Chapter Five: Operation Assassination

23:00 local time...

In the Eldant Empire, which tended to start and end the day early, this was smack in the middle of the night.

A curtain of darkness had fallen over the world. A group of men snuck through the bushes, crouching low. The goggles they wore looked crude and out of place, but were equipped with night vision. With their camouflage uniforms and the equipment that covered half their faces, it was hard to make out who they were.

Their square jaws looked awfully tough, and their muscled bodies were covered in black battle uniforms along with bullet- and blade-proof vests. They were wearing helmets—black too, of course. They practically screamed night raid.

They were the Central Readiness Force of the Ground JSDF—a special operations unit.

Much like America’s SOCOM, this was a special unit composed of elite soldiers that essentially reported directly to headquarters. They were the part of the JSDF that specialized in counterterrorism and guerrilla warfare. In other words, covert killings were well within their mandate.

None of their equipment bore any unit insignia, of course. Those had been deliberately left off. It was obvious why. Let’s just say they hadn’t gotten royal permission to come in-country.

It was sort of silly, actually. They were the only ones in the Eldant Empire to possess equipment like this.

The troops moved forward, using hand signals to communicate. They were heading for the employee housing of the parallel-world-first general entertainment company, Amutech. They had already confirmed the location of their target—namely, Kanou Shinichi. The lights in his bedroom had gone out almost an hour ago, and no other lights were to be seen anywhere in the house. Presumably, everyone in the mansion was asleep.

The squad leader didn’t speak a word, just rested his hand on his shoulder, signaling. One by one, the soldiers advanced on the target house.

Then one of the soldiers looked up, as if he sensed something. He stiffened—there, in the branches above him, was some kind of round shape. No doubt the thing showed a pale green on the other side of his passive infrared night vision goggles. It was some kind of small bird of prey, no larger than thirty-seven centimeters.

An owl.

But it was clearly not the same creature the JSDF trooper knew from his home world. It had no eyes on its head, just one lolling oculus in the center of its stomach. As far as the soldier could tell, the thing defied common sense. He might well have called it a monster.

“......Ugly little freak,” he muttered. In principle, unnecessary talk was verboten during an operation, but maybe it was simply impossible not to remark on the creature. The men in this unit might be the elite of the elite, but they had never fought in an alternate world, nor even practiced how to operate in one. Most likely, it had only been a few days earlier that they had even learned of the existence of this place.

Quiet as shadows, the soldiers circled around to the back entrance. The captain pulled a key out of a bag and unlocked the door, and then in they came, not one of them making a sound.

True, most special-ops forces you see breaking into houses in movies are a little more violent—blowing up walls and piling into rooms and stuff—but that’s when the enemy is expecting them and speed is of the essence. If your targets aren’t on the lookout for you, you want to keep it that way as long as you can, until you’re right up close.

Real pros use their weapons as little as possible. Minimize casualties, maximize effect: that’s the working rule for a special force.

The troopers arrived at the bedroom they were targeting and lined up on either side of the door. They nodded silently at each other once more, then one of them grasped the doorknob.

An instant later...

“Hrk?!”

...the door flew open inward by itself. The trooper was thrown completely off-balance; he probably hadn’t expected anything like this.

The room lit up like a light switch had been thrown. And there in the very manorial room—

“Welcome home, Master!”

—were thirty or so maids.

Not classic Victorian maids, though—these ladies were dressed anime-style, more of a French-maid vibe. Frills and lace everywhere, skirts that only went down to the knees, outfits that emphasized their chests. White knee-high socks covered their slim legs, and they wore headdresses that were as frilly as everything else they had on. The youngest of them was only right around ten years old, while the oldest seemed to be about in her early twenties.

Then there were the pointy ears that stuck out from under their hair, the proof that they were elves.

“Welcome home, Master!”

They spoke in that special, saccharine tone that maids have—what we might think of as an “anime voice.” Not to mention, our illegal-immigrant friends—namely, the JSDF troopers—weren’t wearing magical translator rings (those were issued by the Eldant Empire), so the words the girls were saying must have sounded awfully strange to them.

“The hell...?!” one of the soldiers growled. The prohibition on chatter seemed to have gone out the window.

In response, the Beautiful Maid Brigade cocked their collective heads. They didn’t seem to know quite what to make of the special-ops force that had burst into the room.

“I get it. It’s that otaku,” the squad leader said venomously. “So he was using government money to surround himself with women... Where is he now? Having his fun?”

The man was obviously confused, but he knew there was a serious otaku in here, so maybe he figured it only made sense that the mansion should be home to all kinds of bizarre, possibly depraved amusements.

The captain turned to his unit and nodded again. “Just ignore the girls. Check if the target’s in the bed.”

“Roger.”

With that brief answer, one of the men in black began pushing his way through the sea of maids, his footsteps loud—he was almost on the target now, there was no need to be discreet—and advanced into the room.

The surprised maids watched the unit move forward; meanwhile, the girls were discussing something amongst themselves. Of course, the JSDF men had no idea what the maids were actually saying. Most people might have guessed, though, that it was something like, “Who are these people?” or, “Goodness, what trouble.” Several of the maids grabbed onto the soldiers, trying to stop them from moving.

The troopers seemed somewhat confused.

They were members of the military of Japan—a country that was, for better or for worse, largely peaceful. They had all been raised with the belief that women and children were weak and should be protected. Yes, they had heard the stories from the Vietnam War—episode after episode where American troops had tried to help children, only to have the kids throw hand grenades at them and kill them. But it was very hard to immediately think enemy when confronted with such sweet-looking people.

“Clear ’em out,” the captain ordered coldly.

There was an instant’s hesitation on the part of his men, but then they nodded and pulled pistols from the holsters on their belts. They looked weirdly toy-like; they weren’t the JSDF’s standard-issue 9mm handguns, but some kind of taser. One assumed they had been sternly warned to cause as few casualties as possible, other than the target himself, of course. Too many Eldant deaths would make future diplomacy a lot harder.

Men and maids looked at each other in perplexity. One of the soldiers had turned his taser toward a young woman, but she only smiled and grasped his wrist gently with both hands. The Eldant Empire had no knowledge of guns, so it made sense that she wouldn’t identify it as a weapon. Perfectly normal behavior.

What came next? Not so much.

“Hah!” The maid let out and exhalation of breath bordering on a karate yell. And then the JSDF soldier found himself flying over the shoulder of an opponent half his size.

“Hrgh!”

The man was caught unawares, leaving him no opportunity to breakfall; he hit the ground hard and, with a grunt, went out like a light. The other elf girls ran toward him, pulling out rope they had hidden in their skirts. The rope moved on its own, like a snake, tying the man up in the blink of an eye.

“Wha—?!”

What had happened? The JSDF trooper’s mind probably only went blank for second. Just a second. But a whole second. In a constantly changing situation that demanded nonstop reappraisal and judgment, that was a crucial blank.

The maids took advantage of this exceedingly brief period to do what they had to do. The JSDF soldiers were tough, and had every kind of technological advantage. The maids grabbed them and threw them, or hugged them from behind and tied them up. The blade- and bullet-proof vests were no use against strangleholds, or impacts to the entire body. That youngest maid grabbed one of the soldiers; he gave a low moan and bent his head back. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but he could probably hear the sound of his own body being choked and crushed—squish-crunch or some similarly unpleasant noise.

In an eyeblink, half the soldiers were unconscious and out of commission.

“Wh-Wha—?!” Seeing his men go down one after another, the captain brought his gun to bear. By now, he had probably figured it out: the Maid Brigade wasn’t just some otaku’s pervy little indulgence. They were a trap, set specifically to take care of the special operators.

“You have permission to fire! Shoot! Shoot!” Apparently, he had decided they didn’t have time to patiently knock out their opponents with the tasers. His unit clicked the safeties off on their suppressed Type 89s and took aim at the maids.

There was a gunshot. Then another, and another.

Spent shell casings arced through the air in time with the series of muffled explosions, jangling to a halt on the floor.

Steel traveling faster than the speed of sound hit the maids, pierced their willowy bodies, driving itself cruelly into flesh, shattering bone, as the targets collapsed to the floor...

“Th—”

Gotcha. You can assume that’s what the soldiers expected to happen.

The reality, though, was totally different.

“This can’t be!”

They stopped firing after expending half the ammunition in their clips. The soldiers’ faces were largely hidden by their goggles, making their expressions hard to read, but astonishment and confusion were most likely the order of the day.

Every single one of the maids was just standing there, perfectly calm and normal.

The elf girls had all stretched their palms out as if they were shields. A sort of barrier emitting a faint light stood between the elves and the operators.

“Are they using... magic?!” The captain’s voice was drowned out by the maids, who let out another barrage of karate shouts and fell on the soldiers again.

“Bwahahahahahahahaha!”

A laugh that could reach the ceiling bellowed through the room. And who should it be gazing into a crystal ball and cackling like a final boss but Petralka?

Uh... Actually, I’m a little weirded out by how well that laugh suits her. And that fan in her hand? Total bad-girl look.

“Hah! They are so predictable! Predictable to a fault!” she said, starting to slap the armrests in her mirth. “They came to finish you off, Shinichi, just as we expected. It seems human minds think alike, no matter which world they come from!”

We were actually right there in the mansion, but we were camped out in a storage room that I rarely went into. Now we were using it as an impromptu command center, and things looked a little different from usual in here. All the crap had been carried out or shoved up against the wall, leaving a big open space in the middle of the room. A blueprint of the mansion had been unrolled, and about fifty wooden pieces were arranged on top of it.

Fifteen of them were red, thirty were blue. But there were five that were white. These colors referred respectively to the JSDF, the Maid Brigade, and—yes—us.

Normally, you only see maps and playing pieces like this for large-scale operations. I had some doubts as to whether all this kit was really necessary for one fight in one mansion, but, eh. I kept them to myself. Three big crystal balls resided against one wall, broadcasting to us, via magic, everything that was seen by our enchanted sneaks, the one-eyed owls.

Petralka was lounging in a high-backed chair that she had put where she could see all three crystal balls at once, looking quite pleased. Beside her were Garius and the commander of the royal guard, whom we had borrowed from the castle.

This particular commander was a woman, and the royal guards she commanded were none other than the maids who were currently beating the hand-picked forces of the JSDF silly.

Given that Petralka was a young woman, the soldiers who served and protected her in the castle were women as well. Many of them were demi-humans (as you’ll recall, both male and female demi-humans often had military experience), and in fact, I gathered that the maids who had been serving us on the terrace the other day had also been among the empress’s personal guard.

It was my understanding that these female soldiers had been requested because constantly having burly armed men at your side tended to spoil a mood. I knew that elves were usually good at magical warfare, and when it came to dwarves, even the women had enough power in their small statures to overcome a full-grown human man. They were ideally suited to attend an imperial or noble personage without having to constantly carry a weapon.

Plus, the maid thing definitely got people to lower their guard. Despite the way they looked, the members of the Maid Brigade were all adults. And the dwarven soldiers may all have seemed like little girls from a human perspective, but I heard some of them had several kids!

“Even so, I bet they never pictured themselves getting done in by a bunch of maids,” I murmured. It’s not the sort of thing elite military units tend to train for.

Beside me, Myusel cast her eyes sadly at the ground. “I can’t believe people from Japan really came to kill you. And so many of them... Brooke-san and I alone could never have protected you.”

Wait, so she had been planning to try to protect me if anything happened? I felt kind of good about that, and kind of bad...

“Minister Cordobal,” I said, addressing Garius, who stood with his arms crossed beside Petralka, keeping a close eye on the situation. For what it’s worth, the idea for this strategy had come mostly from Petralka, but given that Garius had actual battle experience, he was the one who assumed command.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked, not looking away from the crystal balls.

“Why are you doing all this for me? Getting your military involved and everything? I’m just—”

I left off there. But the silver-haired knight glanced back at me, an incongruous smile on his face. I felt like he could see right through me, see everything.

“Truth be told, Shinichi, I myself had an inkling of what the Japanese government was aiming at.”

“...Er. Sure. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” I actually felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders when I heard that. Garius and Prime Minister Zahar were pretty sharp customers. I had found that they, at the very least, weren’t so attached to old ways of doing things that it caused them to misjudge a situation they were faced with. I shouldn’t have been surprised if they of all people had spotted what was lurking in the shadows of the Japanese government’s sweet talk about “cultural exchange.”

“But that just makes me more curious...”

Why go out of their way to help me, then?

“That question would be better answered by Her Majesty,” Garius said. I looked from him to Petralka.

“Mm. True enough,” the empress said. She assumed a thoughtful look, frowning slightly and making a noise in the back of her throat. “How shall we put this? Garius may be able to fathom all this, but personally, we find ‘invasion by otaku culture’ to be rather difficult to understand. The spread of new culture always leaves the rubble of the old in its wake, does it not? The idea of using such a force as a tool of invasion is impossibly vague. We have trouble feeling that it’s quite real.”

“I... I guess you could be right about that.”

That was exactly what made cultural invasions so terrifying. There was as good a chance as any that by the time people realized what was going on, it would all be over.

“Neither is it the case,” Petralka went on, “that we in the Eldant Empire mindlessly accept all that we are given. When new culture is absorbed, it is planted in the seedbed of what is already there, until it blooms afresh as a combination of old and new. Our empire is a place of many races, and its traditions are not to be manipulated so easily.”

She looked, frankly, triumphant—and I smiled at her. “You’re sure right about that.”

It actually wasn’t that different from Japan. There were times in history when Japan was behind the cultural development curve. It sent emissaries to Sui and Tang, China to learn about foreign culture and bring it back. In fact, they went so far as to proactively seek out foreigners who had left their home countries for one reason or another, especially those with special skills, like engineering.

Had Japan stopped being Japan at that point? Had it turned into a little piece of China? Of course not.

The Eldant Empire was the same way. From a certain perspective, Petralka and the others could prevent the culture we brought in from being invasive. As long as the empire handled it with self-awareness, otaku culture would lose its effectiveness as a weapon of invasion.

All of this was more or less the same conclusion I’d reached.

“However,” Petralka added with a severe look, “acceptance is viable only when the purveyor of the new culture adopts a humble attitude, as you have done, Shinichi. When instead the ambitious seek to impose their will upon us, culture is arbitrarily distorted, and of course the commoners’ thinking is defiled along with it.”

That was cultural invasion, indeed cultural pollution. Controlled, not free. Perverted because someone was trying to manage it.

Culture should, fundamentally, be free—that was why I had deliberately decided not to try to force anyone to adopt what I was introducing. The people who liked it would take it, and those who didn’t could leave it. That was all. But in a way, that was everything.

“Shinichi,” Petralka said with a smile. “That is why we—the empress, the Eldant Empire—chose you to be the one who brought us this new culture.”

I was silent. Maybe the previous day’s audience had been a test—a test for me, to find out whether or not I was really an invader in the Eldant Empire.

“This is strange,” the guard commander muttered. “Observers six and ten are blind. There were supposed to be fifteen enemies, but I only count eleven tied up.”

This provoked an immediate reaction from Garius. “No! Check all the Observers, immediately!”

More than twenty of the magical creatures had been positioned inside and outside the mansion, broadcasting what they were seeing to us. Even if one of them went down by some accident—caught by a stray bullet, for example—there was no way we should have lost track of the entire JSDF unit.

Meaning...

“Huh?”

There was a clatter as something fell at my feet. It was on the large side, like a 500-milliliter bottle of cola. I reflexively looked in the direction the object had come from and saw that the door to the store room—the door to our little think tank—was slightly ajar.

“Crap!”

I went stiff; Garius was bug-eyed with shock.

About a second later, the tear-gas grenade blew, filling the room with white smoke.

I suppose I should be grateful for the special ops guys’ restraint. If that had been a regular hand grenade, or maybe an incendiary bomb, we would have been blown to smithereens. But instead, the soldiers stayed faithful to their stated objective of killing no one except the target (me, in case you forgot) and otherwise keeping casualties to a minimum. True, the guys ambushed by the Maid Brigade eventually opened fire, but still.

The room filled with a white haze. My eyes, my nose, the inside of my mouth—every exposed surface felt like it was being stuck full of needles. My eyes were running with tears—I knew I needed to be able to see clearly, but it was a biological response that I couldn’t control. So my vision blurred, and I lost track of what was what. And that was before the violent coughing started.

My ears, at least, still seemed to be working; I could hear someone else coughing, too. At the moment, though, I didn’t have the slightest idea who was. Myusel? Petralka? Garius? The lady commander? No idea. No time to care, either. Tear gas may be a parade example of a non-lethal weapon, but it’s not pleasant, not by a long shot. I thought I even remembered reading somewhere that a person with a weak respiratory system could die from inhaling it.

If we got any more gas in this room, we were going to be out of options.

“The window!” I heard Petralka shout. “Open the window!”

She had seen me use the fire extinguisher during that terrorist attack, and she must have figured tear gas was something similar. An instant later...

“Tifu Murottsu!”

I heard Myusel’s voice, accompanied by the punch of a wave of magic. The window, frame and all, was blown away with a wumph. I could just make it out through my tear-streaked vision. When it occurred to me that the incantation for this spell took close to a minute, I realized Myusel must have been preparing this magic since the moment I had first cried out on seeing the tear gas canister.

The impact flushed the gas out of the room. Myusel had both her hands out in front of her, her eyes streaming with tears, no doubt from the gas.

But there was no time for a sigh of relief. A dark shape loomed in front of me. I took a step back.

It was a JSDF soldier wearing a gas mask.

From the “Protect Gear” of The Red Spectacles to the soldiers of Fallout to the stormtroopers of Star Wars, this sort of equipment has always been played for how intimidating it is up close. It looks so nearly human that its inhuman elements are somehow heightened.

I gulped. He was so close I could have reached out and touched him. Plus, he was holding a 9mm handgun.

If he decided to shoot me, there was no way he would miss. I was sure he was well-trained, too. I went pale, feeling like my consciousness might be sucked down that yawning black barrel. It’s kind of embarrassing—but in this case, it also saved my life.

I collapsed to my knees.

There was a huge roar inches above my head. You could hardly have fit a sheet of paper between me and that bullet; I felt the air tremble as it went by. Absolutely terrifying me, of course.

“Master!” Myusel shrieked. Then, “Tifu Murottsu!”

She invoked the spell again (just as a note, I gathered that when you cast the same spell twice, you could significantly shorten the incantation), and the soldier was blown backward. He tried to fire a second time, but the shot went off in some random direction, smashing through the wall and scattering debris.

There was still no time for a sigh of relief. I looked up to see another soldier, not three meters from me.

“Shinichi!” Petralka shouted. At the same moment, something came flying by.

It was a knight. The knight. Garius.

He had his blade out as fast as if he were in a duel, and cut at the soldier. The sword as such was stopped by the blade-proof vest, but the momentum of the attack from such a short distance meant there was bound to be some force behind it. The trooper was thrown off-balance—and a second later, a morning star buried itself in his head.

It was the female commander.

Normally a weapon like that would crush the skull and snuff out the victim’s life. This JSDF man could thank his helmet that he would wind up with nothing more than a concussion. There was no visible blood, but he slumped to the floor and stopped moving.

But there were still two soldiers left.

“Drop your weapons!” they cried.

They had gotten the wall behind them, and they were carrying Type 89s.

The Type 89 is a high-tech assault rifle the JSDF is pretty proud of. Just flip a switch, and it spits out 5.56mm bullets like a machine gun. Almost irresistible for spraying a room with suppressive fire.

These soldiers had two of those guns, and they were both pointed right at me.

Petralka and the others, of course, couldn’t understand exactly what the soldiers were saying. But under the circumstances, it wasn’t hard to guess what they meant.

Everyone froze. Neither Garius nor the commander, however, laid down their arms.

“Weapons down, I said!” one of the soldiers shouted.

But me? I was looking out the now-absent window.

“Guys,” I said, “I think you’re the ones who’d better put down your weapons.”

An instant later, two arms were protruding from the wall beside the soldiers.

I don’t mean figuratively or metaphorically or whatever. Just, suddenly a couple of scaly, blue arms with huge claws had punched through the wall.

The astonished soldiers were too slow to react. Even as they cried out, one hand grabbed each of their necks—firmly. I told you, right? Bullet- and blade-proof vests can protect you from, well, bullets and blades, but there are plenty of other ways to attack a person. Those vests didn’t come up to their necks, anyway.

“Hrgh... Gah!”

From where we previously had three windows, we now had a collection of lizardmen piling into the room. There were almost a dozen of them. They quickly moved to surround the JSDF soldiers and confiscated their guns.

“Master.” One lizardman, even bigger than the others, emerged from the middle of the circle. It was Brooke. “Please forgive the delay.”

The two soldiers had already been virtually stripped of their weapons and equipment. But Brooke nodded, and almost as if to add insult to injury, the lizardmen pulled something new in through the window.

Two people, tied up with rope: Matoba-san and Minori-san.

“Dammit...” Maybe the soldiers had finally resigned themselves to their situation, because they put up their hands helplessly.

Then...

“Koganuma-kun.” Matoba-san glanced back at Minori-san. Despite the fact that he was tied up, he didn’t look remotely upset or nervous. In fact, he had a sort of dry smile on his face. “I’m sure someone was supposed to be keeping watch in the direction our lizard friends attacked from... Wasn’t it you?”

“Yes, sir,” Minori-san said nonchalantly. “I have no excuse. I was keeping watch, but... well, it’s like you say, Bureau Chief, sir. They’re lizards. They’re hard to detect with infrared night vision.”

Incidentally, I didn’t think that was true. Yes, lizardmen were cold-blooded, their body temperature dropping when the ambient temperature went down. But I assumed the night vision equipment employed by JSDF—the special forces, no less—was third-generation passive stuff. That means it would use black-body radiation to detect the infrared rays emitted by all physical objects and turn them into visible light. It couldn’t give you full color, but it wasn’t any worse than watching a black-and-white television. The other guy wouldn’t be invisible just because he was cold.

On top of that, lizardmen really had variable body temperatures; biologically they could be considered ectotherms. By staying in a warm place, they could build up body heat to a fair extent and preserve it for longer than you might think. It’s the same sort of thing turtles and lizards do when they bask in the sun. I knew, of course, that Brooke built his campfires for much the same reason.

And on top of that, even if lizardmen really could “blend in” on night vision equipment by assuming the ambient temperature—well, Minori-san had been in the Eldant Empire for months. She, if anyone, would have known they could do that.

It was clear that Minori-san, much to my benefit, had purposely ignored the approaching lizardmen.

Matoba-san, that half-smile still on his face, gave a sigh.

“Well, isn’t this something,” Brooke said, pounding his own chest. “Doesn’t need magic, you don’t have to start a fire, and it’s lighter than a hot-water bottle.”

Then he held something out. It was a disposable hand-warmer.

That’s right: Brooke and his friends had used these to get themselves a little heat and allow themselves to move more quickly. I had actually had Minori-san get them for me from the JSDF in the first place.

“Kanou Shinichi,” Matoba-san said after a moment. “It seems we must admit defeat, for the time being.”

I didn’t speak.

“So, then. What precisely do you plan to do now?”

“I have a request for you. All of you,” I said.

Obviously, Matoba-san & co. were in no position to refuse.

I took a deep breath and looked up. Behind me stood Petralka and Myusel, Brooke, Garius, and lots more besides, from the Maid Brigade to the captured JSDF soldiers, along with Minori-san and Matoba-san. Their collective gaze was fixed on me, and on the communications device in front of me.

The communications device was already powered on; a staticky sound, like sand being poured over metal, came from the speakers.

We were at the Eldant training camp—i.e., the place the Japanese military was renting part of, and also where the special ops guys had been temporarily based when they were sent over to assassinate me.

That’s right: the object in front of me was a digital communication device with encrypting functionality. The special operations unit had brought it over here to help them keep in touch with their superiors.

“It seems you’ve connected.”

The static suddenly resolved into a voice, a distinctly serious male voice that definitely sounded like some old guy with an awful lot of authority. If I may elaborate, he sounded like someone who was very used to looking right down his nose at people and chewing them out, twisting the screws with just a word or two.

The guy on the other end of the line was the big cheese responsible for running the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau. Yet I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t especially want to know, either, because if it turned out to be the prime minister or something, I would probably get so intimidated that I would trip over my own tongue.

“Good to meet you,” I said as soberly as I could. “My name is Kanou Shinichi, and I run the general entertainment company Amutech. Well, perhaps I should add a qualification: for the time being...”

No sooner had I said that than there was a loud scoff. It sounded like there was more than one person on the other end of the line.

“This is treason, plain and simple!”

“You don’t understand the importance of your work.”

“If you apologize immediately and do as we say, you may yet be pardoned.”

And so on and so forth...

I couldn’t help smiling. Did these guys know they sounded like half-baked villains? I practically expected one of them to say “I’ll give you half the world” or something. They might be politicians, but when it came down to it, they were still only human.

Their wheedling and threatening sounded like it could’ve come from one of the stupider moments on the floor of the Diet. Heck, it probably had. These guys pretty much talked this way for a living, right?

Finally—

“Pipe down for a moment. Let me be our spokesperson.” It was that first voice I’d heard. The other speakers immediately went quiet. “Now then,” the voice said, “Kanou Shinichi.”

“Yes?”

“As you can hear, we’re very concerned about the way you’ve gone rogue. We dearly want you to come home.”

The voice spoke slowly and deliberately; he was choosing his words carefully. I glanced at the JSDF soldiers behind me.

“Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“I believe there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. Our only interest is that you, the one who has achieved so much in promoting cultural exchange, should make it back to Japan safely. After all, there’s no telling what might happen in some other world.”

He was beating around the bush, being ambiguous—classic politician.

“Listen to me, now. We have only your best interests in mind. We’ve had reports that you’ve been neglecting your duties for some days now. Some of us are worried that being sent to an unfamiliar environment so suddenly has had an adverse impact on your psychological state. Come home. We urge you to see a specialist, someone who can evaluate and treat you.”

So were we just going to pretend the assassination attempt never happened?

“I’m not biting. Say I come wandering back home—then what? Some unfortunate accident?”

Maybe one of the soldiers’ guns goes off unintentionally. Maybe a rampaging truck runs me over. Maybe I get stabbed in a random act of violence. Or how about something more prosaic? A very unpleasant bout of food poisoning. A medical mishap that results in my untimely demise.

“I see you’re the suspicious type.”

“Nah. Just a coward.”

Silence from the other party. It stretched on for a minute or more, until finally, with a deep sigh, the voice started up again, slow and reluctant.

“We have great esteem for all you’ve achieved in such a short time. But if you insist on being obdurate and not coming home, then you leave us no choice. You were born and raised in Chiba, as I recall. Is that correct?”

I was a bit surprised by the sudden change of subject. It gave me a tingle of an unpleasant premonition.

“Your immediate family consists of your parents and a younger sister, is that correct?”

“So what if it does?” I asked after a moment. It was only with effort that I kept my composure.

Still, it was all too clear to me what the voice was trying to say. It was a dirty move—but undeniably effective. I was sure the people I was talking to had done similar things countless times before and were well acquainted with the usefulness of such tactics.

“If you come back to Japan now, and swear absolutely never to speak of anything that’s happened, we can guarantee the safety of yourself and your family. You’d be kept under observation, of course. But we could find some pretext to give you a little stipend. Live within your means, and you could go your entire life without working ever again.”

It was actually a pretty extraordinary idea: they were offering this former home security guard a second chance at a failed life. I could go back to school, have dinner with my family again, all the little things. All the stuff I could have done while I was in Japan, but chose to ignore. They may not seem like much, but taken together, the little things add up, until they bear real fruit. That was something I’d learned here in the Holy Eldant Empire, another world.

I didn’t say anything. True, not everything I’d done since I got here was especially praiseworthy. There was the fact that I had been an invader, not to mention I had probably turned half of the next generation of nobles into irredeemable otaku.

That part of me—the invader part—wanted to take this opportunity to escape.

“Think hard about this, Kanou Shinichi-kun. Not that we can imagine why you should hesitate.”

“That’s true. You’re absolutely right,” I nodded. “I don’t have to hesitate to tell you I’m not going back.”

A hubbub broke out on the other end of the line. It quickly turned into a storm of shouting—shouting at me, by a bunch of men who were probably trusted with the most important offices of the government.

“A shut-in failure of a human being like you doesn’t have the right to choose! You never did!”

“You think we can’t do whatever we want to one piddling little household? You’ve abandoned your family!”

They had given up trying to hide their hostility.

“I’m betting none of you got elected on a platform of killing families, intimidating citizens, and calling people failures. How about I share the recording of everything you just said with the whole internet?”

“Silence! People who want nothing but escapism through children’s cartoons and comic books have no right to speak! And nobody raised on such trash—nor their families—should have anything to do with the fate of the country!”

“Gee, tell me how you really feel.”

Strangely, I wasn’t intimidated—if anything, I felt my emotions cool and settle down. Maybe it was just... you can only get so scared or so angry before you go numb.

“I wonder what makes you think you have the right to badmouth otaku like that. To try to get rid of us. You’re always so happy to parade Cool Japan around, as long as it’s making you money...”

“It’s because you’re a menace!” the loudest man exclaimed.

Ahh. Here we go. They had no basis for their criticism. All they knew about otakuism was the stuff that riled up the public. They had probably never even sat down and actually read a manga or watched an anime. That was why they could dream up something as ridiculous as brainwashing people with otaku culture. Not just dream it up, but actually attempt it. They had convinced themselves that an otaku-fied people would be easy to control.

Someone had been brainwashed here, in a manner of speaking—it was these bureaucrats who had let themselves be taken in by the superficial judgments of the public at large.

They probably figured otaku culture was no different from narcotics. They avoided it themselves, called it a danger—but when it would make them money or gain them power, they were only too happy to push it on others.

“Act as brave as you want, boy,” another voice said, taking advantage of my silence to get in another jab. He sounded triumphant. “It doesn’t change the position you’re in. You may disavow your parents and your... younger sister, was it? But surely even you can’t just stand by and watch them die. Or do you intend to offer them up as sacrifice in your own place?”

This time I really was lost for words. Hostages? That was the oldest trick in the book—but also one of the most effective.

“Pardon me a moment, gentlemen.” The unexpected interruption came from Matoba-san, his voice perfectly calm. “This is Jinzaburou, the bureau chief, speaking. With your permission?”

“Yes, what?” the voice replied. “Right now, I don’t think your opinion—”

“You may recall that one of our criteria for choosing this boy was that he be someone whose disappearance would have scant impact on the world. As you say, a shut-in otaku NEET certainly seems the definition of a failed human being. His parents seemed unlikely to make too much of a scene if he vanished, as well. That, I believe, was why we decided he would be perfect from a confidentiality standpoint.”

Geez. He’s really not pulling his punches, is he?

Every word was like getting stabbed in the heart. But then...

“Yes? And what about it?”

“We chose him because his family might well be willing to overlook his absence. So what gives you the confidence that he wouldn’t also be willing to overlook the absence of his family?”

There was a shocked silence on the other end of the line.

“Remember, gentlemen, we’re talking about someone who indulged his own whims at the expense of causing great trouble for his own family. Their distress could not keep him from spending long hours playing games, or watching anime, or reading manga. That is Kanou Shinichi for you.”

H-He’s really not pulling his punches!

And to add insult to injury—

“Yes! He real-ly is most des-pic-a-ble!” Petralka said in Japanese, a mischievous smile on her face. What, now even she was getting in on the act?! And going out of her way to speak Japanese to do it?!

But her merciless words had a surprising effect.

“Matoba-kun!” one of the voices demanded. “Who was that who spoke just now?!”

“The empress of the Eldant Empire,” Matoba-san said drily.

There was absolute silence from the communication machine. It stretched out until I thought it would go on forever, even though it probably lasted no more than five minutes. Finally, someone on the other side spoke in a weary voice:

“Matoba-kun, for now... consider the operation suspended. We’re delegating full authority to you. Just please have the special operations unit withdraw, if you can.”

Later.

We had the soldiers from the special operations unit taken back to the cave where the hyperspace tunnel was and released there. Without their weapons, naturally. The royal forces who accompanied them reported that the men went quietly back to Japan—maybe they knew when discretion was the better part of valor.

And me? I had opened every window in the mansion, trying to get the last traces of the tear gas out as quickly as possible. I was sitting at home, despondent.

Almost before I knew it, the sky had started to lighten, the sun working its way over the horizon and chasing the night away.

In the moment, sheer adrenaline had almost kept me from thinking about it, but I, a home security guard/average teenager, had just gone toe-to-toe with honest-to-God VIPs of the Japanese government. Now that I had a chance to think about it, the whole concept was so terrifying it left me drained.

“Master.” Myusel sat down beside me and gently put a blanket over my shoulders. “At least you’re back home. I’ll put tea on.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and stood.

At that moment, though, I heard Matoba-san’s voice. “Kanou Shinichi-kun.”

We had undone his bonds. Minori-san was next to him; we had freed her, too.

“I’ve had a few words with my superiors. For the time being, your disposal has been... put on hold.”

“Gee, I’m thrilled.”

“I have to attend a meeting to discuss how the government will deal with the Eldant Empire going forward. I’ll be returning to Japan for a while.”

“Have fun,” I said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

It was only after my conversation with the bigwigs that I realized: when they figured out we were essentially negotiating along parallel lines, they had started to get nervous. I mean, hostages are only useful if they’re alive, right? If I had really insisted on staying in the Eldant Empire, the government could have killed my family—but in doing so, they would have lost their leverage.

In fact, it would be fair to say the operation had really failed the moment we found out who the special ops unit was. I’m sure they never expected the brain trust of the Eldant Empire to be waiting in the mansion with me.

They made one other miscalculation, too: the Japanese language.

They were so taken with their magical translator rings that they failed to account for the spread of Japanese. They assumed these other-worlders wouldn’t know what they were saying, and it caused them to let down their guard. They said things they might not have said otherwise. You can’t put a magic ring on a communications device, and they just figured that even if someone from the Eldant Empire happened to be in the room with me, that person would never understand what we were all saying.

But as it happened, Petralka and Myusel were both already capable of handling simple, daily conversation in Japanese. That’s partly because they were both smart people, and partly because they had a sort of competition going to see who could learn the language faster. Nothing like a good rivalry to help you study.

So why did Petralka jump in at the end of our conversation, deliberately speaking Japanese? I’m sure she just wanted to let them know that she was listening—and understanding. She was putting them on notice that they had just revealed their true motives to the empress of the Eldant Empire. They had no choice but to give.

“Kanou Shinichi-kun.” Matoba-san again. (Obviously.) He looked as relaxed as ever, but his tone held a hint of a warning. “You’ve chosen a most dangerous path. Do you understand that? You revile the thought of being an invader, but how are you going to draw the line between what’s invasion and what isn’t? Even if you manage to do so, you’ll have to walk that line for the rest of your life.”

I didn’t answer immediately, but quietly met his gaze.

He was right. I could argue that it was all good as long as everyone had freedom of choice, but the truth is, it’s hard to make sure you maintain something as ambiguous as freedom. And even if the Eldant side at this moment, meaning Petralka and the others, gladly accepted and understood what I was doing, there were no guarantees that later generations might not look back and decide it really had been an invasion after all. That was something that I and the people of the Eldant Empire would always have to watch out for.

“Sure, I understand,” I said. I nodded, a smile of challenge on my face. I couldn’t let him see any sign of weakness right now. “But I’m an otaku. I play my games on Hard Mode or nothing.”

Matoba-san blinked, looking confused. At length, he said, “I see. That truly is how you differ from those of us who seek benefit first and foremost.”

He smiled with surprising earnestness and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. Then he turned and left, accompanied by Minori-san and a waiting detachment of Eldant soldiers.

It seemed like for the first time, I had seen something of how Matoba-san really felt.

I looked up, suddenly noticing how much brighter the sky had become. The pale, warm sunlight shined over the whole (other) world. Myusel stood beside me, and together we looked up at Eldant Castle. I gave a great stretch.

“All right then! Things are gonna be busy from here on out.”

“They are?” Myusel asked, tilting her head like a little bird in an adorable gesture.

I smiled and nodded. I pointed in the direction of the rising sun and said, “They sure are. For starters... hmm. Let’s hit the marketplace and set up our own slice of Akiba.”

Our fight was only just beginning!

...Pfft. Or something like that.

(つづく)

To be continued...