NECRO4: Hell of a Long Way (2)

[From (1)]

■■■

There is no specific, clear reason why Takibi hates Necro. His personality, his mannerisms, his ideology, his words, his actions... every single element that makes him up is irritating, and the totality of "Necro" that emerges from the overlap of these things stimulates her disgust like a hangnail. She is, of course, aware that this is unreasonable, but the guilt of being unreasonable is mostly canceled out by how much she dislikes him, and in the first place, even if Takibi ever thought about so-called consideration for others, she would immediately find it troublesome and throw it away.

It is not that she has low empathy, but rather that she has little interest in empathizing. While toying with some random self-analysis, Takibi let out a big yawn on the sofa and arched her back. As the position of her head changed, the ripple-like sound leaking from the pile of radios stacked against the wall wavered slightly. It is boring. In front of her, the same old people are getting excited about the same old topics. In her vision, blurred by tears, each of their actions melts together.

In front of a whiteboard pulled out from somewhere, Placta is reporting the search results. While listening to that, Gunji is frowning and chewing on a pen, exchanging words with Takibi's sister, Sazanka, over the radio. Hipati is shaking her overly large body sadly, and Cut is rearranging her entire body, which is made of claws, stretching and shrinking. A long time has passed since Necro went missing, but there is no sign that they are going to give up the search.

"Ah... so, Placta, you killed the secondary body of Hayashi that you found on the bus, didn't you?"

Gunji asked Placta while tapping her temple with her pen and squinting her muddy, dull eyes.

"That's right. I was wondering how a living person ended up wandering into this city, and it turns out that was the logic behind it. Hahaha, it's quite ironic that the real thing was actually a farmed product. No, since we are fakes, it's only natural that it would be flipped and be the real thing. Chief, what do you think?"

"As a former supervisor, I'd like to offer some comment, but I don't really think anything of it. More importantly, the problem is that we have completely lost the means to track Necro. If I had to force a suggestion, it would be to wait for the secondary body to regenerate and capture it."

"But she didn't seem to know anything. She didn't show any sign of being aware of her connection to <Hayashi in the dream>."

"That is only natural, because there is no connection in the first place. It's just that her body and soul were generated because of Hayashi's existence, so to speak, they are completely separate entities."

"Then, even if we catch her, she won't be a clue."

That is true, Gunji nodded, and started talking about incomprehensible things again. Takibi thinks it is a bad habit of hers to waste time meaninglessly by lining up complicated words. When she enters this mode, Takibi decides to focus her consciousness on her round glasses. The way the glasses move up and down intensely in response to the excitement of the conversation, scattering reflected light, is somewhat humorous and interesting.

However, she doesn't understand why everyone is so obsessed with such a man. She can still understand Gunji and Placta. There is a reason. Gunji, who fears death more than anyone else despite being undead, is probably trying to learn the "don't die" know-how from <Necro the Undying>, and Placta is impressed by Necro's philosophy of love (though from Takibi's perspective, she can only doubt his sanity). But Hipati? And even more so, her own sister, Sazanka?

Takibi remembers the big fight she had with her sister the other day. "What's so good about a man like that?" Her sister's answer to that was, "What's not good about a man like that?" Every time, Takibi would get worked up and list every insult she could think of—selfish, self-righteous, violent jerk—but her sister would just say, "That's absolutely true, I think so too," affirming all of Takibi's insults, and laughingly end the conversation. Since she herself hates him for no reason, there is certainly no logic in complaining about liking him for no reason. But her feelings cannot accept it. Since "I hate Necro" is absolutely correct within her, it can't be helped.

"Hey, Cut, you think so too, right?"

"...!"

Cut, who was suddenly spoken to, stretched out thinly as if surprised. She, whose entire body is made of claws, has no way to speak, and communication can only be done through the sound of claws rubbing against each other. Honestly, it's even questionable whether she understands what is being said. But Takibi liked her. Even though they couldn't exchange words, she could read the kindness of her ego from her every gesture, and above all, it is rare to meet a "young person" like herself, who is under 1,000 years old, in this city.

“……!!……!?………?”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Just talking to myself. I just felt like calling out.”

“………!”

“Takibi-san, please don’t bully Cut so much.”

Turning around at Gunji’s voice, Takibi saw everyone in the room looking at her. Their strangely expectant gazes made Takibi flinch.

“……What is it, all of you?”

“Actually, there is one favor we would like to ask of you, Takibi-san. As we have said many times, Necro-san’s body and soul are currently in Hell, hijacked by Aisa-san. We want to secure her before Aisa-san fully wakes up and becomes uncontrollable. Therefore, we would like you, Takibi-san, whose body does not decompose even when entering the town of Hell, to search for and retrieve Necro-san……”

“I refuse.”

Takibi answered reflexively.

“The decomposition of physical entities, centered around Mii-san, is a power that uses bacteria as a foothold. While your body would also be eroded, Takibi-san, unlike us, the impact should clearly be smaller. We received samples from Sazanka-san and ran calculations, and there is almost no doubt that your recovery and regeneration will outpace the bacterial decomposition. Also, Aisa-san is likely not in a state where she can resist yet.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!”

Takibi raised her voice, and Gunji returned a look of bewilderment. That only further irritated Takibi’s emotions.

“Gunji-san, you know it too, don’t you? I hate that man. If possible, I don’t want him to come back.”

“Huh. And?”

“And? ...That’s why I’m saying I don’t want to save him.”

“That is not a valid reason.”

Placta’s raspy voice cut in.

“That is merely an emotional issue for you, Takibi, and it is not important. Compared to the precious existence that is Necro, whether you like him or hate him... haha, that is a trivial matter.”

“That’s your set of values, Placta-san! Don’t drag me into this!”

Takibi was genuinely angry at the two of them for their selfish arguments. However, realizing that Gunji and the others were also genuinely confused by her reaction, her anger vanished as if doused with water. The two of them were looking at her with eyes that viewed a foreign object they couldn’t understand. They were like people standing before a broken machine, wondering how to make it function normally again without knowing the reason.

...Takibi-san.

Shut up!

Takibi bolted from the room and sprinted down the apartment stairs. Without even checking the destination, she jumped onto a city bus stopped at the street station. 'Little interest in empathy.' She had noticed it vaguely while living together, but Gunji and Placta were beyond that. A closed system with no intention of aligning their vocabulary with others. Is eternal life something that extreme, capable of turning humans into such things? As I continue to live for another 1,000 or 10,000 years, will I also end up completed in that shape, like a stone constantly struck by raindrops?

Takibi felt anxious, wondering if perhaps she was the one who was wrong. She understood that she was a special kind of immortal. Maybe her immaturity, caused by her youth, had been a burden to Gunji and the others. Perhaps immortals are inherently that kind of existence, and the problem lay with her for not accepting it. But it was also an undeniable truth that she hated Necro...

Exhaling deeply, Takibi sat down in a seat on the city bus. She didn't feel like returning to that house for a while. The bus doors closed, and it began to move. Then, one of the windows slid open, and a bundle of claws slipped into the vehicle.

...!!

Takibi was on the verge of being alert, wondering if Gunji had ordered it to chase and capture her, but she immediately changed her mind. Cut stood before her, twisting its claws and rubbing them together as if troubled. It was clear from its gestures that it had been worried about its friend who had fought with its masters and had jumped out without thinking.

Takibi let out a soft laugh.

I'm sorry, Cut. You're right.

...?...!...!!!

Long life inevitably hardens one's ego, but that doesn't necessarily mean it closes off. Takibi concluded that they were indeed special. So special that even in this lawless city, they were criminals. She didn't want to speak to those two for a while, but she decided she would at least apologize to Hipati later.

...!...!!

Are you worried about me? I didn't bring any money, but I'll be fine staying at Daigo-san's office or somewhere.

............!?!........!...!.

Do you want to come with me, Cut?

...!

She still didn't know what it was saying, but it seemed to have agreed. Perhaps relieved to see Takibi regaining her composure, Cut skillfully curled its body up on the seat next to her.

The city bus was heading toward the center of the Zofu District, so there was no need to transfer. Takibi rested her elbows on the window frame and gazed at the cityscape, which had become a pile of rubble due to the Necro. City officials were busy walking around the traces of destruction, which looked as if a monster had vomited everywhere. Seeing the situation where most of the city had been leveled as an opportunity, they seemed to be planning to rebuild many of the buildings using the staff themselves as raw materials. The sight of building materials made of corpses extending nerves and blood vessels to grow the buildings was grotesque, but also strangely cute, and the citizens were looking up at the scene with interest from their shacks and tents.

The flow of reconstruction, which entangled the rubble and rose organically, created a gentle curve through the bus window, but it stopped abruptly at a certain point. A massive metal wall, built without regard for the landscape, intruded rudely into her view. That's right, Takibi remembered, feeling a bit guilty. To make matters worse, the bus announced, 'Next stop, Jigoku-mae.' The wall was a defensive barrier to prevent death bacteria from leaking out of the town, and after Mii was released from the Necro, the city office had relocated it from the town where Mii had originally been.

No passengers pressed the stop button, and the city bus passed the Jigoku-mae station. The road, hastily laid around the defensive wall, was poorly maintained, causing the bus to shake violently. Just as she was about to say to Cut, 'The ride is rough, isn't it?', Takibi heard the sound of meat sizzling. Her vision went completely white for a moment, and she closed and opened her eyelids.

“Huh?”

Cut wasn't there. In fact, the entire left side of the bus, beyond Takibi's seat, had been gouged away. The city bus, now a thin cross-section, lost its balance and tipped over, throwing Takibi into the air. Without understanding what was happening, Takibi slammed into the ground, scraping skin and flesh against the asphalt, and exhaled every bit of air from her lungs. She forced her head up, stood as her broken bones healed, and her clothes crumbled away like rags, piling up on the ground as ash. Takibi panicked at suddenly being naked, but she understood the reason immediately. It was the extinction bacteria.

A massive hole had been torn in the defensive wall that was supposed to divide the inside and outside of the hellish city. The edges of the hole were scorched by intense heat, and its perfectly circular outline drew a straight line directly toward the city. The bus Takibi had been riding was in the trajectory of the heat ray fired by someone, and it had suffered the damage by sheer bad luck. Extinction bacteria seemed to be spewing from the open hole, and the city streets that had been starting to rise, along with the citizens who happened to be there, were being decomposed into gray ash even finer than rubble.

Amidst the screams and chaos, only Takibi's body remained intact. She felt a sensation like needles pricking her skin all over, but she didn't end up like the other citizens. Takibi was impressed by the trivial thought of whether Gunji-san's calculations had been correct, but then she panicked, realizing this wasn't the time, and started to run. If only she could gather the remains of Cut and leave this place... but that was not to be. A whip-like metal object wrapped around Takibi's right ankle, digging backward-facing barbs into her ankle bone.

“Wha...”

Before she could even understand the situation, Takibi was yanked upward with intense force and left dangling in the air. In a world turned upside down, she saw the owner of the metal whip above her. It was a lump of scrap that looked like a plastic model kit that had been half-melted, kneaded, and hardened. Among the countless bumps protruding like a sea urchin, only one was shimmering with heat. Takibi immediately understood it was a heat ray emitter.

The scrap turned Takibi over and over in the air with interest, then extended barbs from its main body and skewered her torso. Before Takibi could resist, “branches” grew from the contact points between her torso and the barbs, tearing her flesh and bones to shreds from the inside. Takibi was an immortal; she felt no pain. However, the experience of being treated like a toy by a giant with whom she could not communicate was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of discomfort.

While piercing through her body, the branches extended to the ends of Takibi's limbs, stretching her body out in the air like a split fish. Takibi imagined herself naked, splattered with blood and vomit, spread-eagled in a miserable state, and she wanted to die. Then, as if responding to that negative emotion, the barbs and branches vibrated inside her body, causing a voice-like sound to resonate within her.

“Ah, I was wondering why you weren't eaten by that gloomy woman's germs, but I see, your body is made of some kind of special resin. Still, it's rare. Even the junk from Higashi-Hizui doesn't have this rate of modification. Actually, I wonder if it's even possible. You wouldn't have a soul in something like this.”

“Gah... buh...”

Takibi tried to speak, but her throat was clogged with liquefied flesh and vomit, and it only made a gurgling sound. The voice resonating inside her, without acknowledging her will at all, seemed to insist that she was nothing more than an object. A new soul that had accidentally manifested in an artificially manufactured resin body. Although Takibi was aware of her own special origins, she had no complex about it, but the words being forced upon her felt like a violation of her dignity as a human, and it made her feel terribly sick.

“...I remember now. You're Sazanami's little sister.”

Having said that, the scrap slammed Takibi into the ground without any context. She felt the front of her body flatten from the impact. That wasn't the end. She was swung back into the air and slammed down again. Once more.

“I heard you were playing family with a defective doll, but seeing the real thing, it's even more shitty and the worst. To be happy treating something like this as a sister, that woman is truly beyond saving.”

Once more. And once more. Takibi was slammed into the ground repeatedly and relentlessly. Her crushed eyeballs spilled out, and her teeth fell out. In her flickering consciousness, she began to find the answer to what “this” was. An existence that, like her, was under the influence of the extinction bacteria and was not decomposing. In other words, someone who possessed a body significantly different from the composition of a general living organism. Among them, someone who possessed this much malice and violence. There was probably only one person in this city of Zofu who met those conditions.

“...No... stop.”

Was that spoken aloud, or was it just a feeling in her heart? Hearing the sob that escaped Takibi, the scrap loosened its violent grip for the first time. With a tone of voice that sounded impressed, saying “Huh,” it spoke to her as if it had just realized that what it was holding was a living creature with a will.

“Little sister, you've got some pretty decent nerves. I was getting sick of all the trash that just giggles no matter how much I mess with them or hurt them.”

That the exchange of violence was the only value in this world. That everything should be a game of doubling discomfort and pain. The scrap... Aisa the Mass-Murderer... said that with a sneer, and pulled Takibi's body, which no longer retained its original form, closer.

“You, you hate Necro, right? That's perfect. My current soul and body belong to Necro. If I mess you up with this body, I wonder how you'll feel?”

With a massive amount of metal forced into her body through every orifice, Takibi twitches and convulses while thinking of two things. While her calculation that a resin body could withstand the necrotizing bacteria was correct, Gunji had misjudged the speed of Aisa the Slaughterer's recovery and resurrection. And, damnably, just as she and Placta had hoped, she herself had become the first person to discover Necro.

■■■

"Mii, it looks like Aisa is up to her old tricks again."

After the liberation at the radio tower, there was nothing left in the vicinity of where Mii had fallen—not even anything that moved, let alone anything with a physical form. Although it relied on the physical phenomenon of bacterial decomposition, the essence of her power ultimately lay in its peculiar state of absence. Whether it was the special resin that made up Takibi's body or the defensive walls surrounding the town, if they remained in contact with her for a long time, they would eventually be converted into an equal mass of ash.

"It seems she's using some poor soul as a crutch to get this far. Who could it be? As far as I can think of, besides Aisa herself, there are three people who possess a body that can move freely under Mii's power."

However, considering the time that had passed since the incident at the radio tower, the situation where "not even anything with a physical form remained" was unnatural. In the first place, there wasn't even any ash there that should have been converted. Although the essence of her power lay in its peculiar state of absence, as long as it relied on the physical phenomenon of bacterial decomposition, there were naturally constraints. For example, while she could turn physical objects into ash, she could not make them disappear completely, and it required a considerable amount of time to decompose inorganic matter or special resins.

"There's Gelande, there's me, and then there's Sazanka's little sister, um, Takibi-chan."

Of course, in this city where everything is sloppy, haphazard, and irresponsible, there is nothing more nonsensical than talking about the law of conservation. The bodies of the immortals show no restraint whatsoever toward scientific logic, shamelessly continuing to multiply and increasing the city's population density. There were no rules to be followed there, but... even so, this city possessed a certain sense of balance. As a resistance to the ever-increasing number of objects, a phenomenon that caused matter to disappear occurred in this city.

"Defeating Gelande would be impossible even if Aisa were in perfect condition, so it must be Takibi-chan. Poor thing."

That phenomenon took the form of a person. It took the form of a woman. It took the form of an extremely small "child," by the standards of the previous century. A pink-based hooded parka and sneakers. She kept her clothing, made of perfectly ordinary materials, intact as a physical form without decomposing a single thread, even while being in the center of Hell. The logic was simple. She ate, digested, and annihilated all the necrotizing bacteria in the vicinity.

"Poor thing, but... it's exciting, isn't it?"

She, who had been talking to Mii—that is, to the empty space in the center of Hell—stretched slightly after saying that. She was a hard worker, and for the past few days, she had been busy devouring the animal carcasses that Ballet had scattered all over the city. It was only a short while ago that she had finally finished that and returned to Hell to enjoy chatting with her best friend. It was on her way there that she had spotted Aisa, who had taken over Necro's body, crawling on the ground.

"So, Mii, sorry to bother you right after I got back, but is that okay?"

Before she was human, she was a phenomenon, but the personality that could be read from the outside was very human-like, childish in appearance, and found everything amusing. She loved to stick her nose into trouble out of interest and curiosity, which sometimes led to unnecessary "annihilation." There were records of the city being driven to ruin because of her, and even the city hall, which knew her usefulness well, had to reluctantly admit that it was a risk that could fundamentally destroy the citizens' way of life.

"Sorry. Well then, I'm going to go mess with them for a bit."

One of the 13 women. Necro's lover, and a criminal... if one had to classify her, a thrill-seeker. With eyes sparkling with a curiosity more voracious than an infinite appetite, Jill the Bottomless showed a carefree smile at the bottom of Hell.

【Continued in (3)】