Chapter Four: That Side and This Are Severed

Chapter Four: That Side and This Are Severed

They called it a training field. It didn’t look like much, just a wooden fence enclosing a square about a hundred meters on a side, ten thousand square meters altogether. Roughly the size of a baseball field. There wasn’t even any equipment set up, just a few small buildings along the edge in the process of being dismantled and abandoned.

We were told this was what the Japan Self-Defense Force had been using as a garrison. They had already left this other world, though, and we were moving in in their place. It was going to be awfully tight for the nearly six thousand troops we had here, including the crew of the Nimitz, so we used the garrison mostly for communications equipment and munitions storage, while our people slept either out in the open or in rooms rented in the imperial capital. In a word, this training field in the Holy Eldant capital of Marinos was now a forward operating base of the United States of America, as well as its temporary embassy.

I, George Grisham, was staying in one of the huts the JSDF hadn’t managed to tear down. Pretty poor accommodations for the representative of an entire nation, but what the hell. At least it kept me out of the elements. Most of the Marines who had come to this other world with me were camped out in the nearby forest. Partly that was to hide them from prying Eldant eyes. Trying to track the numbers of a group scattered across the forest, living in simple, easily relocated tents, was tricky. If, say, a hundred Marines out of a unit of a thousand were to go missing, it was unlikely to be noticed.

I had to say, I was quite pleased with the current situation. Everything was going just according to plan.

“All right, so the food doesn’t taste like much,” I muttered. The lunch I was eating had been made on-site. I wasn’t exactly a junkfood man myself, but this stuff was making me long for some Burger Ki*g or Jack-in-the-Bo*. Maybe I could requisition some tomato ketchup, at least. That had to be one of the top ten inventions in all of human history. Think how much richer the human table had become because of it!

My thoughts were interrupted when a Marine came rushing in. “Ambassador! Ambassador Grisham!”

“What is it?” I snapped. I might not like the food, but I also didn’t like being interrupted while I was trying to eat. A good meal was essential to give you the energy for a busy day.

“Sorry to interrupt you during your meal, sir. It’s just...”

“Spit it out, Marine.” I dabbed at my lips with a napkin and stood up. The Marine stood in the door of my hut, unable to find the words to say next. That was strange. A lot of the men had foul mouths, but they were almost never at a loss for something to say.

“It’s Troy 1, sir. We’ve lost contact.”

“With one of the squads? Which one?”

Troy 1 was our codename for the operation to take over the Eldant castle and make it our base. It was the CIA’s plan, initially. The CIA operatives we’d secretly helped through the portal had made contact with local dissidents and tried to rile them up, while the Marines were to provide weapons and tactical consultation. But given the tight schedule—we had nothing like enough time to learn the ins and outs of the unique weaponry and tactics available here—we had our doubts about proceeding with the operation using only local forces. Hence a handful of Marines secretly joined the operation. Just a fraction of our total force here, ten percent, but still a good hundred people. They’d been divided into several units for the mission.

We knew from the crew of the Nimitz that unpredictable radio outages were a fact of life in this world. We expected to lose touch with one or two of our units during the course of operations.

But the Marine replied, “All of them, sir.”

For a second, I was speechless. A hundred fully armed United States Marines, and we couldn’t get in touch with any of them? We had nearly three hundred people involved including local rebel forces. Was he telling me communications had failed with all of them?

“When you say all of them, Marine, you mean...” My voice had grown tight.

“Every one, sir.”

“Well, what the hell happened? Don’t tell me the secret squirrels screwed up their own plan. Or did one of the locals sell us out?”

“No reports saying so, sir.” Then the Marine slowed down; he had to force himself to say the rest of the words. “Ahem... The crew of the Nimitz... We can’t reach them, either. For practical purposes, sir... this embassy is isolated.”

“What the hell?!” Was he saying those of us here around the embassy had been cut off from all our other troops? “Are you sure it’s not an equipment problem? Is someone jamming us?”

“That was the first thing we thought of, sir.”

When we had first arrived here, there had been some issues with the communications equipment preventing contact between units. But it had been hours since the trouble started, and they couldn’t find any problems with the comms equipment here at the embassy. Everything was functioning normally. They reported they could reach the capital city, at least. That left just a few possibilities: the comms equipment we were trying to reach was all malfunctioning, had all been destroyed, or the radiomen weren’t with their equipment anymore.

I clicked my tongue. We’d dismissed the locals as primitive barbarians. Had that been a mistake?

“Gather the rest of the troops,” I said. “Who’s the highest-ranking person we have contact with right now?”

“Captain O’Connell, sir.”

“Have him form a new unit and investigate, then.”

I started getting ready to go to the castle myself, but at that moment, there was some sort of commotion from outside. I could hear the ruckus among the troops.

“Dammit, what now?” I demanded, shoving past the man in the doorway and looking outside. Then I froze.

Three bizarre things were walking toward the embassy, pushing my Marines aside like rag dolls. The things looked more or less humanoid, but they had to be more than two meters tall, and they bristled with bits that made them look like heavy machinery. They made me think of a movie I’d gone to see with my girlfriend back in college—Cameron’s Alien*, I think it was. The power loader. Like heavy equipment a person could wear as a suit.

“What in God’s name—?”

Then I stopped. I recognized one of the people in those suits. Those flat Asian faces all looked the same to me, but I’d studied the briefing materials well enough to recognize this one. This one mattered.

“Kanou Shinichi,” I growled, barely managing to hold back a hiss.

Lights blazed in the audience chamber. Gathered in the room like they were being put on display were the members of Bedouna, brought there from wherever we had found them, all around the castle. They’d all been stripped of their weapons, their hands and legs bound, but it hardly seemed necessary: very few showed any desire to fight anymore.

Bedouna’s raison d’être was supposed to be to break the back of the other world’s influence upon this one. It should have been unthinkable to them to rely on that other world for help. After Bedouna’s last escapade, however, they had been hunted down, the organization brought to the brink of extinction. Perhaps that was what drove them to swallow their pride and take the weapons and training of this foreign force. Yet even that had ended in failure.

They were so clearly devastated that even we ourselves felt a little bit bad for them.

Incidentally, the Americans who had helped and encouraged Bedouna were not present. Shinichi and his friends had taken them all away.

“How is Zahar?” we asked, eyeing the broken rebels from our throne. Garius stood beside us. Like us, he had been in bedclothes until only a short time before, but now he was dressed in his usual outfit, as we were.

“The doctor treated him,” he said. “I’m told his life isn’t in danger. But he’s not a young man anymore, and it could take some time for him to heal.”

“Is that so?” We couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief. Zahar had become like a father to us after our parents’ passing. We might not have been able to handle his death. At the very least, we certainly could not have found it within ourselves to look on the Bedouna captives with anything resembling mercy. Even if it had been an American who had shot him, they had been working with this lot.

“Your Majesty. If I may?” Lauron asked from the other side of us, sounding hesitant. At the moment, she wasn’t controlling the puppet that served as our body double, but two of the “clay dolls,” large creatures typically used for engineering work. Their purpose was to stand imposingly over the captives, though again, the remaining Bedouna members didn’t have much will to fight.

“What is she doing?” Lauron asked, indicating with a glance a woman sitting silently, eyes closed, in one corner of the room.

It was Theresa. Truth be told, we didn’t know much about this woman ourselves, only what we had heard from Shinichi. But if it was true that she was the administrator of the Dragon’s Den in the Kingdom of Bahairam, and that it was some kind of malfunction of a machine there that had first created the high-per space tunnel, then she was in some way connected to the start of all this. And it seemed she might be connected to the end as well.

“She told us that she was going to get in touch with the Dragon’s Den,” we replied, but we ourselves only half believed it.

Even now, Theresa was connected by some invisible linkage to the Den, almost like magic. She said it was possible for her to manipulate things all the way over there in Bahairam even though she was here in Eldant.

“This Theresa... Do you really think she can close the tunnel from here?” Garius said, as if reading our mind.

That was the question at the heart of it all. It had all begun with the opening of the high-per space tunnel. That had led to contact, then exchange, with Ja-pan, and ultimately the founding of Amutech. That was what had brought Shinichi here, and led to everything that followed after...

If we could close the high-per space tunnel, the Americans would no longer be able to touch us. It would be the simplest solution to their would-be invasion. But by the same token, it would mean cutting off all contact with Ja-pan. And that would mean...

Theresa’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at each of us, taking us in slowly, and then her lips curved into a smile. “I can do it,” she declared. “I’ve got a little control over the tunnel from here. Just enough.”

The training area where the JSDF had made their home was now the Marines’ base. After taking care of business at the castle—and after a short rest—that was where I went, my posse from the castle assault in tow. We didn’t want to give them any time to come up with any cute little excuses or destroy any evidence.

The Marines at the base turned their weapons on us and ordered us to leave, but with three people in forbidden armor leading the way, we forced our way through. A few pot shots came at us, but they were just warnings; we didn’t even need our force fields. Officially, America was still on good terms with the Holy Eldant Empire, so the Marines probably didn’t want to accidentally hit people they took to be locals. For that matter, I was the exception; Elvia and Myusel actually were “locals.” (Okay, so Elvia wasn’t from Eldant, but let’s set that aside for now.)

Finally we found ourselves in front of a small hut, where we discovered the all-too-familiar Mr. Grisham.

“Well, well! What brings you here?” he asked innocently, with a profoundly American gesture of exaggerated surprise. He was smiling, but the smile didn’t reach those blue eyes. He was wary of us. And that was fair enough, I guess.

“I’ve come to give you my answer,” I said in a loud voice, “about cooperating with you.” I could feel the Marines all around watching us. “In English, I think the word is... No.”

Grisham’s expression didn’t budge. He’d probably expected this all along. It wouldn’t have been that hard to predict.

“I’ve decided something else, too,” I went on. “We’re going to close the hyperspace tunnel.”

“What?!” That got his attention. I could hear murmuring among the Marines. Perfect. I’d set them back on their heels. I decided to give them another push. “If you don’t want to be stranded in this world, I’d suggest you go home—right now.”

The muttering intensified. Naturally: the Marines might be among the first in when hostilities broke out in a foreign land, but most of them had loved ones back in America. It would have to be unsettling to think they could never go home again, never see their families again.

“Everyone be quiet,” Grisham ordered, almost in a groan, and the Marines immediately fell silent. “You say you’re going to close the portal? How exactly are you going to do that? If you think you can buy time with your little bluff, I’m afraid you’re going to find out you’re wrong.”

“It’s not a bluff. You remember how Theresa and I both have administrative privileges at the Dragon’s Den?”

“I remember. I also remember the Dragon’s Den is an entire country away.”

“Hah! Silly guy. Who was the first to develop the Global Hawk and the Predator?”

I saw Grisham’s face stiffen.

“Remote control is par for the course in weapons these days,” I said.

“You... You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve got plenty of control over the Den from right here. Theresa tells me that if I use the comms network, I can make pretty minute adjustments. Just to give one example, I could open a temporary wormhole anywhere I felt like.”

Granted, I couldn’t do it very often or for very long because of the amount of space-time instability it would cause, but Grisham didn’t need to know that. I was capable of opening a localized, temporary wormhole like the one that had brought the Nimitz over.

With an effort, Grisham regained his composure and snorted dismissively. “Y-You overreach yourself. How could a single private citizen, a Japanese at that, take it upon himself to determine the fate of the entire world?” He stuck out that cleft chin of his and stared down at me. Well, actually, with the forbidden armor on, we were almost eye to eye, but he tried to look like he was looking down at me. He was trying to convince himself that he was still in control here.

He raised a hand. “I can see now that you are an enemy bent on obstructing the national interests of the United States! I’m authorized to order an attack on you, and believe me, there won’t be any more warning shots!”

“You’re not very quick on the uptake, are you?”

“Arrest this man! I want him alive!”

The Marines all brought their guns up at once. Grisham was grinning at me as if to ask, “What do you think of that?”

“You’re just some dumb Jap kid. I’ll show you what it takes to play with the big boys!”

“You’re gonna show me?” I said, laughing. And then...

A huge noise swept over the training field. The Marines were looking around, trying to figure out where it had come from, when several shadows big enough to block out the sun appeared overhead. They all pointed their guns upward, but they knew better than to shoot.

“The hell?!”

“Dragons!”

I could tell how shaken they were, and honestly, I felt a little bad for them. Between the reports the Japanese government had shared and the stories from their comrades on the Nimitz, they probably knew there were dragons around here; they might even have seen photos or video. But for better and for worse, dragons had featured many, many, many times in fiction. Plenty of live-action movies, too. So somehow they didn’t feel real—until you found yourself facing one.

Five dragons, called in by Theresa, landed with a thud.

“More where that came from,” I said, and at almost the same moment, ten more shapes came wheeling in overhead. Those were the Faldras. Loek, Romilda, and their parents had gotten Garius’s permission to take the dragon-shaped robots (?) on a flyby of the training field. One of them had red stripes on the right shoulder—that must be the one Loek and Romilda were on.

I assumed these Marines had experience dropping in via helicopter to perform an assault. They had to know what kind of situation they were in.

I had administrative privileges over Theresa’s dragons, so they would do what I told them. At a word from me, they could incinerate every Marine here. With the dragons on the ground, I could even have them put their electromagnetic fields to defensive purposes. Those force fields would probably be more impenetrable than the armor of a tank.

As if all that weren’t enough, the magical soldiers riding on the dragons’ backs were ready with their incantations, prepared to use wind magic at any time. A quick whirlwind from them would be more than enough to stop small-arms fire. In other words, the Marines’ guns weren’t going to do them any good. Hand-to-hand combat was obviously right out, too; a quick sweep from a dragon’s tail could bowl over ten people.

“Sorry, Grisham, you were saying?” I smiled as cruelly as I could. “You were going to show me something? What was that? Oh, and just in case you were wondering, we’ve sent forces to deal with the crew of the Nimitz and the Marines you have camped out in the woods, too. That’s the plus side of an absolute monarchy—things happen fast when Her Majesty wants them to.”

Grisham finally flinched. The Marines looked equally cornered. They were supposed to be among the most combat-tested of America’s forces, but that same experience helped them understand just how futile resistance would be in this situation.

Now, it would be great if they would just throw up their hands and surrender, but reality betrayed my hopes.

“Freaking kid,” Grisham grated. There wasn’t a hint of fear or even uncertainty in his voice. He’d come this far. I guess he was committed now. “You close that portal if you want, but we’re not moving one solitary inch from this spot.”

There was more murmuring among the Marines. Grisham was the special ambassador, but the Marines seemed to be wondering whether they were obligated to play along with his personal vendetta.

Grisham sat down right where he was. “You’ll have to kill me,” he seemed to be saying.

“Cool. That’s a big help,” I said. “Just hang out right there. Don’t move.”

“What?”

“You’re all going back home. Whether you like it or not.”

“How? That’s ridiculous! You can’t move six thousand people at a single time! It’s impossible!” Grisham looked at me like I had lost my mind. He was obviously convinced he was right about everything. I found him so silly-looking that I had to laugh.

“What’s so funny?!” he demanded.

“Aw, nothing,” I said, scratching my cheek and looking down at him. “It’s just, every moment of this went exactly the way I planned.”

Behind me I heard Myusel, Elvia, and even Hikaru-san and the others—everyone who had known about the plan in advance—burst out laughing.

Our land, America, is the most powerful country on Earth. If we are to lead the nations of the world into the great, bright, shining future that lies ahead, then we must be the strongest and most powerful at all times and in all ways. Our ways are higher ways, beyond the comprehension of some blathering barbarians. These people claim to be civilized, but they’re trapped by stubborn prejudices; they wander around like sleepwalkers, only getting in our way.

And what is necessary to show idiots like them the true way? Strength. Power. The rod of love, brought to bear for their betterment. When a righteous nation wields a righteous power, the result can only be justice.

Thus, our country must continually position itself at the cutting edge of power, through whatever means necessary. If we could get our hands on the far-future technology said to exist in this world—the Annihilation Reactor and the organic-weapon production facility—if we could learn how these things worked, our nation would leave all others ever further behind, gaining ever greater strength.

Instead, here we were, packed into a place they called a training field. Hideous monsters surrounded us, along with the primitive locals, making escape impossible. And leading our captors was the Japanese boy, Kanou Shinichi. The cheeky little bastard had joined forces with the local populace, and now he was insisting he was going to send us back to our own world.

Normally, I would have laughed him off. The hyperspace tunnel was narrow, and I knew it; it was much too tight to send back six thousand Navy and Marine troops at a stroke. Again: normally.

“We’re not moving one solitary inch from this spot!” I repeated, but he ignored me. His friends started drawing some sort of curved line around us with wooden sticks; probably a circle with which to encircle us. But why? So what?

“Kanou Shinichi!” I shouted. “Are you listening to me?” But he hadn’t said anything since he made his threat. I didn’t know if he was lost for words, or if he was busy planning. Whichever it was, it seemed to unsettle my men, for even the battle-tested Marines with me were looking at each other uneasily.

At length, Kanou Shinichi abruptly said, “Cool. Looks like we’re ready.”

“Ready?” I said. Ready for what? I prepared for a fight. Maybe when he’d said he was going to send us back, he’d meant “in body bags.” Of course, that would mean all-out war between our two worlds...

“Okay, have a nice trip,” he said with a cheery wave. Then, without a moment’s warning, the ground disappeared from underneath us.

“Er?” I gaped. Then I said: “Wha—?” But I didn’t have time to get out the whole word, let alone a whole sentence. Instead I dropped straight down, trailing off: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!”

I could hear the Marines around me yelling, too, but obviously I didn’t have time to take a good look at them. What was this? What the hell was going on?! It was too chaotic for me to get a read on the situation. Even while I was trying to understand what was happening, gravity had a firm hold on us and was pulling us downward.

“Huh?!” Suddenly, the world flipped upside down. Up became down, and gravity spontaneously reversed direction. I remembered this. Yes—the same strange feeling as when I’d passed through the wormhole...

“Hngh?!” Half a second later, I found myself flying straight up out of the ground. Gravity might have reversed, but it wasn’t enough to counter the inertia of our falling bodies. “Hrr...gh?” After another second of floating, we were thrown against the ground. The earth scraped our skin. When I opened my eyes, I realized I was lying on grass.

“Where... are we?” I could see the Marines scattered on the ground just like me. Some were sprawled out, others curled up. Among them I spotted the ones who had been camped out near the capital, and the crew of the Nimitz, people who had been nowhere near me just moments before.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered. I didn’t exactly have time to take a headcount, but I thought I was looking at about six thousand American troops. Kanou Shinichi, the bastard, couldn’t possibly have transported us all at once, could he? Using the hyperspace tunnel? Had he made it appear directly beneath our feet? So that was why he’d said it would be “a big help” when I had sworn we wouldn’t move!

But that would make this...

“The game is suspended! The game has been interrupted!”

I looked up: the voice from overhead was definitely speaking English. It was also definitely amplified. And this grass we were lying on, it was artificial...

“What in the world are we seeing here?! A mind-boggling number of what look like soldiers have just appeared out of thin air!”

I immediately forgot the pain of the impact and sprang to my feet. The first thing I saw was the crowd. Faces, faces everywhere, every one of them completely shocked. There must have been more than ten thousand people looking down at us from the bleachers. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

Then... behind them, I saw something any red-blooded American would have recognized in an instant: a baseball scoreboard.

“A baseball stadium!” The scoreboard showed that it was the bottom of the ninth, and the score was tied. I recognized the names of the teams, too—anyone would have. They were massively popular clubs. Huge, passionate fan bases.

“Hnngh... Urgh...”

I heard a groan, and looked to the man collapsed beside me. He wasn’t wearing military utilities. In fact, he was in a baseball uniform, on which was written one of the same names as on the scoreboard. He was no Marine: he was one of the players. He must have been in the wrong place when we came flying in. And this had to be...

“The MLB?” No sooner had it dawned on me than something came flying at me. “What?!” It smacked me clean on the head with a clonk, although it didn’t hurt. I picked it up. It was a paper cup.

As if on cue, people in the stands started throwing things at us. Paper cups, hotdog wrappers, and score cards, followed by cans, popcorn, and anything else they happened to be holding. Among the barrage were at least one shoe and one ballpoint pen—what were they thinking up there?

“N-No, stop,” I shouted, throwing my arms over my head. “Stop, we’re—” But my voice was lost among the growing chorus of boos and hisses.

“What the hell’s going on?!” someone demanded.

“This is bullshit!”

“Right in the middle of a tie-freakin’-game!”

The thousands of spectators thundered as one, a roar of noise assaulting us. The improvised projectiles kept coming.

I and the other forcibly returned troops tried in confusion to run away, but the crowd’s anger wouldn’t abate. If anything, the shouting got louder, and despite the announcer pleading with them to calm down, they were on their feet and coming for us.

Then a can of cola collided with the back of my head. My vision went blurry, threatening me with darkness. “How the hell... did this happen...” I mumbled as I slipped into unconsciousness.

That day I, George Grisham, along with one thousand Navy sailors and five thousand U.S. Marines, nixed the climax of the last game of that year’s major league World Series.

I would’ve been mad, too.

Even worse, the game was being broadcast live, meaning everyone watching at home on television saw us, too—and that was before it blew up on the net. The American government had to tie itself in knots trying to explain us. But we wouldn’t learn all that until the next day.

“Awesome. I think it worked,” I said, surveying the training field, which was already back to being solid ground. It had been a bit dicey connecting six different places on this side to one single place on the other, but it looked like I had managed to transport Grisham and his troops back home. Then I closed the hyperspace tunnel I’d temporarily opened, lest they come tumbling back through the other way.

I wondered where they’d ended up. I hadn’t actually specified where the tunnel would go; I’d left those details to Theresa. She’d said she would pick a nice, open space in an American city, so at least I knew Grisham and his friends hadn’t drowned or been incinerated the moment they showed up. At least... I was pretty sure.

In addition, we had also temporarily closed the hyperspace tunnel that we—or more accurately, Matoba-san—frequently used. It would defeat the point if we’d sent the Americans all the way back home just to have them show up again through our usual portal.

The point is, everything had gone well. Really and truly. There was just one little problem. There were limits on the opening and closing of the hyperspace tunnel. Since the Annihilation Reactor in the Dragon’s Den was basically in a dormant state, it provided very little energy. At this point, the hyperspace tunnel was effectively being supported by the radiant heat left over from the time the reactor had gone berserk. We probably only had one more good opportunity to control the tunnel. In other words...

“Shinichi-kun!”

I turned at the sound of my name. Running through a crowd of Eldant soldiers, looking almost panicked, was... Matoba-san. Two JSDF bodyguards were right behind him. He rushed up to me, then stopped, doubled over, his shoulders heaving. He wasn’t a young man anymore; I guess that’s what he got for going so fast.

“Wow. Don’t tell me you ran all the way here.”

“Hardly. I took a carriage.”

As we spoke, I took a look around. I saw Brooke nearby. When our eyes met, he gave me a quick, polite bow. I waved in response.

“Shinichi-kun, what’s this all about?” This time the question came from Minori-san. Oh, that’s right... I hadn’t told her about this part.

“Before I left the house, I asked Brooke to get Matoba-san for me if he was here. I figured if he was anywhere, he would be over by the hyperspace portal—guess I was right.”

It would have been pretty unpleasant for everyone if Matoba-san had been inside the tunnel when I closed it.

“I tried the castle, but I didn’t find you there—they said you were here,” Matoba-san said. “I have to say, I never expected America to try such strongarm tactics...” He dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief. Brooke or someone must have given him the gist of what had happened. Maybe it wasn’t just physical exertion that had left Matoba-san looking tired. Maybe there was a psychological component.

“All’s well that ends well,” I said. “We got the Americans safely back to the present, if you know what I mean.”

“But how?”

I waved my hand from right to left, encompassing the entire field. “Opened a temporary tunnel right underneath them. We made sure to get every last U.S. Marine and sailor in this world.” I guess maybe an up-to-down gesture would have been more accurate, but never mind.

“You did?”

“Well, it was mostly Theresa.” It wouldn’t have been possible without her ability to finely control the hyperspace tunnel. She was at the castle at the moment. “She says that with the annihilation reactor shut down, we can probably make the hyperspace portal work just one more time. It’s possible we’ll figure out how to reactivate the reactor safely, someday, but this is your last sure chance to go back to the other side.”

Matoba-san looked almost confused for a moment. “And that’s why you brought me here?”

“What, were you eager to stay?”

“Fair enough. But Shinichi-kun, you...” He trailed off.

“There you have it,” I said and turned back to look at everyone who had been born “over there.” Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Reito-san. “Anyone who wants to go back, step right up.”

The three of them looked at each other. Reito-san was the first to speak. “Geez, I finally go to a real-life fantasy world and I don’t even get to do a little sightseeing? This is the land of my dreams! I want a chance to make out with a beast-girl or an elf or something!” He scratched his cheek, embarrassed.

“Sorry you had to miss all that,” I said. “And thank you. For everything you’ve done.”

“Thank you, man,” he said. “I learned a lot, I had some fun.” He waved to each of us, then stepped inside the circle we had drawn on the ground of the training field. Then he added, “By the way, when I came over here I took... an elevator? A gondola or something? Anyway, how’s this gonna work?”

“It sounds like gravity should function right to the midpoint of the trip, and then inertia should carry you the rest of the way.”

“What you’re saying is, I won’t find myself permanently lost in a space-time rift between worlds.” He crossed his arms and grunted. “Although I could get fired up for that, too. You know, kind of the Flying Japanese.”

Seriously, I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“We’ll be going, too,” Matoba-san said softly. He meant himself and his two bodyguards, who no doubt wanted to go home. The three of them stood with Reito-san in the circle—then Matoba-san turned to me. “You won’t be joining us, Shinichi-kun?”

There was a beat. Then I said, “I have to thank you, too, Matoba-san.” I smiled ambiguously.

“Thank you, Shinichi-kun. I knew very little about otaku, and I must admit that otaku products remain a black box to me to this day. But...” For a moment, Matoba-san seemed to be looking for the right words. “Well. Having the opportunity to work with you was... fun.”

For Matoba-san, who was probably the least otaku person there was, invading another world using otaku goods and merchandise probably sounded completely nuts, and confusing to boot. That was exactly why he had wanted me and Hikaru-san. It couldn’t have been easy for him, caught between us otaku on the one hand and the Japanese government on the other. From our perspective, he could almost have been regarded as a traitor. But ultimately, Matoba-san didn’t complain, just did the work he was given as fairly and impartially as possible. It was his presence that had enabled me to conduct cultural exchange the way I saw fit. He had earned some respect.

As for the rest of us...

“Your Majesty.”

We looked up. We were still in the audience chamber, but the members of Bedouna had been led away by our soldiers, and now it was only ourselves, Garius, and a select few others. One of those others was Theresa, sitting in the corner, who was now looking directly at us.

She was a woman from the armed forces who had transferred her mind into a machine and survived across the ages. Now, she jerked her palm in the direction of the training field. “Last portal’s about to open. But it won’t stay that way for long. No idea if we’ll ever be able to open another one. For all practical purposes, there won’t be any more hopping back and forth to Japan after this. You know that, right?”

“Of course, we are well aware.” We could feel Garius studying us, but we ignored him as best we could. Instead, we said firmly, “Why do you bring this up now?”

“I’m just saying, if you’re gonna stop him, now’s your chance. You know he got video messages from his family on the other side, right? No one could blame him for feeling a little homesick.” Theresa shrugged.

“Stop him? To whom do you refer?”

There was a long pause, and finally Theresa shrugged again. “Hey, if that’s the way you want it.” Then she grinned. “Royalty has its drawbacks, eh, Your Majesty?”

We didn’t respond. If it wasn’t one of them, it was another!

Garius placed a hand on our shoulder as we sat in silence. “It is possible for you to go to the other side, Majesty.”

“And then you would be Emperor?”

“According to the succession.”

“So if you chase us off to Ja-pan, you gain power without shedding a drop of blood. Huh! We cannot let down our guard around you, we see.”

“I believe I’ll take that as a compliment.” Garius smiled, somewhat bitterly. He wasn’t really trying to maneuver the throne out from under us, of course. If he harbored such ambitions, he could have acted upon them long ago. Instead, he seemed to be saying: I’m here to fill in for you if need be, so forget about being ruler and listen to your own heart.

“We have already said our goodbyes,” we said in a whisper. “Now the best thing we can do for him is to keep our distance, lest we undermine his resolve.”

“A noble attitude, Your Majesty... Or should I say, Petralka.” Garius gave a slight bow, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Shinichi-sama...”

I turned when Myusel said my name to find her watching me, her violet eyes damp. She was juuust holding it together, but it looked like one little push could send her over the edge into uncontrollable sobbing.

I turned back to the “hole” in front of me. The circle we’d drawn on the ground of the training field, our very last hyperspace tunnel. It was connected to the Shinjuku Gyoen garden in Tokyo, so there wouldn’t be any problems when everyone came tumbling through. Reito-san, Matoba-san, and Matoba-san’s bodyguards were already gone. Only Hikaru-san, Minori-san, and I were left.

Theresa and I had worked out the timing beforehand, and I knew we only had two minutes before the tunnel closed. I could tell because the forbidden armor showed a countdown timer in front of me, giving the remaining time to the hundredth of a second.

One hundred and ten seconds left. Where had the time gone?

Hikaru-san and Minori-san knew about the time limit as well as I did. Finally, I turned to face Myusel.

“Myusel. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done.”

“Shinichi-sama...”

“You were the one who made it possible for me to achieve everything I did in this world. I can’t thank you enough. No, it’s... It’s more than that. I think you were the first person to say that you needed me. That I was important to you. So I guess, I mean, there’ll never be someone else like you in my life.”

Geez, I was getting embarrassed. If only I could come up with some dry-cool quip! Despite everything that had happened, it turned out I was still just a useless otaku.

I had to work with what I had, though, so I said, “I mean it, Myusel. Thank you.” I took a step back, toward the hyperspace tunnel. “I love you. I love you so much.” Fifty seconds left. “And...”

“Shinichi-sama!” Myusel flung herself at me.

Whoa, yikes! I just managed to catch her, only stumbling back another step. Both of us were wearing our forbidden armor, so there was a clang of metal. It wasn’t exactly a romantic embrace.

“Myusel...”

“Please, take me with you!”

“Look, that’s kind of the point I was trying to build to,” I said, and sighed. “What I wanted to say is, that’s why I’m looking forward to everything we’ll share after this.”

There was a pause. “What?” Myusel tried to blink away the big, fat tears rolling from her eyes.

At that instant, I could feel the hyperspace portal snap shut behind me. I slowly looked back, to discover a flat patch of ground; it was like the hole had never been there. I took a glance around, and naturally, Hikaru-san and Minori-san were there, too. In fact, they were watching me and Myusel as if the whole thing amused them.

“Uh... Um, Shinichi-sama...” Myusel’s face went slack and she gazed at me. “Are you very sure... you shouldn’t have gone home?”

“You thought I would?”

“Yes, sir,” she said slowly, casting her eyes to the ground. Well, I guess I couldn’t blame her. That stuff I’d said had sort of sounded like I was leaving forever.

I freed myself from my forbidden armor, and Myusel did the same. Doing so restored the clothing the armor had been storing for us, so that she was dressed in her usual adorable maid outfit as she stood in front of me. I always knew she looked great like that.

I scratched my cheek to hide my embarrassment, then said, “I got that video message from my family, right?”

“Yes, sir... And I was so sure...”

She’d probably thought it would make me homesick and cause me to go back to Japan. I’m sure that’s what the Japanese government had hoped to achieve by sending Reito-san with that video. If they couldn’t force me to come home, maybe they could twist my arm instead. But I was Kanou Shinichi, a lifelong otaku, and my family was a lifelong otaku’s family—my parents and my sister. So guess what they did.

“I admit, I was sure they’d order me to come home,” I said, smiling a little. Apparently, when asking them to record the video, the government had actually told them the truth—all about the other world, and about Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia. My parents had been flabbergasted. My little sister had been ticked.

In the end, their message to me had been: “If you want to come home, then come home. But if you’re a true otaku, then you won’t sit there fretting about trivial details like your family, or society, or even common sense—you’ll go out there and get the bride you’re most moe for!”

“My own parents—how could they, huh?” I said. “That’s normally where you would expect them to be all, ‘Come back right now! This is your home!’ Y’know?”

“Uh... huh...” Myusel blinked. “But it seems... very like them, I think...”

“Yeah, maybe.” I grinned. Then I took Myusel’s hands.

“Sh—Shinichi-sama?!” She went red up to her pointy elf ears. We’d held hands before, but she looked as off-kilter as if this were the very first time. Man, this girl sure knew how to be cute!

“So, anyway, uh...” I’d come this far, but I was having trouble getting the next words out. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a loser. Nothing I can do. I’m just a useless otaku—that’s life. “Would you be my... my... uh... b— b—”

“Your buh?” Myusel looked at me in confusion. She was bright red, but she was still waiting patiently to hear what I would say.

Say it! Say it, Kanou Shinichi! Now, now, this time you need to come out with it—you need to tell her what’s in your heart! Speak up, speak forth, Shinichi, speak, O extraordinary... no, wait, wrong thing.

Please, Myusel, become my two-dimensional—no, actually, I don’t need that descriptor!—please be my bride! That’s what I was trying to say!

“Arrgh, I can’t stand this anymore!” That exclamation came, obviously not from me or Myusel, but from Hikaru-san, who was standing watching us. He stamped on the ground and then bounded over to me. “What could you possibly be embarrassed about by now, you oaf?! Just hurry up and say it already!”

“G-Geez, speak for yourself, Hikaru-san!”

“Speak for myself how?” he asked, but I could see he’d backed off a little. All right, there was my opening! “Aren’t you gonna tell Elvia how you—”

“You just shut your mouth, you loser otaku!”

“Huh? Whazzat about me?”

“Nothing! It’s nothing!”

“Yeah, but I heard my name just now... Uh, Hikaru-sama?”

“Alright, listen, the order of tying up loose ends definitely goes Shinichi first. My confession can wait till after that!”

“Confession? Wha?”

With Hikaru-san and Elvia in the fray, things were getting completely out of control. Any possible romance had gone out the window. Although I had to admit, it was a very “us” sort of moment.

“Say, uh, Hikaru-sama, you didn’t want to go home, either?”

“Did you want me to?”

“Huh?! N-No, that’s not what I meant!”

“If I’d been planning to go home, I wouldn’t have shown up in this body.”

That was when we remembered that Hikaru-san was, in fact, using his avatar. The human body of the person named Ayasaki Hikaru was back at our mansion. It obviously wouldn’t do much good to send the avatar through the portal.

“And Minori-sama...” Myusel smiled slightly as she looked at Minori-san, who was watching us. That’s right: she hadn’t left, either. Even though there was no BL here. I couldn’t imagine what had inspired such a change of heart. I guess since she didn’t have any family or relatives on “the other side,” she arguably had fewer hurdles to staying here. Er... but... was she disobeying orders from the JSDF? Maybe she’d requested discharge.

Just then I heard someone wail, “M—M—Minori-zenzeiiii!” I turned and saw the crowd parting again, just as they had for Matoba-san. Then I saw our perfectly matched odd couple, a slim, tall young man and a short, stout young woman. It was Loek and Romilda, of course.

Loek raced up to Minori-san, barely holding back the tears. “You didn’t go home?!” he cried. “Are you sure about this?!” Being head over heels in love with Minori-san the way he was, Loek was over the moon—but he also knew exactly what she was into...

It was Romilda, though, who said, “You know there won’t be any more BL in this world, right?” The look on her face was confused, conflicted, almost weak. I’m sure that, like Loek, she was thrilled Minori-san had chosen to stay, but something seemed to be holding her back from unmitigated happiness.

Ahh. I saw what was going on here. Romilda must have been thinking that with Minori-san gone, Loek would turn to her. Outside of things with Loek, Romilda adored Minori-san, too, so she wanted to be happy that she was staying, but at the same time she might have felt a little guilty or annoyed at herself for resenting Minori-san. No wonder she looked torn.

“Er, yeah, well...” Minori-san looked a little uncertain, herself—but she smiled happily, in a way that made it obvious she didn’t have any regrets. “We can just get someone to draw some new BL, right?”

True, this world was fostering its own local talent, from writers like Eduardo to artists like Canal. Even so, I thought it was likely to be a while before the market was mature enough for, you know, the ultimate BL.

“Besides,” Minori-san said, pointing at me, “watching over Shinichi-kun and Garius’s future together is my mission!”

“No it isn’t! You don’t have any mission like that!” I interjected, but everyone, including Minori-san, just laughed.

That’s when Loek demanded, “Hey, Romilda. What’s with the look?”

“What’s with what look?”

“Minori-sensei just told us she’s staying! Aren’t you happy?!”

“Y-Yeah, sure I am! It’s just...”

“Just? Just what?”

“Just nothing! It’s not like I was thinking that when Minori-sensei went home, you might finally notice me, Loek!”

“Huh?”

“Huh?” We all looked at them in surprise—but Romilda seemed just as taken aback as the rest of us. “D-D-Don’t get the wrong idea! I c-couldn’t care less about this jerk! I swear! It’s not like I, like, like him or anything!”

Wow! A textbook tsundere. I was impressed.

Romilda was blushing furiously, but she wasn’t the only one: Loek was red as a beet, too. “G-Geez, uh... Uhh...”

I know I’m not in any position to talk, but after everything you two have been through together, Loek, you didn’t have the slightest inkling of Romilda’s feelings?

Well, I guess it was sort of sweet—or at least bittersweet!

This was turning into one big let-me-tell-you-how-I-feel party. Everyone seemed to be drawing strength from the momentum of my admission to Myusel. It was like one of those scenes, you know, when they’re at graduation and all the underclassmen decide to confess their feelings to their sempai.

It wasn’t just Loek... I wasn’t in a position to talk about any of them! At that moment, though...

“Shinichi-sama...” Myusel edged closer to me, all but whispering my name. As I felt her hands take mine, I said:

“Myusel... would you be my bride?”

There was only the briefest of pauses before she exclaimed, “Yes!”

Even at that moment, we somehow couldn’t quite look at each other, watching Loek and Romilda squabble instead. I guess we were still a little shy together.

I was glad I had stayed here, though. I was so, so glad. This was where I was supposed to be. At that moment, I knew in my heart: now, at last, this was really and truly my home.

I, Matoba Jinzaburou, had some time to kill. I looked out the window of my office, where I could see languorous, gentle orange sunlight. I squinted to get a better look at the scenery. There was a gaggle of buildings in the distance, with some green space between them. The familiar vista of Nagata-cho, the patch of downtown Tokyo that was the seat of the Japanese government.

It looked so... normal. It was enough to make everything that had happened in the other world feel like a dream. They’d been busy days, transiting back and forth between the two worlds, mediating among all kinds of government bodies from the Ministry of Defense to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, obtaining and delivering every sort of merchandise. Now, suddenly, I was just filling a desk, whiling away the days until retirement. Maybe that made my previous engagement seem even more dreamlike.

I no longer had the endless arguments wearing on my nerves; I could just sit back and collect a paycheck.

Almost six months had passed since everything had happened. With the closure of the hyperspace tunnel, the increasingly frequent earthquakes had stopped as if they had never begun. Things were tense between Japan and America immediately after the portal closed, but, well, everyone involved was eager to save face. Ultimately, after much wrangling, everyone had simply agreed that the other world had never existed.

And so everything went back to normal. Our world remained a boring, peaceful, lonely place.

Maybe I can’t say things went “back” to normal. Most of Japan’s citizens had never known about the other world connected to a corner of their country, and so in their minds, things had never been anything but normal. For most of them, the unremarkable days continued unaltered.

There was just one major catch: several Japanese people had vanished from the face of the Earth, at least at this time. Perhaps that outcome had been inevitable. I had chosen people who would have a minimal impact on society if they were to disappear, after all. Japan would continue its era of peace—or perhaps of unrelenting apathy—as if things had always been this way.

“Another world...” I mused.

Maybe all of it—the other world, all those who had stayed there, everything that had happened—was just an illusion, I thought, as I gazed at the unchanging scenery. But I couldn’t help noticing that illusion tugged at my heartstrings awfully hard.