Fraxinus—the cloaked airship hovering ten thousand meters above the city—was where Ratatoskr's specialists formulated their strategies, remotely guiding Shiori through an earpiece during Spirit-sealing operations.
The ship's medical capabilities and technology were also leagues ahead of the outside world. Strictly speaking, Ratatoskr had splintered off from DEM Industries in the first place.
Allowing DEM personnel aboard had precedent with Mana. But this was probably the first time an unsealed Spirit had ever come aboard.
Shiori glanced toward the bench along the corridor wall. Yimi sat there swinging her feet—too short to reach the floor—clutching a piece of matcha cake someone had brought to cheer her up. Even so, the moment Shiori drew close—the one who'd gotten in the way of everything—the little cat couldn't help but hiss.
The reason they'd dragged this barely-cooperative creature along was simple: they'd needed to bring Origami aboard for treatment, and Yimi had come as part of the package.
Across from Yimi sat Yoshino, holding a paper cup. Yoshinon guided Yoshino's hands to hold the cup steady, then pressed an orange underneath it, then pinched the cup—orange and all—and pulled it upward from the inside. The magic trick she'd learned from watching TV was complete.
"Mrrp?" Yimi grabbed Yoshino's free hand, looked left, looked right, and gave it a sniff.
Then Yoshinon, on Yoshino's other hand, mischievously plopped the cup down on top of Yimi's head. Lifting it away revealed the orange underneath.
"Stinky rabbit," Yimi said, pointing at Yoshinon.
"Hey! I'm the one who peels your oranges for you!" Yoshinon crossed her arms.
"Good rabbit." An instant reversal.
"Call me big sis."
"Big sis."
"For some reason, Yoshino seems to really like this child."
That "good big sis" had apparently struck something peculiar.
Shiori looked over at Reine. "How is Origami doing?"
"She took a blunt impact to the flank that injured a kidney. Her newly acquired CR-Unit is an upgraded DEM creation—under normal circumstances it's more than capable of handling direct combat with an ordinary Spirit."
She'd just had the bad luck of running into something as unreasonable as the Sealed One.
Or rather—a Territory was inherently tied to the will of its user. Perhaps Origami, who had been growing increasingly close to the Spirits around Shiori, no longer had the same ironclad conviction she'd held in the days when she'd sworn to live solely for killing every last Spirit.
And in truth, setting aside those like Kurumi Tokisaki—whose combat abilities were fairly limited—most unsealed Spirits tended to pull their punches against humans to some degree.
But Mukuro Hoshimiya, whose heart had been sealed away, likely had no such mercy to spare.
"That said, the extent of her injuries was based on inference from the scene. In fact, after she lost consciousness, our examination returned no injuries at all. Additionally, after Yimi appeared, Mukuro's mood crashed to an abnormally low value due to external force—though all other indices remained completely unchanged."
No need to think twice. The clean bill of health was almost certainly because Yimi had found a window to offload the misfortune onto some unlucky stranger. In its own way, that ability was just as terrifying as a Spacequake.
"To properly seal Mukuro, we'll likely need to draw on Yimi's power. But because Shiori just stopped her from continuing the pursuit, the goodwill that had barely started to recover has crashed right back down."
"Children really are creatures that adore you one moment and want nothing to do with you the next." Kotori paused. "Honestly, we've never been able to analyze her Angel at all. Just a few days ago she managed to absorb the residual Reiryoku from Yaguya... Shiori, what's wrong? I'm not blaming you, you know."
Kotori noticed her sister sitting on the bench with her head bowed, not responding.
"I was just thinking about something..."
Sealing Spirits—on one hand, to prevent Spacequakes from ever appearing again. On the other, to protect these innocent girls from being hunted by AST and DEM simply for the shockwaves they caused upon manifesting. Even with a Spirit's face, once their Reiryoku signature was gone and they lived among humans as ordinary students, AST shouldn't be able to attack a civilian just because she resembled a Spirit. But what if someday someone came along who didn't care about any of that—who kicked in the door while they were having dinner and just took them—
She shook her head, plastering over the confusion behind her eyes. Shiori looked toward her sister, who was sitting cross-legged absorbed in a book. "What are you reading? You look so focused."
"Something that reads like it was written by someone in their chunni phase—and yet somehow makes complete sense."
The book Yaguya had brought back from Yimi—handwritten in a strange script that somehow three foreign speakers who shared no common language could all read. Maybe it was connected to the true nature of the Neighboring World.
"What does it say?"
"It says all arguments can be resolved by swinging an axe."
"That sounds surprisingly... profound..."
"Is this DEM?"
Origami Tobiichi pressed a hand to her flank—where she'd taken the hardest hit—but it didn't seem to have reddened at all.
She remembered: the child Shiori had called a distant cousin had appeared out of nowhere, with a humanoid figure standing behind her—the same figure that had appeared on the same day as the Diva.
A Spirit, then, after all...
"Get lost, you absolute idiot!"
As if summoned by the thought, that sharp, grating little voice rang out at the door, directed at someone.
"Don't be mad, little Yimi—come on, let big sis give you a kiss and we'll make up right here! Look, big sis brought a lollipop."
This was Ratatoskr's arrangement: Miku Izayoi, dispatched to apologize to the little cat. The scene was not particularly dignified. An exceptionally beautiful girl was pouting—while Yimi shoved her face away with an expression of pure disgust.
Honestly, no matter how beautiful someone was, this scene had "call the police" written all over it.
"Mo~o~! Big sis can take you somewhere yummy, so don't be mad—and you said plenty of things to me too, right? So we should be even."
"Hmm." Yimi looked down at her fingers and began sincerely tallying: how many things she'd called her, and how many Miku had called her back.
Miku sat down beside her. "Just say you forgive big sis, and I'll buy you whatever you want."
"Really?" The little cat's expression shifted on the spot.
"Really~."
"I forgive you."
As for what Yimi actually needed—not food. Because Miku herself was the treat.
"Huh...?"
Miku stared at her own hands in bewilderment. She could feel her Reiryoku draining in one clean, unbroken rush—all the way to the bottom.
And it didn't stop there. Because in Yimi's judgment, forgiving someone who had wronged her was outright unreasonable—so the universe compensated. Somewhere across the ship, Shiori suddenly felt the portion of Miku's sealed Reiryoku inside her drain away by half.
"?"
Satisfied, Yimi hopped off the bench and held up a paw toward Miku. "You're not a giant idiot anymore."
"Huh? Little Yimi, what did you just do?"
Miku hadn't yet realized that "not a giant idiot" was now her permanent new designation.
"Congratulations, Host, on unlocking the achievement [From Now On, 9527 Is Your New Name]. Reward: portal energy +5%. Side note: casually assigning nicknames to others is impolite behavior. The System rewards this achievement but does not endorse such habits."
The little cat completely ignored it.
She quietly took stock of her own spiritual energy. Current Holy Corpse fusion progress: eighty percent. No qualitative change yet—but it was close.
Come to think of it, Shiori was surrounded by perfectly good sources of Reiryoku. And they were so easy to absorb.
In the monitoring room, Kotori suddenly noticed faint signs that the little cat's goodwill toward Shiori was beginning to recover.
After her exchange with Miku, Yimi set off at the unhurried, belongs-to-no-one gait unique to small children, heading toward the room where Origami was resting. She passed Reine on the way and paused to share her good mood with the ersatz grandmother:
"I'm almost ready to go fight—the First Spirit!"
Reine: "...Congratulations?"
She stepped around Reine, trotted into the room, and found Origami.
Two small hands pressed down on the blanket over her.
Knead, knead.
Cat worried you were dead.