Courage is—
“Right here in my heart!”
I jump. Straight onto the roof of the moving train.
“WOOOOOAH! KUROMARI-CHAAAAAN!”
No way I’d land cleanly. I tumble roll roll roll toward the back of the car, nearly falling off—but at the last second, I grab the edge and pull myself up.
With the wind whipping around me,
I wobble across the roof toward the front car, where Vice Captain Yanagishita is waiting.
“Are you an idiot?”
She turns and glares.
“Do you really like Shirakawa that much?”
“Well, I do like beautiful women~”
“Shirakawa and you—you’re both children.”
She sighs.
“What’s the point of taking the Holy Grail to Kyoto and turning Japan into a thousand-year empire? You think a ‘prosperous nation’ means happiness for individuals? The higher-ups are rotten. They’re the only ones who’d benefit.”
“But wasn’t your job all about serving the country?”
“I did it to survive. Swearing loyalty to organizations or nations? That’s outdated. Totalist nonsense. Everyone’s sick of it.”
“So you’ll be happy if you take the Grail overseas?”
“At least we’d never want for money. We could use the angels’ power for ourselves—no orders, no chains. True freedom. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Want me to make you an offer?”
“Oho~! That ‘better world’ pitch? Freedom to chase your dreams? Yeah, that’s trendy these days!”
But—
I step toward her.
“If you ask me if ‘doing what you love’ is the answer… nah, I don’t buy it!”
She swings her sword—I block with my umbrella.
“Love or hate, freedom or chains, democracy or monarchy—none of that matters!”
She sweeps at my legs. I leap over it, landing perfectly despite the train’s motion. Wait, why didn’t I get thrown backward? Weird~.
“C’mon, love’s better. Freedom’s better.”
“Still hung up on that, huh?”
I grab the briefcase’s handle.
“Listen—what really matters isn’t any of that.”
We wrestle for the case, slashing at each other with sword and umbrella.
“Any circumstance, any ideology—it’s fine.”
Because—
“What truly matters is Compassion,Responsibility, Respect, Discipline and courage! Oh, and even if I get the Grail, I won’t hand it to Shirakawa. It belongs to someone else.”
“Are you insane?”
Vice Captain Yanagishita’s face twists in anger.
“Lucifer tried to replace God.”
“Sounds just like Her Majesty~!”
“You want to turn the world into hell?”
“Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a three-day weekend paradise~”
“I’m done with you.”
As the train passes under a bridge, she shoves me off and leaps onto it, briefcase in hand.
“I’m saving Kuromari-chan! KUROMARI-CHAN, HANG OOOON!”
No fancy rail-vaulting for me—I just jump from the train, crash onto the bridge, and scramble up.
“I hate guys like you.”
She looks down at me.
“If you’re gonna fight, take it seriously!”
Her sword comes down—I block with the umbrella.
“Your ‘master’ pissed me off with the same attitude.”
“Wow, Vice Captain Yanagishita, you act all cool and logical, but inside you’re just an edgy loner girl, huh?!”
“My mission was to assassinate Shirakawa.”
From the start, the faction plotting to betray the organization saw Captain Shirakawa—strong, unyielding against evil—as a problem.
So they sent her: a skilled, assassination-specialized Vice Captain.
“Shirakawa said she could sense people’s true hearts.”
“All she sees is ‘purity’. Traitors, ordinary people—it’s all the same to her. How noble.”
That day, Vice Captain Yanagishita moved to kill Shirakawa—until Her Majesty saw through her. By the riverbank, She warned: “Don’t.”
“That woman knew everything from the start.”
“Her Majesty never wastes words~!”
Of course, she tried to silence Her. And got wrecked. Yet She spared her.
“Know why?”
She grits her teeth.
“She said, ‘Show up to the damn drinking party.’”
“THAT’S HER MAJESTY FOR YOU!”
“Quit idolizing Her!”
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT gadgetizedpanda.net
(Also, those members of the Angel Squad Her Majesty gunned down nightly? All traitors trying to silence Her.)
“They were the bad guys! Good—my ‘humanism lectures’ were pointless! Her Majesty’s just a big-hearted, Osaka-style goofball!”
“Enough with the ‘Her Majesty’ crap—so annoying!”
Vice-Captain Yanagishita dashed to the opposite side of the bridge and leapt onto the last car of a train passing underneath. Of course, I chased after her and jumped down too.
“Well, fine. Thanks to that, Shirakawa made her move, and that woman got dragged far away from the Holy Grail along with her.”
Apparently, Her Majesty was currently in Okinawa—still impaled by that spear.
“Okinawa—!?”
“Like we could just leave her near the Holy Grail.”
The fact that Captain Shirakawa was now far away worked out perfectly for the Director’s faction.
“Tch, look at me, getting all worked up…”
Vice-Captain Yanagishita no longer seemed interested in fighting me.
“I get it. You’re trying to go somewhere, aren’t you, Yanagishita san?”
“Sharp as ever.”
The next instant, a helicopter appeared behind her. It had flown in low, skimming the ground before rising beside the train.
The door slid open, and Yanagishita leapt inside—planning to escape with the Holy Grail.
As the chopper began ascending,
I stood there, battered by the rotor wash, and thought:
If I acted exactly as my imagination dictated… what would I do?
The answer was obvious—
“Like this!”
I hooked my umbrella’s handle onto one of the helicopter’s skids and swung myself up.
The helicopter kept rising higher and higher.The city buildings and skyscrapers below kept shrinking away beneath my feet.The wind was strong—so strong that I started thinking maybe this was a really bad idea.But I didn’t want to die, so I clung desperately to my umbrella.
Apparently, the helicopter was heading out to sea.
Its destination was a warship anchored in international waters.
Since we had taken off from around Tokyo Station, the coastline was approaching fast. Once we were over the ocean, I’d have no chance of getting the Holy Grail back. So I kept hanging on and started swinging my body from side to side.
Turns out helicopters are actually pretty delicate. Just from that little movement, it started to tilt. Then, right above me, a door opened, and Vice Captain Yanagishita stuck his head out.
“Persistent little pest!”
Yanagishita swung a sword at me, but of course, Yanagishita was too far away for it to reach. Then, without missing a beat, Yanagishita pulled out a firearm and started shooting at me. I curled myself up tight. The helicopter tilted even more.
“Don’t you get it? If we crash, you’ll die too!”
“Maybe I’ll open my umbrella and float gently to the ground. You never know~?”
“Go back to school and study some physics!”
One of Vice Captain Yanagishita’s bullets hit the landing gear. It ricocheted upward—and smashed into the rotor. Black smoke began pouring out of the helicopter, which tilted sharply and started losing altitude. We didn’t make it to the ocean.
Right before we did, the chopper plowed into the roof of a massive factory.
Of course, I couldn’t just open the umbrella and land all soft and fluffy, but just as the roof came close enough, I jumped.
But the helicopter crashed too. I got caught up in the impact and fell straight through the collapsing roof, tumbling down into the factory below.
When I came to, I was lying in a pile of shattered tiles and rubble.
I lifted my head.
The place was a giant steelworks on the waterfront.
A maze of conveyor belts crisscrossed the space, all loaded with scrap metal rattling along toward multiple blast furnaces.
From the mouths of the furnaces, molten iron glowed red-hot, oozing and bubbling like lava. And right there—
In the very heart of that factory—
Vice Captain Yanagishita was pinned to an iron pillar protruding from the ground, her chest pierced straight through the center.
She looked almost like an artistic installation.
Blood streamed down.
Even with an angel’s blessing, revival from that state seemed difficult. Her face remained hollow as she struggled weakly to free herself from the pillar—but it was too long, leaving her helpless and in agony. Except—
She still held Kuromari-chan in her hand.
“……You know what?” she said, blood spilling from her lips.
“Ordinary immortal can’t use the Holy Grail.”
“You saw it at the Metropolitan Government Building, right? That immortal who burned their eyes out and died.”
As she spoke, she gripped the crown atop Kuromari-chan’s head.
“But I can use it. It’s originally the power of the Archangel Lucifer. With an angel’s blessing, I will use it.”
Then she uttered something—words that were not human.
The crown on Kuromari-chan’s head glowed, split apart, and reshaped itself into a size fit for a human head.
“I never planned to use it myself… but I guess I have no choice.”
Vice Captain Yanagishita carelessly tossed Kuromari-chan’s motionless body aside and placed the separated crown upon her own head.
The next instant—a massive pillar of light erupted.
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