Chapter Two: The Captive Empress

Chapter Two: The Captive Empress

My eyes fluttered open a lot earlier than usual that day. Not on purpose, of course. I just hadn’t really slept the night before. I felt sort of like I’d had a really long nap; I didn’t feel refreshed. But it would be kind of weird to go back to sleep now.

Maybe I could surprise Myusel by already being up when she came by to wake me. The thought got me out of bed, and I started changing into my day clothes.

Myusel came to wake me up every day. She’d started putting some different spins on it lately, like one day it was “how an old friend might pop by to wake you up,” and another it was “how the big sister who suddenly has to move in with you might wake you up.” It was a lot of fun. Myusel—well, she had a tsundere streak, or something like it, so she really had to push herself to pull off these little acts. It was adorable; in fact, sometimes when I had already woken up, I pretended I was still asleep just so I could see what she came up with that day.

Just as I got changed, there was a knock on the door. “Hmm.” I guess my timing was spot on—that had to be Myusel. Okay, so she was a little bit early (I checked the clock), but some days were like that. I waited expectantly for her to come in.

Incidentally, each of the rooms in this house had a lock on it—they were sort of like the self-locking doors in a hotel. So Myusel, who had to go in and out of our various rooms to clean and make the beds and such, had backup keys, but nobody else could come in on their own. Too eager to wait to spring the surprise, I went over and opened the door.

“Good morning, Myuse—huh?” I choked a little at the end of my sentence. It definitely wasn’t who I had been expecting standing outside my door. I was confronted not with an adorable half-elf maid-san, but with a female soldier-san who’d been brought back to life after an extremely long time—Theresa. “Theresa! Uh, good morning.”

“Yo. Aww, not who you were hoping to see?”

“Er, no, uh, it’s—I’m fine...”

“Sorry I’m not a half-whatever BOU, eh? Maybe I should wear a maid uniform next time I show up?” She smirked at me.

She wasn’t wearing a maid uniform, but she was wearing her usual skintight white outfit, which made the curves of her body clearly visible. It was sort of like full-body tights, or a wetsuit or something—it was oddly sexy in its own way. And the white color made the heart pound a little—a splash of water and it seemed like it might just turn translucent.

Uh, but anyway...

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

“You know, I thought you might still be asleep when I got here.”

“Just happened to be up today. Hey, why are you here if you thought I would be asleep?”

“Coulda woken you up, or come back later. Got a few minutes?” Theresa jerked her chin toward my room. I guess there was no reason to turn her away. I stepped aside and invited her in. By the time I had closed the door and turned around again, she was standing in the middle of my room—and she got right to the point. “My facility—the place you guys call the Dragon’s Den.”

“Huh? Yeah, what about it?”

It was the military facility in which Theresa had lain dormant. It was both a factory and the site of a wide variety of experiments and experimental equipment—sort of an R&D laboratory for new weapons technology. Theresa was in charge of the place.

“I was playing around with some stuff last night when I realized I had a measure of remote control.”

“Remote control?”

“A person with the right privileges can use the comms lines to give orders directly to the facility even from way out here.”

Theresa seemed especially emphatic about the “directly” part.

“Oh yeah? Uh, but couldn’t you do that before?”

She had been able to communicate with the genetically modified soldiers—the demi-humans she called BOUs—and have them handle a wide variety of jobs for her when she needed them to.

“Up to a point. I could do information searches directly, and I could tell the BOUs to do maintenance tasks at the facility. But there’s a lot of equipment the BOUs can’t handle.”

“Oh... You mean like the reactor.”

“That’s one of ’em.” Theresa nodded.

Only those the equipment recognized as humans holding administrative privileges could work the reactor. That was why, when the power source at the Dragon’s Den had gone berserk, my friends and I had had to go stop it.

“Anyway, I tried some stuff out. Reactor’s still a no-go, but I can manipulate the experimental equipment directly, without having to use a BOU. I don’t have very fine control, but I can do emergency stops and simple operations whenever I want.”

Military facilities inevitably meant lots of dangerous stuff around. Of course they would make sure to have plenty of ways to shut things down, even from outside.

“Bottom line, I can work the space-time suppression machine, too. Right from this room,” Theresa said.

“Wait... Does that mean...”

“It means I can work on the hyperspace tunnel. Don’t even have to go to the building to do it. If I wanted to force it shut, I could do that, too. I’ve already analyzed the interference waves that make up the tunnel, so if nothing else, I could use inverse-phase waves to neutralize them and close it up.”

I didn’t say anything, but I heard a squeak come out of my throat.

“So we wouldn’t have to worry about any more of that time paradox-type stuff. Good news, what with how the tunnel’s been unstable since you shut down the reactor.”

The whole outrageous idea of connecting the past and the future had been possible because of the extreme excess energy from the reactor. When we put the reactor into an effectively dormant state, there was nothing to support the hyperspace tunnel. It became like a bridge that was ready to collapse at any moment.

“What I’m saying is, I can completely sever the past from the future.”

I still didn’t say anything.

In theory, nothing could have been better news. If we could close off the hyperspace tunnel, we could stop worrying about whether interactions between the past and the future would gum up cause and effect. America couldn’t send any more troops over here. The vagaries of the connection were the whole reason Grisham wanted my cooperation in the first place. And from what Theresa was saying, she had the ability to do just that: stop it cold. And, as a registered user of the forbidden armor, I did, too. She had given it to me.

Yes: I could resolve this entire situation by myself.

But of course, that would mean an absolute separation between the past and this future world. It wouldn’t be just a question of going home or not anymore. If I went back to Japan and then closed the tunnel, I wouldn’t be able to come back here for the rest of my life, no matter how much I wanted to. If I were simply forbidden from coming back, I could at least comfort myself with the hope that the ban might be lifted one day—but with the tunnel itself gone, I wouldn’t have even that.

I was still being so naive. Somewhere in my mind, I think I had imagined that as long as the hyperspace tunnel existed, there would be some kind of connection, no matter which world I stayed in. But now...

“What do you want to do?” Theresa asked, cocking her head at me as I stood frozen.

“Wh-What do I...”

This was too much for my brain, still half asleep, to even process. I could hear my own voice trembling, and I felt pathetic. I hadn’t been able to come up with an answer before, and now I felt like while I had been busy worrying about it, my choices had been constricted even further.

Japan and my family and all that otaku stuff?

Or... here?

Which world should I stay in?

Whichever one I chose, I would regret it. I felt like I should pick the one I would regret less. But could I even compare the two?

Theresa watched me agonize with her dispassionate red eyes. I knew she was waiting for me to say something—but no matter how long we stood there, I just couldn’t.

I headed to the dining area with Myusel, who had come to wake me up after Theresa’s visit. As we came down the hallway, I could hear happy voices around the table. Was that Reito-san? What was he doing, anyway?

“Morning,” I said as I came into the room, my mind still somewhere else.

“Heya,” Reito-san said. He was sitting on the floor, playing with some tiny plush toys—no, those were Man’ya and the other lizardman kids. Just beside them were their parents: our gardener Brooke Darwin and his wife Cerise. Lizardmen look like walking lizards, so they can be a bit scary at first glance, but seeing them keep an eye on their kids like this, they just looked like... parents. It was enough to bring a smile to your face.

I was even starting to feel like I had learned to read their expressions, and right now Brooke and Cerise both looked happy. Reito-san was letting Man’ya and the others crawl all over him, picking them up and spinning them around, and just generally having a good time with them. A lot of people were reluctant to have much to do with lizardmen because of the way they looked. (I had even heard that some people, when disciplining lizardman servants, wouldn’t touch them directly, but used a club.) So it had to be heartening for Brooke and Cerise to see someone like Reito-san playing with their children so unselfconsciously.

“Geez, you’ve even got lizardmen! This is a real fantasy world!” Reito-san grinned, spinning Man’ya and her siblings around. The kids burbled with laughter. Reito-san might have been an otaku, but he had the body of the secret agent he was. I sure couldn’t have twirled Man’ya and the others as easily as he did. The quick-growing lizardman kids were already pushing fifty kilograms.

“And they’re so dang cute! Like they stepped out of an anime!”

I agreed with Reito-san. Brooke and Cerise could be a little imposing, but their kids were still round and plump and overall really cute. They still looked more or less reptilian, sure, but that was part of why it was so touching when they warmed up to you.

“All right, everyone,” Cerise said. “The master is here now; it’s time to sit down properly.” She thanked Reito-san for playing with the kids, then started to collect them and put them in their chairs.

“Reito! Reitooo! You spin again later, ’kay?”

“Aw yeah, I’ll spin you till ya get dizzy, kid!”

“I’m not sure lizardmen get dizzy,” I interjected.

“G’morning!” Elvia said. She, Minori-san, and Hikaru-san came into the dining area. We had breakfast at about the same time every day, so it wasn’t unusual to run into everyone else while you were going to eat. Everyone said hello to each other and took their seats. Minori-san and Elvia looked like they always did. But Hikaru-san...

“Morning...” Uncharacteristically, Hikaru-san was trying to fight back a yawn.

“Hikaru-sama, didn’tcha sleep well?”

“Huh? Oh, I—I’m fine.” He waved away Elvia’s question, but that was strange, too. He was usually so careful to do things only in the most refined way, one that suited his Gothic-Loli dresses. Did that mean he really was tired?

Reito-san and I each sat down, and Brooke and Cerise seated themselves beside their children. Myusel emerged from the kitchen with a cart piled with our breakfasts.

“Huh?” I said. “Where’s Theresa?”

Myusel had started setting out our meals, which meant she thought everyone was here. So I guess Theresa wasn’t joining us this morning. Apparently, as a gynoid, she had no physical need to eat, but she could, so she’d been joining us to enjoy Myusel’s cooking. “Beats the hell out of a field ration,” she’d said, sounding unusually happy. I knew she wasn’t sleeping in, anyway...

“Theresa-san went out somewhere a little bit ago,” Myusel said.

“Huh? Really?”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded. She seemed troubled—I guess Theresa hadn’t been willing to say where she was going. It shouldn’t have surprised me; that woman could be as mercurial as a stray cat. Where had she gone, though? I couldn’t really think of anywhere in Eldant that she might want to visit. But if she was going to head back to the Dragon’s Den, I would have expected her to at least say a quick goodbye.

“I guess this is everyone for breakfast, then,” I said.

Myusel finished setting out the food and sat down. I glanced around, then brought my hands together in front of my chest. Everyone else imitated me. Reito-san, seeing that he was the only one not making the pose, quickly caught up. It was the “itadakimaaasu!” pose the kindergartners and grade-school kids all struck together before each meal.

For everyone, masters and servants and their families alike, to sit down together for a meal was still uncommon in Eldant. I’m sure the members of Bedouna—the assembly of patriots that attacked my school once on the grounds that I was a cultural invader—would have been left speechless to see it. They believed that it was precisely the sharp distinctions between races and classes that allowed the Holy Eldant Empire to flourish.

“All right, then, everyone, let’s ea—”

Myusel jumped up from her chair before I could finish. “Oh...!”

“Myusel?”

“Oh, I—I’m sorry.”

We all looked at each other, wondering what was going on. “I think someone’s at the door,” Myusel said. “I’ll go look. You all go ahead and eat.” Then she scuttled out of the dining area with a quick, apologetic bow.

Being half elf, Myusel had better ears than the rest of us. She could pick up on small sounds better than I could, for example, and she was always the first to know when we had a visitor.

“Wonder who it could be this time,” I said, starting in on my breakfast. The school was closed and most members of the Japanese government were already gone, so I couldn’t think of that many people it might be. Then again, I suppose there had never been that many people visiting our mansion.

“Maybe it’s Matoba-san,” I said.

“But he was just here yesterday,” Hikaru-san said, taking a bite of salad. “Unless he finally got sick of you stonewalling him, Shinichi-san, and decided to try using force. He’s probably here with some burly guys to drag you away.”

“Huh? I mean... I guess anything’s possible.” But in that case, why would he bother sending Reito-san with the video messages? Maybe he was just out to try everything he could. “They’re probably here for you too, though, Hikaru-san,” I said.

If Hikaru-san had wanted to, he could presumably have gone back with the JSDF. He could have been gone before that American, Grisham, ever showed up.

“Well...” Hikaru-san seemed to be having a hard time summoning a comeback. That wasn’t like him. Ah, so he was still trying to make up his mind. That actually made me feel a little better, to know that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t decide. I know, I know; it’s a pretty schadenfreude-esque way of feeling better about myself, but there you have it.

“I can think of one other person...” I said, Grisham’s face flashing through my mind. I really didn’t like dealing with him. I preferred never to have to do it again, if possible.

Feeling a bit tense, I continued munching away at the breakfast Myusel had made for me. If that was Grisham at the door, it would put an end to my chance to eat.

Everyone else seemed to have their own thoughts on their mind—there was no conversation to speak of, just everyone quietly eating. The quiet scraping of utensils against plates seemed inordinately loud in the morning air. Then...

“Hm...?” I heard footsteps. Several sets, and moving fast. “Myusel?”

I looked over to the entry of the dining room to find Myusel hurrying in with Loek and Romilda, all of them looking upset. The two kids were both red-faced, dripping sweat, and breathing hard. They obviously hadn’t exhausted themselves like that just getting here from the front door. Had they run all the way to the mansion?

“Hey, wh-what’s going on?” I asked. I was so relieved to find out it wasn’t a Japanese government official or American troops showing up at my house—but at the same time, everything about the way Myusel and my two students looked gave me a bad feeling.

The three of them immediately made me even more worried: they ran up to me, faces pale, all talking at once.

“Sh—Shinichi-sama, it’s terrible!”

“Sensei! The castle! It—”

“In the middle of the night! They were completely helpless!”

I heard words like terrible and castle over and over again, but the three of them were stumbling over themselves so badly that I couldn’t get a coherent story out of them. But something terrible had happened at the castle, I guess? I assumed that meant Holy Eldant Castle...

“I want all three of you to take a deep breath and calm down.”

While I was busy staring at them in confusion, Minori-san stopped eating and gently but firmly ordered them to get themselves together. She was normally so sweet and easygoing, but she was still a member of the JSDF, and she could put some authority in her voice when she wanted to. She could even sound downright scary.

Her command was like a bucket of cold water over the heads of the excited trio.

“All right. Now, what’s going on? What happened at the castle?” she asked, her tone softening. Loek, Romilda, and Myusel looked at each other for a moment, then Loek took a step forward to speak on behalf of the group.

“The castle... Holy Eldant Castle... was infiltrated around dawn by Bedouna. They’ve taken it over for their base.”

“Huh?!” I couldn’t believe it. I had just been thinking of them, and now here they were.

Bedouna, who called themselves the Assembly of Patriots, affirmed a society based on race and class distinctions, and absolutely rejected any novel cultural influences. They’d once perpetrated a terrorist act against me, my students, and even Petralka, after which I heard they had been thoroughly suppressed, with many of their members even arrested. So how...?

It wasn’t inconceivable. I’d heard how difficult it was to pull that sort of terrorism up by the roots. You could even kill them all, but locals with strong grievances might agree with the terrorists, and become terrorists themselves in turn.

What really shocked me, though, wasn’t hearing the name Bedouna now of all times. It was that they had taken over Eldant Castle. That seemed impossible. I knew how many guards, soldiers, and royal knights were stationed there. Plenty of wizards, too. It was a castle—the whole point was to repel invaders from the outside. It wasn’t like a group of five or ten people could get in. Judging by the pinched looks on Loek’s and Romilda’s faces, though, I could tell they weren’t joking.

There was a tense beat. Then Reito-san said, “Uh... Bey-doo-nah?” He was the only one here who didn’t understand quite what that meant.

“They’re terrorists,” I said. “They’ve attacked us before.”

“Ah... I think I read something about that.” He nodded. He must have seen an after-action report on the encounter with Bedouna.

But Loek wasn’t done. “I heard my mom and dad talking...” he started. Thankfully, his mother and father hadn’t been at the castle, and weren’t among the hostages Bedouna had taken when they occupied the place. There was no way a small number of people could take over the entirety of Holy Eldant Castle. There was a good chance Bedouna had only occupied the central keep. But that was more than enough.

Loek went on: “They said Her Majesty and the others are among the hostages...”

“And so we can’t do anything ‘rash’!” Romilda cried.

She was right. Petralka an Eldant III was Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire. If they had their hands on our adorable ruler-sama, it wouldn’t matter how many soldiers there were in the castle. For better or worse, Petralka was absolute monarch here. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that she was the Holy Eldant Empire. To control her was to control not just the castle but the entire nation.

“And we thought maybe you and your friends would know what to do, Sensei!” Loek said.

“Huh?”

“You’ve always helped us before!” Romilda added.

“Romilda...”

They were both looking at me with eyes brimming with tears. They honestly, sincerely seemed to think that I might be able to crack this situation. They were so sure of it that they hadn’t even taken the time to get a carriage ready; they’d come running all the way here.

“I’m afraid that’s an awful big maybe...” I said.

If Petralka and the others around her were in trouble, then I absolutely wanted to be able to help. Just like Loek and Romilda, I wished I could do something—but what could I do right now? I might be able to take the forbidden armor and punch my way into the castle, but if they had Petralka, the forceful approach wasn’t going to be the way to go.

Hostage situations were considered to be some of the most difficult things even militaries and police forces would ever deal with. I didn’t think a complete amateur like me was going to be able to handle one. Heck, even if I somehow managed to come up with some brilliant stratagem, a complete amateur like me would never actually be able to pull it off.

But what about someone who wasn’t an amateur? Someone like...

“Uh, Minori-sa—”

By the time I turned around, our resident soldier was already on her feet, pulling her 9mm out of her bag.

People are at their most vulnerable when they’re asleep. Thus nobles situate their sleeping quarters deep inside their homes, against the possibility of attack. All the more so when that home has a military purpose as well.

Naturally, so it was also with our Holy Eldant Castle. Our bedchamber was on the uppermost floor, far from any stairway. It would take considerable time for any brigand or other enemy to reach us. Security was absolute; about the only people allowed in or out of the room were ourselves and our ladies-in-waiting. Sentries were posted outside the door at all times.

Our bedchamber was large enough that there was usually a kind of tranquility to it. Now, though...

“This must surely be the first time so many people have been crammed into this room,” we murmured, looking around using only our eyes. There must have been almost thirty. Our group accounted for ten of them—ourselves, along with Garius and Zahar (in their nightclothes, as we were), and our ladies-in-waiting. Each of us had our hands tied behind us, and we were all tied together so that none of us could move easily.

The remaining twenty or so people surrounded us where we sat on the floor. Each wore heavy outer clothing and hid their faces, so we couldn’t tell much about them, but from the size and shapes of their bodies, we guessed that most if not all were men. We suspected they had weapons hidden under their coats. It seemed they now possessed the power of life and death over us.

This was humiliating. Absolutely degrading. This was the first time in our lives we had ever had such an experience...

“......No.” That was not true. Something similar had happened to us once before, although not at the castle. In fact, it had been only shortly after Shinichi’s arrival here. Some curs causing trouble at the school had captured us along with Shinichi and others.

These ruffians used the same name as those had—Bedouna. They claimed to be “an assembly of patriots.” We had never expected to hear that name again. They had, after all, committed the grave impropriety of laying hands on the empress. We were informed that the army, and in particular our royal guard, had conducted a zealous hunt for Bedouna adherents in a quest to erase the stain from their honor. These “patriots” were supposed to have been wiped out, and we had not heard their name since... until now.

But it seemed this bad grass had deep roots.

As we looked around, our eyes met those of Garius, who was tied up like us. They had confined all the hostages to a corner of the room, so it wasn’t impossible to converse, but...

“Stay still! Don’t talk!”

The moment we attempted to open our mouth, one of those claiming to be Bedouna shouted at us. As if that weren’t enough, he produced something terrible from under his coat. We heard Garius give a soft groan.

The man didn’t reveal the entire object, but Garius and we had both seen such things on many occasions, so we knew what it was. A weapon, called a gun or “pistol.” Minori, we recalled, carried one such that she referred to as a “nine milly-meter,” but this seemed to be of a different type. That much was clear even from the small part of it we could see.

Weapons brought in by the Americans, presumably...

Indeed, there had been a report as the Americans brought in masses of weaponry that some of it had been stolen. We suspected we were looking at some of the stolen weaponry now.

But how did they learn to use it? we wondered. This entire operation was far too skillful...

Holy Eldant Castle was no otaku school. The scale and quality of the security were far higher. Yet they had reached the innermost sanctum of the castle and taken hostage several important people, including the empress. These were professionals.

We had first been awoken by a huge noise, one we recognized. Like an explosion, but not quite the same as one caused by magic. It sounded like a device Minori and other members of the Jay Ess Dee Eff possessed—a “hand grenayde.”

We had gotten out of bed to see what was the matter when our door was opened from the outside.

Our bedchamber was magically locked, of course. It was normally impossible for anyone to enter without authorization. And yet these people had. Which seemed to imply they had taken the key that only our ladies-in-waiting possessed.

And what of the royal guard who were normally posted outside? We hadn’t seen them. All we knew was that we were suddenly surrounded, then dragged over to where Garius and the others—presumably likewise caught unawares—were waiting. Easier to keep an eye on us if we were all in one place, we supposed.

What did these people want with us, though? Bedouna began as an armed resistance against Ja-pan; they feared that the sudden influx of foreign culture would shake our nation’s traditional mores, destroy the class system, and rob them of the privileges they possessed. It wasn’t surprising, then, that they should oppose us, as we had actively encouraged the importation of Ja-panese culture. That was what had motivated their attack on the otaku school. But the people who had captured us now didn’t seem to have any declarations or demands. What had changed within Bedouna?

For that matter—did these people even truly belong to the Assembly of Patriots?

We quietly removed our magic ring and listened closely. We caught snatches of an unfamiliar language among the conversation. Not just foreign, but a language we didn’t know at all. It obviously wasn’t Eldant, but it wasn’t Ja-panese, either.

The voices speaking the unfamiliar language—which was translated like any other—faded into the conversation when we had the ring on our finger, so we hadn’t noticed before. But without the ring, it was obvious how unusual the language was.

If we had to guess...

American soldiers.

There had been reports that several of the magical rings the country had created for the American troops had been stolen. The reports hadn’t garnered much attention, as the rings are not terribly expensive and the potential for practical harm seemed minimal. But if there were more American troops entering the country than we had been informed of, then things would start to make sense.

It had probably gone something like this: the Americans managed to find the members of Bedouna, who had been keeping a low profile within the local population, then provided them with weapons and perhaps strategic advice, enticing them with the promise that these would allow them to take the empress hostage.

If that were so, however, then it would mean Bedouna was just a puppet, and the Americans were the ones we would have to interrogate. And if we the Empress had deduced as much, then no doubt Garius and Zahar were well aware of it already.

Being aware, though, gained us very little. We had been taken while we slept, with neither weapons nor armor to protect us, and even our armed guard appeared to have been dispatched with little fanfare. There was nothing we could do except wait for someone to rescue us from this unexpected turn of events. Perhaps it would be our armed forces, stationed at the training grounds or near the castle. Or perhaps... it would be Shinichi and his friends.

Shinichi...

Part of us hoped that he would come up with a ridiculous but brilliant plan to save us. Maybe it was all we had seen from him so far that allowed us to entertain the hope of something so convenient. Shinichi always seemed to come up with some way of resolving things that hadn’t occurred to the rest of us. Was it naive of us to hope that he might do so again?

Shinichi...

We wished we could see him. We wished we could be with him.

If only he would come. If only he would save us.

We clutched our bedclothes and thought desperately of that big dummy.

I jumped into action. Myusel, Minori-san, Elvia, Hikaru-san, and I—along with Reito-san—hopped into a carriage and ordered the driver to book it to Holy Eldant Castle as fast as possible. Brooke offered to come with us, but Man’ya and her siblings were so excited that I was afraid they would just follow along, so I decided to have the Darwin clan stay and watch the house.

Reito-san was with us for two reasons: first, because he was used to being in the middle of chaos on account of his job, and second, because he wanted to come. “Whoa,” he’d said, “it’s like something straight out of a manga! I’m going, I’m so going!” I kind of thought a zombie unit of secret-agent otaku was already like something out of a manga, but whatever.

Trying to keep my raging emotions in check, I desperately wracked my brain to come up with every conceivable plan during the carriage ride—but realizing it was pointless, I finally stopped. First we had to get to the castle and see what the situation really was. Then we could think about what we might be able to do.

When we arrived at the gate of Holy Eldant Castle, I lunged out of the carriage and made a beeline for the building. Normally guards with spears would have stopped me, but today they weren’t there.

I suppose that should have been my first clue that things were amiss. But I was so worried about Petralka that I had sort of lost my head.

A moment later, though, I had no choice but to screech to a stop when several men blocked my path.

“Huh?” I said. They looked big and stubborn, but they also looked distinctly out of place.

“You can’t come in here,” said one of the men from... not Bedouna. His combat gear made it obvious: he was with the Marines.

“Wh-Why not?! Petralka’s in there...!” I cried. I tried to duck around the men blocking my path, but they grabbed my arms so hard I thought they might tear them off. “Oww...”

“Shinichi-sama!” Myusel said, rushing up to me. The Marines spared a quick glance at her—and then they shoved me straight into her.

As I stumbled back, Minori-san stepped forward. “Why are the Marines here?” she asked the men.

On closer inspection, I could see the men who had stopped me weren’t the only ones there. The castle grounds were crawling with Marines, more than a hundred of them by my guess. And there were probably more inside.

“The same reason you are,” the Marine who had grabbed me said nonchalantly. “We got word that Her Highness and some of the others had been taken hostage by Bedouna. We’ve commenced urgent operations to rescue the empress of this nation from those despicable terrorists. We have all the experience, knowledge, and equipment anyone could ever need for counterterrorism operations. We’ve got this under control. You can all go home.”

“Wha?”

What it basically boiled down to was: Stay out of our way, you rookies. In fact, it didn’t boil down to that; that was what he had actually said. And it was true, as far as it went. But how far was that? Was it just my imagination, or did the Marines have mocking smiles on their faces as they looked at us?

I’d come this far. If there was anything I could do to help, I wanted to do it. “W-We know the inside of the castle better than you do! Let us help...”

But the Marines’ response was predictably cold. “We said, let us handle this.”

Several of them surrounded us. They didn’t actually point their weapons at us, but it was clear there wasn’t going to be any more arguing. We were forcefully escorted away from the castle. Hikaru-san and Elvia flinched like they might be about to try to fight back, but Minori-san placed a firm hand on each of their shoulders and silently shook her head.

Once they had chased us away from the castle, the Marines lined up like a human wall. They were watching us to make sure we didn’t come back. In fact, a good look around showed armed Marines here and there around the whole outside of the castle. They were patrolling in small groups.

“.........Wait.” I felt a chill run down my spine as a particular possibility dawned on me. “Petralka...”

I looked up at Holy Eldant Castle, so large that I could hardly see the entire thing at once. Petralka and the others must be being held in the uppermost reaches. From where I was standing, that seemed impossibly far away.

The school building was eerily quiet. Nothing was moving anywhere; a cold silence enveloped the entire place. Usually it was bustling with students, providing a background noise of kids chattering and playing. To be here without so much as a lamp lit anywhere in the building felt profoundly strange. It was like crawling through the ruins of some unknown civilization.

You know, I remembered an occasion back almost when I had first gotten here, when Myusel, Petralka, and I had all been captured by Bedouna and held hostage in the school. It felt so quaint now. All right, so maybe this wasn’t the time to be waxing nostalgic...

“Minori-sama, why’re we at the school?” Elvia asked as she came into the classroom. She looked around in curiosity—she didn’t get to come here that often, come to think of it. Why had she asked Minori-san specifically and not me or Hikaru-san? Maybe because Minori-san had been the one to tell the carriage driver to come here.

Myusel looked almost as perplexed as Elvia. For better and for worse, they could both be a little naive. I suspected Hikaru-san had some idea why Minori-san had decided to come here, just like I did.

“I thought there was less chance of listening devices here,” Minori-san said with a shrug.

“They have listening devices?” Reito-san asked. But he didn’t sound surprised. I guess in his line of work, eavesdropping was sort of an assumption.

“I haven’t looked, but it seems like a safe bet,” Minori-san said.

“Listening... devices?” Myusel and Elvia both looked confused.

“Yeah, for listening to people. Eavesdropping,” Hikaru-san explained. “In our world, we have gadgets that can do that easily. Even if the person listening isn’t anywhere nearby. Can’t you do the same thing with magic?”

The women went from looking confused to downright shocked. Incidentally, I knew there were magical devices—some of which were actually living creatures—for secretly listening to and observing people. I could vouch for it, because Eldant had used them to keep an eye on me at one point.

“They posted soldiers around our house to keep watch on us—I would be more surprised if they weren’t listening in on us,” I said. “Besides, I think with laser listening devices, you don’t even have to have them in the room, right? They can use vibrations from window glass to detect the conversations inside.”

Bugging someone’s house these days went way beyond tucking a fingernail-sized microphone into the cracks of the furniture or planting it on the back of a lamp. In the hotels of a certain communist nation that no longer exists, the entire radio in each hotel room was said to be a listening device, and now there were gadgets that could gather sound via the slight vibrations of window glass—in other words, you didn’t have to have anything in the room you wanted to bug; you just had to be able to point your machine at it.

“So you thought about it, too, Shinichi-san?”

“Come on, it’s practically a cliché,” I said with a sigh. Myusel and Elvia, though, looked like they had never considered the possibility they were being listened to; they were looking at each other uneasily. I guess it would be scary to suddenly find out you’d been eavesdropped on. I’d kept it to myself because I hadn’t had any proof and I hadn’t wanted to scare them, but seeing how they looked now, I wished I had spoken up sooner.

Then again, Myusel might cope with it, but I had the feeling that if Elvia knew there was a listening device around, she’d get too self-conscious and accidentally say something she shouldn’t.

“Heh, you guys are regular pros,” Reito-san said with a grin. I guess on some level, we were: aside from all the depictions we’d seen in fiction of the ruthless ways national governments operated, we’d even been on the receiving end a few times. We ought to know by now.

“Uh... Um...” Myusel started out hesitantly. “Can we not just let these, uh... Marines take care of Her Majesty?”

“I doubt it,” Minori-san said. “They aren’t there to help her, believe me.”

“What?”

“B-But why not?” Elvia said. It was like they thought Minori-san was giving up on Petralka. But Hikaru-san and I, and of course Reito-san, weren’t surprised at all.

“Because,” Minori-san said, “it’s probably the Americans who are behind this entire thing to begin with.”

Once again, Myusel and Elvia were astonished, but they were the only ones. The Americans hadn’t exactly been subtle. Maybe they felt they didn’t have the time for delicacy, or maybe they figured it didn’t matter if they gave themselves away. Whichever it was, a kid off the street could have made the connection.

“But... But... But why do you think so?”

“How else would they have known before we did that it was Bedouna that had captured Her Majesty? They could never have reacted so quickly if they didn’t know in advance what was going to happen. Especially not in a completely foreign world like this. The Americans probably orchestrated this entire situation.”

“That’s probably why they were so eager to chase us out of there,” Hikaru-san said.

“It’s not even clear if Bedouna are really the ones who captured the empress,” said Minori-san.

“I suspect they had a hand in the strategy, at least,” Reito-san said with a shrug. “It’s Small Wars 101: pass along some weapons, get a guerrilla movement going. It’s not what I normally expect of the Marines, though. Supporting guerrillas is usually more of an intelligence agency game—classic Cold-War CIA or KGB stuff.”

“So it’s ‘terrorists’ at the top of the castle, Marines supposedly there to fight the terrorists at the bottom, and both of them locked in a standoff with Petralka in the middle. But the reality is, Holy Eldant Castle is now occupied by the Americans,” I said. “That’s where we stand now.”

You could practically see the question marks emanating from Myusel and Elvia.

“But what exactly does America want out of this?” Hikaru-san asked with a frown. “Surely someone over there must understand the danger of time paradoxes and stuff, right? We need to be cutting our ties with this place, minimizing interference...”

“I’m sure they understand that,” Minori-san said, putting her hand to her mouth thoughtfully. “But they’ll want the Nimitz back. It would give them the perfect platform to make a bid for the hypertech in the Dragon’s Den.”

“Oh...” Suddenly it started to make sense. Of course America had to understand the risks of leaving the past and the future connected, but this probably looked like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to them. The hyperspace tunnel would have to be closed eventually, but before that, they would grab up everything they could here.

If this was simply a future Earth, then there wouldn’t be much point in harvesting resources—it would basically be borrowing on margin. What would be the most profitable thing to bring home, then?

Information. Hypertech like the annihilation reactor, the BOUs, and the space-time interference-suppression device. Ideally they would want to bring back examples, but failing that, if they could get information, do surveys, make plans, then they could go home with information that might allow America to develop these otherwise unknown technologies. It would be of immeasurable value.

“I don’t think they’re going to be able to bring in scientists to take a good look or analyze anything, and the stuff isn’t exactly easy to get to. But if they want to overpower Bahairam so they can get at the Dragon’s Den, then the Nimitz and its weapons are their best chance. But they’ll need a beachhead...”

“For which the Holy Eldant Empire would work perfectly,” Reito-san concluded.

Myusel and Elvia went from perplexed to simply speechless.

“Having Her Majesty and Garius-san as hostages would help keep Eldant under their thumb,” Hikaru-san added. That was to say, the empress and the country’s military leader-cum-heir to the throne. With them captive, the empire wouldn’t be able to resist.

“And Theresa-san.”

“Wait, what?!”

None of us could believe what Hikaru-san was saying. All eyes fixed on him.

“It sounds like they’ve got her, too.”

“I... I know she wasn’t there when I got up this morning, but... but how?”

“Well, uh...” For some reason Hikaru-san started undoing the buttons of his dress. He took it clear off, revealing his pale skin, his neck, his collarbone, and even the soft skin of the valley of his chest... Why was he doing this now?! Argh, no, I couldn’t— Huh?

Valley...?!

“Hikaru-san, that’s—!”

“I decided to use this body today, in case anything happened.”

He wasn’t in his actual, male body, but in a female avatar that could house his consciousness. He’d started to use the surrogate body pretty frequently since he had gotten his hands on it. It was definitely stronger and tougher than his human form, so there was some obvious sense in using it at a time like this.

“O-Okay, but why are you stripping?!”

The soft-looking cleft was like a siren call to my eyes, and despite the circumstances, even though Petralka was in trouble, arrrgh, I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding...! No, Shinichi, that’s a man! Yes, he’s got a chest at the moment, but deep down inside, he’s a dude! Don’t be led astray!

I struggled internally with something I didn’t understand.

“I thought it might be quickest to show you, but the reaction isn’t very strong at this distance...” Hikaru-san pointed to something near his chest. “The ‘core’ in this body reacted when we were near the castle.”

A core within his body, just under the skin, was pulsing with a faint light. There was a long beat between pulses; it didn’t look very urgent, but it did look important. It was the sort of light that got your attention.

“I got this emergency broadcast, I guess... It told me Theresa-san was at Holy Eldant Castle but couldn’t really move under her own power. That’s all I got from it.”

“Theresa?” Reito-san asked blankly. Oh, that’s right. He didn’t know Theresa had been hanging out at our place until just recently. Minori-san probably hadn’t had time to submit any reports about the situation.

“But why would Theresa be at the castle?” I asked. The Americans didn’t know yet that she could control the Dragon’s Den facilities remotely. If they figured it out, things were going to get a lot worse for us.

As if they weren’t bad enough already.

The scene was almost unbearable. Several members of Bedouna dragged a young woman into the room where we were being kept and began killing her repeatedly. Five men surrounded her, brandishing guns. The young woman already looked like she had been attacked with guns, and now the Bedouna men attacked her with them several more times. Unlike the men guarding ourself, moreover, these men had long guns. If the “machine pistol” was akin to a dagger, the weapons these men held were like longswords or lances. From the manga Shinichi had lent us, we knew that these weapons were called “small arms” or “rifles.”

The men watched the young woman closely, and if she even attempted to get up, they would use the rifles immediately.

There it was again, another exploding sound from one of the rifles. One of our ladies-in-waiting yelped, and we averted our gaze, feeling as if we might vomit.

Any one of the attacks should have been fatal, but the men continued to administer them at regular intervals. Again and again and again, every time the young woman tried to rise. That implied the young woman wouldn’t die, no matter how many times they attacked her.

“Ungh... Agh!” Her body jerked each time they shot her; she writhed on the floor. Time and again she gave what seemed to be a death rattle, trapped in an endless moment of death.

And yet she didn’t die, despite the panoply of holes we could see in her body. The reason was simple: the young woman wasn’t human. She wasn’t even alive, or so we were told. The body was a “prosthesis” or some such. While it made sense that what was not living could not die, it was nonetheless unsettling to watch someone who looked just like us being murdered again and again.

Theresa, that was the young woman’s name. Shinichi and the others reported that she was the administrator of the ruins known as the Dragon’s Den. She had existed for hundreds, or perhaps thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, and though the form she took now appeared human, her body was not like that of an organic human body. It was more like a puppet she controlled. What’s more, minor wounds she sustained would even heal themselves over time.

The men continued to stand with their rifles at the ready, watching her closely. They had to know that Theresa could heal hundreds if not thousands of times faster than an ordinary human being. Which meant that, if a human could be killed with a single fatal wound, Theresa could survive hundreds if not thousands of “fatal” injuries. That was why they insisted on the rifles. That was why they refused to stop attacking her. So that she didn’t have time to move.

We reflexively looked in Theresa’s direction as we heard her groan. Her pale body was riddled with holes, but they were slowly filling in, silently disappearing as material filled them like melting waxwork.

“Goddamn monster,” one of the Bedouna people muttered.

We acknowledged that someone who didn’t bleed despite being full of holes, and whose wounds closed up even as one watched, could seem monstrous. But then, to us, these men, willing to shoot relentlessly at what appeared to be only a young woman, were no less terrible.

At length, one of the men in the group around us called to those shooting Theresa with their rifles. “Hey.” Perhaps he had some sort of question, for the men retreated to a corner of the room and began a conversation. It sounded as if they were speaking Eldant, but they were doing it quietly, and we couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Instead, we shifted where we sat, as if using our behind to dust the floor. Theresa was lying not very far from us. If we could get just a little closer, we might be able to have a covert conversation.

“Theresa,” we said softly. “Are you all right?” It might seem a strange thing to ask of someone whose body was full of holes, but we were confident that she was still alive, so to speak. Theresa looked at us with her one remaining eye, her left. The right had been destroyed by a rifle burst and still hadn’t regenerated.

Despite fixing us with her gaze, Theresa made no effort to talk. Her lips opened and closed slightly, but produced no voice.

“Is it... your missing ring? Is that why you won’t speak?” we asked. It occurred to us that although we were wearing a magic ring at the moment, Theresa was not. She spoke a different language than we did, and with telepathic communication impossible...

“N... No... I’m f—fine,” Theresa managed, amid a flurry of coughing. “My translation software is already calibrated. I don’t need one of those rings to have a conversation. I do need functioning lungs, though, and they shot those up. Couldn’t really speak until I regenerated them.” Now she sounded perfectly fine.

Her attitude was already back to normal despite her sorry state. We had never been more aware that she was something not human. We suspected she was also capable of turning off any sensation of pain if she so wished.

“Why is it you are here? Shouldn’t you be at Shinichi’s mansion?” we asked. It was the first thing on our mind.

For a moment, we hoped Theresa might have been sent by Shinichi to rescue us, but she said, “I wanted to talk to you... Your Majesty.”

“What?”

Theresa, casting an occasional eye in the direction of our captors, began to speak under her breath: “It’s about that high-per space tunnel. I’ve figured out that I can force it to close from here. I tried asking Shinichi what we should do, but he still can’t make up his damn mind. And now the Americans are here. We don’t have time to wait for that kid to figure out what he wants. So I thought I might just go ahead and close up the portal. Without cluing him in.”

We caught our breath.

The high-per space tunnel. The bridge between our land and Ja-pan. Almost without our realizing it, it had become an ordinary part of our world. We had no more imagined it disappearing than the sky or the clouds or the ground. We had certainly never thought that it might be within our power to get rid of it.

“But I can’t make that call on my own, see? So I wanted to get your go-ahead. Unfortunately, I ran into our American friends on the way, and... well, here we are.”

Theresa’s explanation included one thing we could not overlook.

“Americans?”

“Yeah. Most of those guys are American troops. A few are people from around here, but it’s Americans in charge. Or anyway, they’re speaking English.”

English—that must have been the language of the land of America. “You’re powerful. Can’t you do something?” we asked hopefully, but Theresa only smiled grimly at us.

“Afraid not. They’ve got my number. They know all about this body’s regenerative properties. Hence all the rifles. Good, strong penetrating rounds to keep my systems busy. I’ve got my hands full just trying to regenerate fast enough; comms is out of the question. In this state, I’m less useful than a flesh-and-blood human.”

“Very well...”

So it wasn’t going to be that easy. Perhaps this was a moment to bide our time. The men were finishing their conversation and coming back toward us. We quietly moved back away from Theresa.

We headed back to the mansion feeling somber. Loek and Romilda weren’t there. Brooke and Cerise had told them to go home for the time being, which was a smart move. If there really were listening devices around our house, nothing good would come of the kids being there.

“Welcome home, Kanou Shinichi.”

Loek and Romilda were gone, sure enough, but instead we found Grisham, sitting on the couch, his legs crossed. He was accompanied by his customary detachment of bodyguards, two men standing to either side of him. Intimidating, as ever.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, stopping in the living-room doorway.

The tough-looking American diplomat made a broad gesture. “I happened to come by a few minutes ago. I decided to wait for you to get back.”

That wasn’t what I had been asking.

“I—I’m sorry, Master.” This came from Cerise, who came up behind me from the hallway. Myusel had been out with me, so Cerise must have been the one who’d had to deal with Grisham when he arrived. She usually kept a low profile compared to Myusel, but she was an excellent maid and did good work. I knew she wouldn’t just let someone wander into the house because they showed up. I suspected Grisham hadn’t given her any choice.

I wasn’t about to blame her, naturally. In fact, I was downright glad that she and Brooke had thought to send Loek and Romilda home. If they’d been here, this whole thing could’ve gotten a lot more complicated very quickly.

“I thought I might see what your answer was,” Grisham said.

“I believe I refused,” I replied, not coming any closer to him. Minori-san, just behind me, was watching Grisham closely; I could practically tell without even turning around. His timing was just too good. He couldn’t have made it more clear that he’d been waiting for this opportunity.

“I’ve got an idea. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, and you can try again.” He smiled and stroked the cleft of his chin pointedly. Maybe he was especially proud of it. Hey, this guy was pretty much the epitome of machismo; his creed was probably, you know, “strength is manliness, manliness is righteousness” or something. Anyway, that chin was... well, it was a man’s chin, no question.

I hated the way he acted like he was completely in control of the situation, but he was the one sitting there with four armed men backing him up. Turns out I didn’t have the nerve to be like, “Hey, is that your chin, or did your face grow a spare butt?”

Instead I said, “We don’t have the time for—”

“You have family in Japan, I believe, yes?”

“What?” I said, caught off guard.

“Kanou Shizuki. A little sister. The apple of your eye, I’m sure.”

“Huh?” I said, less surprised than I was starting to get annoyed. This was the most transparent attempt at provocation and blackmail I’d ever seen. A villain on a children’s TV show wouldn’t be so ham-fisted these days. Grisham might as well have drawled, “Nice family ya got there. Be a shame if something was to... happen to ’em.” And if he’d gone to this much trouble, there was every chance he’d researched Hikaru-san’s family as well, so he could use them as a bargaining chip, too.

“Y-You leave my family out of this!” Being an otaku, I wanted to tweak the formula a bit, but he’d played it so stereotypically that I couldn’t help responding in kind.

“And your little empress,” he went on. “Don’t you care what happens to her?”

That was when the blood rushed to my head.

I knew it!

“I knew you had to be behind it!”

I was letting my emotions get the better of me, and I was just about to charge Grisham when I felt someone stop me with a hand on my shoulder. I looked back to find Minori-san shaking her head. “Shinichi-kun.”

The way she said my name, calmly and firmly, helped disperse the red mist. Don’t let your anger make you do something stupid, her eyes seemed to say.

She was right. I couldn’t go rushing an American diplomat because I was ticked off. It was especially persuasive coming from Minori-san, who knew what it was to speak and act in the grip of a BL-moe frenzy!

...Wait, why was I thinking that?

“Heh, I think you’re laboring under a misunderstanding,” Grisham said. He shrugged slightly and held up his hands, a theatrical and deeply American gesture. “I can inform you that at this moment, United States Marines are engaged in an operation to rescue Her Majesty and her associates. That’s what we’re talking about here. Believe me, I’m as mad as you are to see those filthy terrorists lay hands on the empress.”

Listen to him run his mouth...

Thankfully, Minori-san was still holding my shoulder, helping me suppress my immediate instinct to punch Grisham in the face. Not that a weakling otaku like me would have lasted a single round in a boxing match with him.

“There is one thing, though.” Grisham stood up and approached us, his footsteps clear and distinct as if he was trying to make them threatening. The other Marines didn’t move, but I reflexively tensed up. What, you want some?! W-W-Well I’ve got the ultimate weapon of the fujoshi world right here! Don’t make me turn Koganuma Minori-san loose on you, you— (i.e., desperately hoping someone else will save my sorry butt.)

“Kanou Shinichi,” Grisham said, placing his hand on my other shoulder, the one Minori-san wasn’t holding. I could feel his thick, powerful fingers. “Depending on your answer, our troops might be able to move immediately... or it might take them some time.”

I was silent. Grisham took his hand off my shoulder. His blue eyes peered down at me—he was more than a head taller than I was. He didn’t have to say anything else. His gaze was enough: Don’t try to fight me. Do what I want.

Under normal circumstances, I—or anyone, really, any ordinary person—would probably have nodded numbly along, too terrified to do anything else. My sixth sense was telling me this guy was a killer. Maybe he hadn’t pulled the trigger or held the blade that did it, but I was sure he could sign off on the deaths of any number of people, probably smiling all the while. Human life was cheap in his mind, just something to be balanced against what it might gain. Hell, he probably felt the same way about peace and justice and whatever else.

I still didn’t speak. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I could feel my knees shaking. If nothing else, though, I resisted the urge to nod. That much, at least, I’m proud of.

“I h-have... a lot to think about, so please go home,” I said as firmly as I was able.

Grisham narrowed his eyes, but said only, “I’m sure I can expect a favorable answer from you. I’ll be waiting.” The corners of his lips tugged upward as he walked by me and out of the living room. But the smile never reached those blue eyes.

After Grisham and his bodyguards left, we all settled in the living room to plan out what we would do next. As for the listening devices, we thought we could use magic to throw them off. Myusel and I used Tifu Murottsu to produce a wind vortex in the middle of the room. Sound is basically vibrations passing through the air, right? So if we could prevent those vibrations from getting to the listening devices, that should do the trick. The wall of wind would scramble the vibrations before the listening devices could do anything with them. There was a good chance it would even confuse laser listening devices focused on the window glass. I guess theoretically, tiny hidden cameras could still be used to read our lips, but if we sat in a circle in the middle of the room to talk, then they would never see what all of us were saying at once.

As one last precaution, I asked Brooke and Cerise to have a good look around the house. I didn’t think Marines would resort to just standing there with their ears pressed against the door, but you could never be too sure.

“So, that guy obviously came here to threaten us,” I began, looking around the circle at the others. They were trying to use our families back in Japan and our friends here in Eldant against us. It was disgusting. Despicable. Low-down and dirty. But unfortunately... it was also effective.

Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Reito-san all stayed silent. We knew it was true; there would be no point in saying “Yeah, definitely” or whatever.

Myusel spoke up uneasily. “Her Majesty, Theresa-san, and... all of them. I wonder if they’re okay...” Her already pale face was completely bloodless. It almost hurt just to look at her. Things had been a little awkward between Petralka and Myusel at first, mostly because of the difference in their social statuses, but now they were as close as sisters. Myusel worried about Petralka because she was the empress’s subject, sure, but also simply because she was her friend.

“Myusel...”

It would be so easy to say everything would be fine. Hostages were only useful as hostages; I suspected Petralka and the others were too valuable for the Americans to simply kill them. But by the same token, they were valuable simply by virtue of being alive. They didn’t have to be safe, well, or in one piece. Think about all the stories in fiction where a kidnapper chops a finger or an ear off their victim and sends it to whoever they want to negotiate with.

It wouldn’t be any use saying something fatuous just to make ourselves feel better. That would only put the problem off. So I didn’t say anything. Myusel studied me, biting her lip. At last her big, purple eyes started to fill with tears. “Majesty...” she said, covering her face with her hands, which she couldn’t stop from shaking.

“Myusel...” Elvia reached out and stroked her back as comfortingly as she could.

“I’m just so worried... I’m so scared for Her Majesty,” Myusel said weakly. “What if they’re... What if they’re subjecting her to the sorts of things like in... in Shinichi-sama’s ‘thin books’? What if they ×× her, or—”

“Huh?” I sure hadn’t expected to hear a word like that from Myusel.

“...and then they end up ●●ing her... and forcing her to ●△■! The very thought is... it’s too much!”

“Stop! Myusel, stop! You’ve got it all wrong!”

That’s all stuff from the dirty doujins under my bed! You can’t take that stuff at face value!

For that matter, when had Myusel read those things?! I’d gone out of my way to hide them! What was she, some guy’s mom who finds his carefully hidden stash of girly magazines and arranges them neatly on his desk?!

“Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san sounded unimpressed. She was looking at me scornfully, and Hikaru-san fixed me with a gaze that said What a time to be such a complete idiot.

Noooooo! It wasn’t liiiiike that!

“It’s just coincidence!” I howled. “Happenstance! My favorite author’s newest story just, you know, happened to be that sort of thing! I’m not normally into that, I swear!”

Seriously, I’m the happy-ending type! What’s worse was that if Myusel ever saw one of those humiliate-a-maid stories, or one of those things where they you-know-what a half-elf, I might be so traumatized I could never face her again. But I don’t own any of those. I don’t, okay?!

“Aw, man, I’ve been there. You buy something with this, like, totally innocent cover just to find out it’s the filthiest stuff imaginable. That totally happens,” Reito-san said, crossing his arms affirmatively. He might have thought he was covering for me, but to me it seemed more like he was pouring oil on the fire!

“But sometimes that’s how new doors open,” he added.

“I haven’t opened any doors!”

At least not yet! For the time being!

“Look, I can’t say I don’t sympathize,” Minori-san said, also crossing her arms. “Like you think, Aww, what an adorable bottom, but then you’re reading along and it turns out he’s actually the top! But then you think to yourself, yeah, that could happen.”

Um. Hold on. Was Japan going to be okay with people like her protecting it?

“××? ◇◇? Whazzat stuff?” Elvia asked, looking from one of us to another, the only one not to follow the conversation.

“Believe me, you don’t need to know that,” Hikaru-san said flatly—and then he tried to get our derailed conversation back on track. “In any event, setting aside Shinichi-san’s lowbrow, frighteningly blasphemous and despicable tastes—”

Hey!

“—at the very least, I don’t think Her Majesty is in any immediate danger, so you can relax a little about that, Myusel.”

“Y-Yes, sir...”

“I told you, that’s not my normal thing!”

“Anyway. It’s obvious what the Americans are thinking,” Hikaru-san said, ignoring me completely. “Get someone to pretend to be terrorists, gin up a good, frightening situation, and then swoop in to get rid of the terrorists. Conquer Eldant in the process and use it as a military beachhead...”

The Americans wanted Eldant as a first step to procuring the hypertechnology left over from the golden age of civilization in this world. The question now went way beyond whether we would go home to Japan or not. The danger of interference between the past and the future was going to continue as long as the Americans were here—in fact, it seemed very likely to get worse.

I guessed that only left us one option.

“We’ve got to go rescue her,” I said. Everyone looked at me. I felt the pressure of their gazes, but nonetheless I clenched my fist emphatically. I didn’t think it was very like me, but all the same I went on: “We have to rescue Petralka and the others. Theresa, too. If we can get her out of there, then we’ll be able to figure something out.”

If we could force the hyperspace tunnel closed, then no matter what America did, we would at least avoid the very worst possible outcome. To do that, though, we would have to rescue Theresa, or I would have to go to the Dragon’s Den myself and work the equipment—but that was no good. I didn’t know what to do. So Theresa was definitely crucial.

“We can’t let America just throw its weight around anymore,” I said, getting up off the couch. “The JSDF’s left, and nobody from Eldant will be able to act with Petralka hostage. We’re the only ones who can help her and Theresa right now.”

Truth be told, it didn’t look good for me. I could say all the brave things I wanted, but I was still just an otaku. I didn’t have weapons or combat training like Minori-san and Reito-san, and I definitely didn’t have an avatar like Hikaru-san. The forbidden armor would let me go toe-to-toe with the Marines, probably—but when you got right down to it, I was still just a civilian, and a former home security guard at that. Maybe it was too much to think that I could take on seasoned warriors, professional killers.

Ugh, I was pathetic. This was an important moment, maybe the most important moment of my life, but I didn’t have it in me to act all cool like the all-powerful protagonist of some light novel or anime. It would be great if I suddenly discovered I had some “cheat” power right about now, but I guess life was never going to be that easy on me.

But as I was busy feeling like the lowest of the low...

“Shinichi-sama...” I felt two hands gently clasp my clenched fist. I looked at the owner of the hands in surprise—it was Myusel, smiling at me. “I’ll go with you.”

“Huh? But—”

“I want to help Her Majesty. I want to help all of them,” she said. “As long as I’m with you, Shinichi-sama, I... I can do anything!”

“Myusel...” I said, deeply moved.

“M-Me, too!” Elvia exclaimed, waving her hands. “I’m not afraid of any Amerlika!”

“Elvia...”

“You’re a real piece of work,” Hikaru-san said with a sigh. “You’ve got girls giving you the ‘I can do anything for your sake!’ line. Dirty bastard. Ever considered going into business as a gigolo? Or a pimp?”

“Uh, hello? Earth to Hikaru-san?”

“No, I get it. I’m coming too,” he said with a shrug. “Might not be such a bad thing to have an empress in my debt. My avatar should give me a safety net—better than your flesh body, anyway, Shinichi-san.”

“Looks like I’ve got no choice but to go with, then,” Minori-san said with a wry smile. “I am supposed to be your bodyguard, after all. Until we get back to Japan, I’m technically still on duty. Besides, I owe Her Majesty, Minister Cordobal, and Zahar-san, myself.”

I had a feeling that we were way outside of normal bodyguard work, but it wouldn’t have been polite to rain on her parade. Last of all was...

“I’m coming along, of course. Only natural, right?”

...Reito-san, who normally would have had every right to spectate this one.

“A-Are you sure?” To be perfectly blunt, Reito-san hadn’t even met Petralka or any of the others; he’d really only come here to drop off some video messages for us. Forget spectating—he could have said, “Cool, well, my job’s done, so I’m heading home,” and none of us would have blamed him.

But instead he said, “A red-hot showdown like this? As an otaku, I can’t let this one go, that I can’t!”

“Uh, why’d you suddenly switch to samurai Japanese?”

“I’m trying to cover for myself. I’m embarrassed as heck right now! Argh, why’d you make me say it?” He bumped me in the chest with his fist. Reito-san seemed awfully eager for a covert agent, almost like he thought of himself as a superhero or something. “We’re literally saving the princess!” he said. “Fantasy doesn’t get any fantasy-er than that!”

To be fair, we were actually saving the empress, but why get bogged down with details?

I suddenly discovered my knees had stopped shaking. My friends had volunteered to help me, heedless of the danger, and now I knew that we would face our challenges together.

Man, what was even going on here? This was as hackneyed as crap, right? It was the totally obvious thing, wasn’t it?

But that wasn’t so bad. It meant I knew what had to come next. What had to be waiting for us. Because a scene like this always meant there was a big, fat happy ending in the works.

“Let’s go!” I cried.