Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 5 - Chapter 11

The original wish. 

"Siesta!" 

I returned to the battlefield and found Siesta a short distance away from the building. Despite the little cuts on her forehead and shoulders, she appeared to be standing firmly on her feet. 

"That was quicker than I expected. I thought you wouldn’t be back in another two hours." 

…Underestimating me like always. I'd say I was two minutes late though. 

"So, how’s Yui?" 

"Yeah, she's fine…we got into a little argument at the end though." 

It seemed her opinion of me plummeted when I decided not to jump off the building, and chose to return to the building through the window. That's unreasonable. 

"I left her to Fuubi-san for now, so don't worry." 

When I went downstairs with Saikawa on my back, I came across a red-haired policewoman with an anchor-like device stuck into the outer wall of the building. I asked her to rescue the others who were trapped inside the?fruit?, so she's helping Saikawa and the others escape to safety. 

"So, Siesta, what's your current situation?" 

I look around again. Many of the buildings were wrecked and covered in vines, and the ground was so splinted, the city was basically paralyzed. 

"I guess it's round two now." 

Siesta suddenly stared sharply at one of the collapsed buildings. Soon, out of the cloud of dust— 

"SEED…" 

SEED’s armor was partially shattered, and it appeared, swaying from side to side. Apparently, for the past ten minutes or so, the?famous detective?had been going toe-to-toe with the?world’s enemy?. 

"I've got Saikawa back." 

I stood next to Siesta and said so to SEED. 

"You’ll never get Saikawa again. SEED, that’s the end of your ambitions." 

I point my Magnum at the enemy, while Siesta pointed her musket in unison. 

"—Yes, I know. That's why I had just retrieved the?seed?." 

And then, in the depths of the SEED's colorless eyes, there was a brief flash of blue light. 

…Wait, did he use the?fruit?on the large tree to extract the?seed?from Saikawa's body? 

"The vessel I’ve been seeking is here." 

And so, eight?feelers?extended from SEED's back, their tips all pointing towards Siesta at once. There were too many to shoot back with bullets, and these?feelers?would soon regenerate. We ducked behind a collapsed building to avoid the enemy's attack. 

"So I guess that's it." 

Siesta, wiping the sweat and blood from her forehead, added to what SEED just said. 

"This is a repeat of a year ago. Now that I have a heart in my left chest, and my body is currently intact. In other words, SEED is trying to set me up as a vessel once again." 

"So that's what this is about…" 

A year ago, Siesta lost her privilege to be SEED's vessel when she died. But now that she's come back to life, she's qualified to be a vessel for SEED again. 

"But don't worry. I won't become a vessel again." 

Siesta said with a resolute expression, however. 

"While you were gone, I actually noticed something." 

"Well, what a coincidence. Me too." 

We looked at each other and nodded. I didn’t know if we're both assuming the same thing, but at least we're not misguided. 

"Assistant." 

Just as Siesta got me to duck, the enemy?feeler?shattered the outer wall of the building we were hiding in. At that moment, however, Siesta sprinted toward the enemy while under the camouflage of dust. 

"—I've already seen through that attack." 

SEED's eight?feelers?tried to catch Siesta in the smoke, weaving about like serpents. Siesta, however, used them as a springboard to run through the air and approach the enemy. 

"Siesta!" 

But just as Siesta caught up to SEED, the eight?feelers?took on the shape of insectivorous plants with their mouths open, ready to prey on their enemy. And Siesta, surrounded by the eight "feelers" without any space between them, said, 

"You're no match for me now." 

She shot the?feelers?down, and they splattered into pieces. Siesta landed atop the enemy and fired another shot into SEED's neck. 

"—!" 

SEED's face winced slightly, as though it too had a sense of pain. The armor around its neck was destroyed, revealing the skin underneath. There were wounds on the enemy’s neck, in addition to the bullet marks, as though it was once slashed by a large blade. 

"Your regenerative abilities are also weakening." 

Siesta said as she hopped back with a light step, not caring about the poor foothold. 

"I've heard that you were exposed to sunlight and mortally wounded in the battle with Bat. That's why your cells' regenerative abilities aren’t longer working as well as they used to." 

Besides, Siesta says, further hypothesizing that she realized during this battle. 

"You're becoming weaker whenever you share your abilities with your comrades." 

SEED wobbled over as it heard these words, and mucus sloshed down its neck. 

"Even though you’re creating clones, they aren’t perfect replicas." 

I said, "That's what I meant.” And Siesta nodded. 

"The?Primordial Seed?creates?androids clones?by sharing its own seed. That's why the original SEED itself will continue to lose power the more clones it creates." 

Yes, while SEED continued to transfer its power, its own power had weakened as it shared its abilities with its own subordinates and sowed its?seeds?all over the planet. This was the truth that Siesta had realized only because she had engaged SEED once before, and encountered it again several years later. 

Even so, while SEED should be much stronger than ordinary?Androids?, its current physical regeneration ability had been weakened due to the sun's rays, which Bat sacrificed his life for. The resurrected?famous detective?was able to fight on equal footing. 

"—I do not understand." 

Then SEED said with its spine bent, its face facing the ground. 

"Why would I go to the trouble of losing my powers and then share them with a clone?" 

It wasn't playing dumb or trying to bluff us. It really didn't understand. 

"Because that's what you wanted, right?" 

Then I'll at least remind it of its thoughts. 

Perhaps it had forgotten that wish. 

"SEED, what do you want? Your survival instinct—" 

And so I said the hypothesis I'd derived in that building. 

"It’s really just a way to get your offspring to survive, wasn't it?" 

A moment later, SEED's?feeler?flew toward me. 

"…!" 

But Siesta stepped forward and blocked it by swinging the musket down like a sword. 

There was no sign of anger on SEED's face. The attack seemed to be a defensive reaction to the fact that it had just been attacked. 

"So, this survival instinct isn't meant for me? That it's only there to keep them alive?" 

SEED paused its attack and asked, referring to Cerberus and Chameleon. Was it my destiny to create those clones and leave them on this planet? 

"So you are implying that I went through the trouble of sharing my power with them? You know that doing so would cause my body to age? Did you think such devotion—" 

"What is strange about that? After all..." 

I answer SEED's question. 

"Aren’t you their parent?" 

SEED's unfocused eyes widened at my words. 

"That's why you shared your power, and your feelings, with your children." 

Yes, we've been mistaken all along. It's true that at this point, SEED’s devoid of emotions, but it wasn’t always the case. When the?Primordial Seed?crash-landed on Earth about fifty years ago, it entered the body of a human and learned the structure of the human body. Obviously it wouldn’t be unsurprising if SEED, which had come to mimic humans, had also acquired human-like emotions. 

In fact, there were signs of this. About a year ago, when I met SEED on that isolated island that was?SPES?hideout, SEED was angry at Chameleon for interrupting its conversation. While it was a trivial incident, it did show that it would get angry. Also, 

"Chameleon and Cerberus…both of them are born from you, SEED, you. If those?Android clones?have emotions, they must have been influenced by their parent, the?Primordial Seed (original)?." 

In other words, we’d been looking in the wrong order. The?Androids?didn't acquire emotions or personalities on their own. They were implanted emotions from their parent, SEED. 

Looking back on it now, SEED's tone and expression of emotions had become more flat compared to a year ago. There was only one reason for SEED's devotion. 

"You didn't want to survive yourself. You wanted your seeds to survive." 

It’s also a natural instinct for living things, an irresistible, fundamental feeling that all living things have, that they'd rather have children than survive themselves. But SEED didn't realize it…no, it forgot. A year ago, in that experimental facility, SEED had declared its goal to fill the planet with seeds. 

However, the more?Android clones?SEED created, the more power and emotions it lost, and it eventually lost sight of its original purpose. Its hair was drained of pigment, its eyes devoid of emotion, SEED had lost its humanity without even realizing it. To this SEED, I said again. 

"So, SEED, you never wanted to survive. You wanted your children, the?seeds?to survive on this planet." 

That was the final reasoning that Siesta and I came to in this story about?SPES?. 

"—I see." 

SEED, standing in a distant place, muttered. 

"That's my longing. A purpose I had forgotten. A reason to live, a reason to sow seeds, the survival instinct—I see, that is so." 

It understood everything, right at this now. If SEED had any emotions left to mock itself, it might have smiled sadly, spitefully. 

Siesta and I had proven our hypothesis. And for the first time, there was a mutual understanding between the?humans?and the?Primordial Seed?. We've come to understand each other, and yet, in the next moment, I realized this moment of silence didn’t mean the end of the battle. 

"To leave my offspring. If that is my mission, all the more I cannot die here." 

SEED sprouts a thick?feeler?from his back and thrusts it into its stomach. Immediately afterwards, it let out a groan and stomped forward to stop itself... 

"—Rise,?compatriot?!" 

The fluid that spilled from SEED's stomach soaked the ripped ground. And then, 

"—Gooooaaahhhhh!" 

The gates of hell were seemingly opened with this deafening roar, and a calamity emerged from the depths of the earth. Initially, some liquid appeared to be seeping out, but it gradually took shape as a gigantic quadrupedal creature. 

A black behemoth—the biological weapon?Betelgeuse?. 

The monster, which had no eye-like organs, looked at me now with a loud roar. I couldn’t move my legs, not because I was afraid of this monster. It's just that I couldn’t help but recall the scene a year ago. On that island, what that monster did to Siesta— 

"Assistant!" 

It wasn’t the distant memory, but a real voice, that brought me back to my senses. 

"......! My bad." 

Once again, I looked up at the monster, which was even bigger than before. The surface of its body was covered by some black scales that I hadn't seen before. 

"—Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" 

The monster that appeared to be about ten meters long ripped down the traffic lights, crushed abandoned cars and rushed toward us on all fours. 

"…!" 

It's not something we could intercept with a gun. Siesta and I ran as fast as we could to dodge, but Betelgeuse couldn’t stop in its tracks, and crashed into the building behind us. The monster quickly turned around again and, perhaps having sniffed out blood, immediately set its sights on us. We're running out of time, and there's no way out. 

"Assistant." 

Just then, Siesta pointed upward. 

I could hear an engine in the sky—reinforcements, perhaps arranged by Fuubi-san, or maybe the military’s officially mobilized. A number of combat drones appeared from beyond the moon, readying missile bombs. 

"…Thanks for that, huh." 

"I don’t think we’ll be safe either…" 

Siesta and I nodded at each other and sprinted again as fast as we could. 

Not long after that, we were hit by the sound of explosions and the heat of the flames behind us. I could smell burned stuff, and, 

“—Gooaaaaaahhhhhh.” 

It was such a deafening roar that my eardrums would burst if I didn’t cover my ears. It showed that the missile did indeed land on the monster. We ducked beneath a pile of rubble, shielded ourselves from the hot air, and watched as the black smoke cleared… 

"—Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" 

The monster roared again. The black scales might have withstood the attacks, or maybe it didn't care about the swirling flames, for Betelgeuse extended dozens of its?feelers?at the drones flying above. 

"If any one of those things crash on us, we're not going to escape unharmed…" 

Betelgeuse's?feelers?chased the fleeing drones through the night sky, knocking them down one by one into the distance. 

"While you still can," 

But then Siesta, right next to me, moved. 

"If only this bullet could shoot through it." 

—The red bullet—Red hot bullets. That's the same weapon Siesta used against Bat four years ago. If it hits, Betelgeuse's?feelers?wouldn’t be able to target Siesta. 

And so, while Betelgeuse's?feelers?were engaged in a battle with the last remaining drone, Siesta ran up to the enemy again. 

"Ah, Siesta!" 

But the next moment, Betelgeuse spotted an eye that should not have existed. That?feeler?was automatically tracking us…its consciousness had been on us the entire time. 

"…!" 

Siesta stopped trying to run away, and fired a red bullet at the huge enemy. The monster's black scales repelled it mercilessly though. 

"Siesta!" 

My feet were moving before I could think. 

No, by the time I shouted her name, I was already right next to her. 

"…!" 

I shielded Siesta, but there was no way I could protect her from the enemy's attack. Right when I prepared myself for my demise. 

—Zassshh, and then. 

If I had to describe it, that was the sound of a large blade or spear slicing through something. I didn’t feel any pain though, so my back wasn't gouged by the monster's claws—which meant, 

"Don't you think you should be my partner after all?" 

A girl wearing a black coat swung her red glowing saber to the side. 

Her long hair flowed in the wind. The slight glimpse of her profile was the face of the girl I wished to see again, no matter the cost. 

"Yeah, that’s not a bad idea...Natsunagi (Hel)."