WORLD: NEIGHBORING WORLD
BRANCHED WORLD: DATE A LIVE
LOCATION: ILUSSORY ZONE
A few moments ago, back at the white space.
"I knew you'd come, Kurumi."
White Queen then turned back with a faint smile. One that wasn't quite sincere; it was a rather cruel smile.
Dressed in pristine white, a one-piece gown which its upper part fitted like a shirt, and a cap adorned by one corner of her hair.
White thigh-high boots that seemed to glow a different color of blue on their own.
"Sawa... huh? I see you have already realized who I am."
"That—"
"I wonder. How did you figure it out? There's no way you should be able to figure it out."
Floating before her, White Queen didn't turn back to face Kurumi.
She kept looking forward, beyond the endless white space before her.
White Queen hated this world; she wanted to destroy it. Of course, she hated Kurumi.
She wanted to destroy her too.
Yet, now that the person she held dear appeared in front of her, she was now at a loss.
Queen, or rather, Sawa held Kurumi very dear, and yet, she also hated her again.
Why did she have to be killed?
Indeed, those flames took her back. That day she faced a different Kurumi in a different form.
PAH!
The sounds of gunshots resounded, and before she knew it, she found herself falling into the neighboring world.
"Sawa-san, I..."
"It's okay, Kurumi-san. I understand. It wasn't your fault...."
White Queen's voice trailed off as she then turned towards Kurumi, her hands spread wide.
"Yes. It's this world's fault we ended like this."
Kurumi's lips twitched as she stared back at her friend.
"What does Sawa-san want?"
Nightmare no longer beheld the woman in front of her entirely as her friend.
Instead, it was my fault she's like this, was all that was going on in her mind.
Sawa would never speak like this.
That hatred shrouded with a smile on that face. Yes. It reminded her of herself.
That twisted sense of justice that she held, and over the years laying waste to thousands of people.
Which now... had become the name she'd embraced so much.
Indeed, it's her fault.
"What do I want? The destruction of the Neighboring World, of course, and the world that put us through this."
"And to stay with you forever... that is all I want. To do that, I need power, don't I? Yes... Quasi-Spirits, they should serve finely, no?"
White Queen spread out her arms with a shrug, making Kurumi's eyes narrow at her.
Yet, never did Kurumi think she'd say this, however,
"I see." She closed her eyes and slowly opened them. "Sorry, I can't let you walk the same path I did."
"If you do, then, there's no coming back from that path."
Stepping across the sea of corpses to move further beyond, Kurumi didn't want to be changed.
She knew she had committed heinous crimes and sin. As such, what she needed wasn't honeyed words.
At the same time, truly, not idealistic words, either.
".... Is that Kurumi-san's choice. Well, too bad. If it's that I would capture you alive to fulfill that goal, then I shall do just that."
WORLD: NEIGHBORING WORLD
BRANCHED WORLD: DATE A LIVE
LOCATION: KETER
The neighboring world screamed.
Unable to be called anything else, a fierce battle had begun.
The surrounding space distorted, creaked, and smashed apart every obstacle.
Not to mention other Regions. They all looked affront, towards where the First Region was.
Their surroundings? Destroyed.
Originally, they had begun fighting in a chapel away from the main city, with bushes positioned at a hillside.
Now, the chapel was nowhere to be seen, turned into nothing but pure woods, with bricks and furnishings scattered around.
Even the forest around where they fought was affected.
Trees scattered everywhere, without a safe place in sight.
A battle of this scale was unexpected.
If it weren't for Laurel holding up this world, perhaps other regions would have been affected.
At the center of that whirlpool of Reiryoku were Nightmare and Queen.
Kurumi, who now had more than enough lifespan to waste, and the absurd amount of Reiryoku she almost never used.
She unleashed it all on Queen.
Too fierce, too violent.
That was the battle between Tokisaki Kurumi and the White Queen, or rather Yamauchi Sawa.
"[Zafkiel]."
"[Lucifugus]."
Tokisaki Kurumi, the monster who could control time, and the White Queen, the specter that could control space.
Both of them right now, to the very letter, made a desperate effort, devoting themselves to killing each other.
"The First Bullet [Aleph]!"
"The Libra Bullet [Moznaim]!"
Kurumi attacked, charging forward, but the White Queen avoided it by swapping positions with the surrounding structures.
Pushing at Kurumi's defenseless flank, White Queen fired from her pistol repeatedly.
However, Kurumi's accelerated physical ability gave her the speed to avoid the bullets shot.
As Kurumi's figure trembled like a heat haze, the White Queen's bullets disappeared into the void.
At this point, both sides were aware.
This battle wasn't something that could be finished by just shooting blindly.
A victory decided like that would purely be an accidental disposition of the heavens.
Close to shogi or chess, this bout would be a competition of the tactics and skills between the two.
However, there was one decisive difference from those perfect information games.
Both Tokisaki Kurumi and Yamauchi Sawa had fangs hidden from each other.
Kurumi didn't know all of the abilities handled by the White Queen's Demon King astronomic clock [Lucifugus].
Just knowing it had some effect on space rather than time was a terrifyingly vague understanding to follow.
'Honestly, that is like saying anything goes.'
Kurumi deeply sighed.
On the other hand, Kurumi also had an advantage over the White Queen.
The White Queen of this time wasn't familiar with all of [Zafkiel]'s abilities,
Only the knowledge that she controlled time, rather than space, and that was all.
But currently, forget using their abilities. The land had been torn due to the clash of Reiryoku.
Other than the constant shooting of bullets, they also moved in and clashed.
As they did, the force slowly spread, and as it spread, the force was increasingly getting distant before completely dissipating.
'It must be 'that'...,'
White Queen thought.
That thing that tried reaching out to her. Same thing she rejected. Nevertheless, in the end, because of Kurumi, she accepted.
Whatever power that thing gave her, it was just perfect.
With that power, she could always be by Kurumi's side.
It was that power that brought Kurumi to that illusory space before.
Now... It was that power that brought Kurumi in the flesh in front of her.
She was happy, yet angry.
The anger didn't fully belong to her; part of it belonged to the other side of Kurumi that merged with her.
A being filled with rational hatred.
BOOM!
Another forest area behind shattered again, imploding with full force due to White Queen summoning a spacequake.
It missed by far.
Kurumi, whose time had been accelerated, left the area of impact, and White Queen with her first bullet wrapped to a safe spot.
At where Kurumi stopped, White Queen appeared again, at the top of a tree, looking down at Kurumi from there.
"Let's go."
White Queen smiled.
"Yes."
Kurumi and Sawa exchanged gunfire at close range in order to observe each other's facial expressions and what was reflected in the irises of each other's eyes.
Removing their bodies from the predicted attacks,
not afraid to step forward into each other's gun trajectories by flicking back with a saber and gun barrel,
They avoided the deadly bullets in a presentation of mutual display.
Using close-range combat with firearms, it was a distance that Tokisaki Kurumi should not originally be skilled at.
"The First Bullet [Aleph], the Second Bullet [Bet], two in a row!"
"Damn!"
After shooting at herself, a souvenir debuff was placed onto Queen without a moment's delay.
Not able to avoid it, the bullet grazed her, at that moment, the perception of swinging her saber felt abnormally slow.
If it had been an ordinary Quasi-Spirit, they would have been left confused over the gap between consciousness and movement at this moment.
"The Gemini Bullet [Teomim]."
In a hurry, the White Queen stopped the attack by shooting a bullet at herself.
The bullet bearing the crown of twins copied the White Queen's body and even transferred her consciousness to the new body.
The former body crumbled away as the new body survived.
"...!"
Kurumi was stunned speechless by this.
"It shouldn't be surprising. My [Lucifugus] controls space. Copying is easy as long as the Neighboring World is a world where existing with physical bodies is not necessary. Even you—"
"I see you have no shortage of tricks."
"What?"
In response to that, Kurumi merely smiled. Summoning her other gun, tapping her foot on the ground.
How to deal with this situation.
If a certain person were here, they would argue there are probably a thousand ways out of this situation and win.
One of such tactics is this. If a head-on isn't working...
"Hmph."
"Huh?"
Kurumi turned on her heels, using [Aleph] and ran away, deeper into the forest. There, she would set her traps.
In the first place, she engaged White Queen to frantically accept her feelings, then at the same time...
Both practically went into this fight blind.
Both were fighting without knowing each other's abilities. At the very least, they had both deduced the basics of the first and second abilities.
As for the remaining ones, they were cautious.
She didn't want the advantage against her friend. Saying it was a game of tag between them would be correct.
First to get caught (die) was the loser, and White Queen gladly accepted the challenge with open arms.
They both knew what each other were planning. Touching the sanctuary, that is the Mirror City of Japan, is unacceptable.
Kurumi understood that.
White Queen also knew that.
Thus, the only reason why Kurumi would turn her back at this very fight is because...
PAH!
PAH!
PAH!
Consecutively.
Sounds of three consecutive gunshots resounded as three bullets infused with the second bullet: [Bet] assaulted her from three different angles.
Running along the deep forest part, the bullets seemed to have come atop the branches.
But she came prepared too.
KNG!
KNG!
KNG!
The sound of metals clashed filled the air. At the same time, the bullets were supposed to hit her,
like Kurumi's abilities. Three other clones from nowhere appeared, taking the bullet for White Queen.
As the clones took on the bullet, they disappeared again.
"Haah. This won't be easy, will it?"
"Sawa-san is really good. But that bullet, I have deduced its ability."
Kurumi, lounging in the distance, standing at the peak of a tree, smiled as she jumped down again.