Chapter 100 Rescue Squad ③
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
The Death Squad — a form of Psionic Power user born amid the chaos of the world war — had another name: Aimitsu, or Teishin in older tongues. Infamous in the worst sense, they were, in a word, human torpedoes.
They were never made from a healthy man. The method was crude and final: take the spinal cord of a man trapped in a vegetative state, keep it alive, bind it into a ritual that awakened Psionic Power, and in that way forge a wielder from the dying. The practice had been outlawed across the world, but even before laws existed, few would accept such a thing unless utterly cornered. Most women rejected it more fiercely than death itself.
No one could predict exactly what kind of Psionic Power would bloom from that inhuman Oath of Fealty Ritual. Only one thing was certain: it would be a terrible thing.
The woman who became the vessel gained power through a bitter, self-hating mind. Even if she told herself she acted for her hometown or her family, there was no comfort, no moral justification that would hold. The man whose nerves were taken lay utterly unconscious. From him surfaced only animal instinct and a chaotic, rudderless self — a force like a dream from a madman, absurd and hungry, stirring other people’s anxieties.
Worst of all was the pairing of a resentful woman with the spinal cord of a brain-dead man. That combination always birthed a ruinous ability: a one-way ticket to calamity. Once it showed itself, the power spread curses like contagion. There were no exceptions. Those who used it slaughtered to draw others in and died with them. Every outcome was catastrophe — a lottery ticket that guaranteed the worst prize.
Psionic Power did not automatically answer pleas for happiness. If someone begged for misfortune and received their wish, ruin would follow inevitably. It was a cruel truth, some said — the ironic essence of human desire: striving for joy did not guarantee fulfillment, but desiring sorrow would bring its fulfillment without fail.
”Hold your fire. Maintain your firing stance,” the squad leader ordered, voice taut as she kept her rifle trained.
A Psionic Power user could drown out gunshots without a hand signal, her voice powerful enough to dominate the chaos. Around them, the rain had hammered for nearly a minute, turning heat and metal into a choking storm. The iron cross, once skeletal and upright, had been mangled; its outer bars had melted away.
The building behind it had collapsed, its face peeled down in slabs, leaving the air full of concrete dust. Heat pressed on the street, making the air move in shimmering waves that carried the iron’s smoking residue like gray ash.
Gradually the wind cleared the haze. Someone muttered, “It’s bleeding from the frame. Is that… a mystical object?”
Where the steel had flowed, flesh clung to the warped bars. The cross had been stripped of bone and muscle, a ruin of metal driven into the asphalt. Even so, the woman bound to it kept some outline of a person.
An ordinary human would have been erased entirely. The photon rifle could send a hundred rounds in a single burst; a salvo of thousands could pulverize a medium ship in minutes. If this truly was a Death Squad member, her resilience must match the number of nerves they had fused into her — an almost impossible toughness. Or perhaps this was a defensive Psionic Power at work, or she bore some protective artifact.
Whatever the answer, the thing before them remained a corpse and yet was not entirely dead.
”Did it move? No… maybe not.” One of the rescuers breathed.
A severed leg dropped free and thudded to the ground a few meters away, making a wet, heavy sound that carried the weight of human flesh and bone. At that instant the woman on the cross lifted her head.
She looked down at them even as her eyes stared into the void.
”May there be no fortune…” she whispered.
Her ruined face shifted; both eyes had burst, but she still spoke. After what she had endured, she was still alive.
”Let only the curse bring my wish to pass,” she said.
She would die; it felt certain. Death Squads did not carry regenerative or healing power. No matter how tough the body, such wounds were fatal; no amount of Psionic strength could recover what had already been lost.
Her voice was dry. Short-cut hair trembled in the heat. Blood ran down the cross, along the twisted iron, dripping onto the asphalt.
”Oh — you who remain. Please, do not walk the same path as I,” she murmured, her eyes on them. “Not like me.”
She sounded composed, as if awakening from a strange sleep, untroubled by the vast wounds that rent her abdomen. The bullets had torn her open; organs and ribs had been cast outward into a scene of barbaric anatomy. The rescuers — myself among them — stared, swallowed by the grotesque spectacle.
Night wind slapped at the blood, scattering droplets like rain as they fell to the street.
”To have lost a wife, I know the bond sworn between master and man… you who still stand beside your noble and hale lords…” Her voice wove through the ruined town and quiet streets.
She spoke of distance and longing, of a brightness that seemed to them like an unreachable dream — like a delicate, fleeting butterfly of a past day. Her words carried sorrow.
For reasons I could not explain, that monstrous sight took on a strange sanctity. The Death Squad was made of Psionic Power users. That meant they had, at some point, been connected to men, to masters — and some had once formed real bonds. Many women in Isumi had seen those ties severed; an attendant who had once served me had been one of them.
That, I thought, must be what she had lost. A lump rose in my throat; grief touched me too.
She spoke again, quietly.
”May all perish,” she said.
There was no heat in her words, no plea, only a benediction of oblivion that clung like a burr in my ear.
”May the dream that never leaves your head — the plans for tomorrow, the hope for the future — never be fulfilled. May the worst misfortune you fear always roam the world before you. May everything in this world fall ill-timed, useless, and cruel to you.”
She intoned the curse plainly.
”Ruin is all my wife and I desired. There is nothing left beyond it.”
Despair sat deep in her voice. Only when a man sincerely pleaded in a final testament could a woman steel herself to become a Death Squad member. It required the pressure of a mystery and a surge of emotion so powerful it bent the will.
She had nothing left. She had given up everything.
It was clear, sadly and painfully clear, that no matter how monstrous her appearance, she remained human. This Psionic Power user was an extension of a person — not a demon, not a ghost.
”And yet,” she breathed, “my final duty is to drive off those who would tread upon Isumi’s soil with muddy boots.”
As she said that, a single shot rang out.
The squad leader had fired. She had been the first among them to break from the stunned stiffness. The bullet pierced the paralysis that clung to the woman’s body.
”Ignore it. Fire. We’re not listening to more curses. Don’t let her distract you.”
Other merciless rounds followed, punching through the woman’s flesh. With each shot, the little thread of her life was cut shorter.
”Our spirit must not fear the valley,” she added, words and body shredded and swallowed by gunfire.
In the din of the shots, her broken voice was consumed in fragments.
The body that had devoured so many nerves—tough enough to surpass even veteran Psionic Power users—finally began to collapse. No Psionic Power offered absolute defense; overwhelming energy always pierced the strength of will that shaped it.
The pressure that had filled the air, that strange aura of mystery, withered quickly and vanished back into the woman herself.
”If you are afraid,” she whispered faintly, “then become like me. Then, there will be nothing to fear…”
Blood poured from the iron cross, flooding the street like the final beat of a heart. The rescue squad froze for an instant—something within her had awakened. Perhaps some last Psionic Power, though it was clear she would not endure long enough to wield it.
”I have seen what frightens you most,” she murmured.
Bullets riddled her still figure. The crucified woman lost both arms; her chest split apart, her spine snapped, and she fell to the ground with a sound like crushed fruit.
”It’s over. I’m so tired… finally, I can die. Ah, but I will never reach the place where my beloved waits,” she said.
Her lower body still clung to the cross. Between her legs, a blood-slick mass slipped free—a red, pulsing clump like a stillborn child. It twitched once, and then stopped. Nothing else happened.
”She had a child…? It’s… over?” someone whispered.
Why had such a person stepped into war at all?
Before me, the iron cross crumbled away like a sandcastle, scattering in the wind. Her remaining body dropped at last, freed from its own punishment. Even the cross had been her creation—a Psionic construct born of her own guilt and hatred, built to condemn herself. How much regret had she carried through her short life?
”Is she… dead?”
Silence held the ruin. The body on the asphalt was mutilated beyond doubt. She was gone.
She had hated, despaired, and reached the end with nothing left. Her life ended without meaning. I pressed both hands to my mouth, choking down the lump that rose in my throat.
One by one, the squad lowered their weapons. Released from fear and tension, they stood watching in mute stillness, unable even to speak a final word.
Soon the young girl who had argued earlier with Trash-san strode toward the half-burnt corpse, her rifle dangling in irritation.
”So she failed, huh? Scared us for nothing. Couldn’t even hold her own power. Trash from a trash town,” she spat.
She had been trembling before, swallowed by the strange dread that hung over the field. Now she covered that fear with defiance, glaring down at what was left of the woman.
”She sacrificed a precious man and didn’t even have the guts to fight. Lowest of the low. Neither she nor that filthy town deserved forgiveness.”
And then she spat on the corpse.
Nothing happened. No retaliation, and no curse. Maybe the battle had ended before it began. The woman had been cornered and broken, too far gone to resist. Perhaps her Psionic Power required time to take effect, or to endure pain before a counterstrike—but once the body died, any power vanished. Even poisons or sickness-based effects faded at death.
Only rare abilities, like Trash-san’s or Flatty-chan’s, could leave traces in reality after their hosts were gone.
Death Squad powers were one-use miracles: irreversible, burning out both wielder and wish in a single flash. Even their nature was uncertain; often, the user herself never knew what her ability truly was. Sometimes, that ignorance made them useless.
The thought hollowed me out. I tugged lightly on Trash-san’s sleeve.
”Trash-san… is it over? Was it only a suicide power? To create a cross just to crucify herself… Did she hate herself that much? Was that her—”
”Young Master, please be silent,” Trash-san whispered.
The ruins sank into quiet again. The broadcasts that had once echoed across the city of Himawari were gone. Gunfire, collapsing walls, even the air—everything lay still.
Except for one small movement.
The clump of flesh the woman had expelled began to stir. From the melted heap of organs, something was born.
”Huh? What the hell is that?” someone said.
The thing shed its red membrane. Two legs, a beak—it preened itself clumsily. A tiny bird, crimson from head to claw, slick with blood.
”Gi… gigii?”
The hatchling tilted its head with an almost curious expression. Its call carried a discordant tone, oddly familiar, unpleasant. Yet it looked—innocent.
I recognized that sound.
”Gi… gigii.”
The chick pecked at the flesh that had birthed it, eyes wide and amber-brown, its face unreadable and eerie. The body it pecked no longer moved.
”What the hell? Where’d that thing come from?” the girl muttered.
For a moment, she flinched, but when it didn’t attack, she relaxed with a shaky laugh.
”Whatever. I’ll kill it just in case.”
She was careless. She leveled her rifle at the tiny bird. It only cocked its head, still studying her with that strange curiosity.
”That… that’s mine,” I breathed.
In a flash, realization struck.
The Psionic users of Isumi were not afraid of monsters—they embraced them. They were a tribe of aberrations, molded by long exposure to mysteries that toyed with the mind and soul. They adapted to fear through assimilation.
Usually, no one could identify a new Psionic Power on sight. But I had lived among the women of Isumi; I had known their temperaments, if only for a short time.
”No… that bird…” I murmured.
Death Squad powers were mixtures of all three archetypes—and after death, the creative type often lingered. The people of Isumi, too, feared monsters so deeply they became like them. Constantly exposed to mind-reading horrors, they had learned to hide by becoming what they feared.
And so, I understood. Instinct told me the truth.
She had sacrificed herself to drag into this world the thing her enemy feared most — drawn from the enemy’s own memories, their most terrifying monster, pulled through the very rules of life and death.
The bird had been born here.
Its target wasn’t me. I was only an observer, not truly present. It must have searched through our minds and found it inside Trash-san’s heart.
”Goodbye, little bird,” the girl said with a smirk.
There was a soft pop.
It was over before anyone could react.
The girl’s head vanished, blown apart in an instant.
”W-what…? It’s… dark…” she stammered, staggering two steps before her body lost balance and crumpled to the ground.
Notes:
• Psionic Power – Mental energy concept in Chapter 35’s lecture. Trash-san teaches it to strengthen the protagonist’s mind after dungeon ordeals.
• Himawari – A one-eyed black oni girl/aberration-type psionic; town leader/face; asks for promotion help; apologizes for killings; sets 2‑day deadline.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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