It hadn't changed shape. Still a tiger's head on a man's body, still that towering frame, muscle corded tight, claws throwing off cold light.
What had changed was everything coating it.
In those few minutes, fur that had lain smooth was soaked through with Gastrea fluid, and scraps of torn limb clung to it here and there. The fluid ran dark green, thick with a rotting stink, matted into the coat until the whole shape looked like something dragged out of a slaughterhouse. Shredded meat swung from its claws with every movement.
Somewhere out of sight, that thing had fought a battle none of them had witnessed.
Minutes only, and it had already cut down more Gastrea than any of them wanted to count. The evidence hung off it.
But like the one still circling overhead, it carried none of the aftermath. Presence undimmed, eyes cold, no trace of fatigue anywhere in it. Whatever had happened in those trees, the shikigami treated it as a diversion.
Rentaro's artificial eye tracked the blur, and part of his mind kept counting.
"Three minutes."
His voice came out dry, but clear enough to carry to every operator on the ground.
"Three minutes, and there's no sign of Gastrea activity to the north anymore."
A tremor ran under the words. What he felt didn't fit into language.
His eye did more than keep time. It read movement, vibration, sound. From the northern woods now, nothing. No shrieking, no tremor in the soil. The Gastrea there had been wiped out.
The operators stared at him. Faces went slack. Nobody wanted to believe a single shikigami had done that inside three minutes.
From the helicopters he hadn't been able to get a proper count. Ruins swallowed by decades of overgrowth, thick brush and tall trees blocking sight, only dark shapes flickering between trunks.
The tremors had told him enough. There were a lot of them.
Even so.
Three minutes to render an entire flank harmless. A hundred Gastrea, minimum, to produce that result.
That wasn't superior strength. That was a different order of existence.
A hundred Gastrea. Even the lowest grade, at those numbers, would have buried him and Enju without effort.
Gastrea could afford mistakes. He and Enju couldn't. One slip, one injection of fluid, and there was no path back from it.
Yet the ability the Gastrea relied on most meant nothing against the shikigami.
Three minutes. A hundred bodies.
He'd seen strength before. Skilled operators, gifted Initiators, people who'd done impossible things in the field. Never this.
A hundred elite soldiers facing a hundred Gastrea would break and run. The math simply didn't favor humans.
Which meant that if Satoru wanted it, even operators who'd spent their lives specializing against Gastrea would have nothing to offer him. All that experience, every Initiator ability, weighed against nothing.
The gap settled into Rentaro's chest and stayed there. Humanity's strength, measured against someone genuinely strong, turned out to be a thin and breakable thing.
He turned to follow the shikigami's path.
Closer this time. Close enough to see how it worked.
His artificial eye locked onto the brown-gold shape, refusing to lose it, hunting for the method behind a hundred kills in three minutes.
There was no method. No technique, no flourish. It closed the distance at a speed nothing could answer, and then it tore them apart with its hands.
Literally tore them apart. One swipe splitting a body in half.
Creatures built for overwhelming force and grotesque regeneration handled like rabbits. The same Gastrea that opened human flesh without effort and shrugged off standard firearms came apart under those claws like wet paper.
Some tried to leap at it. They never landed. A kick caught them midair and burst them, fluid and fragments spraying wide.
When attacks did connect, the shikigami didn't so much as sway. Claws that could gut a man scored shallow lines through its coat and stopped there. Even a higher-grade specimen's strike managed nothing beyond ruffling fur.
Around him, operators had stopped functioning. Mouths hung open. One man forgot to breathe. Someone's rifle slipped from his hands into the dirt and he never noticed.
Rentaro kept watching a creature kill and kill again with all the strain of a child at play.
Underneath the shock sat something quieter. Envy. If he had even a fraction of that, he could keep Enju safe. Keep all of them safe.
Sky and ground both.
This wilderness that had terrified the whole of humanity for years, this territory that belonged to the Gastrea, and two shikigami had carved a safe zone out of it by force.
Above, the flier still circled, dropping now and then to shred anything winged that drifted close. Below, the tiger raced between kills. Between them, nothing lived.
An island without Gastrea, in the middle of Gastrea country. None of them would have dared imagine it a day ago.
"Okay, this is getting ridiculous."
Shogen let his greatsword sag until the point buried itself in the soil, all the strength gone out of his voice.
Shock and confusion sat plain on his face. The blade suddenly weighed a great deal, and it seemed to him now that the thing was useless. He'd always taken pride in his own power, in how many Gastrea that sword had opened up. Set beside what he'd watched, it amounted to nothing.
"So what exactly are we here for?"
He scratched his head. The question kept turning over without landing anywhere. They were the ones who dealt with Gastrea. Now they stood around as spectators, watching, and he had no idea what to do with himself.
"Are we just the people who get protected?"
The idea sat badly. He wanted to charge in. He wanted to earn a kill with his own hands. He also knew perfectly well that going in would help nobody and endanger everyone.
"What's wrong with that? If every job went this way, I'd be delighted."
Kayo kept her small binoculars raised, watching the pair of shikigami work, her tone flat.
Nothing in her face registered surprise. The lenses stayed fixed on the tiger's movements, studying something.
Finishing an assignment without cost, without risk, without anyone getting hurt was the only outcome that mattered to her. Who did the fighting was beside the point.
"Yeah, but..."
Shogen rubbed the back of his neck. It still felt wrong. They were Civil Security. This was supposed to be their job.
"Do you think you could do it better than those two?"
Kayo lowered the binoculars and turned to look at him. No mockery in it. She was stating a fact.
"No."
He answered without hedging. He didn't like how he felt, and he wasn't going to lie about it either.
He knew his own limits. Against both shikigami, or against either one alone, he wasn't in the same world.
"Then what would you contribute besides slowing them down?"
The question landed where it hurt. His mouth twitched. Nothing came to mind that would count as an argument, because she was right. He'd get in the way, then need someone else to pull him out.
"Fine. Fine."
He spread his hands, giving up on it.
"Then I'll stand here and watch like a good boy."
The greatsword went into the ground, and he let the rest of it go with it.
While the two of them were arguing about it, two figures approached Rentaro from across the clearing.
One tall, one small. The tall one was a young man with a mild smile and a curiosity that showed in his eyes. The small one wore a wide-brimmed hat that hid most of her face, leaving only a bit of her mouth visible, and she stayed close to his side.
"Rentaro."
The voice was warm and familiar. Shouma Nagisawa, senior brother to both Rentaro and Kisara.
Rentaro turned, and some of the weight in his chest eased at the sight of Shouma with Midori in tow. A familiar face out here counted for something.
"Shouma."
The blankness left his expression. He almost smiled.
They'd grown up together, trained together. Shouma was strong and had always looked out for him. Older brother in everything but blood.
"All right, out with it. How do you know someone like that?"
Shouma clapped a hand on his shoulder, curiosity plain on his face. He meant Satoru, obviously.
He'd seen the summoning. He'd seen what followed. None of it added up to a boy from the Tendo school having that kind of contact.
"That isn't the sort of thing an ordinary person pulls off, is it?"
He jerked his chin toward the shuddering treeline, where roars and the crack of breaking bone still rolled out. Every sound out there was one more Gastrea ending.
"Well..."
Rentaro's mouth twisted into something rueful. He had no idea how to explain Satoru to anyone.
The man was a mystery. His strength, his abilities, all of it sat outside what anyone here understood, and Rentaro himself barely knew where to begin.
"I don't really know how to explain it to you."
The wry look deepened.
He'd known Satoru for a handful of days. He'd brought this mission to him half expecting nothing, hoping the man might agree to help.
And he had.