The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (22 page)

“Huh?” Suzuno replied.

“She’s saying you shouldn’t rock the world’s balance from one side only, or else everything’ll get all messed up.”

“Dude, Chiho Sasaki, who’re you
talking
to?” The sharp-eyed Urushihara focused squarely on Chiho. “There’s no way you should know about that. Who’s on the other end of your line?”

This question, oddly enough, made Chiho rear back a little, obviously reluctant to answer—almost in tears about it, it seemed.

“Um, she…she told me to tell you ‘take a hike, you total dimwit.’”

“Huhh?! What the hell?!”

“It-it’s not me! She’s, um, she’s telling me what to do through this thing…”

The rare sight of Chiho half-hysterically trying to defend herself against Urushihara brought order back to Suzuno’s mind.

Between Chiho’s ring and what Emi had said earlier, it was clear that whoever overloaded Chiho’s power with all this holy force without any ill side effects couldn’t have been on Gabriel’s side.

But the Chiho who greeted them wasn’t under anyone’s control. She was Chiho Sasaki, the same one Suzuno knew well by now.

So she, along with whomever she had on the phone, must be here on some sort of mission. But instead of asking for an explanation, Suzuno lifted her hammer, and in the blink of an eye, brought it down.

“Wave-Rending Light!!”

“Eek!”

A shock wave whizzed past Chiho as she balled herself up out of fright. Suzuno, following her own salvo, leaped off the Dokodemo Building into the night sky. The wave released by her hammer, so deftly handled by her dainty arms, flew in from the darkness…and effortlessly blew away the four balls of light that were, just then, rapidly advancing upon Chiho’s back.

“…The Heavenly Regiment!”

“Ohhh, yeah, guess Gabriel
was
coming and all, huh?”

Urushihara and Suzuno glared upward at the four shadows in the air, in the direction the balls of light came from.

“None of you move!”

The Regiment, the soldiers of heaven and servants of Gabriel, had their swords at the ready, floating defiantly in the air as they tried to deter their opponents.

“…Chiho. Once you do what you must here, you may safely leave these men to us.”

Suzuno’s hammer remained at the ready.

“Oh, uh, but…”

“What mission brought you here, and granted you that power? …I suppose we have no time to discuss it in detail, however. And I doubt you have gained the powers of a first-tier warrior in the course of a single evening. The Devil King and Alciel are at Tokyo Tower. Emilia is at the Skytree.”

“Um… Okay!”

Chiho, glowing gold, brought both arms in front of her.

The area between her palms lit up for a moment, and then Chiho spread them out to her sides.

She pulled her right hand all the way back behind her ear, bringing her left out front at just about the same height, pointer finger extended.

Urushihara noticed that the ring on her left index finger was glowing the same shade of purple as her eyes.

Then, from thin air, Chiho produced a silvery bow of light.

Her pose, the
kai
stage of traditional Japanese archery that signified the final moment before the arrow was released, would remind onlookers of a lunar goddess from mythology if it weren’t for the flower-print pajamas and slippers she had technically just stolen from the hospital.

“Maou’s at Tokyo Tower, you said?”

She was turning to Urushihara for confirmation. He nodded. A small smile found its way to Chiho’s face.

“Seelku etulo louseetoh!”

In her voice, in a language she couldn’t possibly have understood, Chiho fired an arrow of light toward the Dokodemo antenna, just as Suzuno had done a moment prior.

It was the light of Holy Seeker, one infused with enough holy power to make Suzuno’s seem like a children’s game. She had spoken in Holy Vezian, using words that meant “Holy Seeker” in the sacred language.

Arcing streaks of gold light, each retaining a clear shape in the dark landscape, spread out from the Dokodemo Tower into the sky.

Unlike Suzuno’s, the light streamed out across the heavens, never losing its luster or brilliance as it radiated across the Tokyo nightscape.

“I’ll explain everything later! Just be careful for now!”

And with those parting words, Chiho shot like a comet east-northeast toward Tokyo Skytree.

“Halt!!”

The Heavenly Regiment attempted to give chase. They did not get far.

“You are here to fight
me
!”

In the air above the Yoyogi Dokodemo obelisk, Suzuno stood strong against the four pairs of wings.

“You aimed those spheres of holy light toward Chiho, did you not? And your eyes, as you even now attempted to give chase, were nothing I would ever call angelic. What are you possibly doing?”

Suzuno, a ferocious grin on her face, looked up at the “angels” she once prostrated herself before.

“If you act against mankind, wearing the mask of all that is holy…then it is time for me to correct this!!”

“Uh, Bell, if I could, uh, say something…”

Suzuno stopped Urushihara before he could continue from his perch next to the antenna.

“I know,” she said. “But if you attempt to lead a flock doing only what you are told to do, you never truly feel the pain of your errors. You cannot regret your mistakes in any true fashion.”

“Uh, what?”

“Their actions hurt innocent people and caused untold damage to other worlds. This is an error that no angel would ever dare commit. Thus, I must correct it.”

The four angels in the Heavenly Regiment, clearly ready for battle, couldn’t help but look confused at this.

“Sheathe thy weapon, human! We are the Heavenly Regiment, in the service of the archangel Gabriel! Thy foolish behavior goes against the will of our God and the teachings of the holy—”

“Silence, vulgar philistines!”

“…?!”

Being called “vulgar philistines” by a human clearly agitated the Regiment.

But one didn’t have to be Suzuno to break out that sentiment. They looked suitably angelic during the previous visit to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, but now, with their T-shirts and hoodies clearly visible under their togas, the way they were half-acclimating to Japanese culture presented a less-than-divine image.

Perhaps the angels knew it. Perhaps that was what agitated them the most.

“Do not speak to me about the will of our God! Our God speaks of loving thy neighbor! How would he dare allow an innocent girl, and the peaceful land she lives in, to face this pointless violence? And you, so freely using the divine as an excuse to hurt someone…”

Then, Suzuno planted a foot on the obelisk and flew into the Shinjuku night.

“Who do you think you are?!”

Hammer in hand, her internal holy power burning, the former Death Scythe of the Council of Inquisitors all but overwhelmed the four angelic servants facing her.

“Fall back, Heavenly Regiment! Your judgment begins now!”

She pointed her hammer straight toward the angels ahead, her long hair shining dully in the air.

“One! Thy master’s behavior has hurt innocent people and property. By the values of justice the Church is rooted in, I beseech thee to take proper atonement! Two! Provide one good reason why you have attempted to harm sensible, God-fearing Church members without warning! I have laid these two sins bare before the face of our God as I shall attempt to make you atone for—Hoh!”

The Regiment did not bother to listen to Suzuno’s oratory to the end.

Wordlessly, they drew the same swords they had challenged her with once before and lunged forward.

Not panicking, in full control of herself, she stopped the swords with the hilt of her Light of Iron.

These were not that same as Emi’s holy sword, Sariel’s great scythe, or Gabriel’s Durandal. These were made of simple tempered steel, completely normal in nature.

Urushihara, watching from the Dokodemo Building roof, whistled his admiration.

“Dang. Pretty intense.”

“You? The child of a human, laying judgment upon the servants of heaven? You make me laugh!”

“Oh, do I? An archangel, one formerly of your ranks, came begging to me for confession, for holy mercy! But, regardless…”

Suzuno grinned as she swung her hammer to deflect a sword away.

Using the resulting recoil to spin her weapon around, Suzuno aimed it squarely at the back of one angelic soldier.

“Star-Rending Light!”

“Krahh!”

It did not send the soldier flying. Instead, the explosive force from her body sent him up in the air, eyes lolling lazily as he fell on to the roof where Urushihara was standing.

“Let your guard down, and even the child of a human can defeat you.”

Suzuno swung her hammer three times in the air before letting it come to rest on her shoulder.

“I am using my holy force to overload my physical form. I created this move in the hopes of quelling the demon hordes, originally…but so be it. Who will be next? Or will you instead meekly accept my judgment and admit to your mistakes with—Oh, I suppose not, hmm?”

The remaining three soldiers attacked as one, the gist of the question already clear enough to them.

Their swords, coming from three different directions, were all blocked by the round edge of Suzuno’s hammer. Then:

“Wha!”

“Yow!”

The soldiers and Urushihara let out a simultaneous cry of surprise.

She wrapped up the blades in her kimono, grabbing them all with her bare hands, then kicked them with the heel of a sandaled right foot that brimmed with holy power.

Her assailants found their allegedly galvanized swords, along with most of the bones around their right wrists, thoroughly shattered.

“We had best take our garbage with us. Sharp fragments falling from this height could cause serious injury.”

Suzuno looked almost serene as she deposited the now-useless blade and scabbard shards into a sleeve.

“Now. I have given you two chances to relent. There will not be another one. The great Buddha that is found here is willing to forgive people’s sins three times. Myself, I am not so patient. Twice is all I have time for.”

She readied her hammer with both hands and let out a small breath.

“!!”

The angels had no time to react.

A holy-power-infused heel kicked through the air, making a sound like a mortar. The noise took them by surprise, drawing their attention away from Suzuno. While it did, the kimono-clad cleric in front of them suddenly veered behind their backs.

The next instant, after alighting behind them, Suzuno leaped once more, showing her own back to the soldiers in the blink of an eye. Her foes, expecting a hammer strike, blinked helplessly as they felt nothing more than a passing wind against their bare skin.

Suzuno, slicing the wind with her hammer as she used her free left hand to wrangle her hair back into a recognizable shape, returned her Light of Iron to its hairpin form like a samurai returning his sword to its sheath. Then, with a caress of her hair, she clicked it back in place.

“Dance of Light: Phoenix Transcending.”

Everything changed.

Three shock waves of holy light echoed across the Shinjuku night sky.

The three angels, unable to withstand the wave of force from within, were knocked out instantly, just as the one before them was. As a group, they fell to the Dokodemo Building roof, directly next to Urushihara.

“Do not take humans lightly. Taste the pain of living.”

“Ooh, scary.”

Urushihara was very unironically shaking.

Ignoring him, Suzuno wiped the sweat of battle from her brow. She extracted a piece of debris from under her sleeve and examined it.

“But…how am I to think of this? What
are
angels, in the end?”

There was no Holy Silver gilding the swords these warriors of heaven wielded. It was not some mystery supermetal beyond human reckoning.

It was plain old iron. A metal Suzuno interacted with on a daily basis.

“Hey! Bell! Is there something else coming?!”

Suzuno turned, puzzled.

“…?”

She looked up, folding a sleeve so that its contents did not fall out.

Something was drawing toward them, from the faraway edges of the sky.

It looked like one of the bolts of light Chiho had unleashed a moment ago. But something was accompanying it.

What Chiho unleashed differed in appearance from Suzuno’s, but it was a sort of sonar all the same. Then, perhaps, this was the “reaction”—a signal that the caster had found to indicate what he or she was looking for.

But was the signal it carried…within?

“Ngh…!”

Suzuno instinctively steeled herself. It couldn’t be.

Chiho had fired a bolt of holy force just now. That was undeniable fact. And yet.

“Demonic force?!”

The belt of golden demonic power extending above the dumbfounded Suzuno’s and Urushihara’s heads flew southeast.

“…Huh?”

As the streak passed them by, Suzuno felt something small—trivial, perhaps, but clearly malicious—lift itself from her body.

“What in the hell did Urushihara just do?”