Chapter Four: Schemes Are So Sudden

Chapter Four: Schemes Are So Sudden

Think about the tool we call the internet, and everything that’s sprung from it.

No one thing has been such a big deal. They’re just little steps, small ideas given concrete form.

That includes video-sharing sites and the ability to comment on them.

It includes Twitter. Facebook. All the social networking service.

No one of them is like the invention of the lightbulb, or the telephone, or the printing press—revolutions that divide the world into “before” and “after.”

In fact, even the things I just mentioned might not have looked like they had the power to turn the world upside down at the moment they were invented. It took time for them to take hold, spread around the world. But like the story of the tortoise and the hare, you might not notice “slow and steady,” until suddenly you realize that things are completely different than they were before.

You look up, and the world has changed.

It seems so sudden. That’s why later, after everything is different, old people talk about “the good old days,” or complain, “Young people don’t know what it’s like to XYZ.” They don’t want to admit that they failed to see all the incremental changes happening.

And thus...

“The US Army in Japan?!”

As the man and another American drove us away from Akihabara, they filled us in on what was going on. Luckily, the guy riding shotgun spoke pretty good Japanese, so we didn’t have any trouble communicating. But...

“But why would the US Army be here?”

“It all goes back to that video that leaked on YouTube,” said the man who called himself Alan Smith.

He never looked back at us while he talked, so it was hard to say what was on his face. All I could make out where his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.

“Most people thought it was just a video—pure fiction,” he said. “But for better and for worse, we take the trouble to examine all the information that comes across the network, without making any assumptions about what it is or isn’t.”

“You’re talking about ECHELON?”

“You’re pretty well informed. Yes, that’s one of our tools.”

Mr. Smith was surprisingly forthcoming. Maybe it was his way of saying that all this was off the record.

Incidentally, ECHELON was an American system for eavesdropping on communications networks. The internet, obviously, but also wireless communications, telephone lines, and pretty much any other type of communications system. Foreign nations had had inklings about the setup for a long time, and facilities that were rumored to be terminals for the ECHELON system existed all over the world—including Japan—but America had never publicly admitted to anything. It was, in a word, the most powerful electronic spy network in the world.

It was also a great plot point, so it showed up in novels and stuff a lot.

But anyway...

“So we took a good look at that video. And after repeated comparisons with our data, we noticed that several of the JSDF soldiers in the footage are people in a rather... special position.”

I caught my breath, astonished. I had heard, of course, that software that could compare two pictures and decide if they showed the same person had been developed, with the goal of catching criminals—but I had no idea it was so practical already. Or—could they possibly be supplementing the shortcomings in the software with human labor?

“We do plenty of joint exercises with the Japan Self-Defense Force, both officially and unofficially, and we keep our own videos of those exercises. One of the people who shows up in that footage is your own bodyguard, Sergeant Minori Koganuma.”

“Sergeant...?”

Strictly speaking, the JSDF didn’t have a rank of Sergeant. Granted, it was probably just the Americans using their own terminology to approximate the JSDF’s rank structure.

“Minori-san’s a Private First-Class,” I protested. But come to think of it, those JSDF suits had been talking about her holding the rank of rikusou, which would be just about equivalent to a US sergeant...

“According to our data,” Mr. Smith said, “she was an exceptionally capable hand-to-hand fighter, a crack shot—unable to get Ranger qualifications because she was a woman, but a soldier with strong prospects for a quick rise through the ranks.”

“Wait... Did you say she was?”

“Everything we have suggests that Minori Koganuma went to an unnamed country as part of a peacekeeping operation, where she went missing and is believed to have been killed.”

“...Huh?”

“A zombie unit,” Mr. Smith said casually.

A zombie unit—a special military unit that doesn’t officially exist, composed of people who are supposedly already dead. (Come to think of it, did Minori-san even have any relatives at all...?) It would be the perfect sort of group to send to another world, into a situation that demanded the utmost secrecy and where you wanted to minimize the chance of information leaks. That was how Matoba-san said they had chosen me to be Amutech’s general manager—I was a shut-in NEET whose disappearance virtually no one would notice.

So... was the same true of Satou-san and all the other soldiers in the Eldant garrison?

“That alone would have been enough to tip us off that the Japanese government was up to something very secret involving the JSDF. And we figured the video was a part of it,” Mr. Smith said. “You might be interested to know that although they haven’t figured out as much as we have, China and Russia have an idea of what’s going on, too.”

“...Huh?”

“Don’t worry. We could have done it without Minori Koganuma, too. Video analysis, the behavior of the JSDF and the Japanese government, requested budgets. Then there’s the fact that the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau doesn’t seem to do very much for all the money it takes up and the amount of communications it generates. We would have figured it out. China in particular has caught more than a few Japanese officials and politicians in honey traps. They might have even more information than we think, even if it’s all verbal.”

“Oh, man...”

Honey traps again.

Basically, they work like this: you get a woman to get close to a man with status or power. She seduces him, and you use that to blackmail him and get information. It’s a classic intelligence technique that’s been around for hundreds of years. “When you’ve got a target, start with his money and his women” is so axiomatic that it was even featured in a certain manga.

The fake maid who cornered me earlier had probably been part of a similar plot. That meant China didn’t know that here in Japan I was just another citizen—so there were some things their investigation hadn’t told them yet.

“Then this happens,” Mr. Smith said, showing me something on his phone.

On the screen was our photo—along with the caption “Actresses from THAT movie spotted in Akiba!!”

Twitter.

“This photograph clearly shows Minori Koganuma and all the ‘actresses’ from the leaked video clip. We’ve tried to investigate these girls, but they don’t match anyone we know anything about. As far as our network is concerned, they don’t exist.”

I caught my breath again.

“There’s something we do know, though. One of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau’s hidden bank accounts regularly transfers money to the account of one and only one Japanese citizen—a certain Shinichi Kanou, whereabouts unknown.”

I caught my breath a third time. I was suddenly as frightened as if he’d had a knife at my throat.

That’s right—I was dealing with a nation-state here. The United States of America, no less, practically speaking the most powerful country on earth. They could find out whatever they wanted!

“I’m sure you can understand we’re very interested in this,” Mr. Smith said. “Just what are the Japanese government and the JSDF up to, and what does it mean?”

All right. Okay.

Even America hadn’t yet grasped that there was an entire world on the other side of the “hole” in Mount Fuji’s Sea of Trees. Japan’s intelligence system was sometimes derided as being about as leak-proof as a sieve, but even they had managed to hold that last line.

“Are you... Are you saying the reason Minori-san disappeared was...?”

“It looks like there was a Russian operative in the area,” Mr. Smith said flatly. “I appreciate her keeping the ‘polar bear’ busy. It made it a lot easier for us to take the rest of you into custody.”

So you had the Japanese government, doing something that they were trying harder to keep secret than anything they had done before. For some reason it involved a civilian—me—and members of the JSDF. To say nothing of a group of mysterious, beautiful women about whom there was no electronic information.

And just when a slew of intelligence agencies are getting especially interested in all this, the lot of us show up gallivanting around Akihabara. Everyone sends their spies in a big hurry, and now here we were.

But what’s he mean, taken into custody?

Were we really?

“Um, so where exactly is this car going?”

“The US Air Force base at Yokosuka,” Mr. Smith said casually. “We have a V-22 Osprey waiting for you there that you’ll all kindly board.”

I didn’t say anything, but I knew this was bad. I wasn’t sure exactly how or why, but it was definitely bad. Going onto another country’s military base was as good as submitting yourself to their legal jurisdiction. Officially, the land the US base was built on was simply rented to the Americans by Japan, and Japanese law technically still applied... but in reality, it wouldn’t have been far off to say that the base was pretty much American territory. It wouldn’t be hard for them to cite situational exigencies or reasons of secrecy or something to keep Japanese military police off the base entirely.

In other words, once they got me onto that base, I was as trapped as if I had been on the American mainland.

So I got away from Chinese and Russian kidnappers—just to let the Americans have me!

The thought hadn’t even occurred to me—when Mr. Smith had mentioned Minori-san’s name, I had been so relieved that I’d just gotten into the car without a fight.

Elvia, sitting beside me, had probably keyed in to the uneasy atmosphere in the car. I took her hand.

“Shin—”

“Hush,” I whispered. “Iesu are imene.”

That quieted her down.

“What an interesting language,” Mr. Smith remarked. “I speak five different languages, but I’ve never heard that one. What is it?”

“It’s Zentradian,” I said flippantly.

“That’s a new one to me,” Mr. Smith replied.

“Das dachan de meltlan chatz?” I answered, improvising. “It’s close to German. Almost like a dialect...”

For reference, when they did the movie version of Mac**ss, the staff really did create a “Zentradian” language for the enemy aliens, based on German to make it sound more realistic. But only an otaku as deep in as I was was likely to know that; I didn’t expect “Alan” to have any idea.

Heck, I wouldn’t have known, except my dad told me about it once.

But anyway...

“So you’re suggesting that girl comes from somewhere called Zentradi?”

“Kinda. She doesn’t really speak Japanese, so I was just telling her not to worry.”

“Were you, now?” Mr. Smith nodded.

And then—still holding Elvia’s hand—I said, “So what you’re telling me is that you’re a bad guy, kidnapping us and the girls in the other car so you can ship us off and use us for your own benefit.”

“That’s awfully harsh,” Mr. Smith said with a shrug. “Wouldn’t you say that it’s the Japanese government, sneaking around behind the backs of the entire world, that’s at fault here?”

I ignored him. “You saw that Minori-san was gone, that your targets were just a helpless otaku and some girls. You figured this was your chance, and pretended to be our friend in order to get to us.” A sharp mind might have thought that it sounded suspiciously like I was offering exposition.

“Shinichi-sama,” Elvia whispered, clasping my hand tight.

“Just for the record,” Mr. Smith said, finally glancing back at us, “both myself and the driver have of course received extensive combat training. An untrained civilian and his Zentradian girlfriend wouldn’t have a chance against us. If you don’t want anyone to get hurt, then I strongly suggest you play nice.”

Then there was a sudden shick! and a metal divider popped up out of nowhere between the front and back seats. It was made of a fine mesh that would certainly stop a blade and probably even a bullet. Hey, who owned this car, James Bo*d? I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover this thing was equipped with a tear-gas sprayer or something that delivered electric shocks. It looked like just a normal sedan, but in reality it was designed to transport prisoners.

“Listen, pressing you for answers right now wouldn’t do me any good. How about you take a little nap?”

Mr. Smith pulled on what looked like a simple gas mask with just one hand. I suddenly realized the driver was already wearing something similar.

“All right, Elvia,” I said.

Elvia was moving almost before I finished speaking. She rolled up into what looked like a ball, then launched a massive kick that slammed into the mesh divider.

Mr. Smith and the driver were both stunned; this must have been a nightmare scenario for them. They were trapped in a space too confined for them to make the best use of their training, and a seemingly defenseless young woman had just put a huge dent in a barrier probably designed to stop gunfire. The distorted barrier allowed Elvia’s kick to reach the back of the driver’s head, the unexpected blow pitching him forward and slamming his face into the steering wheel. The car swerved wildly.

“Shit!” Mr. Smith grabbed the wheel, uttering that most stereotypical of all curse words as he reached for some kind of button. He was probably going for a tear gas release or something. No matter how much training he had received, it was just too tight inside the car for him to do much.

But I raised my right hand, the one where I was wearing the ring set with the magical stone, towards the window and shouted, “Tifu murottsu!” I had begun the incantation the instant Elvia attacked, so by the time Mr. Smith was reaching for the button, I was already finished.

The wind magic activated, immediately pressurizing the inside of the car.

“Elvia!”

“On it!”

Elvia, still holding my hand, launched another kick, this time straight at the window.

I’m sure that glass was bulletproof at the very least, but the combination of a point-blank Tifu Murottsu and a kick from Elvia was more than it could take. The glass shattered, tiny shards of it blowing away. In fact, the entire rear left door, the latch overwhelmed by the force of Elvia’s kick, went flying open.

“What the hell?!”

“Do you see now, Southern Barbarian? This is the true power of Eastern martial arts—fa jin!”

To be fair, the expression “Southern Barbarian” originally referred to the Portuguese and Spanish, and technically doesn’t cover Americans. But never mind.

“Shinichi-sama!” Elvia grasped my hand to her.

Ahh, her chest!! Her chest is—!

There was a second when I felt that soft, soft softness excite my whole body—but meanwhile, Elvia grabbed me up and leaped out of the car.

Normally you would roll on the ground after a move like that to disperse the force of the impact, but Elvia sprang easily off the wall of a nearby building instead, then, with just one more little hop, landed safely on the ground.

“Oh, hey...”

We glanced back to see Mr. Smith’s car careen into the side of a building. I guess the driver was unconscious, and the shock of Elvia’s kick to the car’s frame must have sent it into a slide. It didn’t explode or anything, but the hood was pretty cracked up and thoroughly buried in the wall. It didn’t look like that car would be running again anytime soon.

“That’ll do for our escape,” I said, turning to look back the way we’d come. “But Myusel and Petralka are still...!”

The car with the other two girls in it stopped for a moment when the driver saw his colleague’s accident—but when he noticed that we had gotten safely out and Mr. Smith hadn’t, he seemed to put the pieces together. Instead of getting out of his car to check out the situation, he just started driving again.

Crap. I would be in every conceivable kind of trouble if he got away with Myusel and Petralka.

“I’m goin’ after them!” Elvia said and almost started running, but I pulled her back by the hand I was still holding.

“It’s no use! Even you can’t catch a moving car.”

“But—”

“At times like this, you need a taxi or something...” I said, looking around.

And lo and behold, something came sliding into view. “Whoa, what the heck’s going on?!” exclaimed the answer to my prayers. “That is some accident! What happened? I mean, like, why?”

From right below the source of all this jabbering, Madoka and Manami-san of Rental☆Madoka were smiling up at me.

What had just pulled up in front of us was a specially decorated vehicle of the kind people called an itasha—a car covered in anime characters. This wasn’t just any car, either. It was a Subaru Impreza—a WRX STI, at that!

The Impreza was a model even I, with a minimum of car knowledge, recognized, one of Japan’s representative performance cars. Along with the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution—affectionately known in Japan as the “LanEvo”—it was one of the top choices of participants in the World Rally Championship, consistently winning in the 2-litre division.

I’d heard there were more and more high-value itasha these days, but...

“What’s going on? Some kind of trouble?” asked the driver, a guy probably in his mid- to late twenties. He was wearing a blackish shirt and blackish pants, his hair was a strange length, and he was wearing fingerless gloves. He gave off the vibe of a serious otaku, and not one gifted with fashion sense.

He did give an impression of being pretty healthy—he had fairly attractive features and he wasn’t overweight. And the chibi figure of Madoka dangling from the rearview mirror put me completely at ease.

“Let us in!” I exclaimed.

“Huh? Whyzat?”

“My friends are in the Chevy that’s speeding away! Let us in and follow that car!”

The guy looked shocked for a second—and then he pumped both fists and shouted, “IS THIS REALLY A CHASE SCENE COME TO LIFE?!”

“Uh, not exac—”

“Hop in!” Impreza Guy said, gesturing at the back seat and looking absolutely thrilled.

I opened the door—Elvia didn’t know how—and shoved the puzzled-looking beast girl inside before jumping in myself.

“Thank you so much!” I said.

“Not a problem, man!” Impreza Guy said. “I may have showed up a little late, but it looks like I’m just in time for the best part!!”

“...Huh?”

An instant later, we were flung back in our seats by the acceleration as the “ita-Impreza” lunged forward.

Woo-hoo! That’s a beloved Japanese performance vehicle for you! I can practically see the scenery blurring!

...Er, okay. Not really.

“What did you mean by you may have showed up a little late?” I asked.

“Man, I saw on Twitter that the stars of some movie were in Akiba, so I came out for a look.” The guy was as calm as if he was driving to the grocery store, even as he chased the US Army car at an insane speed. “I was like, man, I gotta see this! I had some other stuff to do first, so I couldn’t get right over to Akiba. I was kinda down, like, maybe you guys had already left, right? Guess it’s my lucky day!”

“Uh... yeah, lucky,” I said, nodding along.

At least he didn’t seem to have any weird plans for us like the Americans did, but... well, let’s just say I was finally coming to truly appreciate the power of the internet for both good and evil.

It turned out ita-Impreza Guy’s name was Ariga Reito. By day he was your typical industrious office worker, but his true love was his car—his Rental☆Madoka-themed ita-Impreza—which he took to Akihabara to show off. In other words, he was pretty much the quintessential contemporary otaku. He seemed awfully excitable—or maybe just out of control—but I guess all kinds of people can be otaku... and frankly, I was hardly in a position to criticize anyone for being excitable.

But there was excitable, and then there was—

“Man, I’m pumped! ‘Follow that car!’ he says! I can’t believe I stumbled into a chance to help determine the fate of the world!!”

“Er, I really don’t think this is going to have much effect on the fate of the world,” I interjected, watching for glimpses of the American car out the windshield. He was swerving left and right, dodging through town, trying to lose us. We would see him for a moment, and then lose track of him again. It was extremely tense.

Myusel and Petralka were in that car. We had to get them back—but without Minori-san, how were we going to do it?

Now that I thought about it, maybe the Americans had brought two separate cars, instead of one vehicle big enough for all of us, with exactly this situation in mind. Even if one car’s occupants somehow managed to escape, they would still have the other captives, who might even make good hostages against the ones who got away.

Speaking of hostages... what was happening to Minori-san? Mr. Smith had said something about her facing off with a Russian operative. The question bugged me something awful, but right now I had to focus on Myusel and Petralka.

Incidentally, I hadn’t mentioned to Reito-san that the car we were after belonged to the US Armed Forces. I was afraid that if he knew his target had the full power of a major nation behind it, he might not be so interested in chasing them down. So yeah, you might say I was sort of tricking him, and I didn’t feel good about that. But at some point we just had to deal with the situation.

“We don’t seem to be getting any closer...” I said.

“Yeah, it’s tough in town,” Reito-san said. “In a straight line, or on the freeway or something, we’d have him beat hands down. But you start racing through a city and it turns into a contest of driver skill. That guy up there knows what he’s doing.”

“Hmm...”

“Anyway, even if we caught him, I wouldn’t know what to do with him.”

“...Oh...”

I hadn’t even thought about that. For that matter, if he made it all the way to Yokosuka, then he was as good as gone.

“Just slam into him until he—er, I guess I can’t ask you to do that,” I said.

“Nah, I don’t mind,” Reito-san answered.

“Wh-What, really?”

“Man, this has kidnapping written all over it. I don’t mind bumping someone in an emergency... uh, but you’ll foot the bill, right? For the repairs and the vinyls?”

“Uh—” I started, but then I remembered: I had some pretty good money saved up in my bank account. I didn’t know exactly how much, but if Amutech had really stuck to the stipulated salary, then by now it was probably enough to buy a whole new WRX STI.

I thought about what my dad had said:

I assumed he hadn’t been envisioning quite this particular need, but still...

“I’ll pay! I’ll get you a new car, anything! Just—please!”

“Awesome, man! I’m gonna hold you to that!” Reito-san was really excited now—had he wanted to do this all along?—as he hit the gas.

The ita-Impreza growled and snapped, leaving tire tracks on the road as it lunged after the American car. Before, Reito-san had been checking things out, getting a feel for his opponent. Now he was after him for real.

Until I shouted in alarm.

The back passenger-side window of the car ahead of us opened, and I saw Petralka lean halfway out. It didn’t look like she was trying to escape. I could tell because a man had his muscly arm around her neck.

The message was clear: if you get any closer, we’ll kill one of the hostages.

“Dammit...!” I growled. If we just went up and bashed them, there was a good chance they’d throw Petralka out of the car, and she would end up with more than a few scrapes and bruises. “What do we do...?”

“Guess we can’t hit ’em anymore, huh?” Reito-san said. “If this were a movie, someone would have to, like, jump from one car to the other...”

That gave me an idea. “Elvia!” I said, taking her hand again.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to have to ask a girl to do something so dangerous—but I’m going to have Reito-san get as close to the other car as he can, and then I want you to jump across and rescue Myusel and Petralka!”

“Understood!” she said instantly. Ah, there was a girl you could count on.

“I can’t back you up with magic like last time, though,” I warned her.

Heck, the last time had only worked because I had a magical stone and was shooting from point-blank range. By and large, it wasn’t possible to use ranged magic in a place like Japan, where there was no magical energy. Even using a sprite bottle would be dicey, as the cars would speed past the cloud of magic before I could do anything.

“It’ll be okay!” Elvia grinned, giving my hand an encouraging squeeze.

“Can you get alongside them somehow?” I asked Reito-san even as I rolled down the window.

“Only one way to find out!” he said.

A few seconds later, when the car ahead slowed for a corner, Reito-san sent the ita-Impreza screeching through the turn nearly sideways, ending up neck-and-neck with the Chevy.

“Elvia!”

“Rawr!”

Elvia went flying. With all the agility and physical talent of a beast girl, she landed on the roof of the other car.

Someone inside the car shouted, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Elvia, of course, not understanding a word of English, happily reached for the hand of the guy holding Petralka...

“Rawr!!”

...and bit down.

There was a whole lot of shouting then.

I’m sure the army guy never expected to be bitten, especially not with the strength of an actual carnivorous beast. He let go of Petralka—and Elvia instantly grabbed the empress to stop her fall.

“Shinichi-sama!” Elvia shouted, and then she dragged Petralka the rest of the way out of the car and flung her at me.

Waitwhat?!

I gave an unhappy little shout and reached out the window—slid all the way out, in fact, until I was sitting on the window frame—and caught Petralka.

“Urgh, ow—that hurts, Shinichi!”

“D—Deal with it!” I pulled Petralka into our car, even if she took a few bumps doing it.

Jeez! I hadn’t expected Elvia to throw her.

Petralka, though, was still shouting. “Shinichi, Myusel is still—!”

“I know!”

You think I would forget her, Your Majesty?!

I leaned out of the Impreza again, getting another look at the American vehicle. It was swerving back and forth in an apparent effort to shake Elvia off the roof. It wasn’t going quite as fast anymore, but the rapid, unpredictable movements actually made it harder to get close to.

Elvia worked her way forward and pounded on the windshield, but I guess even she couldn’t break through bulletproof glass with anything less than her full strength.

Then things got even worse, because an army guy leaned out the passenger-side window and pointed a gun at Elvia. I guess they had really decided to pull out all the stops. Obviously, with the car whipping all over, they weren’t likely to hit her with just a couple of shots, but—

“Whoa! Shit, man, that’s a gun! Are these guys yakuza? He looks kinda foreign—the Mafia?”

Reito-san sounded like it was just dawning on him that there was something out of the ordinary going on here, but I didn’t have time to reassure him. I recited Tifu Murottsu under my breath, just in case. Like being next to a dragon, though, any magic of mine was likely to get swept away within a few dozen centimeters—so it was really a last-ditch, better-something-than-nothing idea.

Then I heard the gunshots.

One, two, three, bam, bam, bam.

Like I thought, the guy wasn’t able to get off a clean shot from the window of a wildly swerving vehicle—but to my shock, one of the bullets did appear to graze Elvia.

Astonished, she lost her footing.

That was right when the driver jerked the steering wheel, throwing the car into a slide.

Elvia floated through space.

Crap! She was completely clear of the car now!

No matter how extraordinary her physical abilities might be, if she went flying to the ground and hit her head, it was likely to mean an injury even she couldn’t come back from. The panic sent my thoughts into overdrive.

Being nothing but a humble otaku, a simple, normal citizen, I was never going to have that many options. I only had one card I could play, and that was Tifu Murottsu.

So, almost on instinct, I shouted:

““Tifu Murottsu!””

At first, I thought it was my imagination that made me hear double. But then I realized Myusel had shouted the spell from the other car at the same time as. She must have come to the same conclusion, too, figuring it was worth a shot even if it seemed useless.

“Huh?”

What happened next was totally unexpected.

The winds... started swirling together. The magic Myusel and I had released didn’t disperse even after it got farther away from us—instead, it formed a whirlwind directly underneath the tumbling Elvia and slowed her fall.

In fact, an instant later she had bounced back to her feet—just in time for our ita-Impreza to come sliding by.

“Shinichi-sama!”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure am! But Myusel’s still over there, so I’m gonna take another shot!”

Ahh, such reassuring answers.

...Hey, wait.

I wasn’t holding Elvia’s hand just then. So how...?

But there was no time for that. Elvia went leaping off again, landing on the roof of the American car with a thump.

Out came the guy with the gun, but—

“Grah!” This time Elvia had all the time she needed to deal with her opponent. She planted one hand on the roof and did a half-spin, her kick flipping the gun out of the guy’s hand.

The army guy shouted something and slid a little farther out, but now it was Elvia’s turn to grab him, taking him by the arm and pulling him free of the car.

More shouting, and an obviously incredulous expression. He couldn’t believe Elvia had dragged him out with just one hand.

The driver could hardly let go of the wheel, and if he tried to shake Elvia off now, his friend would go with her.

Finally, the army guy driving the car decided to stop.

The moment the car came to a halt, Elvia dumped the soldier she was holding and reached inside the vehicle, this time to pull Myusel out.

“You bitch!” the driver cried, getting out of the car.

Well, to be fair, she was a female dog...

Okay, not the thing I needed to be thinking about right then.

“Tifu murottsu!” I shouted, hitting the other guy fair and square with a burst of magic.

The car didn’t move very far, ten or twenty centimeters maybe, but the two soldiers went flying at least a couple of meters before being thrown to the ground. Two meters may not sound like much, but when your whole body comes down on solid asphalt, you’re not just going to get back up again.

Leaving the unconscious soldiers to fend for themselves, we crammed Elvia and Myusel into the ita-Impreza, which had come to a stop in the meantime, and then we made tracks.

Why had we been able to use Tifu Murottsu when Japan supposedly didn’t have any magical energy in the atmosphere? To be honest, we didn’t have a good answer. There were some fundamental things we didn’t even understand about what magic really was. Maybe there was some element of it we were overlooking—but we didn’t have time to investigate at the moment.

We decided to go back to my house for the time being. There was a distinct possibility that the US Army or who knew who else had already gotten there first, but I had no idea where else we could turn. Anyway, all the bottles of sprites, the magical energy stone, and all the rest of our personal belongings were there, and I wanted them back.

But there was another matter...

“Awesome! Freakin’ awesome! What even was that? I am so pumped right now!”

Reito-san seemed inordinately happy for having just finished a dangerous car chase. Even seeing me and Myusel use magic hadn’t scared him or thrown him off; he’d just said, “What was that? Was that a kame**meha?!” in a way that made it hard to decide whether he was joking or not. I guess he got a big kick out of the duel with the American car.

“Man, that was the coolest thing ever! I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go, just name the place! Argh, so pumped! Hey, can I do that thing? That thing you did? Will you teach me? I’ll call you Sensei!”

This guy was really excited.

That excitement got us a free ride back home, though, so I could live with it. I wanted to ask if he was really safe being so lackadaisical, but I didn’t let the words out of my mouth. At that moment I needed all the help I could get keeping us all in one piece and finding out what happened to Minori-san.

We were squeezed into the car together, Petralka in the left rear seat, then me, then Myusel, with Elvia in the front passenger seat. Quarters were so tight that Myusel, Petralka, and I could talk even without specifically holding hands.

“Shinichi,” Petralka said, “we do not understand very well what is going on, but we must ask what you plan to do next. Those people from earlier were enemies of yours and Minori’s, were they not?”

I didn’t know exactly what to say. “Enemies? I’m not really sure... But I guess they weren’t friends.”

When Petralka said “enemies,” she was thinking of opponents in a war, people trying to kill each other. She didn’t know anything about the complicated relationship between Japan and America today—and I wasn’t sure the absolute monarch of a centralized dictatorship would understand “horizontal government” and the complex interplay of organizational power even if I tried to explain it to her.

I assumed America wasn’t trying to start a war with Japan. They did, though, want information from us, and weren’t afraid to break a few Japanese laws to get it. I wasn’t comfortable suggesting it might be okay to kill these people.

“Look, it would be... well, not impossible to kill them,” I said, “but it would cause a lot of trouble. So let’s not, okay?” I crossed my arms. “Once we get our stuff from my house, I think the best thing to do might be to get in touch with Matoba-san and see if he can get us sequestered on a JSDF base or something...”

Considering what we had done to the guys in suits earlier, it would be sort of a ballsy request—but I didn’t really expect the Japanese government to pout and go, “What, now you want us? Whatever! Hmph!”

“Yeah... that’s what we’ll do,” I said, pulling out my phone. “We’ll talk to Matoba-san.”

Then I dialed the number he had given me.

“What are you, an idiot?”

Those were the first words out of Shizuki’s mouth when we somehow made it home. She sounded exhausted to the core of her being as she offered her appraisal of our savior Reito-san’s beloved car.

Then again, calling a car an idiot was kind of strange itself, so maybe she was actually insulting Reito-san and all of us who had shown up in the ita-Impreza.

I guess she didn’t like otaku any more than ever.

“What is with this car?” she said. “It’s covered in anime girls. It’s sickening.”

“Er, uh, I’m really sorry,” I said to Reito-san, bowing my head apologetically. “My sister... well, it’s a long story, but let’s just say she doesn’t like otaku very much.”

“Oooh,” Reito-san said, clenching a fist. “No, man! That cold, critical gaze... I couldn’t ask for more!”

“............guh?” Shizuki said.

Ah... So he was that kind. I hadn’t met many of them in real life... not that I had any right to judge anyone’s preferences.

“I get it, man. There are all these posers out there now who are, like, ‘fashionably otaku.’ Like, they watch a little late-night anime and suddenly they think they’re entitled to go around calling themselves poor, suffering otaku—as if! Being an ‘otaku’ these days is turning into just an excuse for reals to have a bunch of character goods lying around!”

Gee, Reito-san was really passionate about this.

“Otaku, man, we’re supposed to be oppressed! Martyrs crucified on the very works we love as people look at us and go, ‘Ugh, what’s that?’! There’s a path your eyes only open to when you’ve experienced that kind of sacrifice! So bring on the looks of disgust, the eyes of judgment! Mock me, spit on me, hate me!”

Shizuki, who had retreated to the entryway, was watching all this in alarm. But as for me...

“Reito-san!”

“Do you understand what I’m saying?!”

“Yes!”

There was an audible clap as we clasped hands.

I was deeply, deeply moved. He was right: an otaku’s love is the love of a martyr! Their devotion to a work or character withstands criticism from the whole world, it survives all contempt and scorn to open a path heretofore unknown!

“—But I won’t forgive you,” Reito-san said, still holding my hands.

What?! I thought.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!” I said.

“Think about it: you’ve been running around Akiba with three beautiful women! And where do you get off having such a gorgeous little sister?! It’s like you’ve got a charmed life! A harem or something! All you need now is to get summoned to another world, run into a beautiful bespectacled maiden and an older-sister-type character, and you’ll have it all!”

I’m very sorry; I’ve, er... already checked those boxes.

Not that I could tell him that.

Wait, that wasn’t the point...

“Gah! You damn real, I won’t tell you to explode—but only because I’m gonna tear you apart!!”

Then Reito-san grabbed me in a full nelson.

Yikes! I know he saved us and everything, but I’m starting to wonder what’s wrong with this guy!

The thought had hardly gotten through my head when—

“I’m glad you seem to be having fun together.”

We all turned in surprise. I knew that voice.

“Matoba-san...”

There he was, looking exactly the way he did in the other world—same ugly suit, not a hair out of place. The chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau.

At Matoba-san’s suggestion, we moved from standing outside the front door of my house to gathered in the government-owned (he claimed) microbus he had come in. I had suggested my living room instead, but Matoba-san insisted that what we were going to say wasn’t something my family or any other unauthorized people could be allowed to hear. So the minibus it was.

“Other unauthorized people,” by the way, included Reito-san. He left his ita-Impreza where it was in front of my house, saying he would wait until we were done talking for the completely stupid (in the best sense) reason that it, quote, “looked like something interesting was going on.”

So anyway, there we were...

“Things are roughly as you heard from the American officer,” Matoba-san said.

Despite the name “microbus,” the interior was really pretty spacious, especially with just the few of us in there. I wondered why Matoba-san had brought this particular vehicle. Had he planned all along to use it as a space for private conversations?

“Our little film... It’s uncommon for the Japan Self-Defense Force to participate in moviemaking, and that got the attention of foreign intelligence agencies. It didn’t take them long to notice that they had no data on any of the non-JSDF persons who appeared in the clip.”

Well, of course they didn’t. Those people were all from another world. Something on Petralka, at least, probably existed in Matoba-san’s reports, or in the most secret of the government’s secret information files, but I would be surprised if they had any materials at all about Myusel or Elvia, people who weren’t VIPs.

“I don’t believe any country has yet realized that an entirely separate world is involved. But they are certainly aware that something is amiss. And one of them launched a cyber-attack on a government server, in which some information about you, Shinichi-kun, leaked out.”

“...That’d be my bank account, huh?”

“And a few other things besides, but yes. The compromised information also included the lease for the building in Akihabara we used when we ‘hired’ you. So the various agencies were already keeping an eye on that area.”

“I see...”

Twitter or no Twitter, that was why the foreign operatives had shown up so fast.

“In any event, the thing everyone wants most is information on whatever it is the Japanese government is up to. They would love to get their hands on someone personally involved and pump them for specifics. Capturing Koganuma-kun—whether it was Russia or China or whoever else that did it—probably served the dual purpose of stripping you of your protection and gaining them a potential lead.”

I groaned. I of all people understood how callous a national government could be toward the well-being of a single individual, but I had been so worried about the Japanese government that I had never even thought about what other nations might do. That had put Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia at risk, and maybe gotten Minori-san captured.

What am I gonna do?

As much as I hated to admit it, that one sentence summed up all my feelings.

Matoba-san, whether or not he was aware of what I was thinking, said, “You’re in serious danger here. You need to go back to Eldant.”

“Huh? But—”

“Not to mention, the simple fact that the Empress of Eldant is here in Japan could itself cause a crisis.”

“Yes... Indeed,” Petralka said with an almost sarcastic expression. (As soon as we had gotten in the bus, I’d opened one of our sprite bottles so we could all talk using our magic rings.) “We had not imagined that our nation was a secret in Ja-pan.”

Matoba-san just shrugged. No question: from Petralka’s perspective, this didn’t look good. The way Japan was hiding the existence of the Eldant Empire from everyone else on Earth, it would be all too easy to think they were embarrassed about the place.

But there was more. “In a word, you do not wish to give the Holy Eldant Empire opportunities to trade with countries beside your own, but wish to trade with us exclusively, for your own profit.”

“Ahem. I believe control of information is a fundamental diplomatic tactic,” Matoba-san said, pointedly conceding nothing. “Our secrecy about the Holy Eldant Empire derives from the great esteem in which we hold you, as an equal nation and trading partner. This has nothing to do with any kind of embarrassment or scorn.”

His words lacked a certain persuasiveness, coming as they did from a functionary of the very government that had previously attempted a cultural invasion of the Eldant Empire. I was sure Matoba-san was aware of that, but, well, that was the sort of paradox a bureaucrat had to navigate.

“...We should be pleased if that were true,” Petralka said, fixing Matoba-san with a suspicious stare.

And so we decided: the next morning, we would take a car arranged by Matoba-san, guarded by a bodyguard arranged by Matoba-san, to the hyperspace wormhole near Mt. Fuji. In light of the possibility that any number of operatives from any number of countries might try to pull something, he apparently thought it was better to go out in broad daylight than to make a clumsy midnight run.

In the meantime, thankfully, public security personnel were stationed around my house—even the microbus, apparently, was something hurriedly requisitioned from Public Security—and Matoba-san’s estimation was that we would “probably be okay until morning.”

Only one thing was really clear: there was nothing more I could do for the moment.

Reito-san, by now terminally interested in whatever was going on, decided to stick around at my house, but...

“Sigh...” I sighed.

I was in my room, with Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia nowhere to be found. They must have been in the living room—I had asked them to leave me by myself for a while.

...This sucks.

Honestly, this was way worse than the time back in Eldant when I had been targeted by a JSDF special-forces unit. Now it wasn’t me, but Minori-san, who had worked so hard to keep me safe, who might be in danger—and there was nothing I could do about it.

I felt a whole swarm of emotions—frustration, fear, loneliness, the wish that I could apologize. I had no idea what to do with all these feelings.

“To go ‘home’ to Eldant...”

Regardless of my personal feelings, even I understood that that was probably best. If I were the hero of some novel or manga or something, it’d be one thing, but I was just a lone otaku, and I wasn’t going to win a fight with who knew how many national information agencies. My enemy had a name now, sort of, but I didn’t know how many of them there were and had no idea what the full picture was. Even if we knew, say, their operating budgets and numbers of people, what hope did a former shut-in have of really understanding how to deal with any of that?

All of it just made me feel more and more helpless. I put my head in my hands and groaned.

That was when I heard a knock at the door.

“Shinichi-sama?” Myusel said. “May I... come in?”

“Uh... Yeah, sure,” I said.

When the door opened, there was Myusel with a plate in her hand. On the plate was a small teacup, a teapot, and several rice crackers.

“Par-don me,” Myusel said as she entered the room.

“You went to the trouble of making tea for me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t ask.” Maybe Myusel had used a sprite bottle on the way in, because suddenly our magic rings were functioning. I took the plate and set it on my desk.

That desk was pretty much the only other thing in my room besides my bed; there weren’t a lot of other places to put things or sit down. I lowered myself onto my bed—but Myusel stayed standing. “Your honored younger sister told me,” she said.

“Oh, uh... really?” I’d thought Shizuki was busy giving the cold shoulder to everyone I’d brought with me, but maybe she was starting to warm up a bit. Or maybe Myusel was just that nice.

“Er, Shinichi-sama. I apologize for being very forward...”

“Huh? Oh, you mean the tea? No, don’t worry about it. I mean really, thank you.”

Myusel must have figured that bringing me tea when I had asked to be left alone was going against my express wishes. Maybe some people would think so, but at that moment, I felt immensely grateful for it. I guess you could say it reminded me of my daily life back in Eldant. Me in my room. Myusel bringing me tea.

Of course, my room looked very different, and the tea was simple sencha, and there were only humble rice crackers to go with it—but even so, it made me feel that much closer to a life I could relax in.

It was remarkable: I was supposed to be the cultural invader, but instead I found myself completely enthralled by Eldant. It had worked the “wrong” way around. It was almost funny—almost.

“Um, Shinichi-sama.” Myusel looked like she had made up her mind about something. “If... If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.”

“Th—Thanks.”

I wasn’t sure what else to say. To me, it sounded like she was just being encouraging. It was nice of her, but it didn’t mean all that much to me.

But apparently that wasn’t how Myusel felt...

“Even if what you ask for is... is strange, or seems impossible, I won’t argue,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I’ll help you with whatever you ask for, Shinichi-sama!”

“Myusel...”

Come to think of it... What was it Minori-san had said about Myusel threatening Elvia with a gun when I had been kidnapped by Bahairam?

That’s not the sort of thing you do just because you think you’ll get something out of it. In fact, if any of them had been deciding what to do based on what was “best,” I would probably have a spike in my head right now and be a doll chirping “yes” and “no” like some cheap toy.

“It’s really...” I gave a wan smile. “It’s always you, isn’t it, Myusel?”

“What...?” She blinked. “Wh-What’s always me? Am I always the one who screws up—?”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” I said.

Whenever I was lost or wondering what to do, the one who gave me that push was always Myusel. Maybe she didn’t realize it, but time after time she’d given me the courage to do what I had to do. There were times when someone watching us might have said that it led me to do crazy, stupid things, things that made no sense by some utilitarian logic. But sometimes crazy, stupid things were the only choice I had.

I was just one otaku, after all. A single citizen. I couldn’t hope to fight any government. Even I thought so—and I was usually the one who didn’t think hard enough about whatever I planned to do. It made me feel pathetic.

“Myusel, you’ve helped me... get it together a little more. Thank you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, I-I—”

“Heek?!”

From just behind Myusel, there was a crash and the door flew open. Petralka, Elvia, and, believe it or not, Shizuki came tumbling into the room. Presumably they had all been leaning against the door eavesdropping.

“Wha— Wha—?”

“F-For your information, we were not listening to you!” Petralka said from somewhere underneath Elvia, waving her arms.

“For sure, Shinichi-sama! It’s not like we told Myusel she oughta put some tea on and go check on you!”

“What is going on here?! I mean what?! I don’t understand anything anymore!” Shizuki complained as she and Elvia got up.

I looked at them all—and then I realized.

It wasn’t just Myusel. It was all of them.

It was my tremendous good fortune to have so many people who worried about me when I felt lost and alone.

“Hrmph! What are you smiling about, Shinichi?” Petralka demanded.

“Yeah, what’s so funny?” Shizuki said. “My stupid otaku of an older brother...”

One of them sounded like a parody of a little-sister character, and one of them actually was my little sister, and that only made me smile more.

“Shizuki...” I said.

“What?” she demanded.

“You really are tsundere, aren’t you?”

“G-Go to hell, you stupid otaku!”

I didn’t realize then.

I didn’t know that a group of almost a dozen armed men had neutralized my security detail and were silently surrounding my house even as we spoke.

（つづく）

To Be Continued...