Date and Subjugate

Chapter 4

It was still quite surreal to Shidou that he was in an airship when just a few hours ago, he was in a near-death situation when he encountered that mysterious girl in the crater.

This day has been one wild rollercoaster ride so far, and it's not over yet.

......because his little sister Kotori owes him a ton of answers to the questions that he had in his mind.

"So... what are you going to tell me about all this?"

"You call the shots, Shidou. Wouldn't want your brain short-circuiting because you can't handle so much information now, would we?"

"—you're saying I can ask whatever question about this whole issue?'

"Hah! Well, as long as those questions are relevant and are worth answering, so make them count!"

Furrowing his brows, Shidou thought about what he should ask her, which was a challenge within itself.

There were a lot of things occupying his mind right now, and Shidou was having a hard time deciding on what he wished to know first and foremost.

Initially, Shidou thought about asking why his sister is a military officer of some sort and how this all came to be behind his back.

Seriously, the thought of his cute little sister being a tough-as-nails commander all along was playing with his perception of reality.

...like, is this even his sister? Or is the real Kotori locked somewhere and this doppelganger took her place?

"Didn't you come here to eliminate me as well?"

The words uttered by the mysterious girl earlier suddenly popped up in his mind, as Shidou thought about her in particular.

Since Kotori is here, he could ask his sister anytime about how she's involved in all of this and she would be able to give him an appropriate answer.

—but the same can't be said for the girl he encountered hours ago.

Shidou had no idea where she was, if she was fine, or if she was still around.

For all he knew, she had been killed while he was out cold and he was unable to do anything to help her.

"That girl...... that girl I met earlier. Who exactly is she?"

"Ah, I knew you would ask the right question, Onii-chan."

"—huh?"

"Don't worry about it. Anyway, the girl you met earlier is what we call a Spirit. A Spirit is a being that came from a different dimension and every time they appear in our world, the place where they end up in gets blown away."

With a snap of her fingers, a video footage of the mysterious girl from earlier appeared on the main monitor, which showed the precise moment when she appeared earlier.

Shidou watched the clip and grimaced at the destruction that took place, before the girl came into view from within the crater that she created.

"You're saying that she's the cause of the spacequake earlier?"

"Yes, she was."

Shidou bit the inside of his cheek from growing nervousness, even having second thoughts about asking his next question.

".......was she also the cause of the first spacequake many years ago?"

"No. The Spirit you met earlier, codenamed 'Princess', didn't cause a scale of destruction on par with the Eurasian Sky Disaster. It was only a fraction of what the first spacequake felt like."