He had defeated Black Cat. The phone call just a bit earlier meant that a member of FeTUS had had her life entirely remade.
Yes, it was just as Enju had said:
“FeTUS is done for.”
Chapter 5
“Ahhhhhh!”
Ange had arrived below the parking lot for the SeeDWalK shopping mall.
Technically, she was at a secret facility Machina had made in the space below the parking lot. At this hour, the large facility was closed, so no one was there and it
was safe to shout loudly underground.
A space of nearly 50 square meters had been hollowed out 18 meters belowground. Ange had started using it as a training ground.
The tungsten walls were lined with superconductive material and were magnetically controlled, so the room could survive temperatures of several million degrees for a short period. She never could have come by something like this without FeTUS’s assistance.
Metatron’s firepower normally came at the cost of burning away her own life, but
Adam’s command had carved the inability to kill herself into the core of her being. So she had recently started taking advantage of that by trying to control the firepower on a level just barely below the bursting point.
Metatron’s flames possessed the same traits as normal flames, so they were more difficult to control than an angel’s flames that only burned her enemies. That meant she needed a facility that kept the flames from spreading even when she was only training.
“Hahh!”
Wings the same gold as the sun burst from her back like jet streams.
She had learned to release Metatron’s power quite freely.
This was all thanks to Machina who had provided this location that covered already
heat-resistant walls with heat diffusion waves.
——Ooze
“Ah?”
——Gloop! S-sizzle, sizzle!
“They’re melting!? Ibekusa! The walls are melting! There’s not enough power!”
The crucial heat diffusion waves were not strong enough. The heat had gone well past the walls’ melting point of nearly 4000 degrees, so she would be buried alive in magma mixed with metal at this rate.
“Tch!”
There was no response to her calls, so Ange had no choice but to eliminate her flames and make a jump.
She broke through the ceiling and arrived aboveground. She felt heat on her head where the melted ceiling had gotten on it.
Machina stood blankly in the asphalt parking lot with a memo pad in one hand.
In exchange for supplying the training facility, she was allowed to record data on Metatron to create weapons to resist it. So the memo pad was fine. However…
“What do you think you’re doing Ibekusa!? I was nearly buried alive! If you’re declaring war here, I’m ready to go at any-…”
“…”
“…Ibekusa?”
Ange was furious at what she thought was an obvious attack, but Machina just stood there while full of openings and showing no sign of counterattacking.
Machina looked dazed.
She finally reacted when Ange waved a hand in front of her face.
“Ah, are you done, Jiyuuni-san? …Hm? I thought I told you to call for me when you were done. If you break a hole in the ground, it will change the color of the asphalt and someone might notice the oddity.”
“Y’know…”
She did not seem to have meant any harm, so Ange’s shoulders slumped down.
When she realized her mistake, Machina bowed down in apology and they ended the day’s training there.
While training, Ange wore only her angelic underwear that was more difficult to burn, so now she put on some other clothing she had prepared.
“Something happened. You always seem out of it, but this was-…”
She trailed off there and changed her mind.
“No. You’ve been weird a lot recently.”
“Nn…”
“I mean, you were always weird, but your weirdness has gone up by like 50%.”
She sat down on the spot.
There were no cars in the large parking lot and a refreshing wind blew directly down on them from the sky. It felt good on her heated skin.
“…”
Ange immediately regretted what she had said.
Mentioning that Machina had been weird recently made her think about the biggest sign of that weirdness. And after she had been avoiding the subject while trying to pretend it did not bother her.
She thought about dodging the issue, but…
“Something happen with Stupid M-Mutsuki, didn’t it?”
She ended up addressing it.
She focused on the kissing commotion between Machina and Mutsuki.
“N-not that it matters to me since it’s completely harmless. It’s just that…if there’s something there, just tell me. It makes me curious. As his bodyguard.”
“…”
Until today, Mutsuki had dealt with the issue simply by making sure they did not do it where anyone could see them, but she got to the heart of the issue while he was not around.
(Although I’m not sure what to do about this, whatever she might say.)
She knew that, so she was already blushing.
“The thing is…”
Machina opened her mouth.
She trailed off but then opened it again. She was probably going to tell Ange the whole story of whatever had led to this.
And in a way, the answer Ange received was a helpful one for her.
Because it was something she could not respond to as a guardian angel.
“The Holy Grail is complete.”
“!”
“We were attempting to create a womb that matches as closely as possible to
Eve’s and it has finally adapted appropriately.”
“…I-I see.”
The angel somehow managed to respond calmly despite gasping at how Machina held her lower stomach.
She had a lot of thoughts on this matter, but…
“Science really does make a mockery of the natural order of things, doesn’t it?”
She first gave the rational response necessary of an angel.
“Kurosaki, was it? The ones creating the artificial demons. You’re not much
different from them.”
“Science is the power of progress given to humanity. If there is a god who defined the natural order, then expelling the bearers of knowledge was the same as giving the world the possibility of encroaching on his territory. And if the natural order is perfect, then our mockery of it is no more than another part of that natural order.”
“You always have an argument, don’t you?” Ange shrugged. “Well, I’m not going to bother you about it. Angels are the arbitrators of the commandments, so it’s not like I know what to do about something that’s unprecedented from the creation of heaven and earth. In the end, the choice is Stupid Mutsuki’s.”
“I see.”
They both fell silent for a bit.
She could not just ignore this, but she could not interfere either. Angels were meant to correct abnormalities, but attacking FeTUS now would create an abnormality. Even if she made a request to the will of heaven, it would be rejected in the deliberation phase.
“…”
She had only learned to use Metatron’s power with Machina’s assistance.
But she could not deny that Machina might be the first person she used it against.
“A-anyway, what are you going to do now?”
She was more curious about something else.
“If you have the womb to match, then is the next step to get, um, Mutsuki’s…”
“The implantation of the child will presumably come next. The birth of a true descendant cannot be rushed.”
“I-I see.”
Machina readily answered as she was wont to do and Ange blushed again.
They were keeping it from Mutsuki, but the discovery of Adam and the completion of the Holy Grail were only the necessary steps toward creating a child from the two.
That meant the implantation – the impregnation – had to come next.
Ange was unsure how to respond to the idea of Machina and Mutsuki having a child.
And she was curious about something else too.
Machina and Mutsuki had been kissing more than necessary recently, but they showed no sign of the crucial “baby-making”.