Chapter 12: Bomb Disposal Squad

Chapter 12:
Bomb Disposal Squad

 

IT WAS WELL PAST NOON, around the time for children to be put down for a nap. Elgis and Filia had gone off to the village chief’s place, so Filia and I were scouting the forest. There was a chance Misery Mosery had already learned the elf village was here, so we thought it wasn’t a bad idea to look around.

If I was being honest, though, I really just wanted to fight some monsters. Also, as we were completely surrounded, 360 degrees, by Doon Trees, I doubted the monsters could detect us even if we had a little conversation. As such, as we walked, I talked to Filia about the essence of muscle.

“Listen up: When you write the words ‘man’ and ‘dream’ together, you know what that spells? Muscle.”

“It absolutely does not, no.”

“In other words, it’s an old saying that means ‘All humanity instinctively dreams of training muscles.’”

“Nope, still wrong.”

“That’s why I have to spread the word of the splendor of muscle throughout the world!”

“Are you listening to me? Yuuuuri?”

“Come on, relax, Filia. Now, what do you get when you read ‘muscle’ backwards? E-L-C-S-U-M…elcsum. Sounds like the word ‘elk’ and the word ‘some.’ Get it?”

“What am I supposed to be getting here?”

What in the world? She couldn’t understand it, even with my splendid explanations? Well, guess there was no getting around it. I had to jump in and explain it more in depth, huh? I rolled up my sleeves and tried once more.

“Now, Filia, listen carefully: What do you get when you read ‘elcsum’ backwards?”

At that, Filia gestured like she was deep in thought. Good! She just had to think it over, nice and slow. You couldn’t reach the essence of muscle if you just spent your days all in a daze or something.

“What do you get?” Filia repeated. “It was ‘muscle’ backwards to begin with, so obviously it’s just going to be muscle, isn’t it?”

I gave her a thumbs up. “Exactly. That’s why muscles are amazin’.”

“It’s ‘amazing’ how many of my brain cells your lectures murder.”

“Let’s spread the word about the glory of muscles together, Filia!”

“I’m not going to ‘spread the word’ about the glory of muscles! Absolutely not!”

“I see. You have truly trained long and hard to achieve such pure tsundere energy.”

“Wrong! Ab-so-lute-ly wrong!”

Hmm. Why wasn’t she getting the message of muscle? Maybe if I repeated it? Repeating the same words can deepen the impression those words leave. That’s a high-level muscle-training technique.

“Muscles are great, muscles are great, muscles are great. I repeated it twice because it’s important, okay?”

“That was three times, Yuri.”

“Err…I repeated myself three times! Three times! Three times!”

“I’m terribly sorry for trying to drown out whatever you were trying to say earlier, whatever nonsense that was, but don’t you think if you have too much impact, it’ll be overwhelming and I simply won’t remember? It’s honestly been a long time since you’ve been this level of…Yuri.”

“Ah, but Filia, some things just can’t be forgotten. Why? Because every word out of my mouth, I speak to my muscles…”

“Can you please stop saying such absurd things with such a meditative look on your face? It’s bizarre!”

I’d astonished her without even trying—heck yeah! Or wait, heck no. I had to be humble. Because it’s all, after all, about the muscles. Humility is one of the great, essential powers of muscle!

“Whenever you open your mouth, Yuri, I wonder if I’ve gone craz—eek! Watch out!”

I stopped in place and whirled around, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a dangerous enemy. “Filia, what’s up? Maybe your eyes are playing tricks?”

“No, look there, right there.”

Filia pointed to three spherical things growing out of the ground. They were mostly green, though they had jagged white stripes that looked like lightning bolts. They were just randomly sitting on the ground. Were they a type of plant or something? They didn’t really look dangerous at first glance. Filia carefully studied them before nodding.

“This plant, it’s a myopamyopamyoropyo.”

“Myopameowmeow what now?”

“Myopamyopamyoropyo. Or otherwise known as a myopamyopa, for short.”

That sounded like the kind of name that only showed up in a tongue twister or something. Wow. Talk about a sad existence for these little guys. I’d already forgotten all those syllables.

“Name aside, what’s so dangerous about this thing?”

“The plant might appear normal, but it’s actually quite dangerous. The minute you touch the white part, it’ll cause a huge explosion, and—Yuri? Yuri, why are you reaching toward the myopamyopa?”

What a silly question. “You said ‘huge explosion’! Do you expect me not to touch it?!”

“Please don’t move, Yuri. If you move now, I’ll get caught up in the blast too, okay? Yuri? Hey, Yuri, I’m begging you. Just wait a minute, and—”

“Sorry, Filia. I can’t take it anymore.”

Unable to control my urge to explode, I touched the white part of the meow-meow-bean. The second I did, the monopoly-man-thing emitted bright, dazzling light.

“Oh my God, Yuri, you idiooot!”

And as Filia cried out her agonizing death throes, the my-little-pony-melon exploded. The sudden pulsing blast wave did get me slightly excited, but, enh. It wasn’t very powerful. When the dust cloud subsided, I analyzed the explosion.

“Really? Aww, that ain’t much of anything. Well, guess it might be dangerous if it just goes off unexpectedly,” I said.

“Ugh… That was horrible.” Filia blinked her eyes blearily. But there was a bigger change: her hair.

“Whoa, your hair is, like, double the size. How’d that happen?”

“What do you mean, how?! The explosion! You exploded everything, and now my hair’s a mess!”

“I don’t know. I think it suits you. Looks kind of wild.” I smirked.

Filia just stared back at me with scornful eyes. “Do you seriously think you can just butter me up now and that’ll make everything okay?”

“Hold on, I’m not done yet.”

“It’s not going to work, Yuri.”

Yeah? In that case, the best thing would be to just apologize honestly. “Sorry, Filia. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.”

“Well, okay,” she pouted. “But if you do it again, I’ll get mad,” she added, and whirled around in a huff.

“Okay. I’ll bear with it after I do it just two more times.”

“Two more times? Why are you so motivated to do this?! Ah, come on, Yuri, just—can we not—do you have to—EEEEK!”

Two more explosions went off in succession. It wasn’t so bad, if I do say so myself.

 

***

 

A short time later, we were on our way back to the village with our search complete.

“I really, really will get actually angry with you for real if you try something like that again,” Filia snapped. “Sheesh…”

She’d already said that before forgiving me basically right away. Was she being kind or naïve? I guess she was just being Filia.

“Sorry.”

“Ugh, now my hair’s all disheveled,” pouted Filia as she walked beside me.

“Can’t you just use water magic to wash it, then wind magic to dry it?”

“Hmm… You’re smart, Yuri. I’ll do that.”

Apparently, Filia had never tried that before. She created a mass of water over head, and then began to lower it down little by little. Then she began to wash her hair. Filia’s hair, which had turned ashen from all the dust and smoke, immediately regained its brilliant silver shine. With a little wind magic to dry, her hair was back to its original beauty. After checking her work, Filia turned to me with a big smile.

“All good?” I asked.

“Yes! Thanks to you, Yuri, I—” Filia blinked. “Wait, this is your fault to begin with, isn’t it?! Ugh, not good, not good! You almost fooled me…”

It’s not like I’d meant to fool her. More like she’d kinda fooled herself. Anyway, we saw another one of those muddy-muppet-ball whatevers from before growing out of the ground as we continued, right in the middle of our path. If we kept going, we’d end up stepping on it, probably hitting the white part and causing an explosion.

With Filia finally back in a good mood, I couldn’t stand watching it get wrecked again. Yeah, we could just pass this one by. I’d already had enough fun with the last three, after all. Or so I told myself. But man, resisting was hard. I had to respect myself for such puissant powers of prudence.

“Filia,” I said, “be careful, watch out for that explodey plant.”

“Ugh, there’s another one? We need to be really, really, really careful not to step on—gah!”

Filia, too preoccupied with paying attention, lost her footing. She tripped over her own feet and tumbled magnificently—toward the myopic-moose-berry. Worse yet, she fell smack-dab onto the white part of the mayo-myco-meep-meep. Worst of all, well, we experienced yet another explosion.

Thus, Filia once again used water and wind magic to clean and dry her hair. With her hair cleaned, she poked my arm with her index finger while she averted her eyes from mine. “J-jeez. Yuri, this happened because you’re such a goof.”

“Hey, don’t try and pin this on me!” Really, what was even the point of trying to blame me in this situation?

“Because I never give up, Yuri,” she said dramatically. “Not unless my chances are at zero percent.”

“Uh. I guess that’s good advice for the most part, but…”

When coming from the mouth of Filia, it sounded more about self-preservation. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

“So, how d’ya feel?” I asked nonchalantly. “Any better?”

Filia looked at me blankly for a minute, then her eyes widened. “You—wait, don’t tell me, Yuri, you did this for me on purpose because I’ve been brooding?”

“Nah, complete afterthought on my part. I only thought to ask just now.”

It did seem possible that subconsciously I’d thought the explosion might put her at ease. It wasn’t like I’d purposefully made things explode for that reason, though. As if I was even capable of paying that much attention to detail!

“Huh. Jeez, don’t let me get my hopes up like that.” Filia chuckled like she was a little exasperated. “But, you know, your…Yuri-ness did cheer me up a bit. I was definitely feeling a lot of pressure about opening up to my parents, so, thank you,” she finished, bowing lightly.

“Filia, you’ve got this weird tendency to take things way too seriously. You should really remember that sometimes it’s better to just think of it like we’re messing around and say something like ‘Duhhh, I dunno.’ Normal Filia stuff!”

“Pardon me? ‘Duhhh, I dunno’?! A perfect and beautiful elf would say no such thing!”

“Pfft.”

“Please don’t snort.”

We looked at one another for a moment…and cracked up. When the laughter finally died down, Filia looked at me seriously and said, “Yuri, I’ve made up my mind.”

“Hm? About what?”

“I’m going to talk to them tonight about getting my abilities back,” announced Filia, determination in her eyes.

“I see.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to stick around?”

“No. They’re my powers, and I want to convey my own feelings. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Okay.” Well, I’d already told Elgis and Fira what I wanted to say, so there wasn’t really anything more I could add. Besides, Filia was finally motivated. It was my job as her partner to support her, right here and right now. I lightly patted Filia on the back. “Do your best, Filia.”

“I’ll flex my do-my-best muscle!” said Filia, beaming. “Eh he he, just kidding.”

“Huh? What was that? Gross…”

“Gross? How is that gross? Ugh, mean old Yuri!”

Filia and I bantered on all the way back to the house.