Probably neither Soga Yura nor Su Yuzu had seen it coming.
The Asaba Maki they had spent so long worrying about turned on her own side, publicly, right there in the Procuratorate.
No—
Perhaps it didn't even count as turning on anyone.
After all, the last time Su Yuzu went to the hospital to visit Asaba Maki and happened to run into Tsukimisato Somehana, Asaba Maki had already refused Tsukimisato Somehana's invitation.
The words she gave Tsukimisato Somehana that day — "Everything she is stopped belonging to her a long time ago" — hadn't been a polite excuse.
Asaba Maki had simply been stating a fact.
From the moment Su Yuzu carried her back out of the Edge of Aberration.
From the moment she heard that the one thing she still cared about, Zero, was living well under Su Yuzu's roof.
Everything she was had, in truth, already belonged to that girl.
Maybe Su Yuzu didn't care one way or the other whether the Soga clan's research institute happened to employ a researcher named Asaba Maki. And maybe Asaba Maki could never bring herself to say a word to the demon who had devoured everything she had.
But the individual known as Asaba Maki had long since been branded with the name of Soga.
Tsukimisato Somehana looked at Asaba Maki, her face unreadable, then turned toward the prosecutor. "Aside from witness testimony—"
"We have material evidence as well."
The evidence Tsukimisato Somehana submitted was a memory module.
Su Yuzu watched Asaba Maki, whose head stayed lowered the whole time.
She didn't look well at all.
It never once crossed Su Yuzu's mind that Asaba Maki looked that terrible entirely because of her.
With an instinctive terror of Su Yuzu seared into her body, Asaba Maki had no way of facing her head-on.
Su Yuzu assumed her condition came from having a memory module forcibly extracted by the "Epiphany Manufacture".
She didn't doubt for a moment that the "Epiphany Manufacture" had the means to tear a memory module out of someone.
But a memory module was, in the end, a memory-extraction device developed with Aberrants as its base.
Its original purpose had been to rip the memories out of captured Aberrants, harvesting more information on them and seizing an intelligence advantage in battle.
It was only later that "Wind · Fire · Mountain · Zero" used one to record their fight against Su Yuzu. A modified Aberrant could link to a memory module directly through the ear canal.
But Asaba Maki had already come back from the Edge of Aberration.
Her body was that of an ordinary human woman now, nothing more.
What sort of aftereffects a forced extraction would leave behind, Su Yuzu had no idea.
What did catch her off guard, though, was that the memory module Tsukimisato Somehana submitted held no memories taken from Asaba Maki at all.
Just the opposite—
What the module played back was a burning sky.
A burning sun.
The heavens blazed and roared, as though the earth itself had been set alight.
As those searing flames bore down, they left anyone watching with a strangely inverted impression.
It wasn't the sun falling out of the sky. It was this world, plunging toward that white-hot Purgatory.
That was Su Yuzu's decisive battle with the "Seat of Evil".
By then the erosion domain of the "Seat of Evil" had already spread wide, and no ordinary piece of technology could have functioned in conditions that savage.
Which was the whole reason the evidence presented had to be a "memory module".
Su Yuzu looked toward Tsukimisato Somehana.
The woman sat there, straight-backed and composed.
Su Yuzu understood exactly what that memory module meant.
It meant that Tsukimisato Somehana had been there that night. Right there, beneath that sun hanging in the dark sky, silently watching Su Yuzu and the "Seat of Evil".
"This was half a month ago—"
"Live footage from the battle between Su Yuzu and the 'Seat of Evil' — the battle that caused Saint Michael's radiant power, which once blanketed the skies over the Tokyo metropolitan area, to vanish."
Tsukimisato Somehana froze the playback on its final frame.
Su Yuzu's silhouette drifting down out of the sky, a naked girl cradled in her arms.
The image held there.
"We have ample grounds to suspect that the naked figure in Su Yuzu's arms is the fallen 'Seat of Evil'."
"After using Saint Michael's power to defeat the 'Seat of Evil', Su Yuzu did not cut off the danger at its root—"
"Quite the opposite…"
"Out of that laughable compassion of hers, she chose once again to extend a hand to the enemy."
"I would ask Madam Prosecutor to consider this."
"Su Yuzu barely managed to restrain the 'Seat of Evil' at all, and only by borrowing the radiant power Saint Michael left behind."
"And now, because she has sheltered her…"
"What happens if the 'Seat of Evil' turns on us again?"
"Who in this room could stop her?"
"Saint Michael's radiant power is gone completely. The entire Tokyo metropolitan area lies exposed to the eyes of Aberrants and Catastrophe Beasts. We are hanging by a thread."
"And yet—"
"What of Su Yuzu, the one to blame for all of it?"
"What has she done?"
A noisy tide of muttering swept through the Procuratorate.
Some were stunned — the legendary "Seat of Evil" looked so small and delicate.
Others were turning it over: Tsukimisato Somehana did seem to have a point.
Su Yuzu only looked at her. She hadn't expected the evidence to be this, either.
"Objection—"
At that moment, behind Su Yuzu, Soga Yura — who had seemed to be scrolling on her phone this entire time — rose to her feet.
"The 'Seat of Evil' had already been awakened."
"Our academy's strongest fighter, Fifth Sequence Professor Tsukiyomi Fuya, was gravely wounded and dying."
"The 'Seat of Evil' was marching on the Tokyo metropolitan area at the head of an army."
"And that was when Yuzu stepped forward. It was Yuzu's sincere heart that won Lady Saint Michael's recognition, and that was why every last shred of that radiant power was handed to Yuzu — so that Yuzu would even have a chance of fighting the 'Seat of Evil'."
"True, true…"
A chorus of agreement.
The facts weren't far off from Soga Yura's account.
It was only that what had earned Saint Michael's recognition was hardly Su Yuzu's "sincere heart" — if anything, it had been more than a little underhanded.
"As for…"
"the girl Su Yuzu carried back with her."
"She is, indeed, the 'Seat of Evil'."
A sharp hiss went up, and the whole hall erupted.
The prosecutor's eye twitched. She hadn't expected these two Soga family sisters to be exactly the same brand of trouble.
Cast from the same mold, apparently.
Was that really the sort of thing one just said out loud?
Soga Yura merely swept the room with a cold stare, and then… "I would ask all of you to think this through carefully."
"Just what the 'Seat of Evil' is."
"And who the 'Seat of Evil' truly is."
"In every account ever recorded, the girl who appears as the 'Seat of Evil' — that era's rule-type ability user — where did she come from?"
A single name rose in every mind in the room.
The "Holy Royal Court".
"Then I would ask you all to consider one more thing…"
"Where did Lady Saint Michael come from?"
It went without saying. The "Holy Royal Court", again.
"Yuzu received Lady Saint Michael's recognition and Lady Saint Michael's power. How, then, could she possibly deal the 'Seat of Evil' a killing blow?"
"Yuzu did save the 'Seat of Evil'."
"That was Lady Saint Michael's will."
"What's more… after being purified by Lady Saint Michael's radiant power, the 'Seat of Evil' has already returned to what she once was."
"She is now…"
"nothing but a perfectly ordinary little girl of the Sixth Sequence."
Soga Yura's smile turned wicked, and she bit down hard on "nothing but" and "perfectly ordinary".
Cold sweat beaded on every forehead in the room.
Granted… everything Soga Yura had said made perfect sense.
But that was a damn threat, wasn't it? That was absolutely a threat.
Only up in the gallery did Lyudmila clasp her hands together, questioning the girl who dwelled within her.
"Lady Michael… did you truly tell Lady Yuzu to save the 'Seat of Evil'?"
"…" Then, after a long and heavy silence:
"I have no idea!!!"
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