Hekla

It was Thursday evening by the time Hesta saw Miss Chiba again.

Miss Chiba had wanted to take Hesta out for a drive, but Molly refused outright.

"I object, Molly." Miss Chiba frowned. "Why can't I, as her guardian, take Hesta out for a walk? Does the base have to interfere even when I'm fulfilling my duties?"

Molly replied coolly, "If you truly cared as much about your duties as you claim, you should have familiarized yourself with the base regulations in advance. To take a trainee off base, you need to make an appointment at least one day ahead—not just show up whenever you feel like it and take someone away."

Miss Chiba argued for a while longer, but seeing that Molly absolutely refused to make an exception, she had no choice but to give up.

"Can't be helped." Miss Chiba gave a slight shrug and looked at Hesta. "Then let's take a walk around the base."

Hesta said nothing and silently followed Miss Chiba out.

As they neared the training grounds, small groups of young people were jogging together beneath the setting sun. In the golden light, Hesta suddenly noticed a ring of black tattooing around Miss Chiba's neck. It had been hidden by the collar of her sweater during their last meeting, but now Hesta saw that it was a sentence made of letters, each one stretched thin and tall like a dense row of black bars.

The sentence formed by those letters was not in any language Hesta knew.

Miss Chiba took out a small silver key and waved it before Hesta. "Here. Take it."

The key landed in Hesta's palm. The girl looked up at her in confusion. "What is this?"

"That scrapbook," Miss Chiba answered. "I put it in Gray Scale Bank under your name. If you need to take it out later, just bring your ID and this key."

Hesta froze, her gaze dimming slightly. "...Thank you."

"How have you been feeling lately?"

"Hm?"

"Why do you look so dazed?" Miss Chiba laughed. "Don't tell me that little bastard scared you."

Hesta looked up at Miss Chiba. "What did Miss Chiba think? Why did you lift the restraining order against Shawn?"

"Because that thing was useless." Miss Chiba glanced at Hesta. "Wasn't it?"

Hesta did not answer immediately.

In a quiet voice, she recounted what had happened on the night the classroom building suddenly lost power, as well as how Shawn might have been using the building's surveillance system to watch her over the past half month.

"See?" Miss Chiba snapped her fingers. "If you cling to unrealistic fantasies, place your hopes in this system, and expect it to protect you from every angle with all sorts of complicated rules, all you'll do is give those who mean harm even more motivation to circumvent those rules. They'll prepare in the shadows until they believe a new opportunity has ripened... and then you'll only face even greater trouble."

"But what use is Miss Chiba's 'little gift'?" Hesta asked. "Shawn has already undergone Secondary Awakening."

"So what if he has?"

"If his power is already enough to contend with a Chelated Being, then whether I carry a gun makes no difference." Hesta raised her head but deliberately lowered her voice. "Once Bullet Time begins, he can easily catch the bullets I fire. He could even take the gun away and use it to threaten me."

Miss Chiba smiled. "Since you're so afraid of Bullet Time, have you ever tried to learn about its limitations?"

Hesta paused. "...I asked Liz, but she wouldn't tell me."

Miss Chiba looked ahead. "Liz has always been a good kid who follows the rules. It's perfectly normal that she didn't tell you... What about other channels? What else did you use to investigate this?"

"I went to the archives, but my clearance was too low. A lot of reference materials related to Quicksilver Needles research weren't available to me. Then I searched through the base's official news, trying to find records related to combat casualties, but the articles had no real details. So I changed my approach and went to the library. I looked for every memoir I could find written by survivors from the infected zones and made a reading list—"

"That probably wouldn't have helped either," Miss Chiba interrupted. "Publications have to be reviewed before release. Any sensitive descriptions involving Quicksilver Needles would be removed."

"All right... then I saved myself a lot of time," Hesta replied. "Because I hadn't gotten around to reading them yet."

"That's good, Jane." Miss Chiba's voice softened slightly. "The more afraid you are of something, the more you should take the initiative to understand it."

"So... what's Miss Chiba's answer?"

Miss Chiba did not answer right away. Instead, she asked, "Then how much do you know about Shawn himself?"

"Nothing," Hesta said softly. "If I applied to the base for access to his records, he would definitely find out... I don't even want to give him a glance right now."

"Isn't that too pessimistic?"

"...What do you mean?"

Miss Chiba raised an eyebrow slightly. "Even if Shawn currently holds the advantage, as long as he hasn't completely defeated you, he has to worry about your countermeasures. He has unilaterally declared that the fight has begun, yet you think this is nothing but childish nonsense. You can't even be bothered to understand your enemy. Does that make sense?"

"But Miss Chiba was the one who said this was only 'an ordinary quarrel between trainees'—"

"Strategically, of course it's only an ordinary clash," Miss Chiba cut Hesta off. "But that doesn't stop us from devising a rigorous counterattack strategy. Use that little brain of yours and think carefully: what kind of rules do you want to set for your opponent?"

...Rules.

Hesta considered the word and looked at Miss Chiba again.

"Shawn has used his methods to invade your life. That is violence, Jane. Violence has no boundaries. Its limits depend only on how both sides respond."

"Say he punches you." Miss Chiba clenched her fist and assumed a boxer's stance. "If you don't fight back and only run away, trying to hide farther away, then you're telling him, 'I can't fight back. Come punch me again.' Or if you gather a few friends around you and try to hide behind them, then you're telling him, 'A frontal breakthrough won't work, so hurry up and look for another weakness.'"

"The more you try to hide behind something, the more you expose your weaknesses. If this goes on, then in the end, you'll either spend every day crying and clinging to Molly or Fletcher's sleeve, saying Shawn is bullying me, or you'll live in constant fear. By then, whether you have a good day will depend entirely on when he gets busy with something else or loses interest in you completely. Do you want to live like that, Jane?"

"Mm... no."

Miss Chiba nodded in satisfaction. "Then you need to understand your enemy. Shawn is actually quite interesting. When he and Calvin were first brought over from Hekla, they caused several major scandals, every one of them front-page news."

"...Really?" Hesta was puzzled. "I borrowed Liz's computer before to search the newspapers archived by the base, but I couldn't find anything about them."

"What keywords did you use?"

"Shawn, Calvin, Grangua... I tried them all."

"You should have searched for 'Hekla,'" Miss Chiba said. "Most Quicksilver Needles use combat codenames rather than their real names when dealing with the outside world. Reserve members don't even have codenames before they transfer roles. The outside world called the two of them the 'Hekla brothers,' so of course you couldn't find them by name."