Nothing in nature carried lightning the way this shikigami did.
Nothing manifested it in open air like that either.
"It's a shikigami I summoned. What's there to study?"
He said it lazily, entirely unbothered, sprawled back against Nue's skull with the lollipop still in his mouth.
The creature might as well have been a house pet.
"It isn't a living thing in any proper sense. It's made of Cursed Energy, top to bottom. You'd get nothing out of it."
No body, no cells, nothing to put under a lens.
"Getting to study Cursed Energy would be plenty. At least this gives me something to point an instrument at. Better than the methods you've offered me so far."
Sumire wasn't letting go. Hunger sat naked in her eyes.
Years spent on the Gastrea Virus, plenty of strange forces handled along the way, and now this. Cursed Energy was new ground, barely touched, unmapped in every direction.
"If you want it that badly, we'll talk when we're home. Does this look like the right moment to you?"
He lifted his head and looked out past the formation.
The flyers had caught the scent of people, and they were close.
More of them by the second, thick enough to blot out half the sky, driving hard toward the helicopters.
"Right now what you should be doing is enjoying the show."
The smile curved. No visible effort, nothing but a small lift of his hand, and the vast electric-wreathed thing beneath him screamed once and hurled itself at the swarm.
That cry cut sharper than before, edged enough to split eardrums, carrying threat in every note.
The Gastrea in front faltered.
For something that size, the speed was obscene.
One lazy beat of those wings dumped a gale into the air.
Wind howled through the formation. The helicopters rocked with it, airframes shuddering.
Then the bulk blurred into a streak and drove straight through the middle of the swarm, faster than anyone aboard could track.
On any other day these creatures were nightmares. Strength and speed past anything natural, savage temperament, built to kill.
Bringing one down usually meant a Cursed Child's abilities, or overwhelming firepower, or mechanically augmented soldiers.
Often several operators and soldiers together still lost the fight, and paid heavily for the attempt.
Not today.
Against the thing he'd called up, all of it looked like paper.
The lightning-clad body punched into the mass and turned the sky into a slaughterhouse. Creatures that had terrorized this world became insects with nothing to answer back.
A wing swept, and half a dozen Gastrea were flung apart, bodies coming to pieces midair, blood and limbs scattering.
Its beak opened. Blue-violet lightning tore out and swept through a cluster of them, bodies blackening with a sizzle, carbonized down to drifting ash in the space of a breath.
Torn limbs rained down and cracked against the ground below.
A mist of blood hung in the air like fog, dimming a sky already grey, and the reek of it thickened until stomachs turned.
Every person aboard the helicopters stared, dumbstruck. Even Sumire, who had weathered a great deal at his side, sat frozen.
Her eyes were huge, mouth open wide enough to fit an egg, fixed on the carnage overhead.
She'd never imagined that something summoned with a flick of his hand could butcher Gastrea this casually.
They simply didn't measure up.
The physical blows alone were more than any ordinary Gastrea could survive, that size and that force killing outright on contact, and the lightning made it worse.
Even a Stage 3 was there to die and nothing else. No room to fight back.
As for the Gastrea landing a hit of their own, the idea was absurd.
Nue moved too fast to see, a smear against the sky. Claws and wings swung at empty air, never once touching a feather.
Comparing their speed was like matching a grown man against a newborn.
And the thing that made Gastrea truly terrifying was infection.
One scratch, one bite, and the Gastrea Virus turned you into one of them. That was the fear underneath everything, because there was no way back.
But Nue was built from Cursed Energy. No flesh, no cells, no blood. Nothing for a virus to take hold of.
If the Gastrea Virus could infect Cursed Energy itself, the world would have fallen long ago.
Above, the killing went on.
Nue cut through the swarm again and again, every wingbeat and every arc of lightning leaving bodies dropping.
Ferocious as they were, all the Gastrea could do was thin out.
What had been a solid black mass across half the sky lost more than half its number in moments.
More kept coming, and they still couldn't arrive faster than they died. New arrivals closed in and met lightning, carbonized before they got within a step of the formation.
"I understand now. Why he was so confident earlier."
Inside one cabin, Kayo turned to her Promoter, voice level, something like respect settling behind her eyes.
The question had been bothering her. It wasn't bothering her anymore.
Anyone who could gut a swarm like that had every reason for confidence, and every qualification to run this operation and keep the people on it breathing.
"I'll also say your luck is remarkable."
The dry note in it landed.
Shogen laughed, two thin sounds and nothing behind them. Those hard eyes of his had gone entirely awkward. He scratched at his head and found somewhere else to look.
How was he supposed to have known?
If he'd had the faintest idea, he'd never have opened his mouth, never questioned the man's strength. Thinking back on it turned his stomach cold.
Forget the man himself. That bird alone would have finished him. He couldn't clear a swarm like that, not in a lifetime, and certainly not with that ease.
If Satoru had taken offense and come after him, he'd have died where he stood.
"That's beside the point."
He changed course fast, trying to bury the moment. "You'd be better off working out how he pulled that bird out of nowhere."
"That's not mechanical augmentation. That's not any technology I've heard of."
His confusion was total. Nothing in his understanding of the world, or the world's science, accounted for it.
Kayo thought about it, then dug a compact pair of binoculars from her shoulder bag and trained them on the three figures ahead.
She studied them for a while, and something strange crept across that young face.
"What is it? Did you find something?"
He followed her line of sight and saw nothing at all.
"I can read lips a little. But... what they're discussing is odd."
She lowered the binoculars, brow drawing together.
She'd caught the exchange between Satoru, Betty, and Sumire. No sound reached her, but the shapes of the words were enough to piece together most of it.
"That strange bird. He calls it a shikigami."
"A shikigami?!"
Japanese, all of them, and even with Gastrea having gutted the country and reshaped society, the old stories hadn't gone anywhere.
Everyone knew the word.
Knowing it and hearing it applied to something real were different animals.
Shogen's voice cracked halfway through saying it.
"You're joking. Shikigami are made-up. Stories."
"So what, we've got onmyoji next? Yokai after that?"
Disbelief showed through the cloth across his face.
"Asking me won't help."
She shook her head, unimpressed.
"I'm a prodigy, not an oracle. That's an unfair question."
"One thing's certain, though. With him leading, our odds of coming home went up considerably."
Shogen rubbed at his scalp. Things he couldn't work out, he let go. This one hardly counted as bad news.
Who wanted to die, given the choice? "Let's hope so. It depends on what's waiting once we're on the ground."
"There are far more of them down there than up here."
Silence.
"You could say nothing. Especially the parts nobody enjoys hearing."
Their exchange was a small thing in the middle of a larger one.
The flight continued, but the mood aboard had shifted completely.
Back at the camp, a sliver of doubt about his strength had survived in most of them.
After watching the flyers die, nothing survived.
That kind of erasure, dozens of airborne Gastrea cut down without visible effort, sat far outside anything they'd known.
Minutes ago those things had owned the sky and left them helpless. In front of his shikigami they'd been gnats, denied even the chance to struggle.
Every operator now held one thought: stay close to that man, finish the job, get home alive.
Plenty of them had fought battles that ended in despair, watched friends go down under those claws, felt what it was to have nothing left to try.
Judging by what they'd witnessed, even a Stage 4 Gastrea probably wouldn't trouble him.
A Stage 4 was the thing they threw everything at. Multiple squads coordinating, casualties guaranteed, and even then the kill wasn't certain.
There was no comparison to be made.
Before long, under the hammering of the rotors, they reached the landing point.
Two kilometers out from the target.
The ground opened up here, ringed by dense scrub and tall dead trees, littered with broken stone and the wreckage of buildings.
A city that had once been alive belonged to the Gastrea now.
The helicopters settled into a hover, and the operators went down the ropes.