complete!! The Sanctum Tower will be activating in moments, now!]

That’s a big relief—hm?

There was another shift in the air. It was far subtler, but it also felt like a bottomless spring that continued to overflow and grew deeper than it was moments before. A well of great power like no other, a surge of invisible force washed through him. It didn’t allow him to brace for impact, but as it turned out, this unique force flowed through him and spread far and wide.

Somehow, he felt like he could breath easier, now. How was that possible? Was this the power of Sanctum Tower?

It’s incredibly vast, deep and dense, pure and refined, broken down to tiny grains no greater than a single atom. This unimaginable force blanketed the office, filled the air, and covered absolutely everything in existence. The Schale office was far out there, in the outskirts, but he could still feel the thrums in the air. It took his everything to even sense the radiating “influence” of the Sanctum Tower, and still he couldn’t grasp the full extent of its depth. Unbelievable… this is way beyond even the Ark when it was still under Knives’ command.

And yet, it was neither volatile nor harmful. It simply touched everything and flowed around freely, like a whimsical wind sprite.

“…this city sure is something else.”

[Heh he…! Glad to know that!] Arona cheered from beyond the screen of Shittim Chest, rubbing the bridge of her nose with an aura of smugness overflowing from every pore of her petite being. [The Sanctum Tower is a masterpiece like no other! It’s the pride of the GSC, and also the heart and brain of Kivotos!! Amazing, isn’t it!?]

“Well, yeah… it’s mighty terrific, alright.” Vash tilted his head. “So why are you looking like it’s your prided work?”

[Mergh!? B-but, but I activated it…!] Arona’s shocked expression could only be summed up as those strings of emoticons seldom found in corrupted files.

“Yeah, but… isn’t that like having the startup key to a car?”

At that, Arona stood petrified. Turned into stone. Wide-eyed like saucer, she hung her jaw and swaying back and fro. Colors even ran away from her whole being with every second’s passing. In the meanwhile, however, Vash sensed a presence making herself known from a certain direction. The front entrance… right.

The man quickly looked around the screen. He took out the keyboard UI and typed a note that ended up forming on the blackboard behind Arona. It had a yellow color to it, with the note utilizing a dark red font color. The digital girl looked over the memo and gave him a nod of agreement. With a polite bow, the screen then transitioned into a nondescript default wallpaper; the Schale symbol floated in the center.

Now, then… here goes the last stretch, just a bit more. “Welcome back, Rinny. How are things going outside?”

“Please don’t refer to me with such a childish nickname, geez… Just how and where did you come up with that?” The tall and black-haired girl pushed up her glasses. “I’ve received news of the Sanctum Tower’s restart. It was a surprise to see that management rights have been transferred to our hands, but at a glance, it does look to be well-thought out. Thank you, sensei.”

Vash waved with his left hand. It made a crick for a moment there, which made him pause for a fraction of an instance. It didn’t… look like he was in need for a thorough maintenance work on his prosthetic. Still a food for thought, though. Once things started to settle down, maybe.

“Just doing my job. Need a helping hand?”

“I think you’ve done more than enough…” Though she was exasperated, there was no denying the faint smile flitting about on her face. “There will be back-breaking work waiting ahead of us, but at least I and my peers are no longer blocked from accessing the tower. I believe that you can leave the rest to us, sensei.”

Still as serious with zero chink on her armor, huh… “Rin, it’s fine to rely on others a bit more, you know?”

Rin looked like she had eaten a sour lemon. She frowned hard, twisted her lips in total displeasure, and she even threw a half-lidded glare at him. In the face of his fearless and boundless smile, however, she was the first to back out.

“Mrgh… I would like to point out so many issues with that suggestion, but fine.”

Yay, looks like my touch is still working! The imaginary Vash did a fist bump in the back of his mind, while the real Vash rubbed the back of his head. As he hopped off from the reception desk, he walked up to Rin, standing across of her. Heh he, she’s definitely still a kid, you can easily tell what thought flits around behind those bright eyes of her.

“That’s all I could ask for.” Vash grinned a lopsided one. He lifted hand to headpat her, but the girl seemed to have foreseen that. She took half a step back and moved to the left and right, dodging his every attempt. After several minutes of perfect offense and perfect dodges, Vash grumbled good-naturedly. “Well, aren’t you a shy one?”

“Please,” Rin drew a sharp breath in after the nth time of dodging she had done in the face of his onslaught. “You may have our eternal gratitude, but I’d like you to refrain on work harassment. I will call the Valkyrie on you if you keep on doing that, sensei.”

“How is headpatting counted as work harassment?!”

Even back home, a headpat was just that, a headpat! Since when common sense turned on its head like this!?

+-+-+-+-+​

It was late afternoon. With Rin’s departure, citing a firm intention to accomplish much work before the day was over, there were only a few things left to do for the day.

Vash had given his workplace a round of sightseeing. Fortunately, the basement floor seemed to have been the only place where the unexpected had happened, but it also did make him ponder how did Wakamo manage to enter the basement in the first place. Upon further consideration, it was likely of no use to recognize anything other than the fact she had managed sneak past the security there. That girl had quite an aura to her it made him suspect that she could probably bomb her way through anything. On to his current task…!

“So the first floor is the residential quarter, but…” Vash glanced away from the floor layout blueprint in his hand to the shuttered cubicles lining up the corridor. All but one of them were out of business. “I guess today’s disturbance forced that last one to temporarily close down.”

Angel 24 was a rather peculiar name, too. He had no idea if there were any other humanoid races living in this city, but the students were clearly built different from the grounds-up. They had rings of light above their heads, wings, pointed elf-like ears, and that masked girl earlier definitely had animal ears which came in part and parcel with a fluffy-looking tail. Vash had read enough comic books and watched enough films from ages past, but never could he have anticipated the day where he’d actually interact with textbook fantasy entities.

Well, that necessitated me getting thrown to a whole different world, but anywho…

“Sup, girls.” He waved at the four escorts who had brought him here. It looked like they were waiting for him, or maybe they were just about to leave. It was good to see that all of them weren’t standing around like some folks back home and instead choosing their own spots to rest on their laurels. “What are you all doing out here when the sun is still up high? If you want to take a break, you’re all welcome to enter the office, you know?”

He wasn’t trying to be cheeky, but the reaction went as follow:

“He already acts like he owns the place.”

“Maybe his adaptability is just that high? He certainly is bold to the point of fearless.”

“It’s possible that this is him in his natural habitat.”

“But that makes him more frivolous than I thought…”

Wow, public slander much? Vash sure felt loved. His smile stiffened, and he also had a feeling he just lost his winds. Scratching his head didn’t bring up much solution, so screw that white noise. I heard the more wicked children are, the more childishly endearing they become, but…

“Oh, come on. I’m just going with the flow,” the man said. He placed a hand on his waist and craned his head, mulling over his next words all the while. “I can’t work for free, but I also can’t let problems be. There’s a lot of things I don’t understand here, but life goes on even if I stand idly. So I decided to take my time getting acquainted with the city first. Can’t let little ole me miss all the happenings, right?”

Upon saying that, the four girls exchanged looks with each other. It was as if something just clicked between them all.

“He’s saying all that profound stuff, but isn’t he just making excuses to laze about and walk around without a clear aim in mind?”

“Well, at least he’s eloquent. Some of our students could learn a few things in speaking out their minds from the teacher.”

“When there’s nothing to do, exercising the body does help drown useless thoughts out.”

“I can’t say that’s a decent outlook in life, but I am no longer part of the medical club…”

Argh, for god’s sake!! “If you’re here just to gossip around, get back to your own school and study up! This isn’t the daycare, shoo…!!”

“Hai, hai. We’re going to do just that.” Surprisingly, Hayase Yuuka did not take offence to his outburst. She pulled her lips into a grin, smug oozing from her blue eyes. Only now did he notice the tiny red slits in the center of her pupils. “Sensei, I still have a few complaints about your previous conducts, but thanks to your effort, our school has received the aid we needed. I’m sure today’s event will be on the headlines tomorrow.”

“We’ll have to say goodbye for now,” Hanekawa Hasumi added. A small bow of the head, a playful smile, and a warm gaze followed after. “But I hope you can visit us at Trinity General School soon. We are known for our hospitality.”

“I will be reporting what happened here to our Head Prefect.” Hinomiya Chinatsu paused, seemingly wondering as if she could say this. Her next words, however, pointed to a sign of resigned acceptance. It didn’t stop her from displaying a tone full of gratitude in her every word, though. “You are welcome to stop by should your work ever takes you to Gehenna Academy, Vash-sensei.”

Morizuki Suzumi, the last of them all, simply nodded and waved back. The four girls marched to their own beats only to scatter away together it made Vash speechless. Did they rehearse that? The timing just seemed a bit too clean. Nevertheless, when silence reigned, all he could do was to let out a sigh and form a wry smile.

“Kivotos, huh…” He had left the Shittim Chest in his office. Arona had strongly advised to charge the smart tablet as it had been a long time since its last activation, so he did just that. Now he looked up to the sky, gazing past the skyline and towards the grand blue tower of light extending out, seemingly connecting the heaven and earth. “Man, that sure is a marvelous sight to behold. I’m definitely a long way from home.”

And I don’t even know, or have the power to get myself back home… Not that he couldn’t adapt to this drastic change of environment. If nothing else, he was flexible and as open-minded as the sky. I can do this, yeah.

Vash turned around, heading back to his office. His red coat billowed, the tail ends fluttering in the breeze that blew by. From now on, this place would have to do as his base. It was a strange thing, having a place to settle down and actually relax with no real time limits to it.

I’ve been living on the run for far too long, huh?

Travels had defined him. Encounters had forged him. Sometimes, a few words and meals were all that he needed to make friends. Sometimes, bullets were all that he could exchange, much to his eternal regrets. However, he had kept on moving. All for the sake of fulfilling his self-assigned duty, responsibility, and a fleeting promise.

That was all in the past, now. All he could do was to look forward and see through everything, just like he always did. Just like what Rem once told him.

“The ticket is still blank, after all.”

Under the unfamiliar blue sky. Across the cityscape that sprawled on and on. In this hectic land of unknown origin, a song could be heard.

+-+-+-+-+​

The sublime. The supreme divinity of the purest, transcendental quality. Godhood in all, yet closest to human faith. It was known but also unknown; that which could not be grasped without exploring the uncharted waters.

Now then, a question was due. Would the unknown remain the same once explored?

The mystical mysteries enticed. The scholars here gathered together in the effort to pursue that which could not be deciphered. How many times had they met each other, traded ideas and research methods, and discussed on valuable concepts? Neither the artisan advocating simulacra, nor the searcher of the infinite sign care about that. As time wore on, their numbers dwindled, bulked, and faded away. The imprints left behind were the most invaluable commodity, but that was all there was to it when pitted with the genuine article of miraculous occurrence.

“Though diminished to nearly non-existent, he walks on.” A wooden puppet creaked, its two heads groaning with every move. “That which is forever unreachable, and that which is completely irreversible. Indeed, tales born from the legend hardly seem to be enough to display the true breadth of his brilliance.”

“Would the day come where his sign produce a world of its own? His closest kin tried to paint it all with his deep deluge of jet-black color, yet he fell short on that pursuit.” A headless figure dressed in a long coat cradled an unusual portrait in his arm as his cane tapped against the floor. The voice, calm and seemingly in thoughts, came from the portrait of a man with a hat showing nothing but the back of his head. “And yet, a dying candle is still a sign of struggle. Against the inevitable, the “sublime” resists with nothing but his spirit. A sign of determination.”

“THAT’S RIGHT!”

Dark red hue filled the inorganic room. On this conference table, madness was the first to vacate its premise. After all, enlightenment required a mind to command, a body to move, a soul to lay bare, and a will to exact conviction. This organization had changed over the course of its time, but perhaps, a consensus could still be made.

“Sadly, one of us remains absent.” The man in a black suit chuckled. “Well, even I am not so impolite to bother a lady in her final phase of preparation.”

“A delicate moment, indeed. That woman is aggressive and rough, but her chosen approach allowed her quick manifestation in the city.” The master of the craft’s wooden body groaned. One of its heads then turned, a wide eye on a blank face devoid of any other facial feature. “And needless to say, I am… anticipating the spiral of actions taken by her lost lambs.”

“Fashioning after the shepherd, the lady in red strongly believes in a story of salvation, where her shine showers all that exist. A story of guidance, is it?” The man without a head, in the meanwhile, hummed. The dark ash-like smoke wafted from the impenetrable area his neck was meant to be. “With her progress, there will only be little to a month before the city undergoes a major upheaval.”

“INDEED, THAT IS!”

“Be that as it may, we must remain open-minded.” The man in a black suit placed a thumb under his chin. Cracks and swirling line glowing with ghostly blue light ran through his structure, spinning and ending on the right side of his face. “After all, a change has arrived… nay, welcomed by the city.”

“THE CRIMSON DEVIL!”

The devil. The legend. He who had wiped a hundred thousand lives in the course of one night. The journeying gunman from a land as distant as it was far into the hallowed abyss of the starry space. It gave the man in a black suit no insignificant pleasure for setting a foothold in that planet. A mere outpost, simple enough with the favors he had acquired from his business with Kaiser. While none of the countless other sublimes there had the capacity to attain such incredible heights of mystics as seen in the last guardian deity of Abydos, but him, the Humanoid Typhoon?

Yes. That power. That so-called “seed” inhabiting his right arm. The absolute power of the “sublime” resided within him, dried up and exhausted as it was.

“Khu khu… and thus, his definition has changed once more. From a gunman to a teacher, a murderer to one who provides guidance. He who walks ahead of others…”

“Shape and form may change, yet the essence remains. Certainly, the root emotion of his being will never stray, the absolute proof of his mystic.” The wooden puppet creaked, saw dust and tiny splinters falling from the cracks running through its faces. “As an artist, I could find no greater model for inspiration, yes.”

“Aaahhh, such bliss. Yet again, a story shall be written. A new meaning granted to a sign, a vessel of change to the library’s database.” The man in a coat thrust his cane at the floor, declaring a new phase to this gathering of truth-seekers. “And yet, the world is one, all, and none at all. As everything exists, so does signs and interpretations. Shall we begin our observation, then?”

The light dimmed. The shadows lengthened. One by one, these curious figures existing outside of common sense vanished, with only the man in a black suit remaining. That which called himself a scholar, that which called himself a dealer of contract, that which had no longer seen values in the humble origin he once was. The member of Gematria readjusted his black necktie, the murky lines on his featureless face curving as if spilling forth an eerie smile.

“Now, let us raise the curtains, sensei.” Darkness prevailed. The man vanished into the darkness, and red light once again ushered in. “Will this story of yours end in a tragedy, a comedy, or merely reduced into another footprint to your legend?”

The voice vanished. Silence finally dawned. In the empty conference room, only a ring of light serving as the room’s center-piece stayed afloat.

---

A/N: And with this, the prologue+tutorial is done and over with.

I'd like to apologize and thank you all for sticking out with me even with the slowpoke of a pacing. There's a lot of things to say on what's to come, but the fun's only just started. Blue Archive sort of plays fast and loose when it comes to worldbuilding, but the casting and characterization are where it shines the most. At the same time, Trigun can get real messy, but when everything which has been built up culminated for a decisive payoff, it peaked like no other. What I'm saying is that, well, I want to share the love and excitement I felt from the source materials where they matter, and I hope that it will get conveyed through properly as this story goes on.

Anyway, hope you guys will have a nice weekend. Signing off for now, and stay tune for the (hopefully on time) next week's release! Cya!!

 

--- Episode 9: Honey Jam ---​

It was early in the morning. A thin layer of mist crawled through the empty streets, casting a tranquil if a bit murky atmosphere to the massive city of academies. Spring had just arrived, so the last dew of winter lingered around in the form of chilly airs which stood in opposition to the warm rays of daybreak.

Also, a week had passed ever since Hayase Yuuka participated in resolving the incident which had happened in the city outskirts. Time was an odd thing like that.

I don't know if I should be happy about that. The girl hailing from Millennium Science School was never a workaholic, but she was in a position of responsibility. It was her job as the treasurer of Seminar to calculate school's spending, evenly distribute club budget, and stay on the offensive to strike beneficial trades. It was all for the sake of her school and her fellow school mates. Of course, she also personally benefited from enriching everyone's life. And now I must give the after-mission invoice to the teacher…

Teacher. Sensei. A member of the faculty office, responsible for teaching classes, organizing homeroom, and acting as a surrogate guardian to students as long as it was within the school premise. Yuuka felt the term odd in her mind.

Educational system in Kivotos worked through paperwork hand-outs, manual notebooks, immersive audiovisual learning via Blu-ray Discs, and group works. Academical institutions in general had stopped utilizing faculty staff to function beyond the bare minimum, making the duty and responsibility of learning solely on the shoulders of all students. In this manner, the teaching position had all but rendered moot, though her school seldom invited Outsiders for special workshops or thesis presentation.

In any case, she was here, now. The building… didn't look like it had changed much. Good.

"From the entrance, past the reception lobby, into the right wing, and then walk past the convenience store… aha, this is it!"

Instead of heading upstairs, Yuuka headed down the residential quarter. The phone in her hand showed the pinkish red color scheme of the Momotalk application, a program mainly used for text-based communication on the internet.

"Good thing I texted him yesterday evening…" It would have taken her a lot of time she didn't want to waste, otherwise. Making a prior arrangement, gathering information, and then acting on accurate data truly was a time-saving method. It was also very cost-efficiency, which freed her up for other tasks. "Hello? Sensei, are you up?"

She pressed the doorbell and knocked on the door three times. As sixty seconds passed, Yuuka began to suspect that the adult had slept in. However, when she placed her hand on the doorknob, she had somehow managed to walk in…

D-did he not lock the door!?

Hurriedly, Yuuka entered. The outskirts might have been pacified by the shared efforts of Schale and GSC, but delinquents were still on the prowl. Furthermore, she had come to learn about the residential quarter of Schale office being publicly accessible. In other words, absolutely anyone could just waltz into the building! How could the adult be so careless about his personal safety?!

"Sensei!? Hey, are you there!?" Yuuka looked around the spacious room facing a long stripe of green lawn. There was a small television on a cupboard next to the windows, shelves and stand lining up the right side of the room, and there was a two-tiered sofa and cushions to the far left corner. When her gaze landed on the last part, however, a mountain of books poured from the upper tier of the sofa, causing an avalanche that buried a spiky patch of black hair. The sound and slight shudder running on the ground made the Millennium student flinch. "S-sensei? Sensei!? Are you okay…!?"

It took a full three minutes for her to dig out the adult from the mountain of books, yet the teacher remained unconscious; a huge bump on his forehead. Because of that, Yuuka had to run out of the room in search of a pack of ice cubes; something which she had no idea where to find as she had yet to learn everything about the floor layout. Where was the refrigerator, the kitchen, or the mess hall? The convenience store… opening hour was still 45 minutes away, no!

By the time she had found what she was looking for, it was well past the hour for her to avoid morning rush. Agh, this isn't what I wanted to do in the morning!

---

Vash couldn't remember anything. He swore to his last breath that he had seen a light in the darkness, a familiar landscape, a light green lawn and a big tree bearing red fruits, but other than that? Nothing, that was what.

Ow, my head… Why did he have an ice bag on his forehead, and why was he lying down on the sofa in a brightly lit modern room. Who was he? What was he? Why was he here and what had he been doing to deserve this? No… the joke's getting old at this point.

Looking to the side, there he saw a dark-haired girl going back and forth, tidying up the place by placing the many books he had brought from the database room into the shelves on the other end of the room. Occasionally, she stared long and hard at the book covers, murmuring about something he couldn't catch on. Vash groaned, slowly getting up while pressing the bag of ice against his throbbing temple.

"Oh! Sensei, you're finally awake!" The girl turned around, revealing a familiar face. A sharp countenance, minimum make-up, no-nonsense but also no less emotive. The girl named Hayase Yuuka stopped her task and crossed over the room. "Honestly, that's what you get for having a sloppy lifestyle! If you need rest, sleep in your bed! If you are done reading a book, put them away properly!"

Ow, her yelling somehow made the headache worse. He simply winced out of reflex, but that ended up drawing a concerned look on Yuuka's face. Vash couldn't help but to smile an awkward one because of it. He didn't mean to come off as unreliable… I guess that's what I get for letting my guard down, aye…?

It had once been his habits to wake up 3 hours before dawn. Training himself, polishing his techniques, meditating on his ideal, listening to radio news while cooking breakfast and preparing his equipment before resuming his journey. All of that had once been necessary to him. He couldn't afford to fall from sickness, he couldn't permit his skills to grow rusty, and he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't regularly reflect on his main reason for traveling around. Over the past hundred and fifty years, over the ten thousand miles and leagues he must traverse through, over the countless bullets spent and tears he had spilled—all to bridge a connection between his kin and humanity.

Those sweet, tough days were now far behind him.

Now he got to relax. He got to live out his own life. He got to settle down, have a stable job with proper insurances, and spend his days without major worries. He had finally allowed himself to rest easy. No wonder he ended up dropping more than a few things from his daily schedule…

"Sorry about that." Vash yawned, scratched the back of his head, and rotated his stiff shoulder in one smooth motion. Yet another crick to his left limb made him rub his chin with three fingers, but… I could always ask Arona later. "Guess I overslept…?"

"More like burying yourself six inches under a mountain of books." Yuuka placed both of her hands on her waist and huffed in annoyance. "I can't believe you've been trawling through every existing technical books all this time… did you even sleep, sensei?"

"Ehhh… what time is it?" Vash squinted at the digital clock next to the television. One, zero, forty and… huh. Wow. Now that was a first, even for him. "It's almost afternoon?"

"Yes! You knocked yourself out, completely and totally!"

Oof, definitely my bad. He had relaxed too much. He didn't even get to eat breakfast, and where was the Shittim Chest…? Right, I left it in the faculty office last night.

Arona must be really upset by now. He did remember telling her to give him a shout, but he must have slept through like nobody's business. Just as he was wondering what to do with this mess, a nice aroma wafted by his nose. Slowly, the man with hairs that stood on all ends looked up; Yuuka was there with a pastel blue mug offered to him.

"Ohhh… this looks good." Vash blinked. "Chocolate milk?"

"Chocolate oatmeal drink, to be more precise. It's a good mood booster, and hearty."

Vash smiled in gratitude as he accepted the gift. It was indeed hot, hale and tasty. The drink went down his throat and warmed his empty stomach, but he had to stop himself from shoveling it down in gusto because it was a bit hot for his tongue. After he was done with the light breakfast, however…

"Thanks, Yuuka. Looks like I' kept on getting myself indebted to you."

A slight pink dusted the girl's cheeks. Her stern behavior cracked just like that, Yuuka getting flustered right away because of his words. It was real cute how could a person be this expressive, but then again… Kivotos. It really was a godsent that Vash somehow landed here of all places, though a part of his mind still wished to go back if only to finish what he had started.

"H-hmpfh. As long as you understand…" A lull dawned. The dark-haired girl with a black, solid-looking ring hovering above her head then coughed into her fist. "S-so, shall we start our work?"

Right, if I remember correctly… "Invoice about the ammo and medicine supply used to retake Schale's office building, right? Hang on, lemme wash up first—why do you look at me like that?"

"Err… I think, others will appreciate you being a bit less crass when it comes to personal hygiene, sensei…"

Oh, right. Kivotos. Modern city with modern sensibilities. Order had prevailed here, and local common sense had long moved past from the laws of the jungle. With a high moral compass came an improvement of quality to livelihood. Well, even without all that, talking about personal hygiene in front of a teenage girl would be… Hrrm, it sure is difficult to live like a properly civilized person.

Well, it was still not a bad thing. He could adapt, just like always. Before that, though—

"Don't try to peek on me, kay?" Vash halted his steps and popped out his head from behind the partition separating his bedroom with the living room. He saw the girl flinching, looking terribly flabbergasted as blood rushed all the way up to the crown of her head. Did she just…? "Oh ho, you naughty bra—gweh!?"

"Stop wasting my time already, you degenerate teacher!"

Don't throw books, either!

---

It was close to lunchtime. Washing up, dressing himself in his work uniform, and putting on a show in front of the full-length mirror might have been a bit much, but making himself presentable was common decency.

That said, he had used the starter budget for Schale to fill up his wardrobe. Loose and baggy clothes for relaxation, a set of dark-colored pants with varying levels of saturation, and a good number of warm color schemes for his top. He had chosen cheap, easy to wash and quick to dry fabric, but above all else, he didn't have to worry too much if they got stained during work outing. The digital assistant inhabiting his smart tablet had complained that he was taking the fun out of the shopping, but what else could he do? That one brand was just way too affordable for his wallet.

"Huh… that's quite a chic selection." In the faculty office, Yuuka's voice chimed in.

"Really? I just picked the most comfortable stuff I want to wear." Vash slightly pulled at the neck of his beige-colored sweater. The ID card hanging from his neck rattled slightly as he tilted his head. He didn't need to wear the official coat provided by Rin as he wasn't going out until today's work quota was done, so in reality, his outfit was leaning on the plain side for now. "Well, what do you think?"

"Hmm, the red coat was so eye-catching that the contrast is giving me a difficult time to judge fairly. Your current clothes do impress a tidy, warm look, though rather non-formal for the occasion, sensei." Pressing two fingers on her chin, the girl pondered on as she scrutinized him from head to toes. "...but the slippers are totally out."

Vash blinked. "Come again?"

"Out. Nope. The outfit is fine, but the slippers is a big minus."

Vash glanced down at the fluffy white slippers he was wearing. The motive stamped on them was that of a wide-eyed bird with beaks opened wide to reveal his toes which were wrapped in ashen gray socks. The bird looked weird as all heck, sure, but the slippers were comfortable enough for homewear, and the office was right above his flat. Why would he make his own life harder by wearing shoes everywhere he went to, especially in his own home?

"It makes you hard to take seriously! Sensei, are you trying to teach or are you just hanging around in the infirmary with that getup!?"

"Aww, you're making me blush." Infirmary teacher is said to be the one with the least amount of work, nice!

"It's not a compliment…!" Yuuka shouted, her pigtails already looking like they could move on their own to take a stand against gravity. The black ring hovering above her head even started to spin fast like a top. At his laughter, the girl pinched the bridge of her nose, seemingly fed up and done with his antics. "Ugh…! I can't believe you!"

"Now, now. How about we get started on working?" Vash walked to his desk, where a sleekly designed computer waited along with two monitors and a white tablet. He first picked up the Shittim Chest, unlocking it and seeing into the virtual box inside. The sight of a half-destroyed classroom dyed in blue instilled a melancholic mood in him, but that wasn't his priority right now. Arona was… well, she was sleeping in. He would have woken her up if not for the fact that the girl in light blue was grinding her teeth, murmuring gibberish all the while like no one's business. "Hrm. Oh, well. Manual labor it is."

He had already gotten the primers, anyway. Better let the diligent girl sleep in. Plus… it wouldn't be so bad to take a screenshot or two. Oh yes, also a video recording.

Khe khe ke, into the secret folder this goes!

"...sensei?"

"Nothing, nothing." Vash gave a shake of head before setting down the tablet again. He then picked up a stack of papers lying next to the second monitor. After giving it a once-over, the man handed them over to Yuuka. "Here's the related papers to the invoice."

"O-ohh…? I didn't think you've already prepared it… but this looks quite thick?"

The dark-eyed girl accepted the stack of documents with both of her hands. The way her gaze moved back and forth between the paperwork and to him certainly showed her intense curiosity in full display. Well, at least she looked eager to read through them. It might be that Yuuka was used to dealing with paperwork, or maybe it had to do with the fact that she had wasted a lot of time and just wanted to get on with business already by this point. Either way, Vash welcomed the enthusiasm.

"Yeah, well. It included repair bills for the damage caused by the delinquents to the surrounding block." The teacher sat down in the wheeled office chair. He then bent down to press the power button of the desktop computer, patting the amazingly convenient case containing the assortment of engine and processing devices a respectful pat as its fan hummed to life. "There's not much business going around in the city outskirts, but I got the idea after helping clean up all the junk and dangerous stuff from the streets and stores."

"...eh? You did what, sensei?"

"Even if you're used to shootouts, business isn't the kind of thing that can run without a level of public safety and conveniences, after all." Vash leaned back in his chair. After the monitors switched on, he quickly operated the keyboard and mouse deftly, giving his priority to the wordy documents and spreadsheets he had painstakingly written for the last few days. "Well, compensation for the damaged merchandise will be the toughest part, I think. Gotta reach out to the responsible suppliers and distributors, but that's totally beyond me. I also haven't been able to explore much of the city beyond the nearby autonomous districts."

"...pardon?"

"I mean, can't just waltz into a school ground. Everyone gets real cagey already when all I did was just memorizing street addresses." Vash huffed, though he realized that his lips remained stuck in a gentle smile. It wasn't all bad, heh. "But hey, public order looks to be improving by days. That sort of caused the office's inbox to get more requests, but I got a bunch of gifts in turn. The townspeople sure are generous, huh?"

Though they're incredibly, well… Talking bipedal animals made his brain shutdown. Cats, dogs, polar bears, and so on. Not even Knives could have anticipated a city like Kivotos where all kind of sentient lifeforms could be found walking down the streets, shopping grocery or even playing arcade games. Like, damn… The sight alone made me want to punch myself for feeling miserable.

"I… I don't even know where to start." That clunky response made him glance out, and from the corner of his eyes, he saw Yuuka walking in an unsteady step to the desk across of his. The girl ended up letting out a deep sigh full of resignation as she took a seat with a blue mug in hand. A faint aroma of cocoa milk wafted in the air. "You're adapting to Kivotos scarily fast, sensei…"

"Hah ha. So it's that? You pick things up the longer you live. Anybody can do the same as long as they're committed to it."

"The commitment part is the hardest task, I do believe…" Yuuka groaned, all the while picking up papers, pen, and her phone to place on her desk. "And it looks like you've been doing your study when it comes to handling paperwork. Is this part of the reason why there were so many technical books downstairs, sensei?"

Oh, she noticed that? Vash had already recognized that Yuuka was a quick-thinker and capable in spite of her mood swings, but it seemed that was not everything. She looked what… 16 or so? Even though she was still a teenager at the cusp of her youth, there was no denying her life skills which must have been tempered by experience. Once upon a time, scholars and students were said to be respected simply for being well-educated, but Kivotos took it up by another notch.

"Sensei?" Yuuka's voice rang out.

"Hmm, yeah. Knowledge is important, after all. There's also a bunch of things I still don't understand, so I had to learn the ropes all the more so." Vash already felt his smile stretching wide, but that didn't matter. He was just happy to see a good thing. "I mean, I've been thrust into a teaching position. At the very least, I want us to be on the same page… or am I being conceited?"

"Uhh… no. Not at all! I mean…" Yuuka hurriedly shook her head. "I'm sort of, glad to know that you're putting the efforts in. And it shows, from these papers. A lot of the data are straight from field surveys, so it's rather messy and raw in nature, but there are profiles as well as inputs from the affected citizens… The details make it easier to visualize the whole picture. It's… very refreshing, honestly."

Well, now. Off to a good start, then. Vash didn't really know for sure how the intricate technicalities worked out around here. Sure, he could just apply the knowledge he had been cramming into his head for the past week, but using half-baked techniques had the risks of making a complicated mess in the long run. That would be bad and not at all helpful to his assistant. If it was just going down on the streets and taking direct interviews from the locals, though? That… that, he could do with confidence.

"At least the basic is there," Yuuka added. Gradually, her lips curved into a pleasant smile, a graceful complement to her professional attitude. "We can improve efficiency later, but for now, I'm going to start with streamlining the raw data. Sensei, make sure you pay attention as we go through the process, okay?"

"Aren't you a cheeky one?" The adult chuckled, feeling like the teacher and student roles had been reversed. That wasn't such a bad thing, however. He was a beginner in this line of work, and Yuuka was accommodating to his pace. Everyone started somewhere, and here was his starting line. "Sure. Please be kind to me, Yuuka."

"There are times for kindness, and times for strictness. It's all a delicate matter of balancing act, sensei."

And yet, you're smiling all the way. Vash had a good feeling about this. Here, in this academy city of Kivotos. Maybe he really could achieve his long-cherished wish for a cushy, retirement life. Away from all the soul-crushing bloodshed and despair. Away from the constant struggles for survival and ideals. Away from the cycle of fighting and running away. Yeap, I've got a good feeling about this teaching job.

---

A/N: Phew. That took a while to write. Unfortunately, I got sick last week, so there hasn't been much progress.

 

--- Episode 10: Funky Road ---​

The day was soon coming to an end. Orange and reddish hue dyed the faculty office, all thanks to an entire side of the room dedicated for panoramic view overseeing the city.

As twilight ushered in, the first chills of the evening seeped across the floors. Vash heaved a deep sigh and took off his shades, absolutely feeling the migraine from what his brain had been put through. He was more or less an outdoor person, so sitting still had never suited him. Vash paused and looked away slightly. Well... it could also be that he wasn’t really the type to have enough patience; he sure had a ton of bad habits to mow down lately.

“Hm! That was productive, yes!” Meanwhile, his own student looked utterly glowing, which scared him outright. Where did that endless, overflowing energy even come from? The ring on top of her head? Workaholic tendency? Could it be youthful foolishness—no, that didn’t sound right… “I didn’t think it’d take the whole day. Shame as there’s still so much work to do back at school, but since there weren’t many hiccups…”

“Was it a learning experience?” Vash put his elbow on the desk and rested his chin on the palm of his hand. He was getting a fair bit sleepy, already. I didn’t even eat much beyond convenience store food for lunch… “This adult over here sure feels winded.”

“A healthy lifestyle begins with a healthy diet and regular exercises, sensei.” Yuuka wrapped her hands around a stack of papers and tidied any pages that stuck out at angles. After putting them away, she reorganized her belongings next; the right time to go back home, he believed. “If you’d like it, I can give you the contact numbers of a professional in sports and dietary fields.”

“Hrrm… nah, it’s probably because I’m getting real old.” Vash scratched the back of his head, feeling lame over his excuse to skip more work, but well! He wanted to go at this job at his own pace, okay? “Don’t think I need to flip my whole life schedule over it.”

“Hah… I can’t say that’s an admirable attitude.” Yuuka walked off to the corner of the office, retrieving a pair of submachine guns from a wall-mounted firearm racks and attaching the metallic black guns to the holsters on the small of her back. “I will be coming over again in the near future. There’s still much paperwork to organize in Schale, like reimbursement for collateral damage in various districts. I do hope that you will already be done with your share by then, sensei.”

“Homework, huh…? You sound like a proper teacher, there.” Vash chuckled upon seeing Yuuka’s stunned looks. “It’s a praise. Don’t mind it too much. I mean, I’m still a beginner on this whole teaching job, after all.”

“How is it that you could be so easygoing…? Aren’t you the one directly summoned by the missing president of GSC…?”

Hrmm, that’s a fair point, but well… “I guess? It’s not like I’ve ever met her… her?”

Vash craned his head and rubbed his chin. Once again, he felt like he was remembering something fairly important. The rustic scent of blood in the air. The warm sunlight that streamed down unceasingly. A translucent veil of whitish blue hair… not good. He could only remember little glimpses. There was absolutely nothing useful he could glean from scattered bits detached from each other…

“Sensei…? Is there something wrong?”

“Oh, nothing? I’m not sure if I could even call it a concern.” Vash gently shook his head before letting out a dry laughter. “Either way, I’m playing catch-up with work since I’ve never done this gig before. Never managed to stick around in one place, you see.”

Yeah, how should I put it…? Back in No-man’s Land, he had this big bounty for his head, issued straight by the federal government. So much money to the point that no sane mind could have an idea how to actually empty the reward money out even if they actually managed to capture him. His arrival was also oftentimes not welcomed, forcing him to flee into the wasteland. Furthermore, his brother had been constantly on the move, and where he went, people disappeared as if spirited away. Combined together, he could hardly settle down. I did pick up a bunch of skills along the way, but 150 years is a long time, almost too long for legal systems to remain the same…

“I guess it’s because I came from a very secluded place? Everything here is fresh, new, innovated and refined from any excesses.” A modern civilization that had outgrown the basic needs for survival would of course be far ahead and more complex than even his homeland at its best state. In that sense, Vash in his infinite wisdom had a good grasp that he could provide only so much to enrich this academy city. “From my standing, you all have a good life going already. Do you even need me?”

He sent a dry gaze to his assistant, but he instead received the unexpected. The dark-haired girl stared back, completely nonplussed with her lips pursed taut. The way she gazed at him was… oddly familiar in a horrible way.

“Eh? What? What’s with that glare that seems to say “is this pathetic dung beetle with a uselessly high ego to stroke being serious” in a very disgusted way!?”

“Well, you’re the one who said that, Vash-sensei.”

She even addressed me by name! “What did I say wrong!?”

Rather than reassuring him with a clear-cut answer, the student from Millennium Science School merely pinched the bridge of her nose. She seemed completely done and wanted nothing to do with this particular subject, but the cruelly dismissive gesture did a bunch of damage to Vash’s self-esteem as a result. Vash groaned inwardly, covering his face with both hands as he felt the impulse to jump into the nearby hole.

“...hmph. For being an adult, you’re so difficult to handle. I’ll leave that for later, since it’s getting late.” Her voice walked past by him. Her heels clicked against the floor tiles and rang clear and vibrantly. Peeking through the gaps between his fingers, he saw the long dark hair trailing after Yuuka. When he spun the wheeled office chair around, the girl was already at the doorway… then she paused, turned around on her heels and tilted her head cutely. A smile bloomed on her face. “Well then. Thank you for your hard work, sensei. See you next time…!”

Without waiting for him, the door was closed on him.

…he brought that on to himself, hadn’t he? Vash sighed and slumped over, feeling weirdly drained even though he barely left the office for the whole day. Was he just that easy to tease, to make fun of? Well, maybe he really was. He never learned, as many people who had stuck around him long enough would point out. However, there was no heat in Yuuka’s gaze; she was indeed the picture of spritely, innocent youth.

“...it really isn’t bad, huh.” It wasn’t a question. He acknowledged the words and intent behind them as he rapped his fingers against the arms of the office chair. Staring into the ceiling dyed in darkening red shades, memories came unbidden only to dissolve away with the passing of time. “Yeah. This isn’t so bad at all.”

A ping came from the desk behind him. Spinning the office chair once more, he saw the enlarged head shot of one virtual assistant that inhabited the Shittim Chest.

“Hey, Arona.” Vash slowly left his chair, pacing forth to pick up the smart tablet. “How was your all-day nap?”

[Muuu~…! I’ve been awake since hours ago, sensei!!] Well, now. Did she not say anything since there was nothing she could help with, then? [You never asked, and all the work was done conventionally, so this great Arona never got a chance to shine, today!!]

“My bad, my bad… computer work doesn’t sit well with my eyes,” Vash said. He held back on commenting at the slight change to the virtual background, the half-destroyed classroom Arona was occupying similarly painted in a soft orange shade. It was as if the Shittim Chest was replicating the passing of time, which seemed mundane for someone who had known the heights of technology for space-faring humankind. But still. There was a deep appreciation in him over this feature. “Well, work is done for now.”

[...another patrol? This is already close to evening, sensei…]

Patrol might be a bit stiff for what I’m planning to do. “I’m just sighstseeing. Besides, I really am falling in love with Kivotos.”

[O-oohh…! That’s quite a bold word to say out of the blue, but I think I get it!] Arona’s ring of light turned heart-shaped and colored in pink. Briefly, he noticed the red dusting her cheeks, but soon the girl in blue’s mood changed again. This time, flashing sparkles flew from her uncovered eye, while the ring hovering above her head morphed into wild green waves and star-like dots. [Let’s go out then, Vash-sensei! Don’t forget your wallet this time, okay!?]

Ouch, she still remembered that one time, huh? Scratching his cheek, the adult man laughed awkwardly.

+-+-+-+-+​

The skyline lit up from the bright, artificial lights. Colorful too, though he could hardly see the stars as a result. Students who were simply going home or in a night outing wandered around, some recognizing him and some passing by him none-the-wiser.

“Ah, sensei of Schale!” “Good evening! Are you patrolling?” “That’s the rumored adult… and that white coat!” “So he really is part of the federal organization...” “Wow, what should I eat daily to be that tall…” “But not as big as vice-president Hasumi…” “I heard he kicked a tank shell, how?” “Adults are said to be weaker than us, but that must be fake rumors… he’s a menace, for sure.” “Oh no! Quick, let’s scram!!”

Vash spilled a smile. He waved, gave a greeting here and there, and resumed walking. He wasn’t planning to stay still, since the goal of tonight’s outing was to get a feel of the city at night time. Still, though… to think that he ended up melding in with the crowds just like this was quite a surprise.

[That’s just how it goes, sensei.] Through the tiny device attached to his ear, Arona’s voice delivered an answer to his idle pondering. Arona called it an earbud, but it sure didn’t feel like one since it functioned like miniaturized headphone. [It’s no longer school hours, so most students don’t need to put up appearances. Even thugs still do part-time works and hurry along when submission deadline is right around the corner.]

Well, he definitely could see that. Amid the colorful styles and schemes, there were out-of-place folks wearing full-face helmets, overly long skirts, and those that wrapped bandages around themselves. Nevertheless, whether it be regular students, academy board members, law-abiding citizens, or even robots armed like special forces, everyone only cared about their respective business; going about at their leisure.

...not a single face among them was dyed in embittered resignation—much less that of maddening desperation. Though I should ask Arona for the failing students’ contact list.

[Ah, sensei! That street vendor over there!! Look. Look!]

Hmm, that’s… fried snack bar? “Sure has a strong scent for the sauce… What about it?”

[That vendor randomly appears and sells at certain hour! It’s recently rated five-stars by the terrorist gourmets of Gehenna, at that!!]

Gehenna’s terror gourme—wha?? Vash had so many questions, but he decided to push them back for later date. It’d be rude to gawk without buying, so he checked for the meatier menu and strong spice for toppings. His purse got out of the deal a whole lot lighter than before, but well. These are good stuff, but that’s hot…!

[It’s good, right?!]

“Hawff! Huff! Hegh…!” Vash fanned his mouth with his hand. He got a bit too eager there, but piping hot comfort food in a cold night wasn’t such a bad idea. Especially while surrounded by festivity like this. Swallowing the sweet and spicy roasted chicken thigh, Vash patted his chest a few times before sighing. “Ooh… yeah, that’s the stuff. Nice recommendation, Arona.”

He heard her proud giggles through the earbud. And with the mood boosted, the teacher pushed forward, ever further into the night. He spent his time with students and civilians alike, asking questions and answering curious inquiries. Before he knew it, the streets had begun to empty out, store lights turning off with their gates shuttered down with locks on. Late night had arrived. It seemed like there was nothing else he could do now, but when he was about to return—a familiar figure walked out of an alley.

“Oh?” Red eyes blinked. A lovely, small white wing fluttered out and away from a mop of silvery white hair. Morizuki Suzumi blinked twice as if she questioned what she just saw, realization as well as recognition slowly dawning on her. “Ah… if it’s not sensei.”

“Yo. Fancy meeting you here, Suzumi.” Vash raised his right hand to eye level. “Isn’t it past the curfew for Trinity’s dormitory rule?”

“...I am rather surprised that you’d know the curfew hour, even though I’ve yet to see you at our school grounds,” Suzumi replied. Shifting the hand in her skirts pocket, she rolled her shoulder which carried a grayish white assault rifle. There she stood face-to-face with him. “As for your question, sensei… when it’s this late out, not even Valkyrie students patrol around. Kivotos is not lawless, but it certainly has times and places where the presence of authority could hardly be felt.”

Huh… now that I think about it… Vash hummed in thoughts at that revelation. He did notice even the most diligent students of Valkyrie only patrolled when it was still bright outside. He had a feeling they served as first transponders to incidents and accidents, but if the equivalent of local sheriffs functioned only in daytime, wouldn’t that mean the city spawned a bunch of crimes at night? That could spell… some really bad stuff.

“Be that as it may, large-scale incidents would still draw the attraction of Valkyrie or Disciplinary Board, even at ungodly hour as this. With the capacity of our club in mind, we know our limits to not push our luck.” Completely ignorant to his internal musings, Suzumi went on. The adult reflexively followed after her. “Aside from that, my main concern during evening patrol is to look for truants who have yet to return home. Missing person cases truly do not sit well with me, so…”

“Ah, so you’re escorting them?” That certainly eased my concerns. It also made a lot of sense, knowing that Suzumi’s main priority was the well-being of her fellow students. It brought to mind her reason for visiting the nearest branch office of GSC before. It had to do with assaults on her schoolmates on the way to their school… hm. “Is it tough?”

“Hmm? You mean my work?” At his nod, Suzumi bobbed her head. “I cannot say that it’s always smooth-sailing. Kivotos comes in diverse kinds of folks. In the past week, I’m sure that even you can attest to that, sensei.”

Well… that’s true. Sometimes, misunderstandings escalated. Sometimes, arguments turned into a brawl. Sometimes, a shootout even happened and sometimes, tanks or armored vehicles equipped rolled in. Crazy how impulsive could these teenagers be, but the more he observed, the more he realized that this sentiment extended to the ordinary citizens, as well. The ones who’d make a huge fuss among the last group tended to be the sentient robots with angular frames, though.

“But is it burdening you?” Vash redirected the question back to Suzumi. There were times and places to think of the bigger picture. “I don’t mind what you’re doing, Suzumi. It’s nice to see a hard worker with a kind heart like you, but if it’s stressing you out, just take off from work for a day or two. Anyone deserves a vacation after diligently working hard for others’ sake.”

…

“...hello? Suzumi?”

“Hah!? Ahh…? Ahhh… um, yeah. Well…” The girl suddenly walked ahead of him, widening the space between the two of them. She walked in a slightly unsteady gait, yet it was in a controlled manner that it would have been difficult to notice. Too bad that Vash was not a regular person you could find anywhere. Plus, the white wing sticking out from the side of her head was flapping about like crazy; that would be impossible not to notice, even for the densest fool. “Err… It’s not really something I’ve ever thought about. Me joining the Vigilante Corps is, after all, because it’s something that I could do…”

Huh, so it’s a conscious choice. It did make him wonder, though—

“What about school life? You doing alright with your study?” Vash probed further.

“Yes… fortunately, my fellow club members are good people. I also have a class schedule that allows me to take on this task without it interfering with my study.”

“I see, I see. Guess I got myself worried over nothing, then.” The teacher chuckled, feeling up his chin with his two fingers. “But I was serious about my earlier words.”

“Mmh. Sensei, you can be such a mean adult.” A pause followed. “I do take a break here and there… I also have my own day off where I can recharge at my leisure.”

Then, the girl in white and gray canvas turned her head around. A polite smile graced her face, briefly making him wonder if his words truly got through to her. Perhaps that was just how Morizuki Suzumi came off as to other people. Diligent, polite, but sometimes a bit of an aloof character. However—all Vash needed to do was to look her properly in the eyes. He could tell; he recognized the fluctuating emotions deep inside her red eyes, and so he softly smiled.

“I may not sound like it, but I can tell the sincerity in your words.” Suzumi lowered her eyelids, her gaze warm and accepting. “So, thank you. I’m doing alright, sensei.”

“Hm… right, I believe in you.” Vash pushed forward and reached out. Resting his hand—right hand—on the girl’s head, he felt the soft texture of his student’s hair. It was a completely different feeling to those who grew up under the baking rays of the desert planet’s twin suns. “Well, can I tag along, then? I’ve still got some free time before I turn in for today.”

Before he could hear an answer, sounds that cut through the tranquil night abruptly appeared, echoing through the empty street. It was growing louder and louder, and he instantly whipped his head to a dark alley—

“BAAM! SUSPICIOUS PERSON DETECTED!!”

He saw a triangular white patch slamming to his face. He felt the impact, the weight behind the blow hammering his nose in. As air escaped his lungs, he lost his footing and flew before the sudden attack brought his head down to the hard pavement.

“Gubeh!?”

And then sweet darkness dragged his mind down into the abyss.

+-+-+-+-+​

Morizuki Suzumi wasn’t the type to be easily shaken, but she came close to that point today. Her fellow Vigilante Corps member sat in formal posture with a white board raised high above her head with words “I am a bad kid who jumps to conclusions” written with black markers. Towering before her was an adult the girl had knocked the lights out with a body blow at breakneck speed followed with a centrifugal force-boosted head slam to the pavement.

Honestly, it was a miracle that the only injury the teacher had incurred merely ended up as a big, angry red bump growing from the back of his head.

It’s not good that it happened in the first place, however. With a hand covering one side to her face, Suzumi loosened out a tired sigh. It seemed she had no choice but to cut her evening patrol short. For now, she had to make amends as best she could for failing to anticipate this inevitable outcome. I really should have known that this would happen one day, but it arrived far earlier than scheduled.

“I deeply apologize for this reckless girl’s conduct, sensei. This happened because of my failure in educating her.” Suzumi deeply bowed to the adult. She could feel the gaze set on her, but she refused to lift herself from this position as she hardly deserved the right to regain her dignity just yet. Respect was never gifted, but earned. “She doesn’t mean malice, so please—”

“Waaaah! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!! I didn’t know you were the rumored teacher!” And then the shrill voice of Uzawa Reisa rang out. From the corner of her vision, Suzumi saw the pale-haired girl bawling her eyes out, all the while both of her hands extended out to the sky trying to keep the white board in place. It had been five minutes ever since the brash girl maintained that posture… “I thought some creepy pervert was strong-arming Suzumi-senpai to the vile darkness of beyond!”

“Who are you calling a creep!?”

“Meep!! I’m so sorry, sunglasses-wearing old codger…!”

“Ol—I ain’t looking that wrinkled! And what did you say about my glasses, pipsqueak!!?”

“Wh—I’m not tiny?!”

“Yes you are…!”

“Am not! Am not…!!”

“Yes, yes you are…!!”

As the byplay grew both in volume and length, Suzumi suddenly felt as if something terrible was about to happen. Though she didn’t want to, she pulled herself back and stood upright. Gradually, gradually, she moved her gaze to the side, and there was the sight she wasn’t really looking forward to seeing.

The dim street regained some bright lights to it. Shutters were raised, windows were opened, and doors creaked out. One by one, the civilians who had been trying to get some sleep were woken up by a surprise disturbance. Suzumi felt a chill running down her spine as lights turned back on among the buildings scattered all over this street.

Aaah… this isn’t looking good.

For the first time in a long while, Suzumi choked up from having her self-esteem drowned in embarrassment bordering on humiliation. The fact that the reason to that had to do with an adult she had acknowledged and a team member she got along to some extent really hurt.

“STOP YAPPING, WRETCHES!! I NEED SOME GODDAMN SLEEP!”

Before Suzumi could remove this event from her memories, an empty canned drink soared above her. It drew a graceful parabolic line in the air and struck the teacher of Schale in the back of his head. He dropped to the floor with a yelp cut short… right in front of the petrified Reisa. Something white and round leaked out from the corner of the adult’s mouth…

“W-waaah!? A dead body!!”

Suzumi pressed both of her hands to her face. I want to go home…

---

A/N: Been quite busy the last few days... Life never likes working out to your favor, huh.

 

--- Episode 11: Midnight Trip ---​

Vash woke up in a small park full of greenery. At a gazebo with street lights dimly shining over the scenery, he breathed in the cool and fresh night air. Slowly, he got up, catching a stare from behind the table laid out before the bench he was in. Her ring of light, shaped in the form of two rounded five-pointed stars, glowed brightly. Pale blue tinted with light pink dyed her hair, and the girl wore a familiar gray and white orthodox school uniform.

Vash heaved a wry smile as he pushed his shades up the bridge of his nose. Memories came to him in seconds, and he easily recalled what brought this change.

“Hey. What’cha up to?”

“...uh. G-good evening.” The girl gripped the edge of the table with both of her hands, leaving the digits on display. Unlike before, the boisterous firecracker almost looked like a small critter poking her head out from her burrow. Well, that might be rude to say out loud, so Vash refrained from saying anything. “Err, Suzumi-senpai is currently off buying warm drinks. It turns out we didn’t have to buy a cold compress and cream for bruise, but it’s getting really chilly around this hour…”

...right, he was still the same ole him. Shrugging, Vash swung his legs off from the bench and rested his elbows on his thighs. “Nothing I couldn’t live with. Were you worried?”

“Uuhh… yeah. I mean, I didn’t think you’re the rumored teacher of Schale.” For some reasons, the girl’s bubbly and noisy personality could hardly be seen now. How… odd. Even though Vash had barely known her beyond a short banter, he somehow figured out that this was out of the norms for her. Yes, it almost felt as if she was… apologetic? “I’m sorry for earlier, sensei… Even though adults are built differently to us, I went up and pounced at full force out of habits…”

Hoh ho, so she does have a good level of self-awareness in her. Vash cupped his chin in two fingers and hummed appreciatively. Something she had just said earlier also rang a bell in his mind… yes, of a certain pair who formerly worked for insurance company. It was a rather interesting coincidence, a common similarity or perhaps a parallel between those two strong women and these two girls. Well, she called Suzumi “senpai,” so she must be a freshman… first-year? New meat? At any rate…

“Hang on… since you’re with Suzumi—“

“Hm! Hmf!! Uzawa Reisa, the Trinity’s Apostle of Justice, at your service!!” The girl’s eyebrows sharply pointed down and her lips shifted into a smug-filled smile. Her eyes seemed to glitter, and the white gun slung behind her loudly rattled. Vash wasn’t sure what to say about the glaring yellow symbols painted all over the gun’s body; it was super bright, like very very bright even in this dimly lit park. “If you have any problems while exploring our school districts, feel free to give us a call! Thugs, smugglers, tyrannical businessmen, or even legendary rulers of the dark world—I shall defeat them all if you ever encounter them!!”

Right… Vash pulled out some treats from his pocket. “Want some candies?”

“The ramune gummy one!” Reisa fetched the candies as soon as she saw them. It sure didn’t take much to ease up the atmosphere between them. “Thanks for the treat, sensei…! Guess you can’t trust rumors all the time!”

“Uh-huh. You sure are spirited,” Vash said with a widening smile. “So. What’s the rumor mill saying about me?”

“Hmm? Huh… well.” Reisa gulped down the gummy candy after a constant of chewing. Her eyes drooped at the corners, so when she looked upward, she looked quite adorable. Was this what they said about cute things existing because they wanted to be spoiled? “Uuh, I heard that the teacher of Schale can kick a shell at near point-blank range back to the tank that fired it, threw wanted criminals out of his office like taking out trash, breaths fire that can melt concretes, and also shoots laser beams when he wears glasses?”

“What am I, a radioactive-spewing giant lizard?”

“Oh! I know that one!! That’s the ancient movie franchise often fought over because everyone keeps on making copycats of it, right!? I heard the Perorordzilla sub-franchise didn’t quite pass the pre-production stage, but who knows if it even exists, aha!!”

I’m not even sure what to say about that. Vash tilted his head to the side and crossed his arms together. Somehow, Reisa also followed in suite. Well… at least they were in a similar wavelength. That was good, right? Maybe. Probably. Honestly, she sure resembled Milly in more ways than one. Bubbly, full of smiles, hyper and all, yet soft nonetheless—

“Sensei? Have you woken up?” From behind, Suzumi’s voice reached his ears. He turned around to see the red-eyed girl holding a few canned drinks in her arms as she let out a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness you’re okay… Seems like you’ve been interacting with Reisa, as well. She hasn’t caused any other problems, hopefully?”

Vash grinned. “It’s no biggie. All waters under the bridge, now. We’ve only been chit-chatting, too. Right, Reisa?”

“O-ohh…! I’ve also apologized for my mistakes, senpai!”

“I see… all is well, then…” Tension sapped away from the silver-haired girl. Sitting down across of him, Reisa followed after her to sit near her side. Vash gazed upon the three canned drinks laid out on the table and then picked one up. “Ah. My apologies, it’s already so late, there weren’t many choices to pick.”

“Matcha green… huh.” It was as eastern as it could get, flavor wise. Plants were capable of many miraculous things, but it had been mankind’s ingenuity to craft and subvert their mysterious workings to reproduce what couldn’t be found in No-man’s Land. “Oh, it’s surprisingly sweeter than I thought.”

“It wouldn’t last long, otherwise.” Suzumi nodded sagely. Her choice was a chocolate-flavored milk called Wintry Chocolate. “I’m sorry that we ended up cutting our patrol short, by the way. As it’s getting—“

“Sleep is good. Eat good meals and get enough sleep. You’re growing kids, anyway.” Vash chuckled at the flustered looks Suzumi wore. “I can walk myself back to the office. You don’t need to worry about me, Suzumi.”

“Well… if that’s how you want it, sensei.” The Trinity girl rubbed her thumb across the side of her canned drink. He could hear the gasp and the befuddled gaze from her underclassman, but why was that? He didn’t exactly say anything unreasonable, so… did it have something to do with Suzumi’s instant acceptance? “What is it, Reisa?”

“No, well… Suzumi-senpai, isn’t the teach here more fragile than either of us?” The boisterous girl definitely looked confused. However, he did want to point out her pointing at him felt rude and uncalled for. “The dark time beckons great shadows! Lots of malicious denizens and evil beasts roam the city at this bewitching hour, you know?!”

Oh god, why does that phrasing sound so wrong and embarrassing? Contrary to Vash’s growing concerns and heated-up-to-a-boiling-point ears, Suzumi somehow managed to take in a stride Reisa’s words as if at face value. No, wait. Was this just a secret language used between the Vigilante Corps members? Did they understand each other in a special way like this?? This old man can’t keep up with all these modernity!!

“Well… that’s what she said, sensei. How about it?” Suzumi, someway or other, had entirely dropped the idea of explaining and went straight to asking him. “While I don’t believe there will be much troubles, knowing your abilities, there’s nothing wrong with being safe, I believe.”

Don’t just—oh, wait. “You sure think highly of me, Suzumi.”

The silver-haired girl shrugged. “Honestly, I still thought it was something straight out of a battle manga, but since Schale has been given the trust of the missing President, I can only accept what I saw that day to be the reason why.”

“No, no, no. That’s not how you should decide how good somebody’s for the job.” Vash waved with his right hand rapidly. “I got recruited into teaching position. Sen. Sei. What good is brute force for in a role like that?”

“Uuuhhh… for maintaining order during classes?”

Thank you for the hypothetical answer, Reisa, but wrong! Vash exhaled roughly, now realizing that his actions might have been misunderstood as a show of power. It was a complete fluke that he trusted in the Crusader tank’s spec to be lower than the overly modified insanity of his homeland. The gunpowder didn’t have the right oomph to it…

“Say,” Vash paused. Lowering his line of sight slightly, his sweeping gaze met the two Vigilante Corps members in the eyes. “Does it hurt when you get shot at?”

“Eh? Well, yes. Depending on the shell type and caliber, it may end up leaving a bruise…”

“Yeah… those can get pretty nuts.” Reisa made a face as if in reminiscence. She folded her arms together and sat cross-legged. “A buckshot to the face can mess our uniforms badly, some pepper you real hard, too...”

Just a bruise… The stranger from a whole different planet decided not to pursue that lane of thought; lest he be distracted into tangents. He could set aside some free time on personal research about biology and anthropology subjects—but not now! Right… okay, how about this, then…

“Well, it’s still better if you never get shot in the first place, right?” Vash curved his lips, putting effort to look convincing as he could. “People don’t like pain. They’d do anything to not get hurt, but that can end up causing a whole lot of mess down the line…”

“You mean… aversion to the truth, no matter how horrible it is, may end up inflicting bigger harm in the end?” Suzumi blinked, her ruby red eyes shining with a curious glint.

“Well, that can work, too.” I feel like these two are still not ready for this kind of talk, but well… no better time than now, I guess. He had no doubts that they’d still act like this, patrolling dark alleys and protecting the innocents. Even if that meant coming into conflicts with armed thugs, they had decided to shoulder this duty and responsibility by their own will, and Vash could respect that. It probably didn’t matter whether or not he was around, too. “I don’t like fighting, you see. Even in the absolute worst situation, it’d be better off for everyone to settle things out without getting hurt…”

“That’s… a noble aspiration, sensei.”

Vash chuckled. It seemed that Suzumi could tell something was off. His wording, while not exactly designed to hide underlying intentions, could came off as pathetic.

The world was everything, but welcoming it was not. It could not be nice, kind, gentle, and so on. Mother nature was cruel in her infinite glory. And yet, people did their best to survive, to live on. They raised their heads, extended their hands forward, grew up, argued, fought, shed tears, fell ill, have family, and laughed. The song of humanity was one such chaotic ensemble from start to end.

Hence why—

“It rests on everyone who’s still alive whether or not you can make the world be a kinder, better place than the point where you first saw it as. After all…” Vash faltered, a shard of the past surfacing from the bottom of his heart for an instance. He quickly crushed that emotion, that memory, and held back on continuing his words. It was… it wasn’t right. He didn’t want to let down these two kids, not like this. “Well, just means that diplomacy is the best. Love and peace, you know!”

There. Nailed it. He laughed, and laughed. The two Trinity students glanced at each other, but they didn’t say anything. Man… he sure was lame.

+-+-+-+-+​

The stars twinkled. Lady moon shone. Clouds dispersed, and a breeze sneaked by.

The walk back to the dorm was… quiet. It was tranquil, oddly enough. Of course, it wasn’t like there weren’t calm days like this. As that enigmatic adult had said, peace was for the best, and Suzumi wouldn’t have it any other way. She could rest easy without minding over injuries or fatigue tonight.

Parting ways, they said goodbyes and words of expectation for tomorrow. See you later, see you next time, until tomorrow… it was something Suzumi had always considered as a given, words that were only polite and nice to say and to hear. After all, time would pass and tomorrow would arrive. Less than six hours from now, dawn would break out. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

“Say, senpai?”

“Hmm? Yeah, what is it, Reisa?”

“Uhmm… can I, request something from you?”

Suzumi raised an eyebrow. Hearing her junior’s request, a small smile broke out. The girl nodded, extending her hand slightly to the side. In the next seconds, the pair of freshman and sophomore walked under the starry sky. Together. Hand-in-hand. Against the chilly airs of the night and the shadows blanketing the sleepy city.

It was cold, for sure. But it’s a bit more tolerable, now.

“Senpai…” Reisa called out once again.

“Yeah. What is it, Reisa?”

Suzumi looked ahead. They had passed another light post, ancient and old, marred with weathering scars as well as dents caused by ricocheting bullets. A plaza was waiting just further ahead of them, a fountain and the shiny golden fences on the side foretelling of their destination being close at hands.

“Do you think sensei is happy living here with us?”

“Hmm… I don’t know. I don’t want to presume things,” Suzumi rubbed her chin with her free hand. The weight of her rifle made itself clear as she rolled her shoulder. “When he said that he dislikes violence, does that bother you?”

“Well… fighting thugs, and making peace. Those are… aah, I get it.” Reisa’s voice sounded feeble in the middle, as if unsure, yet it picked itself back up at the end. “It’s just, uhm… how do I say it?”

As she hemmed and hawed, Suzumi chose not to say any more words. She didn’t know Reisa for long. It was still spring, she had just reached her 2nd year, and so she could hardly think of herself as one full of maturity. Experiences mattered, but she doubted she had made enough right choices to speak on behalf of others.

Therefore, she waited. Therefore, she kept herself at apace. Slowly, steadily, relaxed and reassuring. I guess Reisa is my escort for this evening work, then.

At some point, Reisa made an audible sound. She looked up, staring at the night sky.

“It’s because… he sounded so sad, back then.” Reisa’s words made Suzumi to follow after her direction, staring out to the sky full of stars. “It made me feel sad, too.”

I see… so that’s how it is. When put like that, perhaps it couldn’t be helped that Reisa was feeling hapless. Even Suzumi shared the same sentiment as her. To the two of them, studying and gunfighting were parts of their daily lives. Kivotos was a wide place, but it was also everything that all students had ever known. In a way, Suzumi only now realized how small her microcosm was, what with club activity limiting her movement only to the furthest edges of Trinity’s autonomous districts. I wonder… what does the outside world look like?

Where did the City end, and where did the Outside start? What would be waiting for her, once she finished her study and embarked on her journey past graduation? It all came back to that person who… at the time, had worn a sad smile on his face. He was a teacher, an adult, he who preceded others; the guide for those who came after him in the long journey called life. Surely… he knew the answer?

“...I hope we can get to know each other better.”

To Reisa’s murmuring, so feeble that it might as well be a noise in the winds, a corner of Suzumi’s heart hoped that it would not end as mere prayer.

+-+-+-+-+​

The stars twinkled. Clouds scattered. Lady moon waxed and then waned. As the world turned, dawn cracked open the night and so morning arrived.

Sunlight peeked through white curtains. It illuminated the flat with the bright white ray falling upon a rectangular dining table. A white tablet left on the wooden surface flickered to life, black screen shifting into a patterned canvas of white and blue.

A clear “ping!” came from the smart tablet. A white box appeared, signifying the icon of a letter entering a box. Unfortunately, the digital assistant inhabiting it was fast asleep with just a portion of her head poking out to the screen from below. Her sleeping habits, terrible as they were, caused the system manager of Shittim Chest to swipe her arm across the screen. Though faint beeping sounds followed in suite, neither Arona nor the teacher of Schale managed to wake up.

As a result, the message was left opened, blown up to fill the screen. The system identified the sender and addressed it at the top of the page, and the message carried within it a special digital signature in the form of a triangular logo bearing the pointed orb of the sun. The message read as thus—

[To: Sensei of Schale
From: Abydos Foreclosure Task Force
Subject: Please save our school, senseil!]

---

A/N: Might be a bit short, but I feel like it ended on a nice cutoff point. Stay in tune, for the next is Volume 1 (at long last!)... well, I really am taking my sweet damn time on this. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

 

--- Episode 12: Future Bossa ---​

It was, without a doubt, a very unusual request. There had been cases where he had to find lost pets, entertain the crowds as a magic show’s partner, or even cleaning clogged public park toilets, but something this caliber was basically unheard of… or maybe his exploits had spread far and wide that it was about time.

That being the case, he pored over the request while eating breakfast. One leg raised on the chair, a cup of instant coffee in one hand, a slightly brown toast with sunny side up egg, and a few bacon strips to savor—though the half-lidded glare sent by Arona hurt his conscience a bit.

[This is violating so many table manners, sensei.]

Vash pursed his lips. “Well, I need some “me time” too, don’t you think?”

Arona drew out a sigh. She looked resigned, so the adult considered this as a win. He ate his breakfast unhurriedly before going back to the request at hands, pending for acceptance of course… He had no intention to reject whatever task that stumbled its way to his office. It wasn’t like Schale had actual duty to it beyond “fix the city and regain public order,” which he believed had done a stellar job at. He wasn’t bragging, needless to say. He was just that awesome of a guy.

Still… this request, he had a hunch about it.

“Say, Arona.” The man with black hairs that stood at all ends glanced to the side. He caught his assistant consuming a strawberry shortcake with a carton of strawberry milk on the side… This brat, she actually dared to complain about table manners while eating high-calorie stuff right in the morning. “Since we never covered these topics before, mind answering some questions?”

[Uh-huh? Is there something that piqued your interest, sensei?] The personal assistant who lived in the digital realm tilted her head.

“What’s that ring above your head?”

[...heh?]

“It’s pretty neat. Some of the girls I’ve met so far have different colors and shapes to them, but really, the heck are they for?” Vash didn’t feel like pointing out that it made the students angelic in appearance. It wasn’t helped by how Hasumi and Suzumi straight out had wings—literal wings that definitely were part of their physiology. In a far different, more deranged place, he’d have presumed human experimentation, but Kivotos had proven to be a safe, comfy haven as it could get. Therefore… “Are they some trendy accessories for school girls—ababababababaaa!!?”

What was that? What was that!? Why did he feel like an electrical shock had ran through his being!? No, wait, he was being zapped but how!? AronaaaAaaaAAaaaAAA, my brain be a trembbbleeeeeeeee??!!

[Sexual harassment! Sexual harassment! I can’t believe you, sensei!! What the heck are you thinking this early in the morning…!?] A tomato-faced Arona yelled out, both hands stretched out to the screen as if grabbing ahold of it. [Pervert! Pervert…!! Punishment!!]

“AbababababABBABABABAAAAAA!!”

...well, that was how monday morning signaling his second week in Kivotos turned out. It took a lot of effort to calm down the blue kid, but at the end of it, all he could get about the round things above her head—and by extension all Students across Kivotos—were that they were indeed angelic halo… or Halo. Whatever. Naming aside…

“They come on when you’re awake and dipped away when you’re fast asleep or completely unconscious, huh?” Vash rubbed his chin with two fingers. “Looks like a telltale sign for naughty kindergartners who don’t like afternoon nap. Really nifty, wish all kids have that sort of thing. Would have given all parents and caretakers easier time back home.”

[Ahahahaha… I guess from the eyes of adults, it feels like that, huh…] Arona wore a troubled smile. [But, umm… well, about our Halo… Sensei, it’s just—]

“Oh no, I don’t really have anything else to ask. I was just curious,” Vash gave the AI girl a casual hand-wave. “Sure, I’ve never seen anyone with a halo before, but you react so strongly when asked. I won’t pry if you’re not ready for it yet. I’m a classy gentleman, you see.”

[Ha-haa… I’m not sure a true gentleman calls himself that way…] At his words, tension evaporated from Arona’s face. It sure made him wonder how sensitive the subject was, but well—not like there was any harm to not knowing it. Plus, it was a pretty little identifier representing one’s own existence. Vash liked the concept of it. [Ko-hon! We-well, then. Sensei, do you have any other question, now? This great Arona will assist you to the best of her abilities!!]

“Sure, sure. So, next up. About this request.” He prodded at the message box left hanging in the right side of the smart tablet. “Apparently, a school can just be on the verge of shutting down. This is mighty shady, don’t you think?”

[Eeeh…? I don’t know where you’re going here, sensei…]

Vash picked up a toothpick to clean the bits stuck between his molars. It was made out of a material called bamboo, which seemed to have its own scent and flavor to it. Quite an oddity, but he didn’t mind it. The aftertaste spreading through his mouth felt like a palate cleanser.

“I mean, schools are big here.” Vash chewed at the toothpick. “From what I can tell, they own lands, districts, facilities and road accesses even. They manage whole sections of this massive city and only bow down to GSC. If a school got reduced to a sorry state like this, shouldn’t it be treated as a big problem?”

[Ah! You mean… the request for aid does not match the level of priority it’s supposed to have? Amazing, you even picked up on that, sensei…!]

“It’s just the result of diligent study and thorough observation.” Vash narrowed his eyes in delight, a soft smile on his face. Soon after, however, his stare shifted into one full of solemn atmosphere. “Arona. To all students who live in this city… what do the schools they belong to mean to them?”

[It’s… well…]

“It’s a precious place, right?” Vash chuckled at Arona’s hurried nods. “School life must be a heck lot of fun. Studying, chatting, running around with wild abandon and spending your evening at leisure. It’s a freeing sight.”

That was why… to these kids, school must be their rightful place. Away from home, but not so far out that they wouldn’t know where to return. A mundane, bright and carefree daily life full of fun adventures where you could spend your times together with people of the same age, away from the observations of adults. No wonder academic institutions were once venerated by all.

“...to the people who wrote this request, their school must mean everything to them.”

Enough that they refused to let it go. Enough that they would rather ask for help instead of closing their doors on strangers they had never met. Vash the Stampede wasn’t unfamiliar to desperate pleas; far from it. The school of Abydos… he had never heard of it before, but he could understand one thing through this letter.

“Arona, could you please prep up an inventory list of things I need to bring to Abydos?”

[...un! Leave it to me, sensei!!]

Vash smiled. As he put away the dishes at the kitchen and walked to the bathroom. In the background, cluttered noise rang out from the Shittim Chest.

There are children in need of help, he thought. But first, fresh undies to face the day!!

+-+-+-+-+​

The Sanctum Tower. It was a place the General Student Council was headquartered in, the beating heart of Kivotos. It sported an impressive number of floors, a solid range of departments and technological marvels, as well as staffing handpicked by the currently missing President of the organization.

Shortly after the incomparably useless morning meeting had adjourned itself, Nanagami Rin received a direct message from a certain office located in the city outskirts.

She stood in the middle of the empty corridor and stared long at her phone. The content of the message was short and simple, without formality whatsoever. The sender had the tone of a friendly neighbor who paid a visit just to pass off gifts, and the language he used was oddly considerate in some places. Unfortunately, the extent of frustration Rin felt as she discovered that the teacher of Schale had run off for unsanctioned business trip without consulting her beforehand, was tantamount to the volcanic eruption of Gehenna’s unholy mountain of doom.

Crack—a web of harsh, jagged lines covered the phone screen. The black-haired girl adorned in white gazed upon the windows, the fitful rage gleaming behind her glasses only identifiable by a frightful secretary of the Executive Office.

+-+-+-+-+​

Vash the Stampede was a man of many things. A journeyman with tons of impressive tales and epic escapades to tell. A gunman with a heart beating for love and peace. A dastardly handsome good samaritan, also simply built tougher and different. In any case, he was a fighter with unparalleled skills, experienced in the myriad ways life could take.

Sadly, being baked by the sun-dried asphalt road was never one of the things he had really experienced for real. The withering husk of a man eked out coarse groans, hobbling forward with a stick he had graciously received from a temporary trash dumping site several blocks behind… actually, where was he supposed to go next?

[Se-sensei! Hang in there!!] The comforting, supportive voice of his digital assistant pierced the hazes fogging his dehydrated mind. [We’re only a few stations left from reaching their school! Sensei, fight! Fighto, sensei! F-I-G-H-T-O!! You can do it…!!]

The-the sentiment is good and all, but why is this happening…!? He thought that modern convenience could bring him anywhere, but as it turned out, nearly all routes leading to Abydos School Districts had been deactivated. He had to drop off at a business sector situated right next to other schools’ autonomous district, and walked the rest of the way to his client. It was absurd, insane. Why is this so familiar…!?

The sun shone really brightly the moment he entered the district proper. Rows of houses, empty and seemingly lacking in terms of maintenance stretched as far as he could see. It was a sad sight whenever he stumbled upon old graffiti and dead plants in flower pots, but what could he do? The school’s surroundings must have become ghost towns for a long while now, but why? How?

This is getting fishier the more I look at it—but the sun is way stinging over here!!

It burned at him with baleful heat and rays. The sunlight’s intensity almost felt familiar, scorching while all-too-easily depriving him of the liquids in his body. At this rate, never mind thinking properly, he probably would collapse and turn into a mummy way before he reached the school! Rather, he was already halfway to the afterlife!!

“Wah… wahter…! Wahzheerrrr…!!?”

[Sensei, you already drank the last bottle 300 meters earlier!!]

“Nnuuhhoooooooo! Curse you, resource-rich environment…!!” I made a grave mistake, got too spoiled by all the conveniences and readily available daily goods…!!

[Ah, wait! Sensei, don’t run! You’re just going to exhaust yourself faster…! Sensei, please calm down…!! Sensei…!?]

A few minutes later, the adult faced yet another tall hurdle. In this case, it was a very physical hurdle in everything that mattered. He craned his head up, gazing listlessly at a long road with steep climb to it; he saw no such thing as stairs. Looking back, he only had his backpack on his body. It contained several sets of spare clothes, daily supply for hygiene, and a charger for the Shittim Chest. Vash then looked back at the harsh terrain standing before him. Imposing. Menacing. Also condescending.

The shadow cast over him felt as if it was mocking him, taunting him, making fun of his mortality even though it was just an uphill road. Vash decided he didn’t like that smug aura, no sirree. Not. At. All.

“Guh…!”

[G-guh…?]

“Guuuoooohhhh!! Don’t underestimate me…!!”

[He’s lost it…!? Sensei, please stop! Stoooooppp!!?]

Just as he was about start his mad climb on all-fours, something suddenly vaulted over the peak of the elevated road. It soared in midair for seconds until it landed and sped down, rushing headlong at him with breakneck speed. Before Vash could blink, he felt a solid impact crashing right into him.

“Gebyurahhg…!!!”

The world turned, spun, and swam. The blue of the sky suddenly seemed like a pool surrounded by houses and electrical posts. His vision dizzied him as if he was being put through a washing machine’s cycle. When things started to slow down, his skull smashed the hot asphalt road, followed by the rest of his body. His sight was now parallel to the ground, but it was of no use.

As darkness consumed him, he swore he saw an ashen-haired wolf looming before him. It was… probably his whole life flashing before him.

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It was a shiny day. A new beginning. Another new day. Spring had just arrived, so the rain had lessened and winds started to pick up their pace.

Of course, that came with the caveat of sand particles sneaking past the ventilation and every available gap to cover the school’s corridors. It was a chore and a half to clean up, but since the other members were rather independent in their own rights, there was no need for a set work schedule over who must sweep the floor and wipe the windows. In this sense, Izayoi Nonomi happened to be the first one to arrive; quite an unenviable spot she had been put in, but she smiled as she was allowed to help her friends in more capacity than the usual.

She dropped her trusty minigun at the gun rack sitting in the corner of the club room, making sure she had already engaged the safety and covered it with a plastic tarp so as not to receive sand and dust infiltration. Setting aside her cardigan, Nonomi then picked up a dustpan along with a handheld soft nylon brush to sweep the surface areas above the grounds, throwing all the dust and dirt and sand to the floors before she could use the long broom to run a circuit around the entire floor. By the time she was done, she was beset by a girl donning a very familiar blue scarf and a cross-shaped hairpin…

Except, she was carrying a super tall person on a fireman’s carry. Nonomi paused, holding a broom in one hand.

“Ah! Good morning, Shiroko-chan!”

“Un. Good morning, Nonomi.”

The girl—Sunaookami Shiroko—was a girl of few words. However, it wasn’t like she was being rude about it. The girl before her had a certain circumstance to her growing up the way she did, but overall, Nonomi believed that she was more or less moving in the right direction. Personally speaking, though, Shiroko could be likened to a lone wolf, but come to think of it—wasn’t wolf a pack animal species? Hmm, what did it mean for a person to be a lone wolf, then?

Ah, wait, never mind that. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s an incident waiting to happen… Shiroko-chan, it’s not good to pick up people like stray cats, you know?”

“Oh… I know that. I need to accept the full brunt of taking in strays.” However, Shiroko shook her head and rolled her shoulders. As a result, the very tall person let out a weird groan… huh, a male? A man?? Was that an actual adult, in the flesh right there? “But, err… what do I do, Nonomi…?”

“Uuuh, what do you mean by—“

“I… ran over this person.”

...oh, so this was a traffic accident all along. Nonomi finally understood why Shiroko looked stricken with emotions she had never seen before… No wonder she seemed to be at a loss for words? Then again…

“Should I get a shovel?” If it’s a homicide, the Valkyrie probably won’t go all the way out to here...

“...I think he’s still alive. Probably. Hopefully…”

Wow, she sure sounds unsure of herself… Nonomi wasn’t exactly stuck so far in the clouds upstairs, but the saying turned to be true sometimes. There was always a first time to everything.

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Darkness. Total darkness surrounded him. It was a familiar, suffocating place he was most afraid of, but at the same time, the thought of him in this place also left him with a deep sense of dread.

And yet, something was different this time. He looked ahead, only to see nothing. He did not see the ghosts of his past, the marks of his failures, the lives he had let down and the hopes he had trampled upon by his continued existence. He wondered if he had been forsaken at long last, but his heart… his soul still remembered them; clear as day and bright as the first star of the evening.

Therefore—Vash couldn’t stay still. He got up, turned around, and gazed long to the infinite darkness waiting for him. He took a shaky step forward, and there he saw wisps of light flashing around him. His hearing returned, he heard muffles and whispers. The more steps he took, the brighter the world became. He started running, and the sounds became clearer.

Voices. They were voices. Rambunctious, chaotic, without set rhythm or even carefully worded out. Like noise in a crowded street, but much cleaner and easy to pick off.

He ran to that light, and so he woke up—only to have his nose kissing cold, hard floor.

“Gwueh.”

Clutter. Crash. Thunk. Thud. An ensemble of noise stunned him. As senses wholly returned to him, the man without much worth to his name slowly got up, pushing his upper body off the floors which turned to be… yellow tiled floors. Sitting on his butt, he crossed his legs and leaned back—his head meeting a slightly hard cushion which turned to be a sofa. As his eyes readjusted themselves to the surrounding world, he saw what appeared to be a brightly lit room, several desks set next to each other to form a huge but makeshift conference table, a set of cheap chairs, a bunch of papers and stuff…

Finally, he met four… no, wait, five pairs of eyes. They stared dumbly at him, as if seeing something they had never seen before.

All five of them also happened to be young girls at the height of puberty. Decked in school uniforms bearing a unified motif to patterns, Vash quickly assumed they belonged to the same school, his presumptions turning into certainty upon noticing the name tags each of them carried on their persons. A familiar logo bearing a sun contained within the frame of an equilateral triangle.

…

“...uuuh, yeah? Good morn’n…?” Where have I seen that logo before… oh, right. “Nice to meet you all. Are you girls… students of Abydos School?”

To his awkwardly put question, the five girls glanced at each other. Two of them had black hairs, one of them pale blonde, another had pink hair that went all the way past her knees, and another one of them had ashen gray for her hair color. As if they all shared the same thought in that singular moment, the girls squatted down at the other side of the room and huddled together. Fierce whispers flew back and forth, but their reaction made it very hard for the only adult in the room to interrupt them.

After a long while, one of them poked out her head from the huddling session. The girl with overly developed body and a soft-looking blond hair raised her hand overhead.

“Excuse me,” she started. Her voice was melodious, cozy and a bit drawn out between each word she had said. “Do you happen to be an adult?”

What the heck is… ah well, not the weirdest conversation starter I’ve ever experienced anyway. Plus, it was harmless. “Yeah, I guess I’m a certified adult.”

“You guess?” One of the dark-haired ones voiced out as if in disbelief.

“Yeah, well. I don’t really pay attention.” Vash shrugged. “I’m still spritely young, the picture of fitness and energy. Technically though, I’m older than all of you combined.”

“...he’s joking, right?” The twintailed girl all but wondered aloud by this point.

“An old man’s sense of humor…” The bespectacled girl drooped her shoulders.

“Speaking of self-styled old man…” The girl in a cardigan tilted her head.

“...I guess that narrows down on who’s the best as our representative.”

“Umm, hello? Shiroko-san? That’s the first time I ever received a stare full of dejection from you of all people…” The pinkhead looked haggard, then she hung her head low. Now she looked totally defeated. “Ah, phoey. You girls are so mean… fine, then.”

For some reasons or other, the shortest among them all left the huddle session. She languidly got up and approached Vash. Though she was standing at her full height, only now did Vash realize that even sitting on the floor, all he needed to do was to lift his head a little to meet her gaze. This girl seemed to be about… what? Could she be somewhere around 145 centimeters…?

Small didn’t even begin to describe her, yet the girl with the three-tiered eye-like pink Halo let out a deep sigh. “Umm, yeah. Nice to meet you… sensei? You’re the rumored adult from Schale, aren’t you?”

Oh, she recognized me right away? “Is my coat that much of a dead giveaway?”

The girl twirled the hair that hung around by the side of her cheek. “Yeah… well, news spread fast, you know? So, uuh…”

Vash restrained himself from smiling. As he looked up to the girl, she coughed into her gloved fist and cleared her throat. As she slowly reopened her eyes, Vash took notice of the mismatched colors painting her irises. Deep blue, and bright yellow hued in blazing orange of dawn. A past memory resurfaced, telling of wisdom about the stars and the numerous lights dotting the empty vacuum of the universe.

“Well, sorry about the rough welcome you had to suffer through. My juniors are all very lovely and good-hearted, but I guess one of them has forgotten about traffic safety thanks to the empty streets around here…” The girl bearing the fascinating colors of albireo in her eyes curved down her lips. “Still, welcome to Abydos, home to our little Foreclosure Task Force. Looking forward to work with your guidance, sensei.”

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A/N: Here ends the prologue, and here begins the first volume. Welcome, everyone. The beloved initial cast are now on the stage. A round of applause, please.

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