Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Thirty Eight - Hakushoku zatsuon [白色雑音]

Footsteps reverberated endlessly through corridors, back and forth in a disorientating haze of movements. It felt like white noise in the back of her mind, much like that whenever she couldn't focus right on what was in front of her. It was entirely dull as if she were trapped underwater, and how she hated that feeling more than anything else in the whole world.

Her eyes was trained upon the figures jogging ahead of her, unwavering in every respect, and yet her thoughts were as far away as they could possibly be. She could scarcely pick up on her surroundings as she followed everyone.

Did the God of Death learn through hacking the mobile form of the Fixed Artillery that there were others connected to the class worth use? Did he learn that her two siblings were right there a stones throw away from the school? When one stopped to consider just how resourceful this God of Death was, Amaya didn't feel that all the security Shigure had placed on the premises would mean anything against this particular brand of psychopath.

For the first time in the whole duration of her stay in the E-class of Kunugigaoka, she was honestly fearful for the damage its association could cause them. She didn't know what was worse, a madman hell-bent on capturing her for experimentation, or a psychopath hitman who had the sheer capacity to do almost anything if his whims deemed fit.

She'd never believed anything could ever truly contest Katsuragi Toji's place of volatile danger inside her head, and now that she was faced with it, she didn't know how to handle that.

The Rescue team veered down a corridor to the right before long, which appeared to end in a single door leading onward. It turned out of course that the door had been locked, Kataoka discovered as she tried in vain to open it.

'This door probably leads to the room where Bitch-sense'is captured, providing he hasn't moved her, yet.' Kataoka surmised as she crouched down in front of the door to appraise the lock for a moment. 'We could probably bust a lock like this with one of Takebayashi's explosives. Amaya-san, can you watch the corridor while we get in and rescue Bitch-sensei? This is going to be noisy.'

Amaya didn't give an obvious response, though she did step back a few paces to turn back so she could see down both ends of the corridor.

'What do we do?' Okajima questioned apprehensively from somewhere not too far from Amaya's position at the corner. 'It looks like Team A's in trouble, so maybe us guys should--'

'Don't panic. That's just what he wants.' Kataoka instructed. 'There's no change in the fact that we win if we defeat the "God of Death". He'll come attack us from somewhere eventually, that's when we turn the tables on him. We have some heavy-hitters here, too, you know.'

'But... how do we do that without Team A?!'

'These explosives are no good against Humans, but they're plenty useful as traps or threats.' Kataoka responded.

Though Amaya was skeptical about how good they would be as threats.

How could they manage that to begin with? Were they going to ask the God of Death to sit perfectly still while they attach them to his various limbs, arm them, and then detonate them?! Not likely!

'Also, we have these tear-gas bullets Okuda-san made. Just hitting someone near the face seems like it'll cause panic.'

Amaya froze up at that remark.

Okay, that would probably work well, or in her case, a bit too well.

'Amaya-san, don't you have a gun or a taser at least?' Came Kurahashi's remarkably more subdued voice from a few paces away.