The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 8 Page 15

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, dude, he sucks. He must not be going full bore on ’er.”

  “Is that maybe because he’s in Japan, so he doesn’t have access to his full powers and stuff?”

  “If that’s what it is, he better remove that storm barricade quick, or else he’s going back home in three or four chunks. Like, ditching the rain and stuff would let him devote that demonic force to the fight, but why ain’t he doing that? And that’s not the only thing, either.”

  Good point. It was definitely Libicocco summoning this vast storm over school grounds. Diverting that energy in Suzuno’s direction would certainly make the battle a little fairer for him.

  “Wh-what else is there…?”

  “I noticed this with Ciriatto, too. Why’s he still in demon form?”

  “Um…”

  “Like, this isn’t the kinda situation I had, where I had pretty much an infinite resource of negative energy to tap on all around me. A Malebranche leader’s, like, middle management by my standards, dudette. They ain’t got near the Devil King’s power to retain demonic energy. So how’s he still able to stay a demon while he’s wasting all this strength on the storm? Something’s totally gotta be up with that.”

  “…What’s the big deal with that? If he was going full force, Suzuno might be in a lot more trouble, besides…”

  Urushihara’s argument seemed to be supporting Libicocco more than anyone else. But as far as Chiho was concerned, the weaker the adversary, the better.

  “Naaah, I think Bell could whip his ass then, too. It wouldn’t wind up this one-sided, I don’t think, but still. As it is now, Bell’s gonna lay the hammer down on him sooner or later. I just have no idea why he’s putting himself through this.”

  “Why…?”

  He was right. Libicocco’s bewitching words made her forget about it, but he had opened up the Gate to Japan himself. It was hard to imagine he was relying strictly on a source of negative emotions he could never have counted on.

  Camio had arrived looking for Maou; Ciriatto had come for the holy sword; Farfarello had tried to bring Maou and Ashiya back home. None of the demons who had traveled to Earth had ever fulfilled their missions, essentially. What was Libicocco even trying to do?

  “I don’t like how this is all unfolding when Emilia ain’t here, either. Did that guy say anything weird to you before we showed up?”

  “Weird…?”

  The weirdest thing, without a doubt, was the little pronunciation lesson he’d given her. But there was something else. Chiho recalled the conversation of ten or so minutes ago. What did Libicocco say he was here to do?

  “Actually…he said this was the kind of ‘job’ every demon dreams of… He wasn’t here to kill people in the school. He just wanted to start a ruckus, and make it as conspicuous as possible… I think that’s what he said. But he triggered a ton of lightning, too…”

  “Oh, like those flashes just before we got in?”

  “Huh? Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t that neat, dude…”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean, there were two or three lightning bolts, but they all hit antennas and lightning rods ’n’ stuff. Looked more like a short circuit than anything.”

  “Huh? It was a lot more than just that! There was this massive bolt across the sky, and I couldn’t even keep my eyes open…”

  And yet the nearby homes were far less damaged than either Chiho or Libicocco imagined. Chiho chalked that up to Japan’s superior disaster preparedness, but…

  “I think that was all just illusory magic. The Malebranche’s really good at that stuff.”

  “I-illusory?”

  “Yeah. Like, they conquered the Southern Island so quick because they used dirty tricks, dudette. They used necromancy and illusions to conjure up whole armies of zombies and ghosts and stuff. Then when all the humans were freaking out, it was pretty much open season. I’m guessing he set it up so you were the only one to see that flash or whatever. He’d need a crapload of demonic force to pull off the real thing.”

  “…”

  “Now, the stormwall, though… That’s real. A Malebranche conjuring up stuff like that’s pretty impressive, I gotta admit. Must be one of the old-time bosses, if I had to guess. In that gang, Malacoda’s way ahead of the bunch there, but apart from him, it’s pretty much just street-hood dudes like Ciriatto. He ain’t using near the amount of spells I did, right? Maybe he’s just conserving his forces or something, but if so, I really don’t get why he won’t shut off the storm.”

  “Oh, you know…” Chiho racked her brains for an answer, impressed at Urushihara’s wholly unexpected insight.

  “He wanted it conspicuous, eh…? What was he trying to make us take our eyes off of, though?”

  “Urushihara?”

  “…Oh.”

  Chiho looked up at Urushihara’s voice. Suzuno was up there, behind the back of a nearly limp Libicocco and gearing up to hammer him down onto the school roof.

  “Hnnngh!!”

  She put her all into that swing. It was a home-run blast, sending the demon hurtling like a comet down toward Urushihara. “Ooh, that ain’t good,” he said as he raised his arms.

  “Nh! …Rgh!” Libicocco groaned as he stopped in midair. If he hadn’t stopped, he might’ve caved in the old school building’s roof with his weight. Urushihara must have cast something to prevent that.

  “Yo. Malebranche general. You know she ain’t goin’ all out on you, right, dude? I dunno what you’re hiding, but you keep that up, and you’re dead.”

  “Gnn…nnh…”

  Whether he didn’t want to talk or was too physically drained to, Libicocco could do nothing but squirm above Urushihara’s hands.

  “Whew,” said Suzuno as she gently alighted on the roof. “All bark and no bite.” She slowly walked up to Libicocco, flicking the blood off her hammer. “Now! Release the school from your accursed storm at once! If not, I will be forced to take your life, and I would like to avoid that if I could.”

  “…Kill me if you want,” Libicocco said in a tight, pained voice. “You’re human.”

  Suzuno shook her head. “I will no longer kill simply because my adversary is a heretic…or a demon.”

  “Suzuno…?”

  “You could have fought on more of an even keel if you annulled your stormwall magic. You refused to listen to my repeated warnings. You have another objective you are hiding from me, yes?”

  “…” Suzuno must have found Libicocco’s behavior just as perplexing as Urushihara had.

  “I will kill you only if I decide you have clearly and intentionally blighted the world and its people with your malice. I have learned how to be more flexible with my credo in Japan. I only fight an enemy that shows malice against me. The idea of killing yet again simply because our races or species differ sickens me.”

  “Heh…heh-heh… That ‘credo’ will come back to haunt you in the end.”

  “’Tis better to rue my betrayer than to rue the fact that I failed to believe in him. The human world has grown rather…complex as of late. I would hate to kill, only to wonder if my enemy was right the whole time.”

  Suzuno’s hair, still wet from the rain, shone in the light around her.

  “Besides,” she said, “my friends are not such weak people that a single betrayal would mark the end for them.”

  With that, she shrank her hammer, returning it to hairpin form as she inserted it into a pocket. It would be too much trouble to put it on before her hair dried.

  “…Am I wrong, Chiho?” she asked, turning around.

  Chiho was dumbfounded. She knew exactly which of her “friends” she was talking about. She had always hoped Suzuno would come out with it, but she never imagined it actually happening.

  “Y-yes… Yes, you’re right, Suzuno!”

  It made her supremely happy for some reason, swinging her fists in the air as she reflexively jumped up and down.

  “Uh, y’know�
��”

  Urushihara—who, it turned out, could read the atmosphere in a room a lot better than she thought—knew what they were getting at. He wasn’t the sort of person to accept it that easily, but he was too lazy to rain on their parade, either.

  “So what’re we gonna do about these stormwalls—?”

  Just as he attempted to move things along, Urushihara’s sight was completely taken over by an intense light.

  “Ah?!”

  “What in the…?”

  “Huh?”

  The three of them looked up at the sky in order. The roof they were standing on had suddenly been engulfed in sunlight. The rain and wind streaming from the inside of the wall stopped, as if releasing the school from its barrage, and now the sun and blue sky were visible once more.

  “…Uh, did you do something?” an accusatory Urushihara asked Libicocco. This couldn’t have been natural. The stormwall itself was still up there.

  “…”

  But Libicocco refused to answer. Suzuno, eyes still upon him, shook her head. “I do not like this one bit. What will happen next?”

  Urushihara squinted at the sun above him, its rays pummeling his face. He raised a hand up to block them. It looked like some sort of all-seeing eye, looking down upon them through the break in the storm.

  “Hmm?”

  There, in the sun, he spotted a tiny black speck, like a small piece of trash stuck to the surface.

  “Whoa, there’s something in the sun…”

  The speck gradually, ever so gradually, grew in size.

  Urushihara’s eyes opened wide—one of the handful of times each year he ever bothered to look serious. Tossing Libicocco aside, he leaped over to Suzuno and Chiho.

  “What…?”

  “Urushi…?”

  His sudden spring to action surprised them both, but before they could voice their concern:

  “Hooff!!”

  Urushihara’s wings spread out wide, shining in the light. All the two women could do was gasp. A searing flame, like a science-fiction light beam, had just crashed down on the spot Suzuno and Chiho were standing on.

  “Lucifer!!”

  And Urushihara had stopped it. His arms were out, and just as he did with Libicocco before, he had made the beam stop dead in the air a few inches over his hands, protecting the girls.

  This, however, was a daunting task. His white wings could spread out no further, his entire body shining as he strove to defend himself, but waves of intense heat were making Suzuno’s and Chiho’s hair blow back behind them.

  “Ghh… Ahh! Shit…!” Beads of sweat ran down Urushihara’s forehead. “What the hell is he thinking?! Bell! Get Chiho Sasaki outta here! I can’t hold this!”

  “Grab on, Chiho!”

  Without waiting for a reply, Suzuno all but tackled Chiho at the waist. Once she was safe in her hands, Suzuno leaped up and shot away from the roof at speeds that could very well make Chiho lose consciousness.

  “Ooh…eh…!”

  Scooped up into the skies at a rate that upturned her stomach, Chiho watched the scene below her. The roof door leading downstairs was starting to bend—a steel door, one that Urushihara’s holy magic was supposed to have sealed off. That was how hot it must have been. Was he all right, dealing with that by himself? The temperature of this gigantic flamethrower was such that the diminutive Urushihara began to shimmer in the haze underneath the beam.

  “Wh-what’s that?!”

  Suzuno had finally traveled high enough that they were free of the beam’s range. She slowed down, but even from here, they couldn’t see where the flame was coming from.

  “Suzuno! How’s Urushihara?!”

  “I don’t know! But if we go back down there, the heat would roast you, Chiho!”

  “No way…” the schoolgirl moaned.

  Then things got worse. Slowly, ploddingly, a gigantic shadow arose away from the beam. Libicocco, tossed aside a moment earlier, had revived himself.

  “Suzuno! Look!”

  “I know! I’m dropping you off in the courtyard, Chiho!”

  Suzuno turned away from Urushihara and the flame, trying to take Chiho to as safe a place as possible. But:

  “D-damn you all!!”

  Somebody was there, in midair, to stop her. Someone that, to someone who had just been fighting a demonic visitor from out of nowhere, was unbelievable to her.

  “N-no…!”

  Chiho, in her arms, began to feel desperation set in.

  “Out of our way now, Heavenly Regiment!”

  The enemy refused to budge. There were five of them there, surrounding Suzuno to keep her from descending.

  “N-not Gabriel again?!”

  The Regiment were the soldier-servants of the angels themselves. They had visited Japan on a couple of occasions, serving as Gabriel’s bodyguards.

  “They bear different weaponry,” Suzuno moaned. “Gabriel’s fighters simply fought with whatever they could find.”

  All five of them were clad in heavy, thick-looking red armor that covered their entire bodies. In his hands, each bore an identical black metal trident. Clearly, this was a different level of cohesion from the ragtag bunch Gabriel tolerated.

  Every barb on every trident was aimed at the two of them. The threat might not have meant instant death, but it was enough to make Suzuno’s mind race. There was no way a Malebranche leader and a Heavenly Regiment platoon would just happen to show up at the same time. It meant only one thing.

  “You… You’ve really done it…”

  There was a tangible frustration in Suzuno’s voice. She still had no idea what they wanted, but there was no turning away from reality now. The demons maneuvering in secret on the Eastern Island were receiving support from the heavens—the angels themselves. It was impossible to believe, and impossible to know why it was happening, but it was the only possible explanation left.

  “Suzuno…”

  “Chiho, don’t move. Ahh, curse this body! I swore to myself I would let nothing faze me…!”

  Chiho couldn’t see it from Suzuno’s arms, but the woman’s voice was now starting to be laced with tears.

  “The black tridents, and the red armor. Iron, and red. And Lucifer, damn him, he refuses to move an inch!”

  Urushihara was now almost fully swallowed by the fire hurtling toward the roof. Suzuno took the chance to curse his name anyway.

  “Archangel Camael! What are you trying to accomplish?!”

  The two of them could now feel seething rage emanating from the Regiment. The reaction made it clear Suzuno was on target. And although this angel couldn’t have heard Suzuno’s voice:

  “S-Suzuno!”

  The flame attacking Urushihara silenced Chiho’s scream as it swelled further in size.

  “Gaaahhh!!”

  As they and the Regiment watched, the little figure on the roof was blown away by the light and flash, falling to a rest just before the edge of the roof.

  “Urushihara! Urushihara!!”

  She doubted he could hear her, but Chiho just had to call out anyway.

  And that still wasn’t all of it. Libicocco, dragging his battered and bruised body, began approaching Urushihara. Chiho held her breath in horror.

  Suzuno had just taken a step further toward Chiho’s ideal world, but now… These insane new events had wounded her all over again. Did that mean everyone was going away?

  “Ngh…!!”

  Chiho looked upward, teary-eyed. Now she could clearly see the figure that had fried Urushihara up so thoroughly. Like his Regiment, he was in a red suit of armor. His body, while still not quite Libicocco’s size, was every bit the hulking mass that Gabriel boasted.

  “Hoh, man… I never dreamed you’d put up with this farce, dude…”

  The unwanted baggage of Devil’s Castle, his holy force used up and his body literally browned and ready for serving, was back to human form. Yet even in his sorry state, he never took his eyes off the sky.

  “Shiiiiit, Bell and Ch
iho Sasaki’s gonna kill me for this. I totally said you wouldn’t take action, too.”

  “…”

  Between the full-body armor and the full-face helmet, the silent figure looked more like a berserker captain than an angel.

  “So… Camael. Why the change of heart?”

  The archangel Camael ignored Urushihara’s question. He looked at Libicocco, motioning with his head.

  “…Tch.” Libicocco sneered. But he carried out the order anyway. It didn’t involve Urushihara at all. Instead, he spread his tattered wings and began flying straight for Suzuno and Chiho.

  “Sorry, you little ant.”

  Suzuno couldn’t move, hampered in all directions by the Regiment. And unlike their private one-on-one meeting earlier, the look Libicocco gave Chiho was more awkward than anything else.

  “Give it. You know the score.”

  Chiho looked down upon Libicocco’s outstretched palm, scarred and missing a claw.

  “The Yesod fragment. I know you’ve got it. Give it, and all of us are out of here. Now.”

  She found herself bringing a hand up to a pocket on her uniform.

  “Don’t do it, Chiho!!”

  The subsequent scream from Suzuno made her freeze.

  “Don’t give them any more of the Sephirah! Remember what Gabriel and Raguel did to us!”

  “B-but, Suzuno, Urushihara’s been—”

  “…If worse comes to worst, Chiho, I’ll take your fragment and swallow it if I have to.”

  “And you think we demons would hesitate to dissect a human if need be?”

  Chiho now found herself in the middle of a pitched war of words.

  “It would beat simply handing it to you, any day of the week!”

  Suzuno’s voice was clearer now, more resolute. But the bravado was pointless now. All the two of them could hear in response was a cold, blunt command.

  “…You heard her.”

  It was not aimed at the shouting Suzuno.

  “Ngh!!”

  “S-Suzuno?!”

  Chiho could feel a dull impact run across her body. It was accompanied by a throaty groan from Suzuno.

  “Ah…?!”

  Then she saw something horrifying out from the corner of her eye. One of the Regiment’s spears was sticking out of Suzuno’s stomach.