Chapter Three: The Rescue

Chapter Three: The Rescue

We headed for Holy Eldant Castle as thoroughly equipped as we could be. Namely, Myusel, Elvia, and I wore our forbidden armor, Hikaru-san was using his avatar, and Minori-san and Reito-san had all the weapons they could carry. Reito-san, by the way, had only had his pistol, for self-defense, on him, so Minori-san spotted him a Type 89 and some other stuff she happened to have on hand.

“Shinichi-sensei!” Romilda called from the shadows of the trees, waving to us. Assaulting the castle head-on obviously wasn’t a good idea, so we’d arranged to meet Loek, Romilda, and their parents by one of the many small side entrances. We would stop our carriage, and Romilda’s dad, Rydel-san, would fill us in on the castle’s secret entrances. His ancestors had been among those who built the castle generations earlier, which was why his family had been granted nobility, unusual for demi-humans. Naturally, the Guld family had a set of blueprints for the castle, passed down as a cherished heirloom.

“I must say, I’m impressed you even knew these would be here,” Rydel-san said, running his fingers through his beard.

“Eh, y’know. It’s sort of how these things work. Even in real life.”

Any castle or fortress or whatever was bound to have secret passageways that the family and their servants could use to escape in an emergency. It wasn’t just a cliché—it was common sense. But the flipside was that they could be used to sneak in as well as out. Then again, when I said it was a cliché, I meant in entertainment—which these people hadn’t had much of until recently. Maybe it wasn’t as obvious to them yet as it was to me.

“It’s usually disguised as, like, an unused well or something,” I said.

“No, nothing that obvious,” Rydel-san replied. “Besides, it would fill up with rainwater. Surely you don’t imagine my esteemed ancestors would have created such a facile deception, Shinichi-dono?”

“Huh? But then where...?” I asked.

“Behold the wonders of dwarven skill!” Rydel-san struck the root of a nearby tree with his fist. It went booong, and then part of the root recessed inward.

“Wow...”

No way, I thought, but only for a second, because it got even wilder. A dozen nearby trees soundlessly slid aside or tilted half-over, and the ground itself began to give way. I heard dirt tumbling downward, but I could clearly see a metal surface below.

Hang on a second... Was this a secret base?! Was a rescue machine with wings that looked tiny for the size of its fuselage going to pop out?! Why were dwarves so obsessed with this stuff?!

“That’s so cool!” Reito-san cried. “I mean, cue the badass background music! Mrrrrmrmrmr bzzzoowww!”

“I think those English do-gooders would be more appropriate here,” I said.

“Yeah, about that,” Reito-san said. “In the opening, they always exclaim ‘Th*nderbirds are go!,’ but doesn’t that seem like, grammatically a little weird?”

“Huh? Isn’t it because there’s five of them?”

“I heard go is actually an adjective there. They say it’s a pretty common spoken usage,” Minori-san interjected. “But remind me: why are we talking about that at a moment like this?”

“Sorry,” Reito-san and I said, and then we prepared to use the dwarven sally port—or escape route or whatever. By the way, it was on a slant so that even a carriage could get in or out. It was a nice touch; I guess you’d expect nobles to flee in a vehicle rather than on their own feet.

“Say, Loek. You can use electricity magic, right?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. But, uh, so can everyone here,” he replied, indicating Romilda and all their parents.

In fantasy novels, lightning always seems to be a subdivision of wind magic, but according to Loek, there weren’t really special “elements” or affinities like wind or earth. I guess when you think about it, metal is the best conductor of electricity, which is really more of a dwarf thing, anyway.

“All right, then...” I pointed to several suitable spots on the castle blueprints Rydel-san had shown us. I told them to get not just the Guld and Slayson families but everyone they could who was capable of using lightning magic, and to start using their spells where I indicated. Everyone looked at me as if to ask why, but I didn’t have time to explain the details.

Finally Rydel-san said, “We beg you to help Her Majesty, Minister Cordobal, and the others. Best of luck!”

“Juuuust leave it to me!” I said, making a rude gesture in imitation of a certain civil servant, and then we headed into the tunnel that would lead us into the castle.

I said it was big enough for a carriage, but that was true only until the spot directly beneath the castle, at which point it became a more ordinary escape tunnel. It was just tall enough for Minori-san to not have to duck, and barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Reito-san had to lower his head, and those of us in the forbidden armor had to crawl.

So there we were, making our way slowly but surely in a line through the passage. Minori-san was on point, followed by Myusel, then me, Elvia, and Hikaru-san, with Reito-san our rearguard. We’d decided on this arrangement because Myusel and Elvia had wanted me in between them, presumably so that there would be someone to protect me no matter which direction an enemy came from. My manhood felt a little insulted by that, but after their battle in the forbidden armor, they knew how to use it better than I did, and anyway, I didn’t want to waste time arguing, so we went with their idea.

In other words, everything was going basically fine. Except for one little thing.

I swallowed heavily, hoping no one could hear me. But once I was thinking about it, I found myself having to swallow again and again.

Like I said, those of us wearing the forbidden armor had to crawl along. In other words, Myusel’s butt was right in front of me. And while the armor covered the most-vital places, it didn’t leave much else to the imagination. Whether to leave sightlines open or what I don’t know, but for a powered exoskeleton, these things didn’t have much actual armor around the torso. It was dirty. Downright filthy. And it meant that among the mechanical bits of the forbidden armor, I caught glimpses of Myusel’s—of her—her behind, swaying side to side, right in front of me, arrgh, and with those thighs hanging right out there, and between them I could almost see—but not quite—but—ahhhhhhh!

What was this? Was this fan service? This was fan service! It was deliberate! I wished whoever designed this armor was here right now. I would give them a big grin and an even bigger thumbs-up. “Good job!” I’d say!

.........Uhh... I don’t actually mean any of that, okay?

Awful! I am awful! This was serious! Petralka and Theresa were in real trouble, and here I was thinking dirty thoughts! I couldn’t believe myself! (I mean it, okay?!)

I was frozen, making excuses to I’m not quite sure who, when Hikaru-san’s voice brought me back to reality. “Shinichi-san, don’t forget our objective, all right?”

“Huh?! Who’s forgetting? What’s forgetting?!”

It didn’t take me long to figure out what he meant, though. He was positioned directly behind Elvia. Which meant he was getting a good look at...

Grrannghhhh!!

There was her butt, of course, and those toned thighs, and that fluffy tail—whoa! Was I getting jealous just imagining it? Very jealous.

Huh? But wait. When I thought about it—okay, I didn’t have to think that hard—Elvia was behind me. So was she getting an eyeful of... aaaahhhhh I wish I hadn’t realized that! Ugh, I’m so embarrassed! Shinichi, you’ll never be able to get married now!! I know, I know, I was just looking at Myusel’s butt the same way, but...!

“Shinichi-sama, is something the matter?”

“N-Nothing at all, Myusel! Let’s just keep going, dead ahead!” I told the concerned butt—I mean, Myusel!—and tried to smile as encouragingly as I could. It was the only thing I could do.

The passageway eventually led us into an underground room that appeared to be some sort of storage area. We easily pushed aside a cover in the stone floor, allowing us out of the passageway. Beside the cover, I could see a large, wooden box—it had probably been sitting over the cover to hide it. It looked heavy, but I found I could move it without any trouble. It was probably empty.

“Phew,” I sighed, glad to finally be free of the claustrophobic hallway. I’d been right on the edge down there, and I don’t know how much longer I could have lasted. Of course, the forbidden armor had its own oxygen supply, so I wasn’t actually going to suffocate, but with that butt right in front of me— (Remainder omitted.)

Once Reito-san, bringing up the rear, was safely out of the passageway, we all looked at each other. The light in the room was so dim we could only just see each other’s faces. Minori-san pressed her pointer finger to her lips, then motioned to the door leading into the castle.

First things first: we would have to get to the upper levels. While we knew the layout of the castle, though, we didn’t know exactly where Petralka was being kept. We would have to figure it out somehow. Here was my idea: we’d work our way up, then when we got upstairs, we’d have Elvia with her excellent nose try to sniff Petralka out. (It was possible to lower the force field around the forbidden armor to let outside air in, so that wouldn’t be a problem.)

We all followed Minori-san into the castle, trying to be ready for anything. We had gone down several hallways and were about to turn another corner when—

“Fall back!” Minori-san exclaimed. At almost the same moment, I heard a series of muffled gunshots. The stone floor, walls, and ceiling erupted in showers of sparks. Whoever was shooting at us must have been using a suppressor, because I didn’t hear full-fledged gunshots or see any muzzle flash. But that didn’t make the bullets any less lethal.

“Yeep!” I cried. Minori-san pressed herself against the stone with her pistol at the ready, using the wall for cover as she fired around the corner.

Reito-san, too, jumped out from behind me, letting off a few rounds while being careful to avoid the return fire. But then he let out a “Pfah!” and dropped down toward the ground, his face scrunching. I could see a small cut oozing blood down his cheek—maybe a graze from a bullet, or at least from a bit of flying stone.

“Maybe the people with the armor could get up front?!” Reito-san said.

“Er, right!” I replied. Suddenly it seemed so obvious: ricochet. Even firing blindly around a corner, your bullets would bounce off the stone floors and walls and ceiling, and some of them might hit their intended target. In fact, enough of them probably would that you could deliberately try to use the ricochet to deliver the shot—I remembered reading that in some manga somewhere.

Reito-san let up firing for a moment and Myusel and I hurried forward, hoping to trade places with Minori-san.

Suddenly the firing stopped.

“I knew you would come,” someone said as if they had been waiting for this very moment. The magic ring was interpreting for me, but from what I could hear, it sounded like they were speaking English. Which meant...

“M-Minori-san...”

“Yeah. An ambush.” Minori-san had her back pressed to the wall near me, and I could hear her trying to get her breathing under control.

“We accounted, of course, for the possibility that you would show up here. And so you did. Never knowing that we were waiting for you,” the other person—a Marine—said mockingly. Several other voices started to laugh. Even in the gloom, I could tell we weren’t dealing with just a couple of people. There had to be at least twenty men facing us.

“Uhhh...” I’d like to see around the corner, I thought. That got me a reaction from the armor’s onboard AI, which projected an image formed by echolocation in front of my eyes. It was remarkably detailed, much more than I would have expected from a picture formed with sound. I could see not just the Marines’ equipment, but even their faces. If I’d felt like it, I could probably have counted the hairs on their heads.

I had been right—about twenty Marines. They were armed with M4 carbines and MINIMI SAW light machine guns. No snipers. No mortars, either. Well, we were indoors.

Still, that meant there was a hallway packed with fully armed Americans waiting for me. I had never seen anything like this except in movies. Ironically, that gave the moment a sense of detachment, a feeling of unreality that tripped me up.

“Throw down your weapons and surrender. Do as we say and we’ll let you live.”

There it was: the classic surrender offer. Then again, between the lines there was usually something like, “we won’t kill you, but we’ll make you wish you were dead.” So it wouldn’t necessarily pay just to do what they asked.

“Need I remind you that we hold the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire in our grasp? A stupid move on your part could have very unhealthy consequences for her.”

It was so American to take such a roundabout way of saying it—but in any event, the Marines showed no sign of attacking us. They were probably still hoping we would surrender and come out peacefully.

I see, I thought. They don’t know exactly what kinds of weapons we might have, so they’re being careful. They had no idea if we might be armed with magic or magical weapons.

I didn’t say anything out loud, but I looked back at Myusel and Elvia behind me. Our eyes met, and they picked up on what I wanted without me having to say a word. They each nodded, and then I looked at Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Reito-san before raising my arm in front of my face and taking up a fighting posture.

They seemed to get what I had in mind—they all nodded at me and took a deep breath.

It’s all right, Kanou Shinichi. Your forbidden armor withstood a rampaging annihilation reactor—a few 5.56mm bullets aren’t going to hurt you.

At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

Myusel, Elvia, and I charged around the corner all at once. It seemed to catch the Marines by surprise—but they were still trained soldiers. They didn’t hesitate, but opened fire on us.

I caught my breath as I saw ripples run across my defensive force field, but they only lasted for a moment. The force field robbed the bullets of their kinetic energy, and they went tumbling to the ground. None of them got through. I’d known they wouldn’t, but it was still pretty scary to actually get shot at. I mean really scary. I had to force myself not to close my eyes.

But we could do this!

“If they can’t hit us, they can’t hurt us!” I shouted in imitation of some captain somewhere. I mean, I guess it was sort of a truism, but I shouted it anyway. To be fair, I guess they were hitting us. Just in the force field.

“What?!” cried the Marines when they realized their bullets weren’t doing anything. They might have expected that if we’d shown up in walking tanks or something, but the forbidden armor looked more like mecha-girl cosplay. You know, the sort of thing that makes you go, “The chest and the head are important—why aren’t they covered?!” In other words, they didn’t look very smart in defensive terms. It had probably caused the Marines to underestimate us. After all, the force fields were invisible to the naked eye.

I couldn’t repress a nasty little smile when I saw how shocked they were. Normally, they could have taken out someone like me with one finger—well, okay, maybe not quite that easily, but a good punch from one of them would have laid me out flat. And here they were, practically scared of me! It was an outrageous role reversal.

“Try this on for size! Former Shut-In Otaku Cheat Attack!!” I shouted, making them blanch even further, and then I punched the guy on point.

“Hrgh!” he cried, flying into the air. That’s not hyperbole—he literally came up off his feet. I didn’t put all my strength into it—I didn’t want to kill anybody—but it threw him a good meter or so, slamming him into his comrades behind him.

“Goddammit!” a couple of them shouted as the guy came tumbling into them. Ooh—his arm was at a weird angle. You see that in manga and stuff all the time, but to see it in real life, even without any blood, is pretty grotesque. I knew in theory I didn’t have to hold back against people who wanted to shoot me, but like I said, I wasn’t out to kill them, so maybe I shouldn’t go around punching anybody until I had a better sense of my own strength.

With that in mind, Myusel, Elvia, and I started working our way among the Marines. Even underground, the castle passages were wide enough to allow us to run around in the forbidden armor, but it was a bit too tight for a squadron of Marines to retreat quickly. We slammed into the middle of them, grab, rip, throw, grab, rip, throw. Okay, there wasn’t actually any ripping, but the point is we tossed them aside easily.

“Tossing” was really one way of attacking. It might not have looked like much at first, but it was remarkably effective. Throws and locks can be better than strikes when you just want to control an opponent. My mom told me that’s why police officers usually learn judo instead of karate or kenpo: because they don’t want to punch or kick people so much as they want to be able to keep a handle on them once they’re on the ground.

My mother had thrown me once, and even on tatami matting it took me a few minutes to get up again. The impact hits your entire body at once, knocking the air out of your lungs. Just imagine landing on something a lot harder than tatami, like asphalt—I wouldn’t be surprised if a person went unconscious.

“Wh-What the hell are these people?!”

“St-Stop!”

The Marines could tell when they were outclassed. Their frightened, angry shouting echoed off the stone walls. The guns they were carrying started to work against them, crucially slowing them down as they tried to switch to hand-to-hand fighting or even just withdraw.

In the blink of an eye, we’d cast aside six Marines and were closing in on three more, including one who looked like the commander. They were scrambling backwards, trying to make some space between us and them, but they couldn’t run full-out in the half-darkness, so instead they just ended up trying to stare us down—but they were well within reach.

“D—Damn...” The man in the center of the Marine line, the one who appeared to be the commander, held something up. “I told you! You really don’t care what happens to the empress?!”

He was holding some kind of communications device. One word from him, he seemed to be suggesting, and the Bedouna terrorists, or the Marines pretending to be terrorists, or whatever, would kill Petralka.

We stopped as if this were a samurai drama and the communications device the Marine was holding was his inro seal case. The Marines saw that, looked at each other, and grinned. They clearly thought they had the upper hand now.

“Excellent, there’s a good boy. Stay still. One false move and the hostage dies. First things first: drop your weapons. And take off those weird suits you’re wearing.” As if to emphasize that he held Petralka’s life in his hands, the commander held the radio to his mouth and said, “This is Charlie Five. We’ve got intruders. Take the hostage and—”

Suddenly, he stopped talking. The radio was silent—or rather, it kept producing useless static.

“What’s the matter? Radio not working?” I said. The Marine glowered at me. Bingo.

“What did you do to it?!” The men to the commander’s left and right leveled their guns at us. The commander tried several more times, with increasing desperation, to raise his comrades on the radio, but there was no response. Just the buzzing white noise of static.

Phew. I couldn’t have been more relieved. It had actually worked.

I’d had no way to be sure it would go the way I’d planned, so I’d been pretty worried—but Loek’s magic was doing exactly what it was supposed to.

When we’d been on our way to the Nimitz recently, we’d encountered wireless interference. The cause seemed to be lightning magic being used at the scene of the battle. I didn’t know how large a radius the interference would extend to, so I’d been gambling.

“Oh, and your friends from the other floors won’t be coming, either.”

“What did you do?” the Marines shouted.

Hey, I didn’t have to explain it to them. Sure, cackling madly while I spelled out all the delicious details might have had a certain satisfaction, but you know what happens to people who do that. The tables always turn on them. So I decided to bite my tongue.

To be fair, it wasn’t anything that special. Myusel and I were using wind magic to create a barrier of silence around the area. We’d been doing it ever since we got out of the carriage and made our way through the escape tunnel.

“That means you’re up, Elvia!”

“Yessir!” She jumped at the Marines, her already exceptional physical abilities further enhanced by the forbidden armor. Regular old humans, even Marines, had no chance. Further hobbled by the despair of knowing that their radio equipment had been rendered useless, Elvia had them on the ground, knocked out, in no time flat.

So much for our would-be ambushers, Charlie Five. The Marines had probably thought they had us trapped—tough luck for them! They were the ones in the trap all along.

“All clear, guys,” I called, and Minori-san, Reito-san, and Hikaru-san emerged from around the corner.

“Worked like a charm,” Minori-san said. She, of course, was in on the whole lightning-and-wind magic thing.

“You took out an entire Marine platoon in less than three minutes. Pretty impressive,” Reito-san said.

“Eh, it’s mostly thanks to this armor,” I said. Three minutes? I wouldn’t have lasted three seconds in that fight without this suit.

“Guns can’t hurt you. You have superhuman strength. And you can even use magic,” Hikaru-san said, looking irritated. “Shinichi-san, it’s like you’re the OP cheat protag of some story.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” I replied. “Anyway, you’re hardly one to talk, Hikaru-san.” I didn’t know how battle-capable that avatar was, but Hikaru-san could fight without even being physically present. Talk about cheating. Even if, admittedly, I didn’t think his avatar could withstand a hail of bullets.

“We’re off to a good start—let’s keep it up!” I clenched my fist, and everyone else nodded.

“All right, now...”

After about ten minutes of wandering through the castle, I called for a brief rest. Frankly, those of us in the forbidden armor, and Hikaru-san with his avatar, weren’t really tired, but Minori-san and Reito-san had to get around on their own two legs, and five or ten minutes of flat-out running was probably about all they could handle. Even with the sort of training they’d had, flesh-and-blood humans could only exert themselves like that for so long.

At any rate, completely ignoring the lower levels had been the right choice: after rushing up the stairs as fast as we could, we’d arrived at the upper floors. We stopped by a large pillar near the staircase and held a quick strategy meeting.

“The first problem is, we don’t know where Petralka and the others are being held,” I whispered, looking around vigilantly as I spoke.

Incidentally, after our encounter with Charlie Five, we’d run into one other group of Marines on the way upstairs—but we’d taken them out quickly, and that was it. I assumed they’d concentrated their fighting strength up here. Or alternatively, maybe the terrorists didn’t actually have that much strength. If you think about it, even if they were working with Bedouna, if hundreds of Marines were suddenly to vanish from their posts, people would start asking questions. Which meant that there was a good chance the force committed to taking over Holy Eldant Castle wasn’t actually that large. And that would mean the group guarding Petralka and the others wasn’t that many people, either. They would keep everyone in one place—they didn’t have the numbers to do anything else.

“They probably didn’t put them anywhere too obvious...”

“But we can’t spend forever searching, either,” Hikaru-san said. That was true enough.

“Someone’s going to get suspicious when those Americans don’t report in after a while,” Reito-san said.

“Yeah, or they’ll notice we’ve been messing with their radios,” Minori-san added. I guess they were speaking as much for Myusel and Elvia’s benefit as for mine. In any case, they were right. Jamming communications was all well and good, but when the other guys didn’t hear from their friends, they were going to wonder what was going on. Since we weren’t actually out to destroy the “terrorists,” the best-case scenario for us would be to run into as few of them as possible.

“I knew this castle was ridiculously big... but I didn’t realize how ridiculously big,” I said. Honestly, even just getting up the stairs had been a challenge. It was like climbing to one of those mountaintop temples where you take a series of steep stone staircases embedded in the side of the hill. Plus, the upper floors were still huge. The walls were too thick to hear any sound from inside the rooms, and I didn’t even know how many rooms there were. We couldn’t go around shouting Petralka’s name; the terrorists would hear us—and because Petralka and the others, you know, lived here, it turned out their scent was everywhere, so Elvia couldn’t readily track them with her nose.

The result: we would have to check every likely room one by one.

“It’s like trawling through an endless forest or cave in an RPG,” I muttered.

“Yeah, but at least if this were a game we could check a strategy guide,” Reito-san said with a wry grin.

“Watch out, they’re gonna say you have game brain or something.”

“Haven’t you ever thought life would be easier if it was more like a video game, though?”

“Would it? Imagine if you wound up in one of those Fr*m games. You’d be dead within seconds.”

Your character spawns, then you take three steps and die in a river of molten lava. It’s over before you even know what’s happened. Or you buy it falling from some high place. Too real.

“Could we use magic to find out where she is?” Hikaru-san asked. Expectant gazes turned toward Myusel—but she shook her head apologetically.

“I’m sorry, but I never specialized in magic...”

Myusel had learned her magic while in the military, which she had joined to earn citizenship, but she hadn’t exactly joined up because she was itching to learn some spells and go to war. Naturally, she hadn’t learned more than the average.

“What about you, Hikaru-san? You react to Theresa, don’t you? Couldn’t that give us an idea of her location?”

“I can only work out that she’s somewhere in this castle,” Hikaru-san said with a disappointed shrug.

“No choice but to go door to door, huh...”

We had a time limit. Worse, if we let down our guard, it would be game over. I guess this was what you would call hard mode...

That didn’t mean we could give up, though. As an otaku, I even found the challenge inspiring. If it all went well, I would probably wish I could upload the forbidden armor’s recording of everything onto a video sharing site or something.

“We’re the only ones who can rescue the damsel in distress,” I said. (I meant Petralka.) “We have to try.”

“That’s right,” Minori-san said, looking at me with kind, even comforting, eyes. “You, O brave hero, are the only one who can rescue the monsieur in distress!” (...Did she mean Garius?)

“Minori-san?” I asked.

“What?”

“I know who you’re thinking of, and it’s weird.”

“It’s not weird. It’s not weird at all. Shinichi-kun, you needn’t feel embarrassed! I’m rooting for you, on your side, in your corner!”

“No, it’s definitely weird, and your brain is even weirder!”

Even as Minori-san and I talked, I got up and started to search.

The alleged members of Bedouna, including the Americans, continued to keep watch on us with guns in hand. They also continued to periodically attack Theresa. Each time they saw her wounds starting to heal, they would injure her again with the guns. Already it seemed divorced from any ordinary sense of wounding or killing someone; it had simply become another job. Her attackers hid their faces so we couldn’t see their expressions, but they didn’t seem excited, nor did they shout or act angry or joyful. They showed no sign of feeling any intense emotion.

That was unsettling in its own right, and the ladies-in-waiting who were tied up with us kept their eyes on the ground as if they could hardly bear to see the terrible “work” being done in front of them. Some of our ladies had received military training, but none of them had ever experienced a situation as extreme as this. Garius and Zahar, unable to do anything, were also quiet.

It was the wise choice.

Our captors had powerful weapons and were exceptionally well trained. Garius might have physical strength and hand-to-hand training, but with no weapon and against this many opponents, he had no hope of victory. If he caused trouble, they might decide to torture one of his friends just to keep him in line—or even kill someone.

There was nothing any of us could do. We could only wait. Our captors seemed to know that, and they appeared less vigilant than they had at first. It’s draining to be in the same room as your enemies, even if you’re in control. Continual alertness takes its toll, and fatigue accumulates many times faster than normal. It’s only natural that one would start to pay less attention—one could even say it’s the body’s way of protecting itself from complete mental exhaustion.

But yes, it was also a weakness we could take advantage of.

“Say,” we said to one of the people nearby. Despite his face covering, we could immediately see his expression tighten. His gun drifted toward us. We sensed surprise and alarm running through Garius and the others.

“We wish to powder our nose,” we informed the soldier, and the men looked at each other. They removed their magic rings and held a hushed conversation, presumably about how to handle this situation.

We had now been captives for quite some time. If anything, it was surprising no one had spoken up about this before. In other words, there was nothing suspicious about our request, we thought. We were only asking to indulge the same natural processes as anyone.

They could force us to hold it, but it might make things more difficult for them down the line, as they well understood. Given how competent they had appeared as they tied us up, we had to think this wasn’t their first time doing this, or at least that they had planned it very carefully. That also made them very different from the last time we had encountered Bedouna.

“All right,” one of them said, putting his ring back on and coming up to us. “But don’t try anything funny.”

“Perish the thought,” we replied. In any event, our bonds were undone and we were allowed to stand.

If this were one of the manga Shinichi had lent us, this was the point where we would have swept the man’s feet out from under him, but unfortunately we ourselves were not capable of that. Much as we hate to admit it, our body cannot seem to keep up with our age, and isn’t very large. Our limbs are short and not terribly powerful. If we were so rash as to try anything right now, we would only end up inviting retaliation.

The man pressed his weapon into our back as if to say Hurry up. We felt our heart skip a beat. This was what they called the moment of truth. Fighting to hide our own nervousness and anxiety, we looked up at the man.

“We must have one of our ladies-in-waiting with us.”

“What?”

“We do not know how you lower classes handle the matter, but when nobles answer nature’s call, they always have at least one attendant with them. We might add that we ourselves have never made do with just one.”

“Huh, sure. Can’t even wipe your own ass. You high-and-mighty types,” the man grumbled. “Well, make sure your little friend goes too, while you’re at it. I don’t want you all going to the bathroom a million times.”

“You. Come with us,” we said, pointing at one of our ladies-in-waiting. Then, finally, we were free of the bedchamber.

“Tifu murottsu!” Myusel cried, and a blast of wind assaulted the Marine squadron. The men were slammed against the walls and floor and knocked clean unconscious. They didn’t even cry out, which was good for us. They would probably be fearsome enemies in a modern-day-style fight, but instead, they were facing magic and superweapons and amateurs who didn’t know combat common sense from a hole in the ground. If anything, their training tripped them up, as we behaved in ways they never expected.

“Is that everyone?!” I called. I was using wind magic, too, but not to attack, like Myusel was. I was creating a soundproof barrier around us. Myusel and Elvia nodded to me.

Forbidden armor or no, fighting still took it out of you. When you had to fight several battles in a row, it was even worse. We’d had a fairly easy time of it getting to the top floors, but they weren’t going to let us just walk over to Petralka. We were encountering small units of three or four people each. Presumably they were combined groups of Marines and Bedouna, but it was the Marines who were in charge, and that made the effects of attacking with magic and the forbidden armor especially amusing. We were scouring the top levels of the castle, and so far not one of us had so much as been hurt.

While those of us in the forbidden armor had been doing most of the fighting, the flesh-and-blood Minori-san and Reito-san, along with Hikaru-san, had been searching the rooms we encountered. Now Minori-san came running up to me. “Shinichi-kun!”

“Did you find Her Majesty?!” Myusel said, looking panicked. As much as Myusel and Petralka were servant and empress, they were also genuine friends, which only redoubled Myusel’s concern. Of course, I felt the same way—in fact, I was a little annoyed we hadn’t found Petralka yet.

Minori-san said, “She wasn’t on this floor. But we found some attendants, tied up. They told us where she is.” Then Minori-san smiled, and somehow she looked like a wild beast. I didn’t know how exactly she had gotten the information about Petralka’s location, and it sort of worried me, but maybe it would be best not to ask.

“So, where is she?!”

“She’s in her bedchamber.”

“Her bedchamber...”

Now that I thought about it, that seemed like it should have been obvious, but I had never been in Petralka’s bedroom. I’d never even seen it. Loek had said Petralka had been captured near dawn. The Americans must have attacked while everyone was asleep. Did that mean... Petralka was in her pajamas? And what did the empress sleep in in this world? Was it maybe sort of a négligée? Or, don’t tell me... did she sleep naked?!

The fantasy machine revved up in my head, spewing out different ideas about how a sleeping Petralka might look. I could see the big, canopied bed, Petralka herself asleep under layers of silk, dressed only in thin bedclothes that revealed not just the curves of her body but even the indent of her bellybutton and her ●●●! And she was hugging a big stuffed animal like a body pillow...

Ooh, my heart races just thinking about it!

“Shinichi-san, get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Huh?! Wh-What gutter? Who’s a gutter?!”

Was Hikaru-san psychic?! Could he read a person’s mind?! Had he spent his entire childhood a misanthrope, until one day one special encounter opened his boyish heart and—

“You thought the look on your face wouldn’t give you away?” Hikaru-san’s exasperated voice interrupted my little fantasy of what his life must have been like. Oh.

Poor Shinichi, how embarrassing! Completely, entirely unbeknownst to me, I must have had a little smile on my face.

Gazes settled on me that said: What’s this guy thinking? And why is he thinking it at a moment like this? Argh, even Reito-san! And Myusel, Myusel looked somehow upset, too! No, stop, don’t look at me like that!

“O-Okay, let’s bracket that!” I said in a forceful bid to change the subject. I couldn’t stand their frustrated scrutiny for much longer. Heck, even if I could, it seemed likely to open some very strange doors that I would rather leave closed. “I-If we know where she is, then we’re all set!”

A hostage rescue was a very delicate operation, but with our people and equipment, I figured we could manage somehow. At least, that was what I told everyone, or anyway, myself.

“Her Majesty’s bedroom is on the floor above this one. Let’s hurry,” Minori-san said, and we all nodded.

I, Theresa Bigelow, cannot die. Then again, strictly speaking, I wasn’t alive to begin with, so you might say that’s not a coherent statement—or that it’s a truism. The soldier who became the basis for me died long ago; I’m just a gynoid who happens to carry her personality data. I’m a machine, so I might break, but I won’t die. And if I break, I can be repaired.

My avatar is constructed of nanomachines, and as long as my core is relatively intact, it’ll regenerate itself. I don’t even have to think about it; it’s an automatic process, just like how a human body can repair minor injuries on its own. And in the same way, I normally can’t consciously stop this process any more than a human can.

That might seem awfully convenient, but depending on the situation, sometimes it’s not so great. Regenerating my avatar puts a substantial load on my core, which means I can’t really move while I’m doing it. My nanomachines are programmed to prioritize preservation of the avatar over conscious processes. In other words, if I get hurt bad enough, I’m rendered immobile for a while.

The American Marines understood that, and they perforated me with bullet holes on a regular basis to keep me busy healing up. After they’d taken an anti-materiel rifle and carefully put a bullet in my head, chest, stomach, and each of my shoulders and arms—a regular collection—and were satisfied I couldn’t move, the Americans nodded and went back to chatting with each other. It was just idle banter, but their eyes—and their guns—never left me. I was kind of impressed. These guys were trained.

But then I heard:

“Have Charlie and Delta platoons checked in yet?”

“Naw, not yet. They think there might be radio-wave interference. Bravo Two’s going to check on them.”

“Don’t suppose it’s, y’know, some sort of Dellinger-effect thing?”

“Maybe, but...”

The Americans had removed the rings, apparently believing that would prevent anyone from understanding what they were saying. They weren’t making any attempt to keep their voices down; in fact, they were talking pretty loud, just in English.

“Your Majesty,” I whispered over toward where the empress was sitting patiently tied up. I tried not to let the Americans notice me. It wasn’t hard. Even in the twenty-first century, the technology already existed to make a voice audible only in a specific direction and within a specific distance. With my nanomachines, it was a piece of cake. “I think Shinichi and his friends are here to rescue you.”

There was a boy, Hikaru, who used a nanomachine-based avatar like mine. I could feel when he was close. The kid didn’t strike me as hotheaded—or stupid—enough to burst in here on his own, so if I was sensing him, I assumed Shinichi and his merry band were right there with him.

I also assumed they would be using the PDWSs, or the forbidden armor, as they called it. That would put them on even footing with the Marines and their guns, or maybe even give them the advantage. The whole point of the PDWSs had been to enable complete amateurs to get onto the battlefield and live to talk about it.

If the boys in here with us weren’t hearing from their friends, that meant one of a couple of things: either Shinichi and the others were using magic to block communications signals, or they’d completely overpowered all the troops in the castle. In either case, it meant things were going well.

Her Majesty looked shocked to discover Shinichi was here. The other people with Her Majesty, overhearing me, got looks of joy on their faces. They were starting to see a possibility of rescue. I wasn’t sure if Shinichi and his buddies would be able to handle all these terrorists, but at least if they came bursting in here, it would give me some time to regenerate.

That was when I heard one of the Americans say, “Charlie Five’s gone completely silent. I think we should take that to mean there are hostiles in the castle.”

I didn’t like that. But it was only natural for them to reach that conclusion—that was the whole point of regular check-ins.

“You think it’s those guys from Amutech or whatever it is?”

“What, the Japs?”

“I think we should assume they’re in here, though we can’t say how close.” One of the Marines produced his gun from under his overgarment and pointed it, but not at me. He was aiming in the direction of the hostages nearby. “Think we better show ’em what a stupid move that was.”

He started to remove the suppressor from his gun. Then the room resounded with a gunshot; without the suppressor, it sounded like a small explosion. The hostages, who were probably hearing that noise for the first time, cowered.

Then we heard a man groan. “Hngh...”

“Zahar!” cried Garius, the empress’s aide-de-camp. I could see an old man, I think someone who advised or took care of Her Majesty, bent double. It looked like he’d been shot in the foot. A red pool of blood was gradually forming on the stones by his feet.

There was general consternation. Everyone knew I was an avatar by now. They were actually starting to get used to the sight of me being shot. The other hostages had gradually stopped flinching every time a bullet penetrated my body. But to see the old man get hit—that upset them all over again. The unmuffled sound of the gun, along with the smell of gunpowder and blood in the air, brought home the reality of the situation to everyone, and freshened the terror.

“Everybody shut up!” one of the Americans shouted. When the ladies-in-waiting saw the gun swing in their direction, they immediately quieted down. Garius glowered at the Marines; the only sound was Zahar’s groaning.

“You think we’re not serious?” the American went on. “You think this is an empty threat?” I assumed he’d taken the suppressor off to make sure the sound reached Shinichi and the others, to discourage them from coming. I didn’t know how close he and his friends might be, and neither did the Marines, but some shooting, some screaming, and a little blood were their way of reminding him: we have hostages.

“We can and will kill hostages!” the Marine said. “And if you think killing is the worst thing we can do to you, hoo boy, are you wrong. We’ll make you beg for death before we’re done. You’re all gonna find out what it costs when a bunch of civilians try to pull off a hostage rescue!” Then his voice dropped a little and he said, “But their shortsighted dumbassery works out for us. Kanou Shinichi is the only one other than that doll lady there who has access privileges to the hyperspace tunnel. Everything and everyone we want is coming right to us, all on their own. Guess we should be grateful to them.”

The American troops laughed. As for the rest of us, no one said anything. We couldn’t say anything. But Zahar was still groaning, his blood dribbling onto the floor.

Our objective was right at the very top of the castle. They’d hollowed out a mountain to make this building, but obviously not everything in it was made of rock, and of course, the floors got narrower as you went up.

The uppermost floor was the location of the living quarters of the royal family, and each room was large, but there weren’t very many of them. I guess you could say the topmost level was Her Majesty’s personal apartments, while the floors below were for business. Even I had never been up in this part of the castle before. Petralka’s bedroom was on the south side; it had maybe the best view of any room in the castle.

Minori-san stopped and whispered, “I think that’s it.” We hid behind some decorations in the hallway—suits of armor holding spears—before peeking out to see what she was pointing at.

A pair of double doors stood at the far end of the hallway. Judging by the doors alone, the room beyond had to be pretty big. If I didn’t already know it was someone’s personal sleeping quarters, I would never have guessed it was a room for just one person. I guess that’s what it means to be a princess—er, an empress.

“What’s the plan?” Reito-san asked.

“Charge the place head-on!” Elvia said immediately. She was raring to go; you could see it on her face. She was a straightforward person, just like her plan. She was probably sick of sneaking around the castle and trying to keep quiet. I couldn’t say I didn’t sympathize.

Before I could discourage her, though, Hikaru-san said, “We can’t do that. We’ve been able to handle things the way we have so far because we’ve been getting the drop on our enemies, and they didn’t have any hostages. That won’t work here. Besides, as if everything else wasn’t bad enough, we don’t have the key.”

Yeah. That was our first problem. If even our personal rooms at the mansion were magically locked, it was pretty easy to imagine that Petralka’s bedchamber would be, too. If the Marines knew about that, and if the lock was active, then we didn’t have a leg to stand on. Back at the mansion, Myusel had spare copies of each of our keys, but if the Marines had all the spares in the room with them? That would be bad news.

In fact, we knew just how bad from a particular incident we were involved in called the Seven Days of Rottenness—er, but that’s not important right now.

“We’d have to get them to open it from the inside...” I started.

“Or use magic, an explosion, or some other method to break in from below,” Hikaru-san concluded.

“If we’re going to try explosives, we’d probably have better luck with a wall,” Reito-san said. “That’s basic special-forces stuff, but they use special tube-shaped explosives. Wall, floor, or whatever, I think a standard-issue hand grenade would be a little too risky.”

“Is that true?” I said.

“Yeah. Besides, what if they have the hostages right up against the other side of the wall we pick?”

“Oh yeah...”

If we blew down a wall to rescue the hostages, but blew up the hostages doing it, that would sort of defeat the point. Reito-san said sometimes terrorists even counted on that, specifically placing hostages against walls as an insurance policy...

“A hand grenade bursts into fragments intended to wound an enemy,” he said. “It was never really designed for making holes in walls or floors.”

“True. Even a human body is enough to stop the shrapnel from going very far,” Minori-san added. Come to think of it, that was something I’d seen in manga. Allegedly, they’d done experiments in Nazi Germany and found a lone human body could stop the force of a grenade’s explosion. So when it came to the sturdy walls of Eldant Castle... Well, it was pretty much impossible, I guess.

While we were having this discussion, Myusel spoke up. “U-Um... The lock... I think it’s open.”

“Uh... What?”

“The door is slightly ajar...”

The rest of us took a fresh look at the door. We squinted, trying to make out all the details we could, and discovered that she was right: there was a very slight crack in the door.

“Don’t suppose they just conveniently forgot to close it,” I said.

“The people inside must know we’re coming by now, don’t you think?” Myusel said.

“I’m not sure,” I replied; it was the most I could say. It would be fantastic if we hadn’t been discovered yet, but it had been more than twenty minutes since we’d taken out that first unit we ran into. I didn’t know how often they were supposed to check in, but there was a good chance the terrorists had noticed something was amiss by now. If they’d figured out that the communications disruption wasn’t a natural phenomenon, and wasn’t just an accident—if they realized it had to be deliberate—then they would be on their guard. There was every chance they would be waiting for us when we got in there.

“Maybe we really should charge the place, like Elvia says,” I suggested, glancing back at everyone else. “That door looks like the only way in or out, after all.”

“Looks like it,” Minori-san agreed with a nod. “If we could get some crossfire going, create confusion...”

The ideal when forcing your way into a room like that would be to coordinate the timing of two separate groups so as to catch the people inside in the middle, buying yourself some time while they figured out how to respond. But with just one way into the room, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Even if they are waiting for us, they’ve only got guns,” I said. “The forbidden armor can handle that. We’re the ones who are losing out by taking too much time to talk about it.”

“I’m not used to seeing you so forceful, Shinichi-san,” Hikaru-san said.

“Er, well, I mean, with everything that’s happening...”

“What you mean is you’re sick with worry about Her Majesty, right?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

What if something happened to Petralka while we were standing here chatting? Deliberately walking right into the enemy’s trap was a real strategy. Sometimes, it could actually create an opportunity. Like maybe they would be so happy the trap worked that they would let down their guard. And what if the thing that walked into their trap was basically a mobile tank?

To this point, the Marines we’d encountered had seemed to underestimate the forbidden armor because so much of the occupant appeared to be out in the open. I hoped the same might hold true for whoever was in that room. The only thing we really knew about them was that they had hostages—but I thought if we could get the drop on them, then maybe we could pull it off somehow.

“Elvia, Myusel, and I will lead the assault. I want the rest of you to back us up, Minori-san and Reito-san with your guns, Hikaru-san with your avatar.”

I was just an amateur, and I’d come up with an amateur plan, but nobody raised any objections.

We crept nervously toward the door, trying to be as quiet as possible.

First, we positioned ourselves on either side of the door, barely daring to breathe. I listened hard, desperate to catch any hint of what was going on inside—and the forbidden armor, helpfully reading my thoughts, began scanning the interior of the room with ultrasonic waves. This produced an image that allowed me to get a general idea of where the hostages were and how many terrorists we were dealing with.

I assumed the people sitting by the wall were the hostages, and the ones standing around were the terrorists. Wait... Two people lay collapsed on the ground. Don’t tell me they’d started killing people already?! This was awful. We didn’t have a moment to hesitate. I nodded to everyone...

...and then Myusel, Elvia, and I flung open the door and burst into the room.

“Yipes!” I exclaimed immediately.

Bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap! Muted gunshots (probably thanks to the suppressors on the weapons) came in a flurry, and the marble floor lit up with sparks. They were firing at the ground deliberately, a clear warning to us not to come any closer. Then, from behind the terrorists in the front row emerged a long weapon with what looked like a giant harmonica on the end.

A Barrett M82A3! An anti-materiel rifle! I knew from the unique muzzle brake on the end of the gun. This was a fifty-caliber rifle that could even take down a robot cat from the future—no, wait, I mean a muscle-bound-dad-like future-robot—in a single shot. From what I knew, it wouldn’t be effective against a main battle tank, but it could at least take out an LAV. In other words, it deserved its label of an anti-materiel rifle...

So they even had one of those?!

I knew the U.S. Marines used the weapon—in fact, the suffix A3 indicated the Marine variant—so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I didn’t have any hard numbers on just how powerful the forbidden armor’s force field was, and I had no idea if it could survive a direct hit from the Barrett’s fifty-cal. I’d been working on the assumption that I could just bull my way through anything the enemy threw at me, but I was starting to question that premise.

Then there was the guy standing behind the rest of the troops, holding an M4 carbine. He looked like the commander. “Hello there,” he said. The soldiers were wearing heavy outer layers, but the weapons were all U.S. Marine Corps issue. There was no question in my mind: more than half these terrorists were American troops.

“Shinichi?!”

“Petralka!” I exclaimed when I heard her voice. It was just like I had seen from the sonar picture: Petralka, Garius, and their attendants were tied up against a corner of the wall, behind the terrorists. They were all in their bedclothes, probably caught unawares while they were asleep. And just like I had imagined, Petralka was in a négligée—but let’s set that aside for now.

My eyes went wide when I saw Theresa lying beside Petralka. She wasn’t moving a muscle. How had they reduced Theresa, of all people, to that? Then I noticed Zahar-san, lying on his side and groaning. Bright red blood flowed from his foot. He and Theresa must have been the two people I had seen crumpled on the ground.

I felt the blood rush to my head. “You bastards!” My anger pushed me a few steps forward. Almost instantly, ten different weapons opened up on me. Most of them were M4s, small-caliber things, but that Barrett got in a shot, too. Everything was aimed at my legs and knees, though. They were far enough away that most of the shots missed.

I could almost hear the smile on the face of the terrorist—or I guess I should say Marine—commander. “Things would have been so much easier for everyone if you’d just done what we said. But I assume you don’t need your legs in order to manipulate the hyperspace... tunnel...”

He trailed off as the smoke cleared—and he discovered that Elvia, Myusel, and I were completely unharmed. The forbidden armor’s force field had successfully repelled not only the small arms fire, but even the fifty-caliber round. Although I admit that when I saw the massive, thumb-sized bullet caught and spinning in the force field and realized it could have gone straight through, it definitely made my blood run cold.

“What?!”

The terrorists were incredulous, and I didn’t really blame them. But I also didn’t care. The three of us charged forward. Elvia in front, then me, with Myusel bringing up the rear.

As large as the room was, with our legs artificially strengthened by the forbidden armor, we were on the terrorists in a matter of seconds. They didn’t get off a second volley of gunfire before we were among them, rendering attacks with firearms basically impossible. The chance of friendly fire was too high, and they knew it. A few of them tried using their guns as clubs instead, but that wasn’t enough to scratch the forbidden armor.

“See you in hell!”

One of the Marines manning the Barrett had it pressed right up against Elvia. Bad news. Even the forbidden armor might not survive a fifty-caliber round at point-blank range. Hardly even thinking about what I was doing, I fired the armor’s wired claw, hoping to pull her out of the way...

It turned out I hardly needed to help her, though, because before I could pull off my little rescue stunt, Hikaru-san dove in from the side and gave the Barrett a vicious kick. Despite being long and heavy, the rifle barrel swung easily up toward the ceiling, then exploded.

That wasn’t all; Hikaru-san and Elvia proceeded to fling the terrorists around every which way. That avatar was really something. It might not be quite as strong as the forbidden armor, but it was a lot more threatening than it looked.

A few desperate soldiers prepared to engage us in hand-to-hand combat, but Reito-san and Minori-san politely opened fire from behind us. Given the effect bullets had on the forbidden armor (that is, none), they didn’t have to worry too much about hitting us.

Almost before we knew what we had done, we had taken out more than half the terrorists. We could do this. We just had to keep—

“Don’t move! Stop right where you are, or the girl gets it!”

Just as I was thinking we only had to finish off the terrorists and get out of here, there was a shout. The rest of us froze, and I saw a Marine—I knew it was a Marine because he’d taken off his overlayer; I guess he didn’t care anymore if we knew who they were. He had Petralka by the arm and was pressing a gun to her head. I felt the blood rush away from my face, pretty much the opposite of what had happened when we broke in here.

“Petralka!”

“Let go! Let us go, we say!”

The Marine wrapped an arm around Petralka’s delicate neck, pulling her up off her feet, as if using her as a shield. Her legs kicked helplessly in the air.

“Majesty!” Garius shouted. He almost started to get up, but he stopped when the Marine said, “Freeze! If you want your empress back with her head still attached, sit still!”

“D—Don’t listen to him! He must be bluffing!” Petralka shouted, not just to Garius, but to all of us; we had all stopped in place.

She wasn’t entirely wrong. She was the Americans’ best hostage, so if they killed her, it would give them fewer cards to play later on. From that perspective, it sounded likely to be an empty threat, but...

“Don’t listen! Don’t worry—”

—about us, I think she was about to say, but the American interrupted, “We have a backup. Killing the kiddie queen here won’t slow us down.” He was looking at Garius, still half-risen from the ground, as he spoke. It was true that Garius was next in line for the succession. If the worst should happen to Petralka, he would immediately become emperor... And maybe that meant they could afford to kill Petralka after all.

It looked like we had failed. Maybe we should have gone straight for the terrorists, not worrying about that opening volley of gunfire. It was my fault, too, for letting my anger run away with me when I saw Zahar-san and Theresa shot. I should have focused purely on getting Petralka and Garius out of there.

It was too late for should-haves, though. Wasn’t there something, anything I could do? We’d come here to rescue Petralka and the others, but at this rate, we were going to end up as captives ourselves.

“Sh—Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said, turning to me. The way she looked at me with those eyes brimming with tears—I had to think of something! I worked my brain as hard as I could. Was there some way to break the stalemate? Arrgh, but if they really were serious about killing Petralka, then my hands were tied. I could hardly think. It felt like all I could do was panic!

That was when I saw something move behind the Marine. “Huh?”

It only took a split second: almost as soon as I had seen the movement, the Marine crumpled. His body, almost two meters tall, hit the ground like a sack of bricks. What the heck had happened to him? I didn’t know exactly, but I soon figured out who had done it to him.

Theresa.

Somewhere along the line, she’d managed to heal her wounds, and had attacked the Marine from behind. Now it was making sense. Her body was an avatar, made of nanomachines. It would take more than a few bullets to kill her, and her body would regenerate automatically. The Marines had been aware of that, but our intrusion had caused them to forget about her for just long enough. She’d used that time to heal up, then launched an ambush as if to say, “Can’t let you guys have all the fun!”

She took advantage of the fresh chaos among the Marines to press her attack. The guy who’d had his gun to Petralka’s head turned it on Theresa—but she immediately grabbed his hand, weapon and all, and gave it a twist, earning a scream from him. Ouch, that looked like a few broken fingers...

Petralka used the moment to slip out of her bonds and came rushing toward me.

“Shinichi!” she cried, spreading her arms wide.

Petralka collapsed to the ground, tumbled along, and came to rest at my feet. One of the terrorists stood behind her, holding an M4 carbine. Maybe he was a legitimate member of Bedouna, because he wore ordinary Eldant clothing.

That didn’t matter right now, though.

“Petralka...” I could hardly speak, I was so overwhelmed.

She’d been shot. Petralka had been shot. They’d shot her, and now she was on the ground. Right at my feet.

No, it was okay, it had to be. She’d just tripped, that was all.

See? She would get up in a second, the simplest thing in the world, and berate me for not catching her. I was sure she would...

“Petral...ka...?” I said. My voice shook terribly as I spoke her name. She still wasn’t getting up; she was just lying there. I took her in my arms. The forbidden armor seemed infuriatingly slow and clumsy. The AI must have sensed what I was thinking, because the armor retreated from me, setting me free, and I found myself holding Petralka’s small body in my own arms. She seemed so heavy, though. Limp and cold.

This was ridiculous. Impossible.

“Petralka... Petralka!” I said, but she didn’t respond.

The others, especially Minori-san and Reito-san, Theresa and Hikaru-san, were fighting with the remaining terrorists. But to me it all seemed so far away; I could hear the noise, but it was fuzzy and indistinct. Myusel and Elvia both crouched by me; they seemed to be saying something, but honestly, I couldn’t tell what. I didn’t want to know.

Petralka...

“Why... How could they...”

“We didn’t...” The faintest of voices came from my arms. She was alive! She was alive! But... “We didn’t wish... to get... in your way...”

“You aren’t... I don’t...”

What was she talking about? How could Petralka possibly get in my way? She was always—

“Shinichi-sama, give me Her Majesty!” cried Myusel, who had also taken off her armor. “We need magic! We need to heal her...”

“It’s all—it’s all right, Myusel.” Petralka shook her head weakly. “There’s no point...”

“B-But Your Majesty!”

“Tell us, Shinichi... Were we... able to be of help to you?”

I felt my chest constrict. How was that fair? Asking me that question here—now! It was almost like... Like...

I couldn’t get any words out; I could only nod.

“Good...” Petralka smiled, genuinely pleased. “That alone... is enough...”

“Stop that!” I said. She was acting like this was her big death scene! “Myusel, quick, take Petralka,” I said. I didn’t know if it was really pointless or not, but we had to try. Myusel started chanting immediately.

“We told you, it’s no use.”

“We won’t know that if we don’t try! Petralka, just—”

“Say, Shinichi...” A smile flitted across her face. “Do you remember the day we first met? It feels like only yesterday.”

I caught my breath. My throat hurt, and suddenly my vision was blurry.

This was no time to be crying. If I had time to be getting all weepy, then I had time to be figuring out some crazy plan to save Petralka! Come on, Kanou Shinichi, think of something—anything!

But all I could think of was... nothing.

I hugged Petralka as tightly as I could, clutching her to my chest as if I might be able to keep her from slipping away from me. I got covered in blood, but what did I care? Arrgh, it was all over. I couldn’t even feel her heartbeat anymore, and her blood—

Wait a second.

“Ah, yes, how could we ever forget your impropriety?”

“.....................Huh?”

Her blood... wasn’t actually soaking me? She... She wasn’t actually bleeding?

“It is our considered opinion that you know nothing about the heart of a woman.”

Whoa, wait, hang on, what?!

She’d been shot through the chest, right? A bullet to the heart should have been fatal, rendering even magic helpless against it. Was I wrong about that? Even if you figured I didn’t hear a heartbeat because she’d been shot, wasn’t it weird that there was no blood? And did you normally get to talk this long after getting shot in the chest?

“And then all those things you said in the ensuing days, about the flatness of our chest, and on and on. There is insult, and then there is insult.”

Speaking of chests, I could feel Petralka’s through her clothing, and it was downright... hard. I mean, sure, just like she said, she hardly had any chest at all! But what was she, some kind of doll? No human could have a chest so...

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................a doll?

“Are you listening, Shinichi?”

I finally put the pieces together. At some point I had started hearing Petralka’s voice, not from my arms, but from just over my shoulder.

“Wha—?!” I looked up in a hurry to discover Petralka standing there, her arms crossed. “Petralka?!”

“What?” Myusel, who had been trying to intone a healing spell between sobs, looked up, too. She froze, utterly astonished.

“Hrm. Took you long enough,” Petralka muttered. She was... almost naked. I mean, not in the sense that she had a bunch of skin showing, but she wasn’t wearing the royal garments I was used to. Neither was she wearing her bedclothes, though; instead, she was wrapped in a shapeless white sheet of some sort. It was sort of a morning-after look—I mean, if the night before had been really wild—I mean, it sent my mind spinning.

“B... B...”

But how?

I sat there, unable to get out even those two words, when the “Petralka” in my arms suddenly started to move. She calmly extricated herself from my grasp as if she hadn’t just been shot through the chest with a rifle, and went to stand beside the real Petralka. They were perfect twins.

“The doll... The puppet!” I realized someone else I recognized was standing behind the two Petralkas. Someone even shorter than the empress—the dwarf, Lauron Selioz. The young woman who had become a lady-in-waiting at the castle in order to puppeteer the doll that served as Petralka’s body double.

“Wh-What?!” The gears finally started turning in my head. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Excellent work, Lauron,” Petralka said.

“You’re not harmed, Your Majesty?”

“No.”

Lauron didn’t seem bothered by my shouting. She tended not to show much emotion to begin with, so I shouldn’t have expected her to panic now.

“That was a fine performance you gave. That is an impersonation we can count on,” Petralka said.

“You honor me, Your Majesty.”

“Shinichi, Myusel, do you not agree?”

“Oh, yeah. I couldn’t even tell the difference............... Wait, not the time!”

Myusel was still frozen and seemed genuinely unable to speak.

“Lauron,” I choked. “Where did you... I mean, where were you?!”

“Captured, among the hostages.”

“No way! You were?!”

I’d noticed the ladies-in-waiting, but I guess my attention had been drawn by Petralka, Garius, and the two people who had been shot, Theresa and Zahar-san.

Hey, how is Zahar-san doing?!

“Zahar-san?!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, it missed the artery, and I’ve stopped the bleeding,” Minori-san replied. I looked up to discover that the others had long ago dealt with the rest of the terrorists and even administered first aid to Zahar-san. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Minori-san and Reito-san in particular knew how to act fast.

Elvia, meanwhile, was looking back and forth between the two Petralkas, the only one not to have quite figured out what was going on yet. She had seen the puppet before, but maybe this was the first time she’d witnessed it in action.

“Here, let me fill you in...” Hikaru-san said to her, and started to explain.

As for me, I finally had myself under control enough to ask Petralka—the real one—“How? When were you able to make the switch? Or was that your double all along?”

“Before you arrived, Shinichi, we requested to relieve ourselves, and made the switch at that moment.” Petralka looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “We selected Lauron as the lady-in-waiting to accompany us. Then we hid until things quieted down. Lacking proper clothing, we grabbed the nearest curtain.”

According to Petralka, Lauron was able to use her magic to get the puppet up and running, which was great, but they were in such a hurry that they couldn’t stop to find an outfit for the doll. They obviously couldn’t send it back to the terrorists naked, though, so Petralka dressed the puppet in the bedclothes she had been wearing. Their original plan was evidently to find an opportune moment to have the puppet go berserk, giving everyone else a chance to escape.

That was when we had arrived.

Myusel was still staring vacantly at Petralka; finally she managed: “Your Majesty... Thank goodness...” And then, unable to hold back the tears any longer, she started weeping, all that anxiety finally coming out. “I can’t tell you... how glad I am...”

“Myusel...” Petralka was almost a little startled by the sight of the sobbing maid. She must have known that they shared a friendship that transcended their social classes, but maybe the depth of it surprised even her. “We must apologize for worrying you so, Myusel.”

“No... Your Majesty!”

“And Shinichi,” Petralka added, pivoting to face me. At the distinct possibility that I would catch a glimpse of her tiny body under that bare sheet, I felt my heart skip a beat—no, I don’t mean that, okay?

“Did you panic when you thought we were dying? Hm? Are you crying?” She grinned mischievously at me.

“I—I’m not crying!” I said, reflexively shaking my head. But I was, or I had been. Even though I hated to admit it. Even though it was embarrassing. So embarrassing that I wanted to just writhe on the ground right there. “I swear I’m not crying, okay?!”

“That’s Shinichi-san for you,” Hikaru-san said from a short distance away. “Best tsundere there is. He could pass for a proper heroine.”

“I could not!”

Who was he calling a tsundere?!

Everyone chuckled at the way I was all but howling.

“A tsundere... So that’s it! Shinichi is a tsundere!” Petralka said.

Somehow, she looked happiest of all.