Chapter 101 Rescue Squad ④
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
The shout cut the night like a thrown stone. “This is bad. Everyone, run—get out!” Trash-san’s voice cracked across the ruined street, sharp enough to make the squad’s breath catch.
”Ichihara’s bird—aims for the head. It takes the neck in a blink!” she bellowed, and a dozen helmets snapped toward her.
I barely had time to murmur before Trash-san’s cry bloomed into a cascade of reactions. Electronic beeps answered her command; the closest men reloaded photon rifles as if they had been holding their breath. I hadn’t seen Trash-san look this raw in years—her eyes wide, hands steadying the weapon in less time than a blink.
”Too fast for a gun. Blind its eye!” the captain ordered, voice like air tearing.
At her command the team’s mood changed instantly. Light blossomed along barrels—small prisms of brightness pitching out into the black like seeds of fire on wind-churned branches. “All directions—crossfire. Don’t mind if you hit a comrade. If they get shot, they won’t die,” she snapped, and someone answered, “Understood. We’ll spread it as wide as we can.”
A woman swore with strange humor. “Shoot it to paste!”
Needles of light pointed at the small shape perched on a broken guardrail. The Horned Owl, an ugly, blood-spattered thing, paid them no mind. It preened, feathers gleaming with streaks of red, pulling at its soiled plumage with quick, precise motions. A red tracer clipped through its center.
”Hit—” someone began.
The bird blurred. Where the steel pipe’s surface had been struck, sparks flared; by the time the bullets arrived there was nothing there but a scatter of dust. A broad puff of debris rolled outward and fresh red droplets spattered the ground.
Then the tiny shadow rose, riding the wind just above us. High, shredding cries broke the frozen night—”Gii! Gii—!”—as the bird beat the air. Flesh and blood rained from its wings. The one that had taken a head strike convulsed; there was no time for medical help.
”It’s dead—no, it’s not. That was supposed to be the Katakai family’s pride,” someone spat, voice somewhere between laugh and sob.
”Light it. Lower the output and widen the beam!” the captain barked. Photon rifles dropped voltage and their muzzles spread cones of light, turning the darkness into a ring of searching lamps. Columns of light jutted up like searchlights thrown from an airbase onto the night.
”Fire. Just fire. Anything. Suppress. Everyone’s allowed to use Psionic Power,” she ordered.
Red-hot rounds lifted into the sky in a single, furious surge. Bullet light and strobe made the night feel like a meteor shower launched from the ground. We were all accomplished Psionic users in that unit; decisions had to be made in heartbeats. We pressed ourselves behind wreckage, cars, and twisted signage, and from those shelters the rifles spat until the darkness seemed to boil red.
The little death danced through it all with ease, zigzagging higher, testing her wings in the violence like a creature savoring the show. High, thin calls—”Gii? Gii, gii gii—”—scraped the air. In the starless sky the Horned Owl had already melted away from sight. Unlike everyone else, I could no longer see it at all; it was a thread gone thin.
A rasping chatter climbed and sped, a sound like metal scraping teeth. Then, from the shadow of a pile of scrap, a woman rose.
One eye was a machine. Silver rings and rebars were fixed into her skin. Ribs showed like latticework of metal; her limbs housed red blades folded into the joints. She had stuffed her body with every strange, anything-that-fits piece of mystic hardware she could find. A small fire burned inside her flank.
”Take cover! I’m using explosive spheres!” she called, and with those words a cluster of small metallic pearls snapped into being above her hand. She smiled, half-mad, half-delighted. “Let’s dry out some Psionic maggots tonight,” she said, and the pearls spun in the air—hundreds of them, each skirting her neighbor and throwing back light like a gilt chandelier.
The spheres were born of Psionic Power—iron that the mind shaped into hungry orbs. The woman launched them in an upward bloom; metal and flame and black smoke spat outward as if the empty sky had been torn.
They struck like a storm. Steel smashed against steel and spun wildly; an iron hailstorm took the air, bouncing, ricocheting. Through that maelstrom the Horned Owl plummeted and, with a single, brutal sweep, shredded the cyborg’s head. The bird’s strike came so fast, so low, I only felt the gust pass.
Blood painted her face, but she was not finished. A grin—dark and private—spread under the gore. Steel fragments fell, magnetized to the crimson on the ground as if the iron itself could smell blood and wanted it.
”You’ve touched my blood now. You can’t run,” she said, spitting the words. Her internal engine flared and the next round of spheres fired straight as a directional mine: a sideways storm that cut across the street like rain.
They missed the Owl at first and slammed into a signal tower a hundred meters away, pulverizing her tri-colored head. By then the bird had already left the nearby buildings behind and flown into the town. The spheres kept chasing it—less numerous with distance, but relentless. For a while her speed kept pace with the Owl, then dropped; when they slowed they started to fall behind, only to surge forward again as if remembering her prey.
She shouted like a hound. “There’s nowhere to hide. These revenge spheres track blood. Twenty left—I’ll feed them well!”
Her Psionic blasts detonated near us; black smoke bucked and opened like torn cloth. More thousands of iron beads roared into being and began to follow the Horned Owl down the highway, churning past street signs and telephone poles until they were spent on obstacles.
”Fifteen rounds left,” she said, breathless but thrilled. “Fast, aren’t they? But useless. We’ll tear its side off.”
She sent volley after volley ahead of the bird’s path. Each time the Owl turned, each time it evaded, the pack of spheres multiplied behind it. And then, with a sound like a final set of fireworks, a synchronized burst crashed through the night.
The world shook. The hunt had only just begun.
Iron spheres burst again and again, overlapping like thunder in a tunnel. The chained detonations blurred into one continuous roar. From the start, she had gone all out, a carpet bombardment that flattened half the block—and still the Horned Owl flew through it. I couldn’t see it anymore; only when distant towers cracked apart did I know where it had passed.
None of it landed. The creature slipped through the narrow gaps between windows, threading the interiors of buildings until the steel storm lost its numbers.
A car blew apart somewhere ahead. Tires burst and metal shrieked. Along the far highway, an abandoned line of vehicles began to sag as if bowing, their axles giving way one by one under invisible strikes. Wheel rims shattered—iron spheres finding targets too late.
The Horned Owl was coming. It skimmed so low its shadow touched its own body, sliding beneath truck shafts and wrecked cars without ever slowing. Too fast to match, too fast even to touch. Then it vanished under a trailer and was gone.
”It disappeared—!”
A heartbeat of silence followed, thick enough to feel. My ears still rang with that shrill cry of air.
”Damn it, we lost—”
”Gii?” The sound came from nowhere and everywhere. When I looked back, it was already there—hovering within arm’s reach of the iron-sphere woman. Its eyes were wide and round, almost innocent.
”Wha—so fast… don’t you dare—” she gasped. She could have run. Firing here would take herself too. But she didn’t care.
”Take this!” she screamed.
At point-blank range, three iron clusters exploded at once. Each wave crossed the other, shattering into a thousand shards that ricocheted in every direction. Her cry dissolved into blood.
The one who pulled the trigger never survives that. Her arms, raised to guard her head, were riddled with holes; blood sprayed like a broken fountain. The false eye burst, leaving her face drenched scarlet.
But there was no pause.
”Gone again!? Where—!”
Above us. The Horned Owl hung with the last few iron spheres, circling.
”Tch… still not a scratch,” she hissed, glaring upward. The creature had shaken every pursuit and was already diving back, looping downward in a reverse arc that defied momentum. The slowed spheres couldn’t keep up.
Overhead, the falling fragments glittered like new stars.
”Out of ammo. Damn you, slut,” she muttered. Her overdrawn Psionic Power failed her—too much at once.
Then its shadow fell across her face.
”Come on then. Now it gets fun—”
She never finished. Her head twisted a full half-turn, snapping like a doll’s. The little death god curved at a right angle before impact, sliding off into level flight and out of sight. Only the wind remained.
A second later, a rain of iron fragments slammed the ground. Her uncontrolled Psionic force tore her body apart, shredding her into pieces no larger than a coin. When the dust cleared, only black asphalt, a few glowing relic shards, and a red stain remained.
Two dead—in barely thirty seconds.
”Be careful! It’s hiding behind the sign! O-Hatsuha, hurry with the light—grk!” The spotter’s warning cut short. I turned in time to see her hurled backward, head wrenched clean off, body flung against a wall.
Psionic users are durable, but the Horned Owl hit harder than any bullet, faster than sound, heavier than a machine-gun slug, twisting necks apart with pure leverage. Even reinforced bodies couldn’t take the first strike.
I couldn’t see it at all. The world flickered in strobe—snatches of motion, bodies reacting before I knew where to look. We had fired thousands of rounds, none finding home. I prided myself on my reflexes, on being a child born for Psionics, but all I caught were ghosts.
Glass shattered in a line—shockwaves marking its path. Far above the main road, the Owl raced through the city’s spine, red mist trailing, dodging every bullet and streaking between skyscrapers. It vanished behind one tower, then the next, skipping through darkness frame by frame. Windows burst in its wake, glass raining down like diamond hail. It was too small, too fast; the only trace was light bending through the falling shards.
”There—” I breathed.
At the farthest tower, a faint glimmer—like a tiny firefly—floated. It had stopped flapping, gliding on captured wind. For a moment the reflection of its eyes shimmered, phosphorescent in the dark.
”It’s playing,” I realized.
It flew alongside bullets, overtaking them as if mocking us, like a bird toying with a trapped worm. When it finally tired of the game, it turned back toward us.
One beat of its wings—and gone.
I couldn’t follow anymore. My mind lagged behind my eyes.
”Trash—” I began, but stopped. She was already firing again, part of the renewed rhythm. The defense users drew its strikes away, intercepting every few seconds, buying us time. The unit was starting to function again, barely holding together.
”Where’s that light? Move, unless you want me to kick your ass!” the Captain roared.
A calm voice answered, smooth as silk. “It’s already active.”
She stepped forward—a woman with hair pinned in a night banquet style, face serene, almost noble. Light poured from her hands like water.
”Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “A first-magnitude star takes time to wake.”
She tossed it upward. The light spilled like liquid, then spread until the whole district shimmered as if beneath midsummer sun.
”My Psionic Power steals from the heavens,” she sang softly. “A Polaris to guide the lost, my own private star system born from the lines between constellations.”
Her fingers wove threads of light, connecting points in the air until a map of stars unfolded above us.
”Arms may never reach those distant stars,” she murmured. “Yet the heart is always near, touching the dreamer it remembers. The hand that grasps a star is a wish.”
With every word, the light condensed—smaller, denser, unbearably bright. Shadows vanished. The world bled into white.
”The light of stars is a golden veil,” she whispered. “Deep beneath the blue sky, hidden like stones beneath the sea. Seen, yet unseen—too bright to behold.”
When the last verse left her lips, a star was born.
A sphere of light nearly two meters wide floated weightless between the towers. Its brilliance painted even the far sides of buildings, erasing night itself.
Inside the radiant field, only O-Hatsuha and I could still see clearly. Her psionic light warped everything else into white haze.
”Gigi… gi…” The Horned Owl’s rasp carried through the glare. My hair stirred—the thing had cut through the light, skimming past us, missing its prey. No one else even saw it.
”This works on things that fly,” O-Hatsuha shouted. “Come, my lonely little drifting star—my sweet sixth-magnitude child!”
Protocol required psionicists to declare activations aloud; manifestations like hers reshaped the environment itself. A second constellation spun to life. A smaller body, dark as obsidian, orbited the blazing star. Its invisible pull peeled concrete from nearby towers and cracked window glass, sending shards raining down.
The black satellite had gravity of its own—harmless to those grounded, disastrous for anything that flew.
I stared despite myself. It was beautiful. Living sapphires burned across the sky. In Kujukuri Town, most children awakened to mechanical psionics, but the second most common gift was celestial. Poor kids watched the night sky and dreamed of bringing back wealth from the stars. O-Hatsuha’s power must have been born from that same longing.
Wind tore through the light again—Horned Owl thrashing against the unseen barrier, its fury shaking the air. Within that park-sized otherworld, the psionic field held firm, shielding us from every strike. The sight was terrifying and mesmerizing all at once.
”Giiiii!” The cry rose—anger incarnate. This one was different from the timid creature we’d fought before; it attacked blindly, consumed by hatred.
Crouching behind rubble, O-Hatsuha spoke to the Captain. “Blind firing always hits something. I’ve made us a quick shelter. Compared with deep-layer automatons, this foe is simple. Take its sight and it’s harmless.”
The Captain snorted. “A transparent stalling tactic. The mystery pressure’s already dropping. Even a suicide unit’s psionic object has limits. Wear it down and kill it.”
”Understood.” Helm-visors darkened one after another.
”Switch to long-wave vision. Track it by heat and instinct!” the Captain barked. Orders bordered on impossible, but the squad obeyed. Their mystical visors shifted filters like sunglasses against the false day.
For a moment, the city filled with intersecting lances of light. Dozens of beams sliced through towers, carving the skyline apart as they chased the Owl. The patterns should have minced any monster alive—but the target was too small, too fast. Each evasive twist forced it lower, yet still untouched. Every wild gesture from our gunners produced cuts hundreds of meters long, yet not a feather fell.
The Horned Owl had no rest; our light kept it in ceaseless motion.
When volleys faded, O-Hatsuha laughed softly. “How pitiful—so many marksmen and not a single hit. We’ll need remedial photon-rifle lessons for everyone.”
”You’ll be first,” the Captain shot back. “Less chatter, more aim.”
The star above them kept burning, white and endless. Its mistress remained almost cheerful. “So, Captain, what’s the plan? If you dislike my bottle gourd and catfish tricks, you’d better think of something smarter.”
”We’ll pin it between Misaki and Kikuka. How long can you hold that power?”
O-Hatsuha tilted her head. “Who knows? No one commands the lifespan of stars. But they’re in a pleasant mood tonight. I expect they’ll linger.”
She didn’t truly control it—only trusted its temperament. The Captain sighed. “Always the careless one.”
O-Hatsuha smiled. “I’m generous by nature. Let the stars do as they please—and let’s pray they stay bright, shall we?”
Even faced with that lethal creature, they were composed, almost casual—as if disaster was just another day. The thought chilled me.
Beside me, Trash-san was tossing insulated power capsules to the team. She met my eyes.
”Young Master, please return to your body. Leave this to us and focus on your role.”
A nearby woman scribbled notes and handed her a paper stack. Trash-san passed it on. “We’ve gathered our hypotheses on the third layer. Read and remember.”
That was my duty—to carry knowledge home. There was nothing else I could do.
”You’ll be all right, won’t you?” I asked.
”There are over thirty psionic users here,” she said firmly. “Not green recruits like the boys we lost in the Forest of Mystery, but veterans who’ve fought monsters and humans alike. We won’t fall so easily.”
I looked around, seeing for the first time how formidable they truly were. Isumi Town had warriors like her—ruinous yet strong. Kujukuri’s fighters had bled to stand beside them. Together they formed something neither could alone.
Trash-san continued, voice low but certain. “The demon woman only aims to drain us. She doesn’t expect to win. Suicide psionics can sway a battle—but they never decide a war.”
There has never been a nation that triumphed through self-destruction. At best, such acts end in stalemate. Especially for defenders—no one wins with a death charge.
Under the false stars, her words lingered like the last warmth of a dying sun.
Notes:
• Psionic Power – Mental energy concept in Chapter 35’s lecture. Trash-san teaches it to strengthen the protagonist’s mind after dungeon ordeals.
• O-Hatsuha – Psionic user who creates the massive light/gravity field. Relationship to Narrator (MC): A comrade-in-arms and fellow Psionic user whose actions directly protect the Narrator and the squad. Appearance: Hair pinned in a night banquet style, face serene/noble.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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