I Need to Use the Bathroom – Part 02
“Ayumu, why are you standing still?”
I’d stopped without realizing it, too deep in thought.
Sera checked the surroundings to make sure we wouldn’t be surrounded and searched for an escape route.
“Haruna, can’t you tell where it’s safe?” I asked.
“There’s too much Megalo presence all around, I can’t tell.”
I gave Haruna the bag to carry and followed behind Sera. Haruna’s small hands couldn’t hold the whole bag of stuffed animals, so they kept falling one by one, but we didn’t have the luxury of stopping for them.
The Megalo chased us, hopping after us like jackrabbits. A swarm of flying bug-types buzzed overhead. I really wished the giant insect ones didn’t exist. They were just too disturbing. They reminded me of a locust plague.
“Ayumu, look!” Haruna shouted at the approaching Megalo.
I looked over my shoulder, and there they were, girls in adorable outfits. Magiclad Girls, probably.
Did they come to take down the Megalo? What a relief. That should buy us some time.
Or so I thought, until the Magiclad Girls headed straight for us.
Huh? Why are they coming this way?
They weren’t heading for Sera or Eu. Which meant, they were all coming for me?!
Oh come on, give me a break. Why were even Magiclad Girls after me?
Wait. Maybe there was a reason for this.
Could it be that thing? The item Big Teach entrusted to me. The one I couldn’t even tell Haruna about. Could that be what the Magiclad Girls were after?
Maybe that’s why the Megalo were chasing us too. If so, it made sense why everything was converging on me.
“Haruna, don’t you dare lose that bag. I don’t care about the plushies, but the bag is important.”
“Wuh? Got it!”
We fled into the panicking crowd. The town center had plunged into chaos at the sudden appearance of the horde of monsters.
Stop panicking. You’re just making things worse for us. The Magiclad Girls will take care of it soon enough, so just evacuate quietly.
But of course, nobody cared about what some random zombie was thinking. People scattered in all directions, shrieking in panic.
In the middle of the chaos, one group stood their ground against the Megalo. I recognized one of them.
“Tomonori! Or Yuki, I guess?”
“Just call me Mael right now!”
“You’re here to help? But I thought you and Sera were enemies?”
“Even if we are, I’m… your wife, remember?”
Tomonori scratched the tip of her nose awkwardly.
Haruna tightened her grip around my neck. “Hey, Ayumu, what did she just say? Something about a short life?”
Sera gave Tomonori a sympathizing look. “Maelstrom, you—hm?” She glanced at the girl in her arms. “Is something wrong, Miss Hellscythe?”
“Sera, what is it?”
“Nothing, really.”
Looking closely, I could see Eu clinging tightly to Sera’s clothes.
“Sera, let’s just leave this to them,” I said. “We’re pulling back.”
“If we fight alongside them—”
“I’ve got a reason not to fight right now.”
If this really was all because of the item I got from Big Teach, then I couldn’t let it fall into enemy hands. For now, escape was the only option.
“Understood.”
Seeing Eu’s lonely expression, Sera choose not to fight for reasons different from mine. That helped.
“Tomonori, I’m counting on you!”
“Yeah, get going like you’re riding a sinking super-dreadnought!”
Carrying a bowl of pork bone broth, the boyish girl looked incredibly reliable. Even if it was sinking, a dreadnought’s still a dreadnought.
With Eu in her arms, Sera dashed into the group in black cloaks. The Vampire Ninjas stepped aside to let her through.
“You owe me one, Seraphim.”
“Thank you.”
Even though Sera and Tomonori were supposed to be enemies, they both cracked a small smile. For the Vampire Ninjas, monster hunting clearly took priority over everything else.
Thanks to the reformist Vampire Ninjas backing us up, we managed to get a bit of breathing room. We slipped into a narrow alley and peeked out from behind cover to watch the street.
Oh yeah, they were going at it.
The Vampire Ninjas clashed with the Megalo. Black and black outfits swirled into a single mass, blood and white particles flying everywhere.
We turned our backs on the chaos, trying to put some distance between us and the fight. But then we stopped dead in our tracks.
We spotted a shadow standing on a nearby rooftop. A very lovely girl.
Small stature, big chest. Pigtails, a black cloak, red eyes. She wore a smile so seductive I nearly grinned back. If I didn’t know what she really was, I probably would’ve found her charming.
“Kyouko.”
But just seeing that smile made my stomach turn. She was the one who killed me, after all.
Kyouko leapt down toward us in one bound, landing with her arms stretched out to block our path.
“Long time no see, Aikawa,” she said. “A shame you’re still alive and well.”
Was she after Big Teach’s item too?
“What do you plan to do, making all these fake Megalo?” I demanded.
Her eyes went wide. “So you know,” she said. “We’re searching for something.” She flashed another bright smile.
Yeah, she was definitely after it.
“I don’t have anything,” I said. “Go bother someone else.”
Kyouko burst into laughter. There was nothing that funny.
“You know, when you suddenly say something like that, you’re basically admitting that you have it.” She nodded thoughtfully. Her annoyingly lovely smile grated on my nerves. “So, Miss Ariel chose to trust you.”
“Ayumu, let’s go,” Sera said.
“Yeah.” I braced myself to run. I just wanted to get out of Kyouko’s sight.
“I get it. A weapon like that can’t fall into the hands of a Magiclad Girl. That explains so much. No wonder nothing ever goes my way.”
Weapon? That word alone stopped me cold.
“Big Teach gave me a what?”
“Ayumu, you have something from Big Teach? You never told me!” Haruna shouted right into my ear. I winced, tilting my head away.
“And what the hell do you plan to do with a weapon like that?”
Kyouko sounded chipper, like she might break into a tune at any moment. “If we have Miss Ariel’s Magiclad Weapon, we can turn this world into the kind of chaotic mess he dreams of. I figured if we caused a massive Megalo outbreak, they’d have no choice but to use it. But it just wouldn’t activate. It was such a pain.”
Now that she mentioned it, Big Teach had asked me to take that thing around the same time the Megalo outbreak began. And the reason for all this trouble was something that dumb?
I was starting to get pissed.
“It’s… my fault.”
I caught Eu’s faint whisper. She held her head in her hands, her face twisted in pain. Was it the toll of speaking, or was she regretting something?
Just by feeling happy, the last person we wanted to see would show up. For Eu, that person was that guy. For Haruna, it was a horde of Megalo. Those civilians wouldn’t want to see those things too. And now, the person I least wanted to meet had shown up.
Blaming Eu for some stupid coincidence was fucking stupid.
“Ayumu!” Sera cried.
I turned to look. Something black came flying at us. I instantly leapt to the side.
I thought it was an attack, but it was a Vampire Ninja. She’d been thrown, rolling along the ground before crashing into a wall.
She stood up with a pained cry and looked straight at me. Her short hair stuck up like cat ears.
“Mael?”
“What the hell’s with those things?! They’re crazy strong!”
“Of course. You seem terribly weak, after all.” Kyouko flashed a bright smile. Her cute little fist pump just made me despise her more.
Yeah, being cute was fine, but it didn’t give her a free pass for everything.
I’d probably go on hating her for the rest of my life. Well, I was technically already dead.
“Huh? What school are you from, punk?!” Tomonori, wearing a scowl, grabbed Kyouko by the shoulder.
“Maelstrom!” Sera called.
What she really meant was, You idiot! Don’t touch her! I agreed completely.
A tornado exploded around Tomonori, way bigger than the ones I saw before. Dust rose into the air. I turned my face away from the violent gusts. My hands were full carrying Haruna on my back, so that was all I could do.
Within seconds, the whirlwind vanished. Tomonori’s cloak and school uniform were shredded to ribbons, and she collapsed to her knees, unconscious.
I couldn’t do anything. It happened so fast I couldn’t even react. Fuck!
“Mael! Hey, Yuki! Tomonori!”
I called every name I could think of, but there was no response. Was she dead?
“Ayumu!” Haruna shouted. “They’re coming!”
I snapped my head around. A gorilla Megalo was clinging to the wall, spewing some foul-looking purple breath.
One of the fake Megalo had caught up with us. This was really, really bad. We had no choice but to fight.
Without a Magigear? That was suicide.
I broke Kyouko’s before, so she probably didn’t have one either. She wouldn’t be able to transform, which meant maybe I could handle her. Maybe. That tornado earlier didn’t exactly scream weak.
But Megalo? No way. Even one would be too much. And more of them were coming straight at us.
Anyone. I don’t care who. Someone, help us.
Then, I felt a sudden chill. Not from fear. But from actual, bone-freezing cold.
The street froze before my eyes. The walls, the buildings, everything turned to ice. Was this Kyouko’s doing?
“Aha, I knew it,” Kyouko said. “You do have Miss Ariel’s Magiclad Weapon with you!”
Frost was forming at her feet. An indiscriminate attack.
A weapon? Was this the effect of the item Kyouko was after? Big Teach left this kind of indiscriminate weapon with me?
Come on, give me a break. What did I even do? Did she have some kind of grudge against me?
Sera leapt onto the roof, and Kyouko followed right after her. I stood frozen, panicking as the ground beneath my feet kept getting colder.
My shoes froze solid and stuck to the ground. Even the gorilla clinging to the wall had all its limbs icing over.
“Haruna, you go.”
“What are you saying?! We’ve gotta run!”
Stop pulling my hair. I’d love to get the hell out of here, but my legs were frozen up to the ankles.
Where’s Tomonori?
I looked down and saw her collapsed on the ground, already surrounded by a layer of frost. At this rate, she was going to end up like some mammoth encased in ice.
“Sera, help Mael!”
She’d made it onto the roof, but everything inorganic had frozen over too. Her feet were stuck to the roof tiles.
Not even Sera made it out. The ice finally crawled all the way up and swallowed the lower half of my body.
“Haruna, get out—”
“Get out of here!” cried a voice as clear as crystal.
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