Chapter 113: Interlude — Waltz of the Puppies

Blade, a four-wheeled bike with ball-wheel drive.

He drove the Monoz serving as its tires at full output, forcing them down against the ground by sheer strength.

There was not a shred of grace in it.

On ground this rough, that was exactly how it ought to look.

Bite into the earth. Split the wind. Fire steel.

That was how the mercenary called Shinzo fought.

His single remaining eye rolled, restless and sharp. He checked the road surface, read the wind from the flow of dust. Enemy shadows closing in. Safe routes. Means of attack. He decided how to use them all before he had time to think.

Unlike Touji, who was a thinking type despite his poor specs, Shinzo was pure reflex.

The experience Shinzo had built up since before he went to sleep was what allowed him to do that.

A low-slung, sports-type armored vehicle. He spotted the sharp-edged thing coming his way, opened the throttle, and at the same time braked the rear wheels. The engine growled—wom—and as the front wheels lifted, he released the brakes.

Wheelie.

He kept riding like that, and at the perfect moment, slammed the front wheels down onto the ground—no, onto the armored vehicle.

The ground was not the only thing you could ride.

If it was there, he could ride it.

Enemy machines were no exception.

Without losing so much as a heartbeat of speed, Shinzo charged up the armored vehicle as if he meant to ram straight through it, then sent the four-wheeled bike dancing into the air. Waiting at the landing point was probably a land mine.

His opponent—the six-wheeled armored vehicle driven by Banri—had been burying fangs here and there as it ran.

He couldn’t dodge.

Then he would just step on it.

“Ha!”

A beastlike grin spread across Shinzo’s face. Hidden safely behind his head armor, he bared his canines and all the animal in him, trampled 『death』 underfoot, and rode on.

Riding hard enough to leave the explosion behind. The blast wind knocked his balance loose, and he turned that broken balance straight into a turn. With the dust of the gouged earth at his back, Shinzo faced his enemy once more.

Until now, this was where he had watched for an opening to escape. That meant taking the risk of turning his back on the enemy—but that risk was no longer necessary.

『Machines moving like living things, machine against machiiiiine! This is the skill demanded of Shepherd Dogs who corner prey out here in the wasteland! This is what Rank 4 【Piloting】 looks like! This is puppies tearing into each other! Both teams are down to their last racer! Shinzo wins, Banri wins—whoever takes this takes victory for their team!』

The announcer’s voice came blaring from the speakers set around the course.

Really knew how to work a crowd, didn’t he? Shinzo’s smile took on a bitter edge as he swapped the magazine on the shotgun in his left hand.

『…I didn’t think Tank Dog would lose.』

A slightly high, androgynous voice. Though Banri was the same age as him, the quiet, subdued tone suited that small frame of his. Shinzo answered it.

“What a coincidence. Me neither.”

Touji was a sniper. Tank Dog was a tanker.

Ask which of them was stronger on this battlefield, and no matter how you looked at it, the answer would be Tank Dog.

『You didn’t seem all that surprised, considering.』

“I’d already used up all my surprise before that. …Hey, Banri. Why’d you side with Henrietta?”

『Will you lose for me if I tell you?』

“…”

Silence.

This was where Shinzo differed from Touji: he couldn’t just answer, smooth as anything, 『Of course. I’ll think about it.』 Shinzo let out an “Uh…” and, regrettably, he was not quite as rotten as his partner.

『Well, it’s not like it’s worth hiding… For the money.』

“Yeah?”

Then that couldn’t be helped.

As if to say as much with his whole attitude, Shinzo tapped the shotgun against his shoulder twice.

Tap, tap.

Then came a third tap, deliberately exaggerated. A harder ton.

Both of them took it as the signal.

Engines engaged. Systems came alive. They launched into a full sprint.

The sudden acceleration shoved Banri back into his seat, while Shinzo shifted his posture, clinging low to the bike to withstand the force.

Each predicted the other’s route, guided the other, laid traps for the other.

At this point, there was no telling which one was the sheep and which one was the dog.

Shinzo tucked in behind the armored car as if herding it and fired his shotgun. Banri slipped aside to avoid it, leaving behind a familiar sight: mines. Two of them.

In an exchange playing out at over a hundred kilometers an hour, Shinzo’s eye caught the traps as they were laid, and his body answered.

According to Touji, this was Shinzo’s true worth.

The eye that disease had left him—just one, and no more—was special.

That eye, which could pick out the fastest route in the high-speed realm, was an undeniable talent Shinzo had possessed since long, long ago, before he ever went to sleep.

His clenched teeth ground with a low rasp.

His hands on the handlebars, his legs braced around the bike, shaped the motion.

It was like a snake.

The front wheels swayed. The rear wheels swayed. The bike slipped between two mines set one ahead of the other, each shifted slightly off the horizontal line.

The Sheephound of the current generation was, by nature, a hands-off sort of man.

Even so, he had left one piece of advice, as a predecessor, to the two puppies he deemed worthy of succeeding him.

—Do not treat your machine like your own arms and legs.

A bike was a bike. A car was a car. If they were not your limbs, then you had no business handling them as if they were. And ball-wheel tires, more than anything, were Monoz.

When a partner with a will of its own became your tire, you could not treat it like a limb.

Even so, the bike under Shinzo moved like a living creature.

Do not treat it like a limb.

That was why they moved as a swarm.

Dogfight was a damn well-chosen word. Shinzo tore through the delay in Banri’s mine deployment, moving as a pack, and sank his teeth into the tail of Banri’s machine despite its superior top speed.

Three thunderclaps. Three impacts.

Shotgun pellets scattered from point-blank range. At that distance, the spread tightened brutally, and the work they did was exactly what that promised.

They chewed through armor. Holes opened.

Banri hated that and moved to slip out of Shinzo’s line of fire. Shinzo hugged his flank, aimed for the driver’s seat, and hammered him with the shotgun, forcing that movement wider. Banri hated that too, so he opened the distance even farther—or so he made it look, before slamming his vehicle sideways into Shinzo.

Mass and speed made for pure destructive force.

With the armored car’s low profile added in, the blow of black steel swept in like a reaper’s scythe.

Dodge it.

Of course he would.

Be able to dodge it.

Of course he could.

If Shinzo turned the handlebars to escape, he could evade a strike like that with ease. That much was well within him.

Which was why Banri had made sure he couldn’t.