The Blue Chicken Is Always Barefoot

 

Unit 5 was riding atop Bastet.

Perhaps in a show of courtesy, Bastet was keeping pace with the surrounding Silhouettes.

Suddenly, Bastet came to a halt, turned around, and gazed up at Unit 5 with her large, expressive eyes.

「Mm. Got it.」

Unit 5 dismounted without hesitation.

「She didn’t even meow! What do you mean, ‘got it,’ Kou?!」

「I think she said to get off.」

Kou answered Matt as if understanding Bastet without an interpreter were the most obvious thing in the world.

「Nyaa~?」

Asia meowed in feline tongue to Bastet.

「Nya! Nyaoo~」

「Myaa!」

Asia nodded in apparent understanding.

「Nyaa!」

Letting out a particularly sharp cry, Bastet turned on her heel and padded off in the direction of the Realm.

「Got it, sis! Leave it to us!」

It was a message for the Kashas.

「I don’t get it… What is happening? Asia, can you actually speak cat?」

Matt was clearly struggling to follow.

「Well, I am the one who created the Familias and the Therianthropes.」

Given that Asia had created feline-type androids and bio-robots, communicating with them in their tongues came naturally to her.

「Oh, right. Do the Kashas understand Bastet too?!」

「We’re born from the myth of a feline youkai, remember!」

「Oh yeah… Wait, no! That doesn’t explain how Kou can understand her!」

「Me? I used to have a cat. You kinda pick up on it.」

Bastet’s face was perfectly round, making her expressions easy to read.

Even Kurose and Kinukawa could now communicate with Hayatarou. Pet owners often had an innate sense for what their animals wanted.

There was a theory that with Eidolons, the type of pet one had could trigger automatic translation nanomachines tailored to the animal’s language.

「I can’t keep up…」

Matt muttered in a daze, but Kou ignored him and turned to speak with Asia behind him.

「What did Bastet say?」

「Danger’s closing in on the far side. She’s going to help out.」

「That’s a relief… though it’s a blow to lose such a dependable Mythology Weapon.」

Even if she couldn’t speak human language, Bastet had earned Kou’s unwavering trust. It was no surprise he felt uneasy without her.

Hearing his murmur, Arthur stepped forward.

「Ahem. If I may, I believe you’ve still got a rather dependable legendary knight with you!」

「Kou-niichan… You completely forgot Arthur was here, didn’t you?」

「That’s cruel, Outis. Just because Arthur’s the epitome of Britishness—」

Even Libya piled on.

「I’d prefer if you said ‘British’, not ‘Britishness’, thank you very much!」

Kou, looking thoroughly awkward, called out in an attempt to change the subject.

「Let’s move out!」

「You got it!」

The moment the Kasha answered, Flack’s hunch was proven correct.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The charge of the three-headed beast—Cerberus—showed no signs of stopping.

Biplane-type Kakodaimons were swatted from the air, and the Tankettes’ attacks did nothing to slow Cerberus’ advance.

「There are too many colossal-class enemies… As expected of the Mother of Beasts—Echidna.」

Aural muttered bitterly. Though the trireme fleet’s support was powerful, it was a poor match for Teras created using warships as their base.

「No worries, Aural. They’ve reached Point A.」

Sara called out while monitoring the radar.

「So it’s Point A, just as we thought… But there’s nothing there but some chicken-shaped decoys. Are we sure about this?」

「It’s a bit unsettling, isn’t it? Being told to stay away from a fake chicken setup. Let’s issue an evacuation order, just in case.」

Following Aural’s directive, Realm’s Mythology Weapons, and Trireme’s Silhouettes pulled back from the front line.

The field into which Cerberus charged was deserted.

A horde of blue birds—neither quite chickens nor quite peacocks, but something in between—stood waiting.

Their oversized wings spread, unleashing bursts of laser fire.

「Chicken? Peacock? Ghost bird?」

「If anything, they barely pass for a chicken. As Aimer said, they are haunted scarecrows. In Kou’s homeland, they’d call it a ‘scarecrow’.」

Astraea answered Aimer’s puzzled question.

Cerberus was pelted with fire but sustained no meaningful damage. Each shot packed maybe 500 kilojoules—not enough to scratch the beast.

Even so, the barrage of lasers was an annoyance, even to a Mythology Weapon.

For the Kakodaimons, it was lethal.

Deciding there was no need for its main cannon, Cerberus launched itself forward, aiming to trample and scatter the entire flock of chicken-shaped turrets.

It landed on all fours—

A flash. Then a pillar of fire. A heartbeat later, a thunderous roar.

Cerberus’s upper body was blown clean off, the lower half rocketing skyward.

「Operation complete. Masterfully done, Marujin-dono.」

Morgan offered her praise.

「That explosion… I recognize it. Just like the Wheel of Fortune Mark II…」

Aimer murmured.

The others were speechless. Only those aboard Astraea’s ship remained composed—it was their second time witnessing this.

The first explosion had yielded roughly 50 kilotons—enough to melt even an Ate with a single strike.

This one was evidently far stronger.

「That wasn’t a Panjandrum, was it, Morgan? What did you do?」

Kinukawa asked, trying to stop himself from accusing the usual suspect.

「A simple trap. That’s what fooled even Cerberus. Those chicken-shaped scarecrows weren’t laser turrets—they were power packs, repurposed to sustain the electronic excitation explosives buried below. Maintenance systems, in other words.」

「The Brits again… Simple enough to be untraceable. Just condensed explosives beneath the decoys.」

Kinugawa sighed deeply in realization.

「Wait—what are you talking about?」

Eri asked, clearly lost.

「There was once a similar plan involving nuclear bombs. The West intended to bury nukes along the border with Russia, near the Rhine in West Germany. But the cold rendered the electronics unreliable, so the Brits proposed using live chickens as heaters—they planned to put live chickens inside the nuclear mine casing alongside feed and water to last them a week.」

「What?!」

Eri’s face twitched at the sheer absurdity.

「After the plan was scrapped, it was publicly revealed on April 1st—leading people to think it was an April Fool’s joke. But it was real.」

「How do I even respond to that… So, that explosion—was it a nuclear blast?」

「No, it was an electronically excited explosive using metallic hydrogen. The scarecrows weren’t live chickens—they were turrets disguised as birds that provided Whis. Instead of body heat, the Whis powered the conversion of excited-state hydrogen into metallic hydrogen—a type of Rydberg matter.」

「Wouldn’t that be a disaster if it misfired?」

「It was likely designed to detonate only when a critical number of units were destroyed at once. There shouldn’t be a significant risk of accidental detonation. They’re bright blue, see? They are an eyesore, and the lasers were just powerful enough to become a nuisance to draw Cerberus’s attention—like a moth to a flame.」

Only a large Teras would destroy that many scarecrows at once. Neither Silhouettes nor smaller Mythology Weapons could trigger the trap.

Still, Eri had a lingering concern.

「By the way, I have a question about the original plan: They planned to use the chickens as heaters, but what would have happened after the chickens died? What would have happened to the electronic devices then?」

「Taking into account the technology of the time, they would have probably failed in the cold.」

「…And the nukes?」

「They would have become dangerously unstable. Detonation would’ve been likely.」

「Did the host nation know these bombs were buried under them?」

「Of course not. Totally classified. It’s ridiculous, burying nukes under an ally’s soil and keeping it secret. And relying on live chickens for thermal regulation? Of course it got scrapped.」

「No kidding.」

「The British Army had even placed an order for ten of these chicken-based nuclear landmines—it was later canceled, though.」

「They went that far… But Cerberus was a high-performance space warship. Couldn’t it detect the trap?」

Just then, a transmission came in from Morgan.

「To its sensors, the scarecrows looked like ordinary laser turrets. Even if it noticed the buried metal, it couldn’t determine what kind. No reason to assume they were electronic excitation explosives.」

「That makes sense.」

「A trap for hunting giant monsters, no doubt. Though I wish they’d looked more like peacocks than chickens.」

Kinukawa could only sigh. There was no doubt the idea originated during the Cold War.

「Try it, build it—spirit of experimentation is key, right?」

Morgan offered an encouraging comment that wasn’t all that encouraging.

「You are, without question, not an Italian myth—but Britain’s own Faerie Queen.」

Astraea declared with regal authority, leaving no room for argument.

 

TN:

It sounds stupid, but the plan to use nuclear mines heated by chickens, REALLY was proposed and even entered the prototype stage. The plan was called Blue Peacock and was developed in the 50s. The plan was pretty much as was explained in the story; they even calculated how many chickens would be needed by mine and tried to create a few prototypes. This madness was obviously discontinued, but it surprisingly reached the prototype stage.