I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 15 Page 4

  “Follow me!” I yelled loudly.

  It was enough to make the two of them flinch before finally getting a move on. I let them go ahead of me and then brought up the rear as we all ran down the stairs.

  “S-Someone!”

  Behind us, I could hear the attendant yelling for help. An alarm then began blaring all through the bay.

  “R-Rekka! What do we do now?!” the doctor yelled in a panic.

  “Ignore it! Which one’s the spaceship?!” I yelled back.

  “Let’s see, 43, 43... I-It’s that one!” she shouted, pointing to a smaller spacecraft with a giant “43” painted on the side.

  We made a beeline for it. The doctor tapped the keycard against the door panel, and it slid open immediately. Once we were all inside, the door slid back into place, and the interior of the ship automatically lit up. But we didn’t stop running until we hit the cockpit.

  “All right! Now fly!”

  “Don’t be absurd!” Satsuki yelled from the pilot’s seat. “The bay hatch can’t open until we’ve left the control room!”

  “Ugh... Can’t we just fire a beam or something and leave through the hole we make?”

  “If you did that, all the employees in the bay would be sucked out into space!”

  “Ah, right. We’re in space.”

  If we punctured a hole in the colony, anyone nearby would be sucked out in the depths of space. Which left us in quite a pickle as we were trying to escape.

  “There’s an automatic emergency repair system in the outer walls of the colony, so the building itself should be fine. But the people here will still be in trouble, which is doubly an issue with the alarm going off. Security teams and all sorts of other people are on their way here right now.”

  “That’s no good...”

  Though this was an emergency, I didn’t want to get any innocent bystanders hurt.

  “Satsuki.”

  “What is it, Rekka?”

  “Um, this spaceship has a warp drive, right? Could we use that to get outside?”

  If so, then we could get out of here without even having to open the hatch. I thought it was a good idea, and the doctor seemed to think so too.

  “That might be possible. Let’s use the short warp to get outside,” she said.

  “Even the short warp needs a certain amount of acceleration, no? It’ll be impossible in here.”

  “We should just be able to pull it off if we increase our speed by circling the inside of the bay.”

  “You think I can pilot this thing like an acrobat?!”

  “Do your best.”

  “That won’t help!” Satsuki shouted, fiercely opposing the doctor’s suggestion.

  “So, uh...” I piped up, trying to come up with another last-ditch-effort plan. “Why don’t we just go and explain things to everyone calmly? We can say the hologram disguise was just a trick of the light or something.”

  “There are surveillance cameras in the corridors and here in the bay. It’d be impossible to fool them.”

  “Then... was it a bad idea to run back there?”

  That thought had been bothering me all this time.

  “What’s done is done. And now we do what we have to. Move,” L said as she shoved Satsuki out of the pilot’s seat and took her place. “I’m taking over.”

  “What? You, L? But you’re so clumsy...”

  “Who are you calling clumsy?!” L snapped at me for being worried. She then grumbled, “Just so you know, I trip over a lot because this child-sized body has bad balance.”

  She continued to grumble as she pulled a cable from her long kimono sleeve and connected it to the pilot’s console.

  “I’m an artificial life form. I can pilot this type of spaceship electronically. With my calculation abilities, a short warp is a piece of cake.”

  “A-All right... We’re counting on you, L!” I shouted.

  “But let’s put our seat belts on for now!” the doctor shouted in turn, prompting me and Satsuki to take a seat and buckle in.

  “Here we go!”

  The spaceship started to move on its own, seemingly controlled by nothing other than L’s voice. I glanced outside the window to see agency employees gathered in scattered crowds. They were probably judging whether the moving spaceship was a danger or not as we rose higher and higher into the air.

  Airplanes on Earth couldn’t lift off without gathering speed along a runway first, but this puppy could apparently move straight up even from a standstill. And once we’d gotten an appropriate altitude, L started to turn the ship around and lap the bay. As we gradually picked up speed...

  “Ugh, I feel sick...”

  “I think I’m gonna hurl.”

  Satsuki and the doctor both held their hands over their mouths, their faces pale. I honestly felt a little queasy too.

  “Tough it out! We’re leaping now!” L yelled.

  We were already at the velocity we needed to enter warp, and L didn’t waste any time activating it. Not a few seconds after she gave us the warning, a strange light enveloped the spaceship as we leaped through space.

  “Whew...” L exhaled quietly as she unplugged her cable. “So, where to now? Well, I guess we have until the warp finishes to decide.”

  “Satsuki’s searching for the exact coordinates of our destination. Our first target is a heroine who has desperately maintained her neutral status without joining any faction since the start of the War of All—Lea.”

  ▽

  Three hours after we made our escape from agency HQ, our small spaceship arrived in the vicinity of a certain planet.

  “Lea’s really here?” I muttered in something of a daze.

  Said planet was already close enough to see plainly through the window, and it... it didn’t exactly look inviting. I’m not an expert on planets or anything, but it sort of looked like pictures I’d seen of stormy Jupiter. I couldn’t say one way or the other about its size, though. When you’re standing in front of them in person, all planets look ridiculously huge.

  I was more concerned about how the entire planet was covered in brown clouds. Or maybe it was airborne sand? Either way, you couldn’t see the surface at all because of it. Furthermore, the color wasn’t uniform. You could see yellow spots amidst the brown here and there, which seemed to be swirling faintly.

  “Those are probably sandstorms. The entire planet seems to be sandy, and with the weather like this, there likely isn’t much light on the surface,” said the doctor.

  “How does anyone live here...?” I asked.

  “For a normal human to live here without any specialized equipment, the whole planet would need to be terraformed. But with the right gear, we should be able to get down to the surface and explore just fine,” the doctor replied, furrowing her brow. “Lea, on the other hand... Lea is known first and foremost for her power. If she put her mind to it, she could easily rival the military force of an entire planet. I suspect she sequestered herself somewhere inhospitable like this so that no one would try and use that power.”

  “...Let’s just go.”

  “Hold on, Rekka,” said Satsuki. “I’ll look up more detailed information on Lea’s location.”

  From there, we followed Satsuki’s directions and entered the atmosphere of the sandy planet.

  “Wow, it’s really all sand...”

  And we just so happened to come down in the middle of a terrible sandstorm.

  “It’s just barely bright enough to see without a light, but the sandstorm drastically reduces our visibility even more.”

  It was only about as bright as a really cloudy day on Earth, but like the doctor said, the raging sandstorm prevented us from seeing any more than a meter or so ahead.

  “Which way should we go?” I asked.

  “First we descend straight down,” replied Satsuki. “She’s somewhere in this area.”

  Satsuki continued to navigate for us, giving detailed directions to L in the pilot’s seat. I was grateful. Without her and her Om
niscient Magic, there was probably very little chance we’d ever be able to find Lea here.

  We gradually descended, bringing the hovering spaceship all the way down to the surface. From there, Satsuki used her magic again to determine Lea’s exact coordinates.

  “Fifty meters ahead of us, there should be a small cavern,” she said.

  And lo and behold, there it was. Rather than a natural landmark, however, it was more like a hollow bored into the side of a giant mass of rock jutting up out of the ground.

  “So, Lea’s in there...”

  “You’d better suit up before going outside.”

  “All right.”

  I heeded the doctor’s warning and put on a protective suit. It covered my body completely, but it wasn’t as bulky or hard to move in as a traditional space suit. If anything, it was more like a skin-tight drysuit with an attached helmet.

  “It’s been ———— since I last saw Lea...”

  Hm? Just now, it sounded like Satsuki blipped out for a second there... Ah, wait, that must be the canceller at work. I’d completely forgotten about the little device jammed in my ear. Judging by the beginning and end of her sentence, she’d probably said something about how many years it had been. The canceller had automatically cut that part out, so it seemed like it was doing its job to prevent me from knowing what time period it was.

  “All right, let’s head out now.”

  While I was thinking about that, the doctor opened the hatch to the ship and led us all outside.

  “Whoa!”

  That was some wind! I had to brace my legs in order not to be immediately blown away, and I grabbed the doctor’s and Satsuki’s hand spur of the moment.

  “It’s probably best if we hold on to each other,” I said. “We’ll get lost instantly if we’re separated.”

  Even if we were only going to a cavern a few meters ahead of us, it’d be a disaster if we lost our sense of direction even for a moment. On a planet like this, it could cost us our lives.

  “There is a distress beacon installed in the suits just in case, but... Yes, let’s hold hands too. Here, L.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t treat me like a child.”

  “There’s no need to play tough. The adults are holding hands too.”

  “H-Hmph! Only because you insisted...”

  And so the doctor took the fussy L’s hand. Meanwhile, Satsuki on my other arm seemed to be strangely stiff.

  “Satsuki? Are you okay?”

  “I-I’m just fine!”

  “You sure? Then let’s go!”

  The four of us proceeded forward side by side. The sand was almost like fresh snow, sinking beneath our feet with every step. If any one of us tripped, the wind would send us rolling. I’m sure it was hilarious to watch, but it was a rather precarious situation. We moved forward with extreme care and caution, eventually arriving at the cavern entrance.

  “Phew...”

  Stepping into the mouth of the cave shielded us from the whipping wind and sand, allowing us to see a little better. But without any light, the depths of the cavern were shrouded in complete darkness. And from the darkness, someone asked challengingly...

  “Who’s there?”

  The voice was familiar to me. I had no idea how far in the future we were, but it hadn’t changed at all since I’d heard it last.

  “I don’t know who you are... but I’m not interested in taking sides. I only pray that everyone will cease their pointless fighting.”

  “Lea, it’s me!” I called to the darkness.

  “That’s...! You...!”

  I could tell by her voice she was shaken.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Rekka Namidare,” I called again to the darkness.

  From the depths of the cavern then came a peculiar sound... Quiet, staggering footsteps. And slowly but surely, a redhead I knew appeared from the dark of the cave. She was wearing a long, veil-like cloak, presumably to protect herself from the sand, but she was otherwise the exact same heroine I knew... Lea the Leviathan.

  “R... Rekka!”

  Her long, disheveled hair swished behind her as she ran towards me, straight into a hug.

  “Whoa!”

  Lea was a little taller than me, so her face was much closer to mine than when Satsuki had hugged me. I could feel her breath tickling my ear.

  “Why...? How...? When did you return? No, none of that matters... I’m just glad you’re alive.”

  “Um...”

  While I was indeed Rekka Namidare, I wasn’t the Rekka Namidare she knew. I wanted to explain that to her, but it was hard for me to say anything when she was sobbing like that...

  Come to think of it, future Lea really did look exactly like the Lea I knew. Was that because she was Leviathan? While future Satsuki had clearly grown older, I felt a little strange looking at Lea who hadn’t seemed to age a day. But the doctor had asked me not to put too much thought into that, so I decided not to dig any deeper.

  “Listen, Lea... I’m sorry to ask, but could you let that Rekka go?”

  “Laputa... and Satsuki? You’re both here too?” Lea murmured as though she’d only just noticed them.

  It seemed like she didn’t have eyes for anyone other than me. The doctor smiled wryly, as if she’d known that would happen.

  “I know it may come as a disappointment, but would you listen to our story, Lea? I promise we won’t take up too much of your time,” she then asked.

  About half an hour later...

  “...”

  While she was initially shocked to find out that I was Rekka Namidare of the past, hearing why we’d come to find her put a conflicted expression on Lea’s face.

  “I understand your request,” she said with a small nod.

  “Then...”

  “But I want you to promise me something first.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t mind lending you my power, Rekka. However, I ask that you won’t use it to fight the other heroines. I don’t want to hurt the friends I spent those happy days with...”

  By “those happy days,” did she mean the time she spent with the heroines in this time line? Thinking about it, Lea was always the most openhearted of the heroines... It was probably because of the thousands of years she’d spent sealed away and alone.

  “Yeah, I can promise you that, Lea. This might be a different time period, but I don’t have any intention of hurting anyone either. I just want to save them.”

  “Heh... I guess you are Rekka, after all,” Lea said with a smile. “You can count on my assistance.”

  “Thank you, Lea.”

  “That said...”

  Suddenly, Lea blushed.

  “Do you have anything to eat? I haven’t had a bite since I shut myself away on this planet,” she asked sheepishly.

  ▽

  “Now, where to next?” the doctor asked, handing me something.

  It was a list of all the heroines that were common to both my past and this time line.

  “Hom nom...”

  Lea was happily munching away on space food in the back of the cockpit. I knew she was fine fasting for thousands of years since she’d done it once before, but she was also capable of eating endlessly when she wanted to. I let her savor her first meal in ages in peace.

  “Hm?” Looking back at the list, I noticed something. “Come to think of it... This list contains a lot of heroines that I saved in my first semester of high school.”

  “Oh? Yes, I suppose it does,” the doctor said with a nod. “While your fate and future Rekka’s fate diverged thanks to the agency’s interference, you both inherited the Namidare bloodline on your sixteenth birthday. It’s not like your fate can turn on a dime, you see.”

  When she put it that way, it made sense. While the agency’s interference—that is, R—made all the difference, both me and future Rekka had the same starting point. We were both teenage boys from rural Japan with the same upbringing and circle of friends. Meeting R was where things started to change f
or me, but it was a gradual change. So while future Rekka and I ended up in completely different places, we had the same origins.

  “Speaking of...”

  “Hm?”

  “I’ve been wondering about this for a while now, so there’s something I’d like to ask,” I said, looking at the doctor, Satsuki, and Lea in turn. “Just how different am I from the version of me that you guys know?”

  It’s not like hearing it would change anything, but I at least wanted to know how different we’d ended up. Mostly, I was just curious. But the three women looked at each other...

  “That’s a tough question. How different? Hmm...”

  “They’re the spitting image of each other outwardly.”

  “I don’t know about the fundamentals, though.”

  So... maybe I wasn’t all that different after all?

  “Ah, but there is one thing—one rather big thing—that differentiates the two of you.”

  “And what’s that, Doctor?”

  “Well, you see,” the doctor began. “Rekka of the future is no longer human.”

  “No longer... human?” I parroted back blankly.

  What... What did that even mean? My head instantly filled with questions. I knew for a fact that I was definitely still human, but future me... wasn’t? What on earth had happened?

  “Sorry, perhaps that was a poor choice of words. More specifically, he quit being human.”

  “That’s the same thing,” I retorted.

  “Really? I think it makes a big difference whether it was done willingly or not,” the doctor replied, scratching her cheek.

  “That’s fair... But why did I give up on being a human?”

  “That’s obvious,” the doctor said, pointing between me and the girls. “To save heroines, of course.”

  “...”

  “Surely one or two examples come to mind, no? Stories where you had to surpass your human limits, stories where you were cornered into making an impossible choice.”

  “Yeah...”

  When she put it that way, I saw what she meant. I’d been through so much... If I’d agreed to share Satsuki’s magic, I would’ve become an Omniscient Contractor. If Rosalind had taken my blood, I would’ve become a vampire. I’d managed to save Rain’s planet, but if I hadn’t eaten Raul’s immortal flesh, I would’ve succumbed to the mutations caused by Shirley’s drug. If I’d lost to the Mask of Greed, I would’ve turned into a demon. If any one of those events had played out differently, I very well may have become inhuman myself. And when I thought about it in those terms, I realized how lucky I was to still be human.