Chapter 68: Side Charlotte

Chapter 68: Side Charlotte

"...! Haah. Four left now..."

I leaned back against the alley wall, then slid down to sit against it, trying to get my breathing under control. A young guy with long hair lay on the ground beside me. A surviving SPES member. If I'd given him even a tiny opening, I would have been the one lying there now.

"So you finally cleared them away, huh?"

I heard clicking footsteps, and a woman's surprisingly husky voice came closer.

"You could stand to fight more efficiently, though." As she smoked her cigarette, she started criticizing the fight I'd just had.

"Then teach me how, Fuubi." Down on the concrete, hugging my knees, I glared up at my extremely arrogant redheaded boss.

Ever since Kimizuka and Nagisa left for London, I'd been putting in live combat training under her direction, but all she did was nitpick. She apparently wasn't planning to give me any proper instruction.

"Wait, didn't you quit smoking?"

"Quit? Oh yeah, sure did." Even as Fuubi said it, she was puffing away as brazenly as an old Japanese movie star... That's insanely annoying.

"At least help me out. Are you planning to just watch your subordinate get killed?" I demanded, getting to my feet and confiscating all her cigarettes.

The SPES members we were fighting right now were like Bat: humans with implanted seeds. Of course, they weren't as strong as a purebred like Chameleon, and Bat probably outclassed them. Even so, they weren't the kind of enemies I could get careless with.

Fuubi gave me a sharp look. "What are you talking about, Charlotte? This has been your job for the past year."

...She was right. Taking down SPES survivors had been my mission for a year, ever since Ma'am died. It was the "role division" she'd talked about.

My combat skills were good, so I was in charge of the fighting. Kimizuka was clever, so he used knowledge and on-the-spot decisions to solve problems. Ma'am had always wanted us to work together that way.

"And yet that guy..."

Kimizuka had spent the entire year since we'd lost Ma'am in his tepid routine. Just remembering it was making me mad again... But I shook my head. This wasn't the time.

"Is there any point in hunting these survivors, though? Wouldn't it be better to find a way to defeat Seed directly?"

Of course, Nagisa and Kimizuka were probably looking for that very thing right now.

"Same as you." As Fuubi spoke, she lit a cigarette she'd managed to snitch back from me. "I wasn't able to kill that thing, either."

Then, exhaling smoke, she began to talk about her past with unexpected candor.

The "thing" she'd mentioned had to be the former Ace Detective. Five years ago, the organization I'd been part of had ordered me to assassinate Ma'am.

"At the time, she'd just run away from SPES's facility. As the Assassin, I was ordered to dispose of her."

"You mean it was a Tuner job? Why would the top brass make that call?"

"We already knew the thing was one of Seed's candidate vessels. They probably meant to defeat Seed indirectly by nipping that in the bud, as it were."

...I see. So they'd attempted the same sort of maneuver that they'd just tried with Yui on Ma'am.

"But she survived." Fuubi watched the smoke from her cigarette climb into the sky. "I chased her to the ends of the earth, the bottom of the sea, the top of the sky, but she ran and ran, launched a few solid counterattacks, and got clean away. 'I don't intend to die until I complete my mission, even if I take a hit from a missile,' she told me. She was wearing this really irritating smile."

Even as she said that, the set of her own lips softened.

"After her brilliant escape from the Assassin, she was made a Tuner, in part because they'd acknowledged her skills. After that, the task of taking down

SPES was officially assigned to the Ace Detective." Fuubi's tone changed again as she grumbled, "Steal other people's jobs, will she." The grumpiness sounded manufactured.

After hearing that story, I had one question. "Did you really give it everything you had and still fail to kill Ma'am?"

Five years ago, I'd had far less experience than I had now, but she'd already been famous in the underworld as the Assassin. Had she genuinely failed in her mission again and again?

Could this woman have picked up on something in Siesta, the way I had? Was that why she'd consistently let her live?

When I asked, Fuubi said, "I'll admit I thought Huh! Interesting girl." On that uncharacteristically light note, she wrapped up the conversation. "All right. We've wasted a little too much time on talk." She stubbed her cigarette out in her portable ashtray. "I need to step out and run an errand, but you stick with the job." Keep taking down SPES survivors, in other words. She turned to go.

"Is that errand of yours a summons from the top? From the Federal Council?" On impulse, I called after her.

It could be a reprimand, since subjugating SPES was the Ace Detective's duty, and Fuubi was still helping without permission. Or it might be the other way around. Even as the Assassin, she might have been ordered to clean up the job the Ace Detective had left unfinished. They might cross-examine her for having failed in that mission, since she hadn't killed Yui Saikawa.

"A summons? No." Fuubi paused for a moment. "I'm just headed out for a little fight," she muttered belligerently, slinging her jacket over her right shoulder.