FULL METAL JUDGMENT

Shiva ★ Resurrection

The reincarnated form of Shiva,

Shiba Kazuya sought to play at Koshien for his dead brother Tatsuya.

That day, however, a guardian spirit told him

that the world was in grave danger…

The people had lost their faith and convictions

and the world was teetering on destruction.

To prevent that, he has to take back the match!

Believe that Kazuya’s faith and playing style will save the world…!

See the light! The decline of the world!

Throw it! The Deadly Magic Ball of Nirvana!

Hit it! A batting form that decimates the opponent!

(Also showing) URGENT G7 SUMMIT! DIVINE PROTECTION WITH WORDS!

Ensuing world panic, the destruction of the ecosystem, dwindling energy, famine.

And then, the antic.i.p.ated final World War.

As society lies in rubbles, the G7 talks in circles.

Only in these cinemas—An all-night fear festival! Face divine retribution if you don’t watch it!

A BOX OFFICE SENSATION!

Haruma-1

In the kitchen, the pot was making a gurgling sound. As the contents slowly built up heat, I watched on vacantly. Now that the dish had finally boiled, it was about time to take it out and drain the hot water. All that was left was to pour it all in a bowl and voila—the stew was done. When I brought a spoon to my mouth, it really did have a “homely” sort of taste.

There’s a wonderful sense of comfort in something that tastes generic. There might be a tendency to take lines like one of a kindand irreplaceable as the highest compliments, but in my opinion, all-purpose disposables are the most wonderful things of all. Like corporate slaves and subcontractors!

As I ate my stew and chewed on those thoughts, the door opened with a clank. My sister was back, it seemed. I heard heavy, dragging footsteps approaching me from her room.

“I’m hoooome.”

“Hey.”

When I looked over my shoulder, Amane-chan was standing there dressed in her house clothes: hot pants and a T-shirt that revealed the shape of her bulging chest. The start of summer might be just around the corner, but wasn’t she being a bit too loose?

“Oh, you’re eating stew. I’ll have some too, ‘mkay.”

Amane-chan headed for the kitchen, pulled out a TV dinner from the cupboard, piled the contents on a plate and tossed it into the microwave. It seemed she had no desire to wait for the water to boil.

“Teehee, this is my reward for today’s hard work… Just a tiny bite…”

A suspiciously grim smile came over her face as she held the burning hot stew and sat across from me. Oh, and she was also holding a can of beer and a pack of potato chips. My sister subsisted on a junk food diet.

“Is it really okay for you to eat that c.r.a.p when you’re a health teacher?”

“What’s the big deal? No matter what I eat, it’s obviously bad for the body, after all.”

“R-Right…”

Her eating habits were one thing, but saying all that aloud was pretty d.a.m.n unfitting for a health teacher…

Even now, she was drowning her chips in stew and slurping down beer. You could say she was the candid type, but she was honestly just cra.s.s… It was as if her personality was the polar opposite of my cute and innocent yet simultaneously wise and intellectual self. We share the same mother, so why are we so different? Please enlighten me, Professor Mendel.

“Your eating habits don’t make one squat of difference. I mean, you have no idea what’s really inside your dinner.”

All of this came straight from a beer guzzler, although my sister’s words did contain an element of truth.

Society is built on trust. Trust that goes by the name of cold resignation. Only resignation built on lies and self-deception can bring peace to a person’s heart.

You could raise a million doubts about the information in the daily newspaper, the product label on your lunch or the age of a girl in the night business, so it’s impossible to seek the truth.

That’s why everyone shuts up and accepts what they’re given. When all’s said and done, trust is possible when everyone gives up on understanding or seeking the truth.

Food, production, information, education, finance. Society is built upon trust in every industry under the sun. Truly, this world is a beautiful place. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that doesn’t fall under the umbrella of “trust” is the matter of blood relations.

This sister of mine was, at this very moment, opening up a second can of beer as she calmly uttered a very faithless thing indeed.

“You’ll ruin your body if you care too much about health. Eat what you want and do what you want and your body will take care of itself.”

“Don’t say that at school… It’s a big thing for growing boys, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But even if you do watch what you eat, it doesn’t necessarily make you healthy…”

“Well, yeah. Not that it’s a good reason to drink like a fish…”

This was all about indulging oneself endlessly as a so-called reward, wasn’t it?

“I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about Misa-chan—you know, that girl from the nurse’s office today? See, that girl has nothing wrong with her diet, but she’s kinda got a weak const.i.tution. She doesn’t have any bad habits either, so I couldn’t find any root causes like this one. I’m also looking into what she was up to around the time she took that rest, though…”

“Oh, sounds tough.”

“Yep.” She put her elbows on the table, pressing her beer can against her blushing cheeks. “But you know,” she muttered with a faraway look in her eyes, “I kinda admire her.”

“Huh?”

What was this chick saying…? What a moron.

She practically lit up before my apathetic gaze. Amane-chan put her beer can down with gusto, as if she was attempting to slap the table with it. She began to talk feverishly, her eyes sparkling.

“You know those tragic, beautiful girls? They’re kinda sickly, but they work so hard it’s inspiring. Boys are weak to that type, y’know? I’m, like, the complete opposite, so no one will give me the time of day…”

As she spoke, my sister threw herself down on the sofa and stared fixatedly at her legs. The long, supple legs that emerged from the hot pants she wears at home could not be described as sickly by any stretch of the imagination. My sister might not have fit the tragic image, but that was hardly the only appealing trait in women.

“…Uh, that’s not really how it is, you know? You give off the vibe of a ripe woman,” I said.

Amane-chan sat up straight, blushing with happiness for some reason. Since her hair was ruffled from throwing herself on the sofa, she ran a comb through it just for good measure.

“Y-You think?” She looked at me through upturned eyes.

“Well, if you’re too ripe, you just ferment.”

“Fur meant? What does that have to do with anythi—oh. You meant that kind of ripe! Shuddup, you… you…!”

As soon as the meaning dawned on her, my sister kicked at me with her long legs. Even though it didn’t hurt a bit, I didn’t think much of her habit of blowing up at the slightest provocation. n.o.body likes a violent heroine.

After flailing around like a grumpy cat and kicking me again, Amane-chan seemed to brighten up somewhat, because she sat up straight and let out a sigh.

“Man, your personality really sucks.”

“I’m a product of my environment…”

A boy with an upbeat older sister is almost 100% guaranteed to end up with a twisted personality. That’s my theory. If the older sister was trying to learn karate, her brother would end up battered and bruised for the sake of practice. If she said she wanted to try cooking, he’d be the human guinea pig. She’d turn anything he bought into their shared property without so much as a “by your leave”. And to top it off, if he appealed directly to their mother about this terrible state of affairs, he’d meet a terrible retribution later on. There was no way he couldn’t end up with a twisted personality.

Well, it wasn’t all bad. Thanks to her, I have no illusions about the female kind. No matter how outwardly beautiful a girl was, underneath it all she was just like my sister, Kusaoka Amane. That awful truth about women had been imprinted in me from a very early age.

Even now, Amane-chan was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, beer can in one hand and squid jerky in the other, guffawing at the screen. This was the twenty-four year old single woman in her natural habitat. How could you have illusions about women after seeing that?

You get the picture. As we were arguing vehemently about the reasons I’d turned out this way, my cell phone suddenly began to vibrate. Yet another push notification for a new event in one of my mobile games, huh? Or maybe an update? Bonus stones being distributed as an apology for a glitch in Puzzle & Dragons? Picking myself up from the carpet, I reached my hand towards my cell phone.

When I looked at the screen, it was showing something from the messaging app, which I hadn’t used in ages. According to the push notification, the name of the sender was displayed as “JOHANNE ♡”.

…Johanne? I had no idea who that was. I wondered if this was spam. These days, you don’t just get spam, you get movie announcements and ads and even texts announcing the end of the world. You even hear these things in the neighbourhood all the time: “THE LORD HAS COME! REPENT!” It’s annoying.

Well, only a spammer would send me a message on this app. I had never told anyone about my account to begin with. It’s just that… well. “If I don’t get this, I’ll never be able to contact my friends,” I said as I cheerfully installed the app on the first day of high school, only to never to use it except for the occasional chat with the public Pretty Cure account and to buy anime-type stamps I never intend to use.

There was no way a stranger could follow me. I have my parents to thank for that. Because of what they taught me, I’ve always refused to mingle with people I don’t know well, so before I knew it I had become someone without friends who acted friendly to me.

I didn’t feel like looking at a message from a random a.s.s stranger. I promptly blocked the number and stuffed my cell phone into my pocket.

After a short while, however, my cell phone started vibrating again. As much as I tried to ignore it, the vibrating sound a phone makes even on silent mode really got on my nerves.

Amane-chan threw a slightly irritated glare in my direction and tutted in casual disapproval. “Hey, that buzzing’s been going on for a while and it’s annoying.”

“…Yeah.”

G.o.d d.a.m.n it, I blocked you already, you persistent b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Once again, I took out my phone, and when I got a good look at the contents of the message, I shuddered.