Full Power! Starlight Cheers! – Part 02

“That’s it!” Haruna clapped her hands. “All right. From now on, this place is the mixer hall. Let’s go!”

What, it’s starting already? Fine, I’ll play along.

“Uh, what are your hobbies?”

She asked Sera? Not me? And why the hell did she look so nervous?

“Secret Art: Swallow Reversal.”

There it is! The hobby that killed conversations dead! Even a little white lie would’ve been better if it let the talk flow. Otherwise, what was the point of practice?

“Oh, I see. I, too, think cheese in curry is questionable.” Haruna’s cowlick bobbed as she nodded, still wearing that stiff expression.

“Stooop! Haruna, you’ve got it wrong. No one was talking about cheese curry here.”

“Why not? This is basically how it goes, isn’t it?”

“You only got the basically part right. This isn’t a conversation at all.”

“What’re you even saying?”

“Come on, Sera, show her an example. Listen, Haruna. At a mixer, the key is to extract info from the other person and show how you match with them.”

“Very well, Ayumu. Why didn’t you tell me that the Chief had returned?”

An indescribable aura poured out from Sera’s entire body.

My homeroom teacher had actually been replaced recently. From a Magiclad Girl like Haruna to the leader of the Vampire Ninjas, like Sera.

I hadn’t told Sera about that, and now she brought it up.

“Uh, well… I thought if I told you, your mission would end. How did you find out about it?”

The reason Sera lived here in my house was because, just like I had been turned into a zombie, she wanted Eu to turn their chief into one too. If she learned the chief had resurfaced, this life of ours would fall apart.

“Saras reported that the Chief was revived by Miss Hellscythe’s power, but when I asked Miss Hellscythe earlier, she said she hadn’t done anything like that. How do you explain this?”

This wasn’t a mixer or a matchmaking interview anymore. This was an interrogation.

The pot-au-feu in front of me looked like a beef bowl, the living room an interrogation room, and Eu with her notepad and pen looked like a secretary.

I had had a few chances to talk with the leader of the Vampire Ninjas. I knew he was actually the Demon Baron who had staged a coup in the world of the Magiclad Girls, Villiers, and that he was Big Teach’s childhood friend. But he made me swear not to tell Saras or anyone else.

He wanted to stay known only as the Chief of the Vampire Ninjas, hiding the fact that he was the Demon Baron tied to Villiers.

So that was it. He told the Vampire Ninjas he had been revived. I stared into Sera’s earnest, jade eyes, and decided to tell her the truth.

“Actually, he never died.”

“He was alive?! I… I can’t believe it.”

Sera’s eyes flew wide in shock. Well, she thought he’d been dead for a hundred years, so that was an understandable reaction. I spilled everything like a criminal cornered by a sharp detective.

“Apparently, he made a blunder or something. Maybe he thought if people found out he was alive, it would trigger a war in this world.”

After failing his coup, the Chief went into hiding, pretending to be dead so the Queen of Villiers wouldn’t find out.

In other words, if she discovered he was alive, the Queen of Villiers would kill him. He was still a dangerous man plotting another coup with Big Teach, after all.

If someone like that existed in this world, even I would go kill him if I were the Queen.

But with Chris—the most powerful Magiclad Girl there was, and another who joined that coup—showing up, he had revealed himself to unite the Vampire Ninjas. Yeah, what a mess.

“So in other words, he pretended to be dead to protect this world. Is that correct?”

“Seems that way. But we won’t know for sure unless we ask him directly.”

Her jade eyes accused me: Why didn’t you tell me this? I liked this life we had, that was all.

Haruna nodded gravely while she polished off her pot-au-feu and then shoved her plate at Sera, shouting for seconds.

“Got it! This time, I’ll do it right. Watch me, ‘kay?”

Yeah, yeah.

Haruna sat formally and fixed her big round eyes on Sera. “Please give me your daughter!”

That was so direct it made snot come out of my nose.

Ladling more stew into Haruna’s plate, Sera replied, “No.”

Gwah! I felt like an earthquake of magnitude 8 split through my psyche. Since I’d already upset Sera earlier, that blow must have hit Haruna just as hard.

Tap, tap. Two taps on the table.

“That’s too soon.”

“That comes after the mixer, after all the twists and turns!”

“Wuh? How do you even do this, then? Sounds like a real pain.”

“You know, bring up topics everyone’s interested in, share hobbies and stuff,” I said.

“Oh! You should’ve said that first.”

Good thing she was studying ahead. She would’ve blurted out something like this at the mixer too and left everyone staring blankly.

“I still think no pilot will ever surpass Rock Iwasaki.”^[1]

What the hell kind of topic is that?!

“His barrel-roll corkscrew was pure art.”

“He really put on amazing air shows,” Sera joined. “He flew planes like it was part of his own body. It still amazes me when I remember it.”

And now they were all into it. I couldn’t even join in.

“Uh, yeah. Rock Iwasaki was incredible. Totally.”

Pretending to know anything about the topic, I ate my pot-au-feu. For the first time, I sort of understood the urge to fake it.

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Now, what to do. No, not about the mixer.

After finishing the pot-au-feu, I went back to my room and flopped onto the bed.

Haruna was probably still practicing for the mixer with Eu and Sera. You could also say I slipped out because I couldn’t join their conversation.

I put on a CD album from a rock band I was into lately and stared at the ceiling, my thoughts wandering.

What worried me the most right now was the Vampire Ninja council. They’d let me attend, but let’s say everything went smoothly and we learned where Chris was. Then what?

Chris was the most powerful Magiclad Girl around. I was the gross Magiclad Girl.

She’d kill me on the spot. Well, I was already dead, so maybe that wasn’t the right way to put it, but I definitely wouldn’t walk away unharmed.

That meant I needed to know how to defeat her before even learning her location.

There was only one person who could. I decided to call the one who knew Magiclad Girls better than anyone: a teacher at Villiers’s Matellis Magic School, where Haruna studied.

“Thank you for calling Matellis Magic School. This is Els speaking.”

A bright, clear female voice answered. Not the one I was looking for, just a staff member.

“Hello, it’s been a while. This is Ayumu Aikawa. Uh, could I speak to Miss Ariel?”

“Ariel? Okay, please hold a moment.”

She pressed hold, and Für Elise started playing. Five tense minutes passed.

“Oh my, Ayumu. How have you been?”

The gentle, laid-back voice belonged to Big Teach, Haruna’s homeroom teacher. Of everyone I knew, she was the strongest, almost monstrously so. If anyone could stand against Chris, it was her.

“I’m doing well,” I replied. “Do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like to ask.”

She chuckled softly. “Of course I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t pick up the phone, would I?”

“It’s about Chris.”

“Ah, if it’s about that, there’s no need to worry. A friend of mine said they’ll throw everything they’ve got into it.”

“If it came down to a one-on-one, what would be the best way to beat her?”

I tried to laugh it off to make it sound like I was only asking out of curiosity.

“Consider this a warning, Ayumu.”

Of course she saw right through me. Her words weighed heavily.

“Whatever you do, never, ever make a move on Chris.”

“She stole Haruna’s mana.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“She’s going to pay for that.”

“Even I don’t know if I could beat her. What makes you think you could?”

Big Teach giggled, brushing me off like she was dismissing a child’s impossible demand.

“I already know that,” I said. “I was just wondering if maybe she had some kind of weakness.”

“A weakness, hmm. It’d be nice if she did.”

“How did the Queen of Villiers defeat her?”

“She just… did. Oh.” Big Teach gasped, a rare thing for her.

“What is it?”

“I just remembered, Chris lost only twice. Once to the Queen. And the other…”

Chris, along with Big Teach and the Demon Baron, once challenged the Queen of Villiers, only to be crushed in return.

I’d already heard how she was then cursed with the ridiculous burden of turning into a middle-aged man, forced to live in this world as my homeroom teacher. I thought only a Magiclad Girl could beat someone like her.

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1. Takahiro “Rock” Iwasaki was a renowned aerobatic pilot and former Japan Air Self-Defense Force aviator. ↩