Ch.308Work Record #937 – Calzone Recipe Missing One Ingredient (2)

I shouldn’t feel at ease doing this kind of work. Yet whenever I must take up my blade, I always find peace. When there’s a clear target to cut down, and when cutting it down means someone else becomes a little safer—in those moments, at least.

I head out of Los Angeles toward the wasteland. I check the firepower of the jump jets attached to my legs, and while on my auto-piloting bike, I slowly draw my twin ceremonial swords to inspect them. The swords hiss once again.

The ceremonial swords bear traces of legendary blood. Belvedere’s freelancers, Fitz & Morrison’s mercenaries… even T-Enter headquarters’ largest gang that used sonic weapons—I cut them all down with these high-frequency blades.

Why did I first pick up a sword? I don’t remember clearly. The only scene I recall is bringing down a broken high-frequency blade on some worthless back-alley gang leader’s neck until his head came off.

I was self-made, in a way. I was born in the back alleys of T-Enter headquarters, where survival of the fittest was both the basic principle and social consensus.

It was a hell completely different from Los Angeles—a place where not even the slightest security service was provided because it was considered natural for the strong to exploit the weak.

That back-alley gang leader was thorough with both those stronger and weaker than himself. Watching him… irritated me, I think. So I killed him.

I ambushed him while he was surrounded by women. His head was tilted back in pleasure when I severed his neck. His territory became mine, and his sword became mine.

Fortunately, I had enough talent that I didn’t need to stop there. I had a knack for killing people, and sadly… I had a taste for it too.

When you live in a place where survival of the fittest is the only principle, you become comfortable with devouring those weaker than yourself.

In the end, I simply became the gang leader of the place where I was born. And then… my memory cuts off in the middle of my territory-conquering spree. It cuts off the moment I step into another gang’s territory to destroy them.

From here is another hole in my memory. I don’t remember how we met or what kind of relationship we had. The memory suppressant worked as effectively as its side effects were severe.

And as I race forward in this mental haze, I suddenly face my target. In the distance, an armored van approaches. It’s a van carrying men paid with Hollowwood Creek’s dirty money.

I draw on the frustration I felt looking at the Creek child. I fuel myself with the sigh that nearly escaped when I saw Reef’s maturity. Soon the van stops. Sera must have connected to it.

Those mercenaries would know that when their van suddenly stops and some flashy-dressed guy is charging toward them, the situation is serious. It doesn’t matter.

I jump off the auto-piloting bike’s seat and start running on my own legs. I catch up to the slowing bike and overtake it. One of them was waiting with his sword drawn, but that wasn’t a problem.

They seem to have hired a swordsman after seeing how all the inquisitors who tried to attack the broker in recent weeks were slaughtered without putting up a fight. But they’re wrong. To catch a swordsman, you need bait and a sniper.

It’s almost laughable that they didn’t hire one. There aren’t that many snipers who can maintain focus in a dusty wasteland.

One of them slashes diagonally, which I easily avoid with a light jump. I leisurely flip through the air to get behind him, create some distance by striking his chest with my sword hilt, then cut him down.

I block a powerful diagonal downward strike with just my opposite hand. Twisting my wrist, I turn my sword in a direction where he can’t apply force, then finally turn my stance and kick him. I trigger my jump jet.

With the burst of the jump jet, we’re both thrown in opposite directions. I immediately get up, regain my balance, and shake the blood-soaked ceremonial sword over the green blade. Three left now.

Normally, I would have half-sliced through the approaching van with an overclocked ceremonial sword to start, and Sera would have electrocuted about two of them with her computing assist device right at the beginning… but not this time.

It wasn’t because Sera lacked skill or because they had an extraordinary security system. She told me to sweat it out and clear my head. So no overclocking, and no support.

Still, I don’t feel like calmly swinging my sword to compose myself right now. Perhaps… it’s because of that child who ate pizza for the first time today. Fueling myself with overflowing hatred, I ask:

“If anyone wants to say ‘Why are you doing this to us! We’re just trying to make a living!’ go ahead… I’ll tell you what you do to make a living. You…”

As I ramble, one of them charges at me, seeing an opening. I lightly leap up. In mid-air, I trigger the jump jet in my leg to leap once more, driving my knee into his face. That must hurt quite a bit.

“To make a living, you’ve created a world where a ten-year-old kid has never even tasted pizza until today. Yeah, fuck! Even I, born in T-Enter headquarters where survival of the fittest was the actual law…”

Seeing one of them hastily getting up from the ground, I cross my ceremonial swords and slice through him. His wrist and forearm fly off as he reaches for his sword, leaving only two neon-colored afterimages like burning lines. I accelerate.

Realizing his prosthetic arm was cut off as easily as butter, he picks up a sword with his remaining arm as if it’s his only hope. Even one-armed, his sword strikes are quite fluid.

With my left-hand sword, I heavily deflect the tip of his high-frequency blade. In this era, right-handed people were still far more common, and they were often clumsy against attacks from unfamiliar angles.

As his sword is deflected and his body exposed, burning neon afterimages like snakes appear in his vision. The two snake-like trails wrap around him as if unwilling to share their prey, biting at his neck and head.

Contrary to what people think, the disadvantage of dual-wielding is that sword trajectories become simpler. If you ask why I use dual swords then… I don’t remember. Since I don’t remember, I force myself to use two blades.

It must have meant something to me before the memory wipe. Since I wouldn’t forget if it were for practical reasons, I must have wielded these two swords for some deeply personal and trivial reason, so I continue.

I feel hatred seeping out instead of breath. After turning him into something resembling sliced ham, I speak to the remaining two mercenaries who can’t immediately process the inexplicable hatred bearing down on them:

“When I was about ten, I didn’t carry a sword, but at least once a week I could eat a makeshift homemade pizza—my mom would put cultured meat ham and pseudo-cheese on synthetic tortillas, you sons of bitches…”

The two quickly realize this means I have no intention of letting them live, and they raise their high-frequency blades. I trigger my jump jet to approach one who’s raising his sword to block my dual swords’ simple trajectory.

Before he can even raise his sword, I slash him diagonally upward, twist his wrist, pull my stance, and immediately cut downward.

Instead of resetting my stance and moving my sword from the beginning, I let the downward-cutting sword naturally arc toward the floor in a crescent shape to deflect the strike coming from the opposite direction.

The neon snakes coil again to regain posture. The intense neon trajectory, bright enough to hurt the eyes, straightens like a striking snake and pierces the last mercenary’s shoulder. I cut upward.

I’m angry. Angry beyond control. I hate them with an insurmountable hatred, and they have become my enemies. Though I haven’t injected any drugs, my heart is pounding as if it might burst. I feel like I’m reaching my limit.

Seeing him trying to block with another sword in one hand, I twist my wrist to make the high-frequency vibrating blades meet. Like two spinning tops colliding, our swords bounce away from each other.

He tries to keep hold of his sword and loses his balance, but I let go of mine momentarily before catching it again in mid-air… then I split his now unguarded torso in half from top to bottom.

It doesn’t fall neatly to either side like in movies. The two halves lean against each other before collapsing awkwardly. It would have been nice if it were like the movies.

After shaking off the blood-soaked body, I get back on my bike and return to the city. To avoid being seen by Reef or Adam, I enter through the bathroom window and immediately wash myself.

Arthur seems… like a happy guy. In the bathroom, there’s shampoo and body wash labeled “For removing blood smell” in his handwriting. For people like us, even caring about such things is a form of happiness.

Having someone who doesn’t want to smell blood on you. And still being sane enough to care about blood smell. All of it. Well… he’s not the type to complain about me borrowing it once.

After washing up and coming out, I notice a light blue monochrome man. A hologram overlaid on a drone… William… ah, right, Weaver. Same name as the malware Sera uses.

He was the man who created Hollowwood Creek. And after seeing his creation become something other than what he intended… he was exiled and experienced tragic events.

“Are you returning from an outing?”

“Ah, yes. Well, our hacker was monitoring a Hollowwood Creek account, and some mercenaries who received money from there were heading to Los Angeles. I took care of them.”

Honestly, I don’t know him well. Sometimes I find it uncomfortable watching Hollowwood Creek escapees seeking his advice. He looked like another cult leader to me.

But he said something I never expected. As if he could smell the blood scent emanating from my phantom chest pain, he spoke. Despite being a drone without olfactory sensors.

“I’ve heard of the name Neonsnake… but with your skills, Mr. Dean, you could have handled it without getting a drop of blood on you. Are you alright?”

The question “are you alright” feels like it’s burrowing deep into my heart. Am I alright? I don’t know. I’m trying to be alright. What efforts am I making? Obsessing over the blurry figure of someone I can’t even remember? I don’t know.

“Ah, well. How should I put it? I was just angry. You know Adam, the kid here? He’s ten years old and has never eaten real food, and he’s only seen pizza with his eyes. That’s something to be angry about, right?”

“Were you taking out your anger on those mercenaries?”

It wasn’t taking out my anger. It wasn’t… if not that, then what was it? I was just punishing those beneath Hollowwood Creek for Creek’s sins. They needed to be dealt with, but perhaps not in that way.

Yes, if I had done it “efficiently” as some people like to say—just cutting off heads or smashing skulls—I could have just shaken off my shoes before coming in. I nodded with an awkward smile.

“Well… I guess it was taking out my anger. I was just so unbearably angry. It’s been like that lately. I wonder if people still get counseling certifications these days?”

As I said this, I slowly slid down with my back against the wall. Despite being half in ruins, the floor of what was once the finest villa in the finest resort was quite comfortable.

Pastor Bill Weaver’s drone sat down in front of me. I couldn’t help but smile a little as he spoke in a somewhat joking manner.

“Although I’m just a 42% copy of him… Pastor William Weaver was an old-fashioned man. Of course he had such certifications. Usually, how do you relieve your anger?”

“Well. I party. I enjoy the silver lining and a retired mercenary’s amazing life, going around Los Angeles having fun. I don’t really remember how I used to do it before.”

I made a gesture of pulling a gun trigger to my head. I remembered that the memory suppressant injector was shaped like a gun. Pulling the trigger of a real gun might have had fewer side effects.

“Hmm. You seem to know healthy ways to expend emotions… Ah, haha. To be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve done counseling like this. Mr. Dean, you seem to be as old-fashioned as I am.”

I couldn’t help but react to the word “old-fashioned.” Being called old-fashioned by a man who created Hollowwood Creek felt a bit strange.

“What were your other counseling sessions like?”

“Creek escapees accustomed to the cult leader’s ways tried to take my words as divine… Honestly, I’ve been getting a lot of help from Ms. Tisha. She knows how to be cynical toward false idols.”

That woman… for someone who was one of the cult leader’s wives, she was a good person. You could tell just by how she treated Adam. Giving children time and encouraging them is something old-fashioned people do better.

“And Arthur… to be honest, he still scares me a bit. I thought I might respect him for freeing my last Eve from all that guilt, so I talked to him…”

“And?”

“How should I put it… Yes. He talks like the cult leader. But worse than the cult leader. It’s like he doesn’t want to waste a single drop of the hatred he has for Hollowwood Creek.”

Learning that Arthur is as full of anger as I am… should I be happy about that? I’m not sure. But he seems to be handling his anger better than I am. Not wasting it.

“I kind of get what you mean. That guy, if he’d been born a hundred years earlier, he’d obviously be the CEO of a mega-corporation by now. Seriously.”

“Ha. Perhaps. Have you ever imagined a Belvedere native with no interest in religion reading the Bible because he needs to understand religion to fight Hollowwood Creek?”

That makes me pause a bit. Is becoming El Sueño… revealing his true nature? Maybe he’s just… testing his understanding of Hollowwood Creek.

“I honestly can’t imagine it. That guy with a Bible… But hearing that actually makes me feel better. There’s something strangely satisfying about knowing someone else’s flaws, Bill.”

“It’s hardly a flaw. Rather, being able to use even mercy for such purposes… that’s something only the tyrants of this high-speed era could demonstrate. Only they, to their own followers.”

Being able to use even mercy for such purposes… that sounds like El Sueño’s approach. Is he doing something similar with Hollowwood Creek? My curiosity boils, but my chest pain seems to be subsiding.

Just reducing the suspicion that a friend I made after a long time might be a madman wielding power for incomprehensible purposes was enough to significantly ease the throbbing.

The chest pain hadn’t completely disappeared… but at least the overwhelming surge had calmed down. Now I could at least wait until Killshot returns to Los Angeles.

The conversation that started with my counseling eventually turned into a pointless hour-long discussion about Arthur, but… even that was more than effective as therapy.