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Chapter 29: Chapter 2.4

Its armored shape was mostly white and about five meters tall—slightly larger than Hel\'s biological weapon. An area near the head of the unit was glass, and I could see Siesta sitting inside. That was probably the cockpit.

The machine could have stepped straight out of a robot anime. Its thick arms and legs were striking, but I spotted missile and bullet firing ports at its joints. It really was a combat weapon.

...Which was why a question came to mind. "Siesta, where did you get that thing?"

It probably hadn\'t been more than a few hours since I\'d been abducted.

How had she managed to procure a mobile weapon in that brief time frame?

In response to my perfectly natural question, Siesta said: "...Um, well, I found it...lying on the road?"

She was refusing to look at me.

"You are such a liar! You couldn\'t have just found that thing by the road!" "...No, I mean it. What, you think I was so shaken by your abduction that I

freaked out, negotiated with the British government, and borrowed the experimental military weapon Sirius? No way."

"That was even more elaborate than I expected!"

She just spilled all of it herself. She\'s so bad at lying, it\'s unreal. "Siesta, look, you were way too desperate to save me."

"...! ...I\'m telling you, that wasn\'t it!" Siesta murmured. She had turned her face away, and I couldn\'t see it clearly.

"Honestly. You\'ll make me jealous, having such a passionate exchange with my future partner," Hel remarked, without a hint of jealousy or even interest.

"Hel."

Siesta\'s blue eyes glared at Hel from the cockpit.

Hel responded by preparing for battle, straddling Betelgeuse\'s neck as it leaned forward.

"I won\'t let you have your way with this city anymore."

"Do you seriously think you can stop me? Do you think you can stop destiny?"

And with that, the battle was on.

"—Ghkgyaaaaaaaaah!" The monster roared and lunged toward us on all fours.

"Assistant!"

Opening the hatch and leaning halfway out of the pilot\'s seat, Siesta reached for me. I grabbed her hand, let her pull me up, and slid into the unit.

"...This is cramped."

"Well, it was built for one, you know."

Pressed together in the tight cockpit, Siesta and I headed into battle with the monster.

"I\'ll control the right side, so you work the left side, Kimi."

"Don\'t just make me pilot this thing out of nowhere. I don\'t even have a regular driver\'s license."

"Well, desperate times. I can\'t reach over there with you in the way. Hurry up, here it comes."

Betelgeuse and Hel hadn\'t wasted any time; they were leaping at us from the left.

"...—! Okay, fine!"

This was no time to hesitate. I grabbed a lever on instinct, attempting to steer the unit...but—

"Whoaaaaa?!"

The Sirius, with us in it, promptly lost its balance and fell over. "Ow-ow-ow... What is this for, the leg?"

Dammit. That was supposed to be an epic rocket punch.

However, we were still okay. When its target had suddenly disappeared, Betelgeuse had overshot, tumbling behind us. We were fighting a monster that had just woken up. It had power, but not control. We were probably pretty evenly matched.

"If you\'ve got time to analyze the situation, could you use it to get off me?"

"Hmm? ...Oh."

I\'d fallen over, and Siesta\'s cold, irritated eyes were right below me. Apparently, my hand had landed somewhere unfortunate, and I hastily pulled away. Although the cockpit was so small that there wasn\'t much distance to take.

"All right, this isn\'t going to work. I suppose I\'ll do the piloting after all." "But you can\'t reach the levers if we\'re sitting side-by-side, right?"

"Not if we\'re sitting side-by-side, no."

...Oh. Well, I guess it\'s our only option.

"—Ghkgyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Behind us, the living weapon was roaring. We hastily got ourselves into position, worked the levers, and got the fallen unit back on its feet.

"If you take advantage of this situation to touch me somewhere you shouldn\'t, I\'ll lose all respect for you."

"Zero trust for your assistant, huh?" I sighed, fastening the seatbelt. "I\'m joking. All right, here we go for real this time— Sirius, move out."

At that, Siesta gripped the control stick firmly from where she was sitting on my lap.

"Here we go." "Whoa...!"

With a roar from the engine, the unit surged forward, straight toward the grotesque, four-legged monster. With that much propulsion, we closed the distance in no time.

"Let\'s go for the direct approach."

Hel was right in front of us, on Betelgeuse\'s neck. With a violent crash, the humanoid weapon and the biological weapon locked together.

"I can\'t believe you\'d create a monster like that."

As Siesta pushed the steering lever forward, she glared through the glass at Hel, astride the monster.

"You\'re very much in the way." Hel turned her cold red eyes on Siesta. The easy indifference she\'d had during our conversation had been replaced by open hostility.

"That\'s my mission," Siesta said and set her fingertip on a button. A spot near the Sirius\'s wrist fired a stream of bullets.

" !"

When Hel saw it, she lightly jabbed Betelgeuse\'s back with a saber, using

the pain to control its movements, and dodged our attack. She reminded me of a jockey expertly controlling her horse with a whip.

But Hel didn\'t seem to like her chances against us in a straight fight, so she ignored us and drove Betelgeuse up the underground road.

"Siesta, don\'t let her get away! Her only goal is to unleash that monster on this city!"

As far as Hel was concerned, she didn\'t necessarily have to fight us. The houses of the British Parliament met right above this underground road. All she had to do was hit them, and the damage would be immeasurable.

"I know. Don\'t start with exposition just because you don\'t have anything to do."

"Geez, you\'re so unfair..."

Shoving the control stick forward, Siesta went after Hel and Betelgeuse. "My, you\'re stubborn."

As we caught up again, Hel drew one of her many sabers from her waist and flung it at us.

"...!"

Undaunted, Siesta tried to intercept it with the unit\'s machine gun—but even if our power was unmistakably greater, the monster had the upper hand in terms of mobility. It evaded all our bullets; all we hit was empty space.

"Hel... Why would you carry out a terror attack like this?"

As Siesta searched for a chance to win, she kept racing down the subterranean tunnel beside the enemy.

"Why? Because it\'s destiny." From her position astride Betelgeuse, Hel glanced over at us. "My will has nothing to do with it. I\'m only following the sacred text."

"—Yeah, and you\'ve been talking about nothing else this entire time." It was so impossible to get through to her that I was getting pissed off. At least Siesta seemed to feel the same way.

"No, I\'m asking about you. What exactly are you thinking in all this?"

The Sirius\'s right arm took a swing at Betelgeuse...but as before, the monster nimbly evaded.

"Me? As I said, my intention is to bring about the future written in this sacred text. That is my only reason for existing. The only reason I was born."

Hel stuck a sword into Betelgeuse\'s back. With a little groan, the monster sped up, fleeing along the wall.

"Siesta!"

"It\'s all right, I won\'t let them get away. Hold on tight." "Yeah, I\'m counting on you!"

"I told you to hold on, but I didn\'t expect you to hug me quite so hard." Well, there wasn\'t anything else to hold on to. I didn\'t have much choice.

Flames from the engine roared out of the Sirius\'s legs, and once again, we closed the distance to Betelgeuse in a rush.

"Earlier, you said that your mission was to get in our way, didn\'t you?" Hel said, once we\'d caught up to her again. She glanced at us out of the corner of her eye.

"In that case, why are you a detective? Why do you protect people? Because that\'s what you were born to be, nothing more. I\'m the same. Just as you were born to protect the world, I was born to destroy it. I came into the world bearing that role. Do you think I crave power? Destruction? I want none of those things. I\'m merely obeying my natural instincts."

In the next instant, Betelgeuse abruptly switched direction, clamping its jaws around the Sirius\'s throat. Its fangs sank into the armor, and a worrying metallic noise echoed in the tunnel.

"...! So you\'re saying we\'re essentially the same? That there isn\'t even a moral difference between us?"

Siesta fought back in the Sirius, slamming Betelgeuse into the walls and floor, over and over. The humanoid and biological weapons attacked each other again and again, jostling as they made their way toward the underground road\'s exit.

"There may be a moral difference. I don\'t mind if there is."

Hel jammed sabers into the Sirius\'s knee joints. The unit tottered, and Betelgeuse seized the opportunity to climb. That proved we were near the exit to the surface...and Parliament. We weren\'t going to be able to stop the monster while it was still underground...

"Siesta!"

"Engine at full throttle."

I reached in from behind Siesta, setting my hands over hers, and we pushed the control stick forward. Large, mechanical wings sprouted from the Sirius\'s

back, the engine roared, and we rose into the air.

In the time it took us to get airborne, the ceiling of the underground facility had opened to reveal black space above us.

"You are good, and I\'m evil. That\'s fine." Hel and Betelgeuse flew up into the outside world.

"Wait...!"

We launched ourselves as well, chasing after them in the Sirius.

The moon and countless stars shone in the dark sky. Betelgeuse was climbing up Big Ben, the enormous clock tower attached to Westminster Palace.

"You are an angel; I am a monster. That\'s fine. It\'s what I\'ve always wanted."

Before long, Hel and Betelgeuse alighted on the top of the tower.

The bioweapon\'s mouth opened; that poisonous breath would bring death to anything living and cause a massive tragedy. SPES\'s terror attack would be complete.

But we could still catch up.

Just a little farther; one more step.

If we could only reach it...

"Assistant," Siesta called to me without turning around. "You need to get away from this place quickly. No matter what happens."

...What was she saying?

But by the time I tried to ask, I\'d already been flung out of the hatch into empty space.

The world flipped end over end. Was I spinning, or was it everything else? My sense of direction was completely scrambled—but before long, something yanked on my back, and the next thing I knew, I was drifting in the night sky with the help of a parachute.

"Siesta, why...?"

In the next instant—

At the top of the tower looming against the darkness, I saw the monster and robot clash—and then they both plunged toward the ground.