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All three of them…They finally got the last of the three fresh bodies into this ‘School Bus’: a young girl with a delicate body, hiding her face under a strange, green tomato mask.
Tsubasa was thankful for that mask; carrying the first two with Shouma, she couldn’t help but throw up. As with almost any young girl from the TRC, she’d never handled a corpse before…the two of them could feel the warmth draining from the bodies they carried with every step…time was of the essence, if these three were really to be revived. That’s why Takumi and Hiruko told these two to get them back to the Last Defense Academy on the double. But…
“I…I know I haven’t been much help, since I’m not strong, but now that we’ve got them all secure…” Shouma’s eyes were transfixed on the outside world beyond the garage door. “Even if pond scum like me can’t do much to help, I don’t want to leave those two behind.”
“What are you saying, Shouma?” Tsubasa’s voice shook more and more with every word. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy from the acid burning away at her throat.
“I’m sorry! I-I think I’m going to go after Takumi and Hiruko! Forgive me for asking, but please get these three back safely!” Shouma shouted, while bowing his head deeply, and then ran out of the bus before Tsubasa could even protest.
It had only been one week since Tsubasa’s peaceful life at the TRC had ended. As if being thrown into a war with strange aliens wasn’t enough to take in, this situation could really break her. She sat behind the wheel, trying not to think about how she was alone in a bus with the bodies of three people her age, or how three others had left her behind to do this. How could they be so cold?
No, that wasn’t right…they were risking their lives to save two more. Tsubasa knew that, but having this pressure on her…it wasn’t fair; she could feel her nauseous reflex kicking in, but despite all she had to stomach, there was nothing left in there. She was running on empty.
But the bus had a full tank. She had no choice but to floor it until that needle was pointing to ‘E’, too.
—————
The bus finally came to a halt before a towering wall of splendid, violet flames. She’d grown used to the sight of this unbelievable, living barrier over the past week, but seeing it from the other side gave her an extra shot of anxiety. She had no idea what it looked like on the other side, since Sirei had stopped communicating with her. For all she knows, everyone is wiped out, and the place she’s staying is gone. If that’s true, then she might be the only human left…Her heart starts spiking with these what-ifs as the bus begins extinguishing the wall of Eternal Flames, making a new road for her.
For a relief, Last Defense Academy is still standing. But it’s a rough scene; there’s School Invaders everywhere, and the other students are vastly outnumbered and in a rough shape.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re back!” Sirei finally is able to radio a response through to the bus, but Tsubasa has no time to respond.
She puts the bus into park, behind enemy lines, and grabs the nearest corpse: a young man with dyed blue hair and an eyepatch. According to Takumi, his name was ‘Omokage Yugamu’. She drags him by the arm out of the bus, and watches as a Corpse Recovery Drone speedily arrives and seals the boy’s body in a coffin. One down…
“Kawana? Is it just you? Where’s Sumino and the others!?”
She tunes Sirei’s voice out, choking back tears, and continues with the next body, even as her shaky arms refuse to obey her mind. Whatever adrenaline was keeping her going is starting to crash, despite the situation being worse than ever. Her body feels like it’s being pushed to the brink from all the stress, even though she hasn’t even fought yet. This girl, with the long black hair, must be ‘Magadori Kyoshika.’ The drones take her away too; she can only hope for the best.
“Hey, Kawana! Answer me! What are you doing!? Get over here and help out, hurry!”
Lastly, that one with the tomato mask. She felt more like a doll than a corpse at this point, but it was surely the body of ‘Oosuzuki Kurara’. As soon as she finished dragging her off the bus, she collapsed on top of her, nearly interfering with the drone’s collection of the dead. She feels her brain start to turn to static; she pushed the tank past empty now, after all. But if her engine runs out here, she’s stranded behind throngs of invaders. Maybe if she dies, she’ll be revived in time to change the battle…she couldn’t believe her last thoughts are ones already so desensitized to the idea of dying.
“Haaanh, get off me, you creep!”
But the sound of a voice jumpstarted her heart. Was that…Darumi? Tsubasa clutched her head and looked around, dizzily rising upwards on her shaky legs. Someone strange and humanoid in a black cloak chased Darumi around relentlessly; had she seen that figure before? They seemed like a huge threat.
Suddenly, all that adrenaline that she thought was gone throbbed in her veins. Maybe it’s just the hemoanima reacting…so she decided to use that, and summoned her ‘Class Weapon’: a rugged black automobile with a horse logo on the hood. Once again, she’s behind the wheel, but this time, she’s moving to save a life not yet lost. Was this what Takumi, and Hiruko, and Shouma were feeling back there? And yet she was the coward that got to escape, and she was still feeling badly for herself…These thoughts get left behind at the bus stop as she pushed the car’s pedal to the medal, plowing into the hooded figure with the spiked front bumper of her Class Weapon.
The body shrieked and went flying, and it hit Tsubasa all at once that she may have just committed vehicular manslaughter. But somehow, the other person got back up, blood leaking from their arm. Her hood had fallen down, revealing a tall, white-haired person she’d never seen before. But she leapt backwards with near-superhuman strength, and makes a retreat. Where’s Darumi!? Was she okay!?
“Tsubasa…”
Darumi had fallen to her knees, her looking as drained as Tsubasa felt. She forced the door to her vehicle open and spilled out, dry-heaving as she clambered over to Darumi’s side. She collapsed upon reaching her side, and Darumi’s weak, somewhat limp body supported her weight with the strength of twiggy tree sprout. Darumi felt only slightly more alive than that Kurara girl at this point, but feeling the pulse of her blood and hearing her labored breaths were enough to assure her that she had made the right choice. At least, she hopes she had. If she hadn’t made it, would that woman have kidnapped Darumi? Or worse…? She couldn’t be sure. But all she wanted to do now was rest.
“Waaah, T-Tsubasaaa…That was so cool! That weirdo stalker had me on lock, I thought my ass was cooked!” Darumi wailed, but Tsubasa wasn’t really sure she could process her words right now. “Seriously, like, I think you just tripped a romance flag or something!”
Unfortunately, for the two of them, the fight wasn’t over. Sirei was yelling something at them, too, but Tsubasa especially didn’t have it in her to listen to that strange, egg-like robot. There was a lot to explain, after all; about the three dead students, the missing two, and the three of their own that stayed behind. She could only hope the three that she brought would be revived in time to turn the tides of battle.
—————
“Up and at ’em, troops! Time to rise and shine!” Sirei’s voice echoed hollowly throughout Tsubasa’s tiny room. “Get ready for your ninth day of active service here at Last Defense Academy!”
The morning wakeup call was meaningless today. Tsubasa hadn’t slept a wink last night. The rotor in her mind was spinning nonstop, and she had no cooling fan like a motor to calm her down. She was alive…well and truly alive, but she’d never felt less like it.
The aftermath was almost as bad as it could have been. The three students, Yugamu, Kyoshika, and Kurara had been revived and they helped rescue the school, but…they had been pretty cagey about the loss of Nozomi and Moko. Yugamu, for his part, gave Tsubasa his proper thanks, but it only made her feel even more guilty. Sirei had chewed her out for not convincing Takumi to come with; apparently the trade of the three from LDA for the three from 2LDA was unacceptable for him. Even the others seemed to not know what to say to Tsubasa…
And she understood. She was the one who ran away, and left her comrades to die trying to save everyone. Had she really made the wrong choice? Takumi had told her to do it, and she listened…should she have stayed behind like Shouma? The guilt was eating her alive; she lived, and the others, she was sure, had given their lives to let that happen. According to Sirei, all communication with Second-to-Last Defense Academy had ceased; in other words, Takumi had failed to find that other robot, ‘Nigou’. It was likely that they had all passed in the struggle, but Takemaru said he was going to lead a team to go searching today.
Of course, Tsubasa wasn’t invited to that team. She was on express orders to rest and recover…which she was doing a very poor job at. It’d take more than lying in bed alone to repair a broken mind, and more than food to fill an empty body; especially since she spent the entire night in her bathroom vomiting it all up. Never before had she experienced this desire to just…rot away.
But she can’t pity herself. Not when those three that she’d gotten to know the past week…didn’t even have the right to have any desires anymore.
Ding-dong.
Someone came to her door. Probably Sirei, to check on her and bring her more food as though she had any chance of bringing it down.
Dingdongdingdongdingdongdingdong!
She was resigned not to answer the door, but the incessant ringing manages to whirr even her tired gears back into shipshape. Somehow, Tsubasa’s curiosity was still a part of her that was very much alive. Sirei would’ve come in through the window by this point, so who was it?
“Ohhh, hey Tsubasa!” It was Darumi, a big grin on her face; it seemed she’d recovered well.
“Darumi…What’s up?” Tsubasa mustered the slightest of smiles in response, trying to pass as some semblance of ‘normal’, even though she knew there was no point to it.
“I just wanted to check on you! Wow, you look like, worse than me. Like, you look dead.”
Something about that almost made her chuckle; she hit the nail on the head and hammered it in.
“Well, I’m not at my best…” Tsubasa turned her head a little to the side, worried about the smell of her breath and how poorly she might be presenting herself. It was a strange self-consciousness she’d never felt before around Darumi.
“Obviously not! Anyway, most of the others are gone, and everyone else is really on edge. They’re kind of bumming me out.”
“You mean…you’re not bummed out? How do you have so much energy after yesterday…?”
“Oh, I run on nothing but sugar and no sleep already. So this is just how it always is for me. Besides, I know you’re way worse off.”
“Yeah…I think I just need to be alone for a bit.”
“Well, you’d have no problem with that, because the others were talking about you, and-”
Tsubasa cut Darumi off. “Great, just what I needed…”
“Well, I was gunna say, you wouldn’t have a problem with that, but I don’t want to leave you alone right now.”
“What do you mean…?” Tsubasa sighed; her brain wasn’t running optimally enough to decode what Darumi was on about.
“I mean…I wanted to say…thanks. Really.”
Tsubasa was a little shocked; she’d almost forgotten how she saved Darumi yesterday. Although such genuine thanks as response felt…unbecoming of the Darumi she knew.
“If it wasn’t for you, I think I would’ve died. Like, died-died. That creep really just wouldn’t leave me alone. You know?”
“I…I’m surprised. I mean, you always have such macabre humor, and seemed happy to fight…”
“Sure, but, at the end…I guess I was scared of truly dying, too. Or something.”
Tsubasa was silent. Scared of truly dying…that was how she felt, too: scared. It was a simple word, but it described it just as well as something more complex.
“You were scared too, right? But you saved me anyway. Kyohoho! Never thought I’d see my life saved by a horse!”
“A horse?”
“Like, on your car! I hate horses.” Darumi suddenly gestured slitting her own throat, grimacing as though Tsubasa was the scum of the earth. “But maybe I like them juuuuust a little more now~”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to make me feel better or not, Darumi…” Tsubasa exhaled heavily through her nose, and closed her eyelids as her eyes rolled back a little.
“I’m just trying to be honest, you know? I’m really grateful. Even if the others think it’s an unfair trade, losing the others just so you could save me…I’m glad!”
A trade…? Did she have a choice in the matter…? And was it right to trade five lives for four?
But here Darumi was, genuinely thanking her regardless of the logistics. It did make her feel…a little less numb.
“Look, you’re on the verge of ending up like me if you just stew in your room. And you don’t wanna be me. So let’s go watch some exotic porn or something!”
“What…!? P- We’re not doing that!” Heat returned to Tsubasa’s cheeks…no, her body. Her flustered response and knee-jerk reaction…did Darumi just whack her fuel injector back into service?
“Okay, fine. But you’re coming with me,” Darumi suddenly grabbed Tsubasa’s hands in hers, and pulled her out the door, stepping backwards and nearly falling down the steps of the balcony.
“Where are you-”
“To the cafeteria! I’m getting you some of the candy I eat that’s softest on my stomach. C’mon!”
Maybe she had judged Darumi wrong from the jump. She was someone afraid of dying, just like her. Someone who would stay up all night, throw up, and cry…just like her. And Darumi had enough strength to reach out to her…She thought Darumi was a careless girl with no tact or any concern for other’s mental states, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. And for the first time since arriving at the academy, Tsubasa didn’t feel…alone.
It was an unfair choice. An uneven trade. But with Darumi’s help, maybe she would be able to keep on living for the five who couldn’t.