Chapter 96.1 (1/2)

The Metamorph, s.h.i.+houin Mari, gave a small laugh as she looked at the place she had been taken to, a special cell that had been made for detaining her. “How generous of you to give me a custom-made room,” she said.

Her voice had no sign of bitterness or sarcasm, but a special microchip and explosives had been embedded inside her body.

This was a step to prevent even the smallest chance of Mari escaping, as she was capable of taking on any appearance.

“… I'm sorry for being so incapable,” said Amemiya Hiroto, apologizing to her without responding to her words.

He was wearing a pained expression as if he was the criminal, not her. The other reincarnated individuals who had been working with him and Mari were wearing similar expressions.

But Mari gave Hiroto a small, bitter smile. “Don't apologize,” she said. “I know you worked hard to solve things without having to kill me.”

Mari had killed another person who had been reincarnated from Earth, Kaidou Kanata. Although she hadn't worked with the terrorists, she had exploited them, led the government and her companions on a wild goose chase with false information and set things up so that her target, Kanata, would be sent on a mission on his own.

Kaidou Kanata's death had a great impact on the other reincarnated individuals. They had been working in disaster relief and counter-terrorism, so they had come into contact with people's deaths… even other than the civilians and terrorists killed in disasters, they experienced the deaths of allied military personnel and helpers that they should have saved.

But the death of Kanata, one of their own, had a different level of impact.

They had been given new lives by a G.o.d and reincarnated in this foreign world called Origin from Earth with magical talent and special “cheat-like abilities.” But they had been stared in the eyes by the reality that even they could die and be killed.

This event had caused cracks to form between the reincarnated individuals who had come together to form the organization known as the Bravers.

No, to be more precise, the cracks had already been there, but they had simply been invisible. It was Mari's murder of Kanata that had made these cracks impossible to ignore any longer.

But there were some among them who thought that everything was Mari's fault. Even the governments and armies of every nation considered Mari, who possessed the Metamorph power that allowed her to perfectly replicate her target's fingerprints, retinas and even their vein patterns, to be a dangerous individual.

And there were also those who felt distrust for Hiroto, who had advocated for her to be confined rather than erased.

“You killed Kaidou Kanata, a single person,” said Hiroto. “You ensured that the president's daughter remained protected. I can understand your motives. This is your first crime, and normally you would be given life imprisonment or maybe even a definite term depending on the country, not a death penalty. And the nation you killed Kanata in has already abolished capital punishment. It would be too selfish to erase you out of convenience and emotion.”

“A stiff way of thinking as usual,” said Mari.

“It's better than being soft,” said Hiroto. “At least, it makes it easier for others to tell what I am thinking.”

If including those who did the office work, not all of the Bravers were those reincarnated from Earth, but they had many relatives and needed to be faithful to international laws in order to be trusted. That was what Hiroto thought.

The reincarnated individuals possessed powers that went beyond even the principles of Origin, a world with science as advanced as Earth's and magic that didn't exist on Earth. If something went wrong, they would be treated as mutants. In fact, groups advocating that they should be treated as such already existed.

That was why they needed to show that they obeyed the rules of society.

“But with everything said and done, I was oblivious to Kanata's crimes,” said Hiroto. “That's what I'm apologizing for.”

“There's no reason to apologize to me, considering that I killed him with my own hands before consulting you,” Mari said as she entered the room.

Seeing her disappear behind the closing door, Hiroto and the others turned and left.

“… What information do we have on them?” asked Hiroto.

“The whereabouts of Murakami and the others became unknown after they joined the 'Eighth Guidance,'” replied Minami Asagi, one of the three people who had been escorting Mari. His tone was polite, but his eyes were filled with anger.

Murakami… the reincarnated individual who had been a high school teacher on Earth by the name of Murakami Junpei, had left the Bravers with a group of ten others and vanished after joining a terrorist group.

Rodcorte had said that the conflict had subsided, but for Hiroto and the other Bravers, this was just a calm before the storm.

“Just what are they thinking… Especially Murakami,” Asagi continued. “Did you know that he was our homeroom teacher? Would a normal teacher incite his students and have them join a group of terrorists?”

“It has already been nearly thirty years since he was your homeroom teacher,” another one of Mari's escorts pointed out. He was the 'Oracle,' Endou Kouya.

However, it seemed that Asagi wasn't satisfied with these words.

“But we are all companions, are we not? Despite that, they betrayed us… I cannot forgive them.”

Asagi had been a hot-blooded member of a sports club on Earth who cared about his friends, who had a somewhat totalitarian way of thinking. He also had a strong tendency of being influenced by the past life he had lived on Earth.

Up until now, that had been a good thing. The past lives that the reincarnated individuals had lived on Earth and the things they had experienced there were a necessary foundation for them to not abuse their new lives and the powerful abilities that they had suddenly been given.

However, the current problem had occurred because they had relied too much on this foundation and not seen what they needed to see.

“Asagi, it has already been more than twenty years since we died on Earth… nearly thirty,” saidHiroto. “People change over that amount of time. We should have considered that.”

“Hiroto-san, I know that even in the news on Earth, you would hear about arrested criminals' cla.s.smates saying that they were good people in the past, but we are companions –”

“Kanata sold the organs of his 'companion' on the black market.”

“That's true, but… isn't that because he gave into temptation and strayed from the path! We must fight, for Tanaka and the other two who were lost! If we don't, they won't be able to rest in peace!”

“Asagi, I know how you feel, but… we're nothing more than humans who have memories from our previous lives and strange powers,” said Kouya.

“Kouysan, what… are you trying to say?” Asagi glared at Kouya, as if Kouya's words had poured cold water on his fiery emotions.

“Other than Murakami, we've already spent more time in Origin than on Earth,” said Hiroto. “We should not believe in each other blindly just because we are companions. We can be tempted, or… our senses of values can even change. That's what Kouya is trying to say. And I think the same.”

“That… I understand what you are trying to say, Hiroto-san, but I cannot accept it!” Asagi shouted over his shoulder as he walked off, leaving Hiroto and the others behind.

Hiroto gave a bitter smile as he looked at Asagi's strong-looking back, and then he spoke to the other reincarnated individuals, who had remained quiet up until now. “Sorry, but please go and listen to his grumbling,” he said, gesturing for them to go on ahead, leaving him and Kouya alone.

“I think he is far more hard-headed than I am, but it is helpful that he is so unchanging,” Hirotoremarked.

“It's not like I hate him,” said Kouya. “It's just that when n.o.body else is around, he says, 'but on Earth,' at every opportunity, which is troublesome.”

“Indeed.”

Hiroto and Kouya laughed and relaxed their shoulders as they continued their conversation.

“Can't you find out where Murakami and the others have gone with Oracle?” Hiroto asked.

Kouya's cheat-like ability, 'Oracle,' might be considered by some to be like a G.o.d's ability to make prophecies. However, in reality, it was not a power that could be called omnipotent.

Kouya's Oracle was simply 'something' that told him a way to achieve the results he wanted.

At first, Kouya had thought that this 'something' was a G.o.d. But he soon experienced that it wasn't anything as all-knowing or omnipotent as a G.o.d.

It had answered several of his questions with, “That goal is impossible to achieve.”

Thus, Kouya suspected that the answers he received from Oracle were derived by accessing the collective human unconsciousness or the Akas.h.i.+c records or something like that.

According to the Oracle, the answer to Hiroto's question was –

“In the near future… I don't know the exact time because it changes every time I ask, but as soon as three months or as far away as three years, it says we'll know through the news.”

“That means that those guys will do something. Is there a way to prevent that from happening?”Hiroto asked.

“… Sorry, but I don't know,” Kouya replied. “The answer to that changes every time as well. If I don't know what specifically needs to be done, I can't give an accurate question.”

“How to prevent Murakami and the others committing an act of terrorism,” “How to prevent Murakami and the others kidnapping someone,” “How to prevent Murakami and the others from trafficking drugs” … All of these were different questions.

With something vague like, “How to prevent Murakami and the others from committing a crime,” he would get strange answers like, “Catch Murakami within one hour before he spits out his gum on the street.”

On that occasion, they did check satellites and surveillance footage in nations and regions where spitting gum onto the street was a crime, but… of course, there was no way that Murakami could be found.

“Murakami and the others know about my Oracle as well,” said Kouya. “That's why they're interfering with it by making multiple plans for crimes and committing small crimes like spitting gum on the street.”

“I see. I suppose we have to use methods other than your abilities to find them,” said Hiroto. “If possible, I want to avoid doing something like killing them, but…”

“For your wife's sake as well, huh?” said Kouya.

“Yeah. She said to treat them as different people from when they were on Earth, but it's also a fact that we can't erase the past,” said Hiroto.

Their lives that ended abruptly and irrationally on Earth, the bonds with their families that they left behind. And the unhappiness that they were experiencing in Origin now.

The more disappointing their lives on Origin were, the harder they were, the more their memories from Earth seemed to s.h.i.+ne.

Companions killing each other was hard for Amemiya Narumi, who had become Hiroto's wife.

Knowing this, there was something that Kouya hadn't revealed to Hiroto. “… There's something that I haven't told you,” he said.

“I had the vague feeling that you were hiding something,” said Hiroto. “Ever since a short while after that secret research laboratory was destroyed by one of the subjects becoming an Undead.”

During that incident, the world had become aware of a new attribute, the death attribute, while simultaneously losing it. Even though they had been compelled to do it out of necessity, this incident was the beginning of the Bravers beginning to fight terrorists and criminal organizations in addition to rescuing people after disasters and accidents.

However, to Kouya, it was an unforgettable incident in a different way.

“After that incident… It was when we all started our military training. I asked, 'How we can avoid losing a single one of us reincarnated individuals.' The answer was, 'Impossible. One has already been killed.'”

The incident had now become even more unforgettable for Hiroto.

“Is that true?” he murmured. “Long before Mari killed Kanata…”

“After that, I managed to ask the Oracle before my Mana ran out,” Kouya continued. “I asked who the killed reincarnated individual was, who killed him, whether there was any way to find out. For, 'who was killed where,' it told me to 'look at the file of the incident at the research laboratory,' and for, 'who that reincarnated individual was on Earth,' it replied, 'you will know if you ask Naruse Narumi what happened before she died on Earth.'”

Kouya's confession revealed a truth that was terrible for Hiroto and the other reincarnated individuals.

“I see, at that time, we… finished one of our companions,” said Hiroto.

“I simply intended to ask the Oracle, 'the best way to exterminate the Undead,' but… for him, it was probably a terrible betrayal,” said Kouya.

Kouya and Hiroto, who had finished their reincarnation in Origin before Amamiya Hiroto had reincarnated, couldn't understand why only Amamiya had been unable to join up with the others and ended up as an experimental subject in that research laboratory.

However, the only reason that the other reincarnated individuals had all been able to join up was something as vague as a 'miraculous destiny.'

“Amamiya Hiroto… so he reincarnated as well,” said Hiroto.