Thursday, December 27, 2012

[No Hero] 1-5: The young master to protect to the death (part 2)


During this period, I saw the appearance of that black silhouette. He was a man with wings and wore either a mask or visor obscuring his face so that his features couldn't be seen; he was carrying another person at his chest. If I weren't mistaken, it seemed to be a young girl.

No human or non-human would carry a young girl when looking for trouble. That person doesn't have any ill intentions.

After seeing him get hit by the energy beams and fall out of sight, I let go of a long sigh. "Truly regretful."

"What did you say?" Tencha heard what I said and turned around to look at me.

"Nothing." I wavered for a moment, but nonetheless decided not to mention the young girl. Since they've already been shot down, saying anything now would only cause more pain.

"Captain! It's bad!"

 While yelling loudly, a body guard ran in a flurry to Tencha's side, almost stumbling on the way over. He was much younger--judging from his face, he was at most thirty or so old. Although it was unclear whether it was dyed or natural, his hair was a unique light gray color.

And his voice…He seemed to be the one that had just reminded me to go clear the toilets.

Tencha scolded, "What are you panicking about, look at you!"

That bodyguard waved his arms and yelled exaggeratedly. "Who cares! Captain, something's happened to Little Briar [1] !"

Tencha stiffened. 

Little Briar? From the bodyguard's actions and Tencha's reaction, Little Briar was probably a very important person to Tencha, but from my guess, fprobably not his wife: considering age alone, that young bodyguard would definitely not use "little" to describe Tencha's wife. Unless it were a son or daughter……I suddenly thought of the young girl from earlier.

I sincerely, deeply wish that the situation was not what I guessed--that kind of development would truly be too regretful.

The bodyguard was so anxious that he didn't care about whether Tencha recovered or not. He immediately turned and hollered at the people in the shadows, "H-hurry and turn on the projector!"

From the darkness came an uncertain voice that asked, "Captain?"

At this time, Tencha finally gathered his senses and immediately growled. "Do as Vale [2] said."

A 3-D projection disrupted the roof's darkness and immediately attracted everyone's attention. The content of the recording was a news report with subtitles that continuously described the news report: "Bank robbers took a hostage while escaping--Police and heroes both unable to make a move."

The reporter seemed to be reporting from a helicopter flying over the scene, so there was a lot of noise. Although it was night, there were many spotlights that illuminated the roof of a large skyscraper, where there were two groups clearly divided. One group stood at the edge of the roof and consisted of about three or four people, while the other side consisted of three people that stood near the door leading down from the roof. Two of them stood behind and wore police uniform, and one person stood slightly in front. She was…….

"Solitary Butterfly?" I said her name softly. However, the person that had just flown over was definitely not her; he was a man.

At this time, the camera zoomed in, showing the robbers and the hostage clearly.

Tencha immediately yelled out in shock. "Little Briar!"

The hostage was a young girl. A robber had an arm hooked around her neck and his other hand holding a gun aimed at her temple. That girl seemed to be around ten years old and had an oval-shaped face, big eyes, and had hair tied into two buns; her appearance was very cute. Even though she was in danger, she only just opened her eyes wide without struggling, bravely letting herself be a hostage.

But, I could not distinguish whether or not she was the girl the man from earlier was carrying. From just a brief moment of illumination, it was truly too difficult to distinguish the girl's features.

At this time, the camera zoomed in onto Solitary Butterfly. She stood without moving; her two guns laid on the floor in front of her. Most likely the robbers had used the hostage to force her to throw down her guns.

The situation was about the same for the two policemen behind her. The hostage made all three of them afraid to make any careless moves.

"I need to go save her!"

At this time, outside of the screen, Tencha was in such panic that he had completely lost his previous calm and self assurance. He commanded the body guard from earlier. "Vale, come with me. We--We can crawl up from outside the building. We'll definitely be able to startle those robbers……."

At this time, a calm voice--not like the voice of Vale--interrupted Tencha's order. "Captain, please calm down. This is a replayed news broadcast, not a live report. Even if you go now it's already too late."

I looked at the time of the news broadcast. Truly, it had happened about an hour ago. However, just as I was looking at the time, the news image suddenly changed, and the displayed time changed to just half an hour before.

The camera was zoomed out very far, depicting the entire rooftop as well as the sky immediately above. An armored helicopter hovered over the rooftop and dropped down a rope ladder, and a few robbers starting crawling up along it; however, the first to climb up was the girl held hostage. When she hesitated a few times and looked down, the robber below immediately used his shotgun barrel to prod her back, and she could only continue crawling up.

Once all the robbers had got into the armored helicopter, there was suddenly a loud barrage of gun shots. The robbers had actually shooting in a mad frenzy at the rooftop, forcing Solitary Butterfly and the two policemen to continuously retreat back.

The robbers roared in laughter. Even the sound of the helicopter couldn't cover their loud guffaws. But at this time, a sound of a piercing shriek managed to cut through even all the laughter.

They had pushed the girl down from the helicopter.

The girl was falling straight down. When everyone noticed, their eyes widened, using despairing eyes to watch as a tragedy was enacted before them.

At this time, Solitary Butterfly ran. She was so fast almost to seem like only a black blur, heading directly towards the spot below the girl. Strangely enough, both the drop and the sprint were both at extremely high speeds, yet time seemed to be in slow motion. Everyone watched without blinking.

The girl's direct drop. Solitary Butterfly's smooth sprint. The two paths of motion continued to stretch and elongate--but everyone was expecting, hoping, to see the two paths intersect.


---

[1] 小棘 (xiao ji): Means "little thorn/briar", not sure of a better name, so went with briar! Suggestions welcome as usual.

[2] 小谷 (ciao gu): Means "little valley". Translated his name as "Vale". 

10 comments:

  1. I'd shower you with gratitude and praises but I'd rather read the chappie first ;P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, of course, getting back into the story is the first priority!

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the trans. The novel is very entertaining. I would recommend posting a whole chapter every few weeks instead of burst and pieces though. The volumes each have 10 chapters, but a single chapter is pretty long by itself. The story is going to get much cooler and people might get dissatisfied with the cliff hangers. Oh well, good work :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your welcome. :) Right now, I'm the only one doing the translations, and since each chapter is very long I probably won't be able to translate an entire chapter all at once. Although my translation speed has improved somewhat, it still takes quite some time! However, I will try to compile all the chapters together at the end into a pdf version once a volume is done so that later on reading it all at once could be easier.

      As for the cliffhangers...Nn, I have to admit I have a strange love for cliffhangers. ;)

      (I'm not a sadist, I swear!)

      Delete
  3. OMG welcome back! thanks for the translations!

    ReplyDelete
  4. when reading the google translation, i always read it as thorn.. and briar just sound weird, i say go with thorn, [edit this chapter] becouse she'll be mentioned allot in the future...

    welcome back, and thanks for the efforts

    ReplyDelete
  5. I too am used to "Thorns" from google translation.
    I searched for 小棘 in google images to see if there was a clue about what exactly her name could be translated as, but I suspect it doesn't have anything to do with frogs/toads, so Thorns/Briar seems apropriated.
    Thanks for the translations!!!

    ReplyDelete