Chapter 61: Old Friend

“...It’s moving!”

Several protrusions appeared out of the bottom of the spherical UFO. What if it was Indra’s Arrow or something? Maybe someone’s in there shouting, “Energy charged 120%!” or “Anti-shock, anti-flare defenses!” Or maybe it’ll be a Specium Ray right off the bat?!

“Reiko, stack as many barriers as you can! Radium and ultra-gold wall-shaped potion containers, come out!”

...

...

...

“Long time no see!”

A voice rang out from what seemed to be a loudspeaker on the UFO.

Oof.

It was the last one! It was the very last one of the possible scenarios Reiko had predicted! It was someone who hadn’t held back at all when requesting cheat powers!

“You’re late, Kyoko!” Reiko said, sounding completely unconcerned...

Wait, this is bad! The kids are watching!

“Reiko, speak Japanese when you’re talking to Kyoko!”

I decided to make up an excuse for the kids later.

The round, gravity-defying thing descended slowly in front of us. The things that appeared under the object weren’t weapons, but landing gear. Though, they probably weren’t designed to support its entire weight, and I suspected there was some anti-gravity device to negate most of its mass. Otherwise, the ground here wouldn’t be able to support that thing at all. The landing gear would have gotten stuck in the ground, causing the rest of the vehicle to tilt to one side or even fall over.

...Spheres definitely weren’t designed for landing.

The thing was about ten meters in diameter. Back on Earth, there were 300-meter luxury cruisers, 400-meter container ships and tankers, and even bigger ships, but a sphere with a 10-meter diameter still wasn’t small by any means. This was particularly true when you considered that it wasn’t a ship that carried cargo or passengers, but only whatever features it had. Besides, spheres contained much more volume compared to a ship with an orthodox design.

...Anyway, none of this was all that important. Not compared to the person that just came riding in that thing...

That voice and intonation from earlier was definitely Kyoko Nishizono of our group, KKR. Kyoko was the ordinary person among us... Or so she claimed, but that only meant she was relatively normal compared to the two of us.

The reason Reiko and I were often forced to take action was usually because Kyoko brought trouble with her. There was nothing really ordinary about her. Kyoko was someone who belonged with us as our friend after all.

Before I knew it, the round thing had stopped descending. There was no space for it to land around here. I wasn’t able to tell when it was flying overhead, but looking at it up close, that thing was huge. It was more like 60 meters in diameter.

Why was she riding in something so big? Didn’t she have a smaller option? More importantly, what was this thing in the first place?

The sphere froze in the air about ten meters above the ground, then something other than the landing gear came stretching out from under it. Maybe it was a tube for getting on and off the vehicle? It extended all the way to the ground, then the front slid open.

“Kaoru! Reiko! In middle school form?! But I guess I am too!”

“Kyoko!”

“Kyoko...”

Kyoko gave me and Reiko a squeeze, and we returned the embrace. From Kyoko’s perspective, she was seeing one of her best friends, one who she hadn’t seen in decades...though it had only been about five years for me.

We would finally be able to unleash KKR’s full power. The trio had finally been reunited!

A goddess...

She came descending on a star... They have no intention of hiding it anymore, do they?

Are we still supposed to pretend they’re mages?

Hmm...

“What? Did you say something?”

“No, nothing!” the kids replied in unison.

Maybe it was just my imagination... Anyway, it was time to celebrate our reunion with Kyoko.

“Kyoko, would you mind taking us and these attempted murderers to the city?”

“You should make use of whoever is standing in a pinch, even Clara.” That’s a famous quote from a world-renowned film.

There’s another famous quote that goes, “If you’re going to die, take the dog with you!” It’s quite educational...

“There’s nothing educational about that!” Reiko had interjected.

Oops, I must have said it out loud...

In any case, we may have been speaking in Japanese, but this wasn’t a good time for catching up with the kids watching and listening.

“I’m sure the guards and local lords are all sleeping by now, so I wouldn’t want to force whoever’s on night watch duty to wake up the person in charge... All right, let’s camp out for tonight and make our move first thing in the morning. We should do it before the sun rises, while it’s still dark. We wanna avoid getting spotted by travelers or descending near the city while it’s bright out, right?” I suggested while pointing at the thing floating in the sky, and Kyoko and Reiko simply nodded.

I mean, what else could we do? The attempted murderer had been tied up, but I gave him a potion that would keep him asleep until we decided to wake him, just to be careful. He was probably going to wake up with sores all over his body from sleeping directly on the ground in an unnatural position, but it was far better than dying.

We then resumed our barbecue and started eating together.

Afterward, we had the kids split up to sleep in Merkava and Panzer...though, they were probably going to gather up in one of the carriages to catch up and talk for a while. Meanwhile, we were going to chat together in the tent.

Kyoko pointed at her ship and told us that it was comfortable in her dinghy, but I didn’t want to get separated from the kids in case something happened to them. It was much more reassuring to be in the tent next to the carriages.

And that thing is supposed to be a dinghy?! When it’s that big...?

“So, what is that thing?” Reiko asked, pointing overhead. Her finger indicated the top of the tent, but she obviously wasn’t talking about that.

“My dinghy?” Kyoko asked.

“If it’s a dinghy, that means it has a mothership, right?”

“Of course!!!”

After a brief pause, Reiko and I spoke up at the same time.

“Just what kind of cheat power did you get?!”

Kyoko explained that, just like Reiko, she still retained her memories and experience from when she had gotten older, but it felt like she had witnessed them through an impartial, birds-eye-view lens. Her current state was due to God strengthening her memories from when she was twenty-two. Therefore, she didn’t feel like she was living a continuation of her life as a senior, but it was more like her new life had diverged from when she was twenty-two.

Were her two lives really going to converge after seventy years? Maybe it was because of her new body, but she was pretty much back to her old self. I mean, even with all the knowledge and experience in the world, there wasn’t much you could do if your body and mind started breaking down.

So now, with her newly refreshed spirit and discarnate entity from when she was younger...

“I’ll live in this new world with this new life!”

“You too?!”

Yeah, we read the same kinds of books and watched the same kinds of anime...

“By the way, are you two traveling all around this continent right now?” Kyoko asked out of the blue.

“Hm? Well, we were preparing to stay in one place for a while... Well, we just went on a trip across the continent, and we’re on the way back from a neighboring country, so I guess you could put it that way in a broad sense. Why do you ask?” I asked in turn.

“Well, because God told me you were on a trip around the continent with your friends...”

“Ah...”

Their kind sensed time in a completely different way than us. So from a god’s point of view, it probably seemed like we went on a trip immediately after we had crossed the continent. Actually, maybe the god of Earth knew a good deal about human sensibilities. I suspected he had heard about it from Celes many times. Celes’s information was unreliable, so I couldn’t blame Earth’s god if he got the wrong idea.

Yeah, it was all Celes’s fault. Made sense to me.

“So, what kind of ability did you get, Kyoko?”

Our conversation wasn’t really moving forward, so Reiko finally went ahead and asked the question. Yes, that was the main issue here. That was definitely the reason for that thing floating above us.

Then, Kyoko replied...

“Oh, I got the power to create any ship that I know. They’re designed to the specifications written in the ship’s documents, and I automatically gain the knowledge of how to use them.”

We both remained silent, deep in thought.

It made sense. Celes must have thought she went a bit too far with Reiko’s and my powers, but figured this wouldn’t be too bad... And we have that floating thing as a result.

“Fictional ships count too?!”

I couldn’t help but shout my reaction, and Kyoko grinned as she replied.

“Well, from a species that’s so advanced you can’t tell them apart from gods, a sailboat, a luxury cruise ship, and an alien spaceship from a science-fiction novel all look the same. It’s like how we see the difference between a dugout canoe and a raft, so don’t even worry about it!”

Ah... Now I remember. This is how Kyoko is...

“This is insane...” Reiko said while gazing up at the sky, then Kyoko made a troubled face.

“But there’s one problem with this ability...”

“You mean like there are limits to what kind of ships you can make?”

“You get some sort of penalty if you overdo it or something?”

Reiko and I asked our questions consecutively, then Kyoko replied with a regretful expression.

“I can summon the ships fully equipped, but...I don’t have any crew...”

“Huh?!” Reiko and I couldn’t help but raise our voices.

“What I mean is, I can summon ships and understand how to use them, but there aren’t any crew members to man them. That means I can only use ships that can be piloted by one person. Plus, I obviously can’t create any humans or any other creatures, but androids with human-like intellect and computers are also a no-go.”

Kyoko sighed, then continued.

“The Goddess said that deities consider such advanced AI to be at the same level as living organisms, so I’m not allowed to mess with them. Well, she doesn’t actually care about that, but supposedly there are morality issues if a goddess creates another race for us to use as slaves... Kind of weird considering they have no qualms about mass-murdering native creatures...”

I covered Kyoko’s mouth in a fluster. Celes likes to check in on me every once in a while...

“Anyway, there’s a computer with its own personality onboard, but all it does is follow orders and can’t think for itself or give advice. It’s not like I can talk to it like a friend. It can handle things like autopilot, but still...”

So a robot ship was fine, but things like Chaika, Paolon, Swordbreaker, or the Riprimu were off limits. For some reason, most spaceships that appeared in science fiction novels required a big crew, no matter how far science had advanced.

You’d think they would figure out a way to automate things like the navigation and weapon management systems so that one person could pilot the ship from the bridge... When attacking enemies in combat, you should be able to give general orders to an AI. There shouldn’t be any need to manually control target reticles to fire all the cannons... Maybe it was to prevent the machines from rebelling.

Anyway, there wasn’t much she could do with a sailing ship or a steam engine without a crew. How did she end up with such an inconvenient ability? I did have a hunch...

“Celes...”

That was it. I knew she hadn’t intentionally tried to twist Kyoko’s words to mess with her. Celes wasn’t like that. She simply didn’t notice or consider these details, and instead granted the ability exactly as it was described.

My guess was, Kyoko hadn’t gained god-like creative powers, but there was something that detected, crafted, and sent over a ship whenever she wanted to summon one. How exactly it was able to make an entire ship in an instant, I don’t know... Maybe they were made in some other world where time passed several million times faster than Earth or in this world, then delivered here once complete.

Anyway...

“It’s hard to tell whether your ability is useful or not...” Reiko pointed out, and all Kyoko and I could do was hang our heads.

We talked until late into the night, then I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes in the morning, prepared breakfast, and woke the kids up. It was still dark with plenty of time until sunrise, so I figured we would get to our destination in no time with Kyoko’s ship. As such, we’d arrive at Little Silver before it became bright out, as long as we ate quickly and left immediately after.

Once we arrived, we would hand the attempted murderers over to the local lord. We would phrase the accounting of events in such a way that put us in a good light too. We had apprehended them in another country, but the victims were citizens from his territory, so no one would question where the criminals had been captured.

Whoever their lord was, it was highly unlikely that he would start beef with a lord from another country for the sake of some criminals. He would understand that if things escalated to the royal palace of each respective country, and the fact that a merchant from their own territory had committed such heinous crimes and placed a hit on the underage victims came to light, things would end up very badly for him.

Yeah, we were gonna be fine.

Leia had disappeared sometime last night. She probably figured breakfast would be nothing to write home about and went back to her usual routine of occasionally observing us from a distance. Maybe she hadn’t actually appeared last night for the food, but she was drawn to everyone having a nice, lively meal together.

And so, we had breakfast and put everything away. All I had to do was put everything in the Item Box, so it only took a second. I would wash the dishes later. I took the kids, who were showing an array of reactions from wide-eyed wonder to jumping at shadows, and the attempted murderers, who were absolutely terrified that the Goddess was about to take them straight to Hell, and pushed them all onto the boarding tube.

I put the carriage and tent in the Item Box, but I had Hang and Scary board normally. Hey, I didn’t realize that the tube could change size... Well, I guess that should be easy. After all, this was probably Star Empire technology that we were dealing with...

“Okay, time to blast off!”

“Hey! That’s my line!” Kyoko pouted.

Come on, let me have my fun!