Side Story: The Boundary Between Monsters and Heroes

Side Story: The Boundary Between Monsters and Heroes

Side: None

The police station is ablaze.

The flames have spread to the surrounding buildings, bathing house after house in red. Thick black smoke rises into the night sky.

Even now, with water pouring from the fire engines that rushed to the scene, the flames continue to spread.

Yes, 'pouring.'

A fire engine connected to a nearby fire hydrant. Its hose has been thrown onto the ground, spraying water with tremendous force.

The water was strong enough to wash away the red puddle spreading beside it.

"Haa... haa...!"

A mother and child were hiding silently behind cover.

Holding her baby, a woman crouched beside a concrete block wall, listening to the crackle of her burning home.

Under normal circumstances, she should have fled as quickly as possible. But she could not move.

The scream her husband had let out before the end—she had heard it from the road. It told her that 'something' was blocking their escape.

"Waaah! Waaah!"

"B-be quiet...! Please, be quiet...! Cough, cough!"

The mother desperately tried to soothe her crying baby. But the smoke drifting toward them made her cough as well.

If they stayed here, they would die before 'something' could attack them.

Summoning what little courage she had left, the mother stood up with her baby in her arms.

And then she noticed.

"Huh...?"

A gun was floating in the air.

An object with which most Japanese people had no connection whatsoever. A slightly blood-spattered assault rifle floated through the residential neighborhood with no visible wielder.

It was a phenomenon that might be called a poltergeist. The mother could perceive only the gun. She failed to notice the creature holding it, whose reptilian face was twisted into a delighted grin.

Slowly, in a savoring motion, the muzzle turned toward the mother and child.

The mother could only draw in a strained breath and turn her back to the gun to shield her child. But it was utterly meaningless.

A standard-issue weapon diverted to 'Calamity' from a certain firearms factory, the kind still used by the regular militaries of developing nations. Military guns and ammunition could easily pierce an ordinary person's body.

As the mother desperately tried to flee, the monster—the Zmeu—slowly began to squeeze the trigger.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

But a roar reverberating through the night stopped it.

The Zmeu hurriedly turned toward the source of the voice. The other Zmeu that had been devouring human corpses nearby all raised their weapons and claws at once.

The source of the voice was a young woman.

She was flying at tremendous speed on bat-like wings growing from her waist, below the height of a two-story roof, with a massive scythe in hand.

She—'Rosso Vendetta'—ripped off her eyepatch and glared at the monsters with her mismatched eyes.

"Mooooove!"

'GAAAAAAAAA!'

The gun-wielding Zmeu all aimed their weapons at her. Without the slightest pause, they pulled the triggers.

With deafening gunshots, lead bullets poured forth. Their aim was wild, since they had received no training, but even a poor shot hits its target if enough bullets are fired.

The bullets pierced her 'Demon Armor' and gouged her soft flesh. In an instant, one eye was crushed, her cheek was torn open, one arm was severed, and her intestines spilled out.

But.

"Gnh... ooooooooooh!"

She did not stop.

Even after taking countless bullets, she did not slow down in the slightest. She raised her right arm. A bullet struck her elbow, but it regenerated immediately, and she brought the massive scythe down on a close-combat Zmeu.

'GAAAA!'

The Zmeu thrust out a spear-hand to intercept her. The scythe met it, slid between its claws, and continued straight through the gaps between its fingers, slicing all the way to its elbow.

The Zmeu staggered, spraying fresh blood and screaming. As she passed beside it, Rosso dispelled her wings.

With a wet squelch, she landed on both feet as her body regenerated.

Bullets and chunks of flesh dropped heavily to the ground, while her body regenerated from the exposed edges.

'GAA... GAAAA...!'

Even to the Zmeu, she could only be described as an 'abomination.'

"Kill... kill... kiiill!"

'GGGGGOOOOOO!'

The magic-type Zmeu surrounding her all opened fire at once. Taking the full barrage, spraying blood and flesh, she continued advancing.

She raised her massive scythe toward the nearest close-combat Zmeu.

'GAAA!'

But before she could swing it, a spear-hand tore away the right half of her face.

For any ordinary living creature, it would unquestionably have been fatal. An instant deathblow.

And yet, the body that had lost half its head moved calmly and ripped open the Zmeu's abdomen with the scythe. Its entrails spilled onto the ground as though the monster had been attacked by a giant carnivore.

'GAAAAAA!?'

'GOO! GGGGOOOOO!'

The Zmeu possessed human-level intelligence.

They practiced martial arts like humans, wielded weapons like humans, and felt fear like humans.

This was something different from them—a monster that had descended to earth to kill them.

Though bullets, claws, and fangs struck her body, she continued swinging the massive scythe without concern. She did instinctively shield her heart, but before the Zmeu could notice it, all five had already transformed into magic stones.

"Haa... haaa...!"

Breathing heavily, Rosso weakly rested the blade of her scythe against the ground.

At that moment, her ears caught the sound of footsteps. Rosso immediately raised her weapon, and the source of the sound let out a scream.

"Eek!?"

"Human..."

It was the mother from before, holding her baby. Rosso stared at her as her eyes rolled into place and regenerated.

The mother, in turn, saw the 'dhampir' directly. She witnessed the moment the skull, skin, and hair covered the exposed brain, and the eyeball that should have been lying on the ground returned to its proper socket.

"H-hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!?"

The mother screamed and ran away with her baby in her arms.

Rosso looked as though she was about to say something, but she immediately turned on her heel.

The 'mother' she was searching for was not that woman. It was her own mother.

Rosso rushed into a house several doors down from the one still burning.

"Mom!"

She opened the front door, whose nameplate read Ishiyama, and shouted. But there was no answer.

Rosso was about to enter the house, her face deathly pale, when she noticed a note on the floor of the entryway.

'Iwako. I am going to the shelter ahead of you. If you see this, flee at once as well.'

Clutching the hastily written note, Rosso let out a deep breath.

Then she immediately left the house and ran.

After running several meters, she took flight without breaking stride. Wings sprouted from her waist, and she soared into the sky.

"Mom... please be safe...!"

────Ishiyama Iwako hated her own name.

Her mother had told her that her sickly father had given her that name because he wanted his daughter to grow up healthy.

The name was far too rough-sounding, and her own withdrawn personality made things worse; she was often bullied in elementary school.

She had resented her parents for that. But they were also the ones who had gently embraced her in her loneliness.

To her, her parents were the 'world.' After one of them died in a traffic accident when she was in sixth grade, her world consisted of only one person.

No, her world had only recently begun to expand. Even so, there was still something irreplaceable────.

'GAAAAAAAAAAA!'

"Not yeeeet!"

She charged straight into the claws of a Zmeu blocking her path, letting them tear into her flank, and forcefully swung the scythe through to sever its neck.

She continued straight ahead, but she had lost too much blood. For a dhampir, a vampire species, blood was also a source of magical power. No matter how much she regenerated, every drop that left her body consumed mana.

Her regenerative ability continued to function to some extent, but everything else was nearing a halt. Rosso could no longer continue flying. She crashed down and rolled across the ground.

"Gah, aaah...!"

After rolling several times along the road, she struck her head against a utility pole and came to a stop. Her forehead split open, spraying blood. It regenerated at once, but that consumed more mana.

Staggering, Rosso headed for the shelter. Her mother was the only one who attended the neighborhood's evacuation drills, though she had taught Rosso where the shelter was.

Using the massive scythe as a cane, she moved forward. Her dhampir ears, sharpened by nightfall, caught two kinds of voices.

One was the distinctive footstep of a scaled foot kicking off the ground.

The other was...

"Shut up! You think we're going to let a monster's accomplice into the shelter!?"

A human voice, shouting angrily.

Right afterward, Rosso heard a voice she knew well.

"Wait! I'm not a monster! I'm human!"

"M-Mom...!"

Hearing the voice she had wanted to hear for so long, Rosso hurried her steps, nearly stumbling.

"You expect us to believe that!? What are the things rampaging through the city right now? Ability users? Monsters? We can't tell, but they're not human!"

"Hey, Ishiyama-san. You're human, right? Then persuade the ones attacking this place to stop."

"Don't be ridiculous! The ones rampaging are monsters! How am I supposed to persuade them!?"

Her mother had once bragged that she and her husband were a handsome and beautiful couple famous throughout the local area. Age had made her voice stronger, and it carried clearly to Rosso's ears.

But it was accompanied by angry shouts and the approaching footsteps of monsters.

"You can do it even against monsters! Please!"

"I told you, I can't! Please, let me inside! Besides, my daughter must be here soon, too..."

"That daughter of yours is the child you had with a monster, isn't she? So—"

There was a cracking sound. But it was not gunfire; it was the sound of flesh striking flesh.

"Ow!?"

"This woman hit me!"

"Shut up! That girl is human! She is the most precious treasure in the world, born from the love between my husband and me! How dare you—"

"Shut up, you monster!"

"Augh!"

A dull thud followed, then the sound of a metal gate being closed.

"Anyway, if you want us to accept that you're human, persuade the ones outside to—"

"Hey, look at that!"

Rosso reached a position where she could see the shelter at almost exactly the same moment the monsters' footsteps stopped.

Two men peered through the gap in the closed shelter door, while a middle-aged woman sat on the ground, apparently having been shoved aside.

Their gazes were fixed on the guns—guns that appeared to be floating.

Rosso saw the Zmeu grinning maliciously as they placed their fingers on the triggers.

"W-wait!"

"Ooooooooooh!"

She no longer had the strength to swing her scythe.

Throwing aside her weapon, Rosso expended the last of her mana and flew. Beating her wings, she threw herself at her mother.

Immediately afterward, gunfire rang out.

"Agh...!?"

"Eek!?"

"Waaaaaaaaah!"

Lead bullets struck the asphalt and the metal door. Mixed among those sounds were several wet impacts as they tore into flesh.

"Iwako!?"

"Guuuuuuuh...!"

Rosso's back exploded as she embraced her mother. Her shoulder was torn open, and her bones shattered.

Bullets grazed her head as well, and her consciousness began to fade.

"Run... my... child...!"

"M-Mom..."

Though the gunfire drowned out her voice, Rosso somehow tried to smile at her mother, whose face was on the verge of tears.

For some reason, an inhuman voice came through clearly to her ears.

'■■, ■■■■...'

It was an incantation.

Behind the three close-combat Zmeu standing there looking bored, the two magic-type Zmeu continued firing while muttering their spell.

Even rifle rounds had difficulty killing Rosso, who regenerated constantly. But what would happen if magic were used at the same time?

────In the parallel world, she still did not die.

Though blackened and blown away by the impact when the spell struck, she fell into a nearby river and survived.

Afterward, a barrier shielded the shelter, and they somehow held out until help arrived.

Leaving behind the middle-aged woman who had burned to death in front of the door.

A basketball-sized fireball appeared above the Zmeu's heads.

'■■■■!'

The incantation was complete, and a fiery hammer bore down on them.

Dodging was impossible. Rosso had no strength left to defend herself.

She was about to have her body cruelly shattered there────.

That was what should have happened.

A roar unlike gunfire or the impact of magic striking its target erupted nearby, and Rosso slowly turned her face toward it.

For a moment, there was silence. The gunfire had stopped, leaving only the sound of flames consuming the wall separating her and the Zmeu.

No—it was not a wall. It was a vehicle, the place where it had struck the ground crushed as though 'someone' had thrown it. The overturned vehicle had been struck by the magic and was now ablaze.

Someone dropped down between the vehicle and Rosso's group.

The newcomer planted both feet on the asphalt with a light thud, a blood-stained jinbaori fluttering in the night wind as flames and moonlight illuminated the figure.

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

His face guard shattered into pieces and fell to the ground.

"Let's fight together, Rosso-san."

With the burning vehicle behind him, the boy smiled at the dhampir.