Watching the Sogen Saitake in front of him abruptly turn into Nursery Rhyme, Albrecht's eyes went wide.
"It's you?"
Did Albrecht know Nursery Rhyme? Of course he did.
Nursery Rhyme and Scorpio had appeared to seize the "Legacy of Seven Stars." Drones in the Tokyo Area had captured footage of the scene. Afterward, the pieces Goshoukai had planted in the Tokyo Area stole those recordings and brought them back to Goshoukai.
Why had Goshoukai wanted to capture Nursery Rhyme and Scorpio—going so far as to dispatch an entire squad and four mechanized super soldiers? Was it just for the "Legacy of Seven Stars"?
Of course not.
The real reason was that Albrecht had recognized Scorpio in the footage.
Her appearance had changed somewhat, but as a survivor of the Seven Stars Village experiment, Albrecht could still tell: the girl in the recording named "Scorpio" was one of the twelve test subjects from that experiment.
At first, he'd thought it might simply be a lookalike. He didn't believe someone who had mutated into a Stage V Gastrea could turn back again—at least, not with any technology that existed now.
But the name "Scorpio" was far too pointed. And the ability to turn her hair into scythes was impossible to ignore… because Scorpio's primary attack method was the eight barbed, scythe-like appendages on its body.
Even with all of that, Albrecht still didn't want to believe the girl called "Scorpio" in the footage was the dreaded Stage V Scorpio. He would rather believe someone had stolen some of Scorpio's cells and cultured a Cursed Child with similar abilities…
But then that wouldn't explain Scorpio's focus on the "Legacy of Seven Stars."
Albrecht knew perfectly well what was inside that box. Naturally, he also knew why that seemingly ordinary box could draw a Stage V's attention.
He needed the truth. He needed to know whether Scorpio was truly Scorpio.
Goshoukai sending out four super soldiers had been on his recommendation. As the foremost of the Four Sages, his standing within Goshoukai was even above top executives like Sogen Saitake.
And naturally, he had also remembered Nursery Rhyme, who had appeared alongside Scorpio.
"Hm? Mister, do you know Nursery Rhyme?" Nursery Rhyme tilted her head, puzzled. "It feels like lots of people know me. Did Nursery Rhyme get famous? But I'm really sorry—I'm not very familiar with you."
The name "Albrecht" wasn't unfamiliar to people in this world, but since he never once appeared in the anime or the novel's plot, Nursery Rhyme truly didn't know him.
Of the famous Four Sages, the only one she was relatively familiar with was Muroto Sumire in the Tokyo Area. But now, just like everyone else in the Tokyo Area, she'd been swallowed by the white fog and lost her name.
"I see… so you're the one who destroyed Goshoukai."
"Huh? Mister, you can't just say stuff like that." Nursery Rhyme puffed out her cheeks, putting on a disgruntled face. "Isn't what caused things to end up like this your own endlessly swelling greed? Don't take a stranger's things—basic common sense even kids know. When you were little, didn't your mom and dad teach you that? But you still stole the piper's flute."
"The world once came close to being destroyed because of humanity's endlessly expanding greed, but you don't seem to have learned anything from it. See? Retribution's here. Everything that happened today is nothing but what you brought on yourselves."
"What a sharp-tongued little brat." Albrecht let out a cold laugh, laced with disdain. "Do you think you're my retribution? Ridiculous. What could you possibly understand of my great ideal? Once my experiment succeeds, new humans will completely surpass old humans and become perfect beings without defects. There will be no more illness, and no more death."
Hearing that, Nursery Rhyme froze slightly.
Perfect beings? What, are you Muzan Kibutsuji now? Want a blue spider lily while we're at it?
"I don't know what the future holds, but I can see the present. Humanity nearly went extinct because of the Gastrea, you know."
"Glorious evolution is inherently accompanied by sacrifice. If those people died, that just means they couldn't keep up with the pace of evolution—they were eliminated. It can't be helped."
In Albrecht's eyes, the death toll was just a number. No one knew how many people had died on his operating table already. To achieve his goal, he wouldn't hesitate no matter how many lives he trampled.
"You won't understand no matter what I say. Have the others in your organization come talk to me—especially the one who developed that new strain of the Gastrea Virus. How many people did he sacrifice for his experiment? How many lives did he trample? If it's him, he'll definitely understand what I'm doing, and we can reach an agreement."
Nursery Rhyme had no idea what he was talking about.
What organization? What new strain of the Gastrea Virus?
She could hear every word clearly, but once he put them together, none of it made sense.
"Nursery Rhyme doesn't understand what Mister is saying."
"Hmph. Playing dumb, are you? Then there's nothing left to talk about."
Albrecht didn't believe she genuinely didn't understand. He only assumed she was pretending, and that this meant the people in that mysterious organization were refusing to meet him.
If words wouldn't work, then it was time for force.
"Eve. Capture that girl. I want her alive."
The instant the words fell, Eve became an afterimage and shot forward.
The Initiator ranked first in IP Rank—who had killed Taurus—was, in this world, the very top tier of combat power. Not even nuclear weapons could threaten her life. She had almost no equal.
But she'd run into Nursery Rhyme.
Nursery Rhyme's eyes could track Eve's extreme speed, and she could precisely throw something at her.
Eve saw it clearly…
It wasn't a knife or a bomb—no lethal hidden weapon at all.
It was a palm-sized red-and-white ball.
She didn't sense the hated magnetic-field fluctuation from it, which meant the red-and-white ball wasn't made of Varanium. So she made a rapid judgment—
This thing couldn't hurt her.
Because of that judgment, Eve lost interest. She casually slapped the ball away with one hand.
And the instant she did, it was as if she'd triggered some mechanism on the ball. It flew up high—and suddenly opened.
Eve's body turned into a streak of white light and was sucked into the ball. The ball snapped shut again, then dropped to the ground under gravity.
The red-and-white ball rolled and rolled and rolled. It seemed the Eve trapped inside was struggling with all her might. The button at the center flashed red, like an Ultraman color timer.
Until the red light stopped flashing, and the ball stopped rolling, falling completely still.
Nursery Rhyme trotted over with light steps, picked up the red-and-white ball, and held it high above her head. With a bright smile, she shouted into the sunlight:
"I caught a Pokémon!"
Off to the side, Albrecht's brain completely blue-screened.
...
With Eve gone, Albrecht couldn't make any waves. Nursery Rhyme casually tossed him into that boxed world—modeled after BLACK SOULS 2—created to punish the unforgivable, and left him there to experience the "local customs."
"Scorpio-chan and the others will be so happy to see you back, right?"
Looking at the red-and-white ball in her hand, Nursery Rhyme's expression filled with anticipation.
"I hope you'll like the Paradise I prepared for you all."
After that, Paradise continued expanding at full speed. It no longer stopped at the Tokyo Area. It smoothly swallowed Sapporo, Sendai, Osaka, Hakata—bringing the entire Japanese archipelago into the white fog.
The surrounding seas couldn't stop the fog from spreading. More and more countries were engulfed. Every method humanity used against Nursery Rhyme's white fog was completely ineffective—a dimensionality reduction strike.
Some countries launched intercontinental missiles, but those missiles were shot down in midair by something within the fog…
That familiar method of counterattack made them think of one of the Stage Vs—Sagittarius. Back in the war against the Gastrea, Sagittarius had shot down satellites, aircraft, and missiles from the sky. That was why surviving satellites were so precious now—and why no one dared to use them lightly, for fear Sagittarius would shoot them down again.
They didn't know there was no Sagittarius anymore.
There was only a little girl named Centaur, who happened to be very interested in archery.
And so, everyone assumed the spreading white fog was also a Gastrea attack—and the suspect they latched onto was Libra, also known as the "Plague King."
Libra's ability was to synthesize tens of thousands of lethal viruses inside its body—viruses that used only humans as hosts—and disperse them into the air. Even skin contact meant infection. Those viruses weren't afraid of ultraviolet light, and they could even pass through the Monolith's magnetic field.
Only Libra could create a bizarre white fog that cut off contact the moment humans stepped into it.
So if you asked which Stage V was the strongest, you'd get a dozen different answers. But if you asked which Stage V was the most terrifying, people would almost always say Libra.
Of all the countries, Russia reacted the most violently. Without notifying anyone else, they used nuclear weapons.
The reason was that during the war against the Gastrea, Libra's range of activity had been over Russia, turning the entire country into a living hell. People suffering from unheard-of, incurable diseases died in agony, bodies piling in the streets. The stench, it was said, carried all the way to Beijing.
Since they couldn't deliver nuclear weapons by missile or plane, Russia's plan was to place nuclear devices near the white fog and detonate them once the fog was about to reach the site.
Of course, Russia's plan failed. Nursery Rhyme stopped the detonation.
An orange fat cat with a five-pointed star pattern on its belly waved a five-pointed star wand and turned every nuclear weapon into an enormous hamburger. And hamburgers don't explode, of course.
Russia didn't give up after that failure. Driven insane, they operated on the logic of "If we launch enough missiles, they can't shoot them all down," and fired every intercontinental missile the country had.
Centaur didn't shoot them down this time. Some missiles carried nuclear warheads; even detonating them in the sky would bring terrible disaster to the ground. That wasn't what Nursery Rhyme or Centaur wanted to see.
So this time, Tom and Jerry took the stage.
Jerry drew a female missile…
Don't ask why missiles have genders. Jerry said it was female, so it was female. He even added a note on it: "It's female." After stroking his chin, he seemed to think something was missing, so he added another line: "Very pretty and very attractive."
Tom used a slingshot to launch the drawing into outer space—aiming it at the sun.
Then every incoming missile suddenly slammed on the brakes in midair—and sprouted eyes. Their eyes were filled with pink hearts of adoration. The next second, while whistling, the missiles chased after the drawing Tom had launched, following it all the way into space—presumably on its way toward the sun.
Against Nursery Rhyme's utterly unreasonable power, all of humanity's resistance was hopeless.
At the end of the story, the white fog seized the last remaining land on Earth. Nursery Rhyme's Nameless Forest boundary finally covered the entire planet. Gastrea vanished completely from the world. Humanity, after abandoning their names, memories, and pasts, all welcomed brand-new lives.
No scheming. Every soul was as pure as a child's. Hand in hand, everyone worked together to build a better new world.
"The story is over… It's very, very lonely, isn't it? But this time, it's a happy ending for everyone. I'm so happy! And nervous, too—because it's a story born by my hands. I hope the people reading it will be satisfied…"
"Still, the end of one story often means the beginning of a new chapter, doesn't it? You have to believe that the future will bring even more wonderful encounters—encounters like an afternoon daydream, like a bookmark that smells of fresh grass, like tea-party macarons… encounters that make you smile without even realizing it when you remember them."
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A/N: The ending's a little rushed. Can't be helped—there wasn't that much in the original novel. I've read a few Black Bullet fanfics and their endings are pretty rushed too, and with my author's limited ability, at most, at most, I can add some more everyday life of Nursery Rhyme and the kids in Paradise.