Chapter Three: The Going Is Easy, but the Coming Home...

It was the day after we had rescued Minori-san. A microbus and two black sedans were parked in front of my house. Strictly speaking, there was nothing special about them, but they must have given off a certain vibe, because we could see people turning and staring as they walked by.

The three vehicles had been provided by the Japanese government to get us back to Eldant. Me and the girls would ride in the microbus, while our escort went in the sedans.

“You look practically normal like this,” I said. I was standing just outside the front door, talking to a man in a black suit who was standing beside one of the sedans.

“‘Normal,’ sure!” Reito-san said with a wry grin. The stereotypical otaku gear he’d been wearing until the day before—the black shirt, the fingerless gloves—were gone, replaced with a black suit, perfectly fitted and without a wrinkle in sight. He looked like a real, productive member of society. Okay, so his hair was still a little long, but he had it tied back by his collar. I guess clothes really do make the man.

“The way you dressed and acted right up until yesterday—I guess that was to get us to let our guards down?”

If Reito-san had shown up in Akihabara looking the way he did now, I would never have trusted him. It was the way we seemed to be fellow otaku that had helped me accept him, even if our meeting did seem a little convenient. It was pretty incredible that it was all part of his plan.

“Nah, those are my civvies.”

“Huh?!”

“And that’s my personal car.”

He sounded practically proud. His personal car? To be fair, I wouldn’t have known what to make of it if he’d said that itasha was government property.

“You don’t get to have a lot of fun in this line of work,” Reito-san added.

“Oh, is that it?”

Then again, Minori-san was an otaku, too; a fujoshi at that. Maybe it made a certain kind of sense. Come to think of it, I had heard that the JSDF, and the US Army stationed in Japan, had uncommonly high percentage of otaku. I wondered if it was true.

Minori-san came out of the house a moment after I did. “Are all the bodyguards here now?” She was followed by Petralka, then Elvia.

So our party consisted of those of us going back to Eldant, Reito-san, two guys for each of the black sedans, and a driver for the bus. I gathered they were mostly CIRO people, although Reito-san told me they were subcontractors—“outsourcing,” he called it.

CIRO, by the way, is sort of a public security or police organization. Traditionally, they haven’t gotten along very well with the JSDF—territorial disputes or something. Which might explain why they’d been sent to take care of us, considering what we had done to the JSDF intelligence guys.

“This is about as many people as you can have and still keep a low profile. You have to be able to make excuses for why everyone’s here,” Reito-san said with a shrug.

“Where’s Myusel...?” I didn’t know what she was doing, but she hadn’t come out of the house yet. I didn’t want to keep Reito-san and the others waiting. I was just thinking maybe I should go get her when she, my parents, and Shizuki all came out the front door.

“I am sorry for making you wait.”

“What were you doing?”

“We were talking about... the various things.”

For some reason, her voice almost trailed off as she answered, and she blushed a little.

Huh...? What’s with this reaction? It’s super-duper cute.

“Shinichi.”

I was just about to get on the microbus when someone stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. It was my dad. My mom and Shizuki were there with him. Myusel and the others glanced back at me, but Minori-san urged them onto the bus.

“Y-Yeah, what?”

“You take good care of that Myusel-san of yours, all right?”

“Say what? That’s kind of out of the blue.”

“She really is a good girl,” my mom chipped in. “She helped out so much at dinner. And she has so many kind things to say about you, for whatever reason.”

“Hey, I’m your son, remember,” I said with a frown.

Well... okay. So being shot down by my old friend had led to me totally ditching school, until I suddenly disappeared one day—maybe I deserved “for whatever reason.” But still... Myusel had said nice things about me? What in the world could that mean?

“...What exactly did Myusel say?”

I had to admit I was a bit embarrassed to ask. My parents, though, just grinned sly grins.

“Oh, this and that. Like how you’re so cool, you’re so reliable.”

“How you’re totally indispensable to all of them.”

“G-Gosh, really?”

Yikes! I was happy but also kind of freaked. Embarrassing!

“You’re a good enough son, Shinichi, but for her to be so keen on you... I have to question her taste in men.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

Geez, seriously—what a way for a mother to talk to her long-lost little boy!

That was when something occurred to me. I was on my way “home” to Eldant, but I had no idea when I would be coming back to this home again. Six months? A year? Longer?

“When will you come home again?” a blunt voice asked, as if its owner was reading my mind. It was Shizuki.

“Well, I...”

I was lost for words. I hadn’t even really planned to come back this time; it had only happened because I was worried about our dad. It had spiraled from there into an international game of spy-vs-spy. And it put me on notice that for better or for worse, I wouldn’t be able to just duck back to Japan any time I felt like it.

As I stood there, trying anxiously to figure out what to say, my dad spoke up instead. “I’ll bet Shinichi can’t just waltz back here so easily. He’s an... otaku evangelist now. A goodwill ambassador, if you will.”

“I’m so glad you’ve found your calling,” my mom said. “Out of the curse of your blood.” She smiled.

Well, no question I was the full-throttle otaku that I was because I had happened to be born to these parents. Was it a blessing, or a curse? I guess that depended who you asked. Whatever it was, Shizuki seemed to have escaped it completely.

“I guess it’s because you saw your mom and dad spend their lives doing what they love. All I’ll say is, do what you have to do so that you don’t regret anything. And... drop us a letter or an email sometimes, just to let us know how things are going. It’d be good for your old dad’s heart.”

“Even if it does seem a little early for you to be leaving the nest...”

The sight of my parents’ smiles left me speechless.

Yikes! I was on the verge of choking up, here. Suddenly embarrassed, I looked away from my mom and dad—

“Gotta say, though, it’s fine by us if you never come home again,” my dad said.

“I-Isn’t that a little harsh?”

“He’s right—you have a job, you’re living on your own. Obviously, the next time we see you will be when you bring your fiancée to meet us.”

“What?”

As I fought back panic, my dad leaned in and whispered: “Wherever your Princess Petralka comes from... is polygamy allowed there?”

That’s what you’re worried about?!

I tried to find the words to react, but before I could—

“Come on now, everyone’s waiting for you. Hurry up and go.”

“You’re the ones who stopped me!”

My parents urged me toward the microbus; it felt a bit like I was being gotten rid of. In the bus, Myusel, Petralka, Elvia, and Minori-san were all sitting and waiting patiently for me. The rows in the bus were arranged with two seats, then the aisle, then another seat, for a total of three in each row. There were seven rows in the bus. Myusel and Petralka sat in one pair of seats, with Elvia in the one across the aisle. I took the open place next to Minori-san behind Myusel and Petralka. The driver made sure we were all on board, then started the engine.

Minori-san opened the window and poked her head out. “Sorry it was so sudden. Thanks a lot for having us!”

Everyone got out of their seats and went over to the side Minori-san was on, sticking their heads out the windows like she was doing.

“We thank you for your show of the hospitality.”

“It was very fun!”

“Thank you very much. Please, be well.”

“Our pleasure!”

“Take care of Shinichi for us.”

Finally, I squeezed up next to Minori-san, leaned out the window, and waved. “See you guys!”

“Big brother—!” Shizuki, who had been sort of hiding in our parents’ shadows until that moment, ran up to the bus. “Take... Take care, okay?”

She was stone-faced, her words the very definition of decorum. But coming from my little sister, whom I had hardly spoken to in years, they sounded different. More meaningful.

“Thanks. You too, Shizuki.” I smiled and nodded—and at that exact moment, the bus pulled away. Flanked by the two sedans, it started rolling slowly, then picked up speed. My family, standing in front of the house, quickly got smaller, and then we turned a corner and I couldn’t see them anymore.

I shifted in my seat and sighed. Minori-san gave me a mischievous smile. “Feeling lonely already, Shinichi-kun?”

“Oh... Maybe, maybe not,” I said evasively, but then I had a thought. If I remembered correctly, Minori-san didn’t have any family. She could come back to Japan, but she couldn’t go back home, and she didn’t have any parents or siblings to share any tearful farewells with. That made me feel a little bad about how I had answered, but maybe trying to backpedal now would be just as rude. In the end, I decided just to be honest. “It would be a lie to say I’m not sad about it...” But I had something bigger on my mind. “Right now, what I mostly feel is, ‘Phew, I can finally go home.’”

Home to my mansion in Eldant. Home to the house where Brooke and Cerise, and even Hikaru-san, were no doubt waiting anxiously for me.

“I see,” Minori-san said with a smile and a nod.

“I am glad I got to see my family, though,” I said. Then I thought about the way Shizuki had looked as we left, and added, “I even found out that my little sister doesn’t actually hate me or anything.”

Or maybe she had, back before I went to Eldant. But at least, with everything that had happened here, I was able to reconcile with her. I was glad for that. I’m not going to act like I brought our family back together again or did any big-deal stuff like that, but there’s nothing better than siblings who get along.

“Good, good,” Minori-san said.

“We are glad, Shinichi, that we could to meet your father, your mother, and your little sister!” Petralka said, turning around and looking at me over the back of the seat.

“Me, too... I am glad that I got to see the side of you I didn’t know, Master.”

“Yakiniku. Very gud.”

Uh, Elvia? One of these statements is not like the others...

It seemed, though, like soy sauce and similar ingredients worked just fine for people from the other world. Maybe I could start importing Japanese sauces, and we could have a yakiniku party over there sometime.

In any event, with all that had happened, it still seemed like everyone had enjoyed themselves in Japan. As far as I was concerned, that was justification enough for having come home.

Now all we had to do was... go home.

We headed for Fuji’s Sea of Trees. The hyperspace wormhole waited for us there, and beyond it, Eldant.

The bus ride back turned into the occasion for a reflective discussion about what had happened. Or maybe I should say an appreciative discussion—it wasn’t like we had screwed up or done anything really wrong. It was just a way of passing the time as we covered the considerable distance from my house to the JSDF base in the forest near Mount Fuji. After all, we had already discovered what happened when we tried to play car games or read books on the way over.

Petralka started us off with some real praise: “This was a most enlightening journey!”

We had released some sprites inside the bus so our translator rings could work as normal. That was great for us and our conversation, but the bus driver probably wondered what in the world was going on. All he would hear would be Petralka and the others speaking Eldant, and me and Minori-san answering in Japanese. But anyway...

“Especially this!” Petralka said—and held up the little gacha**n figure she’d gotten in Akihabara. “Look at this Foreman! It’s so small, but the sculpting is so fine! Think—it’s made of a material that neither rusts nor rots, yet it’s cheap enough for even commoners to afford! We must share this technology with the dwarves!”

In other words, Petralka was psyched. I thought the dwarves were going to have some trouble replicating this thing, considering how hard it would be to obtain materials, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to produce something almost identical using metal or stone.

Incidentally, Petralka had taken to the Gaishi figures with a passion, shoving hundred-yen coins into the gacha**n machine as if she was going to empty it out. I had to stop her. Her bag now contained the complete series of figurines, but only because we had bought about half of them at a specialty shop later on. It almost had to be a better use of money.

“Well, if you’re happy, I’m happy,” I said.

“Akihabara is a far more mysterious town than we expected, though.”

“How so?”

“We never imagined walls such as those would be constructed to protect your otaku goods from the Titans...”

“Come again?”

“Isn’t that what that spicy food is for? To fire up the morale of soldiers about to do battle against the giants? We felt the fire in our belly after we ate!”

Apparently Petralka was still under the misconception that the buildings formed some sort of protective barrier. In my mind, I toyed with an image of otaku armed with box cutters, eating curry and “wire-actioning” their way around, defending their anime and games and manga from titanic monsters, all of whom had the faces of the previous governors of Tokyo for some reason.

Hmmm.

Petralka was chatting away happily, but I didn’t even know where to start setting her straight—she had gone past three-sixty; she had done a triple axel and was facing completely the opposite direction.

“Look, the point is, you’re way off base,” I said hesitantly.

She hardly seemed to hear me. “What did you think, Myusel?” Petralka asked instead, her eyes shining.

“Wha?”

“About Akiba! Did you enjoy it as well?”

“Yes,” Myusel said, smiling. “It was so much fun. It was so moving to seek not just the holy land, Akiba, but my master’s home country. When I think that he was born and raised here, it just means so much to me...”

“R-Really...?” I thought of what my parents had said as we left and found myself feeling a little shy.

“I was also very happy to meet your honored parents, Master, and your honored younger sister. I’m merely a servant, yet they treated me like an important guest and were so kind to me.”

“Well, as far as that goes—that’s just Japan.”

I thought back to when I had first arrived in Eldant, when I had scolded Petralka for yelling at Myusel, telling her that in my own country, there were no differences of class or status. Obviously, my parents understood that Petralka was some kind of important figure, and I think they went out of their way to be nice to her—but they definitely didn’t look down on Myusel or Elvia, who were there as servants.

I didn’t think it was just because my parents were that way, either. In Japanese society, we definitely recognized people of higher status, but we didn’t really have people of lower status to speak of. There was the Imperial family, and then there was everyone else. Sure, some people were richer than others, or better at certain things, or even just prettier, but that was all fluid and ambiguous. Differences in social status as such didn’t mean much in Japan.

I didn’t think that was a bad thing. It made me grateful that I had been born in Japan (although getting to be an otaku didn’t hurt, either). I won’t say it couldn’t have happened anywhere else, but the good-hearted, peaceful environment of my archipelago helped make me who I was.

Anyway...

“And I was able to meet some of your Japanese maids.”

“...Huh?”

“The ones in Akiba.”

“No, listen, those were—”

“They were maids just like me, but in the style of my master’s nation... It helped me understand what maids are like here. I can use that knowledge to serve you better after we get back to Eldant.”

“I’m telling you, they weren’t real.” Myusel was harboring some sort of delusion, too. I had tried to tell her that the cosplay maids weren’t for real, but Myusel seemed to have taken me to mean that they were apprentices of some kind. I knew she always put the best possible spin on what other people were doing, but still... “It’s just a part-time gig for them. You don’t have to act like them.”

“Partime gyg?”

“If anything, I think the maids in Akiba could learn something from you, Myusel.”

“O-Oh...”

For a real maid to try to pick up tips from the cosplayers at a café... There was backwards, and then there was backwards.

“Elvia, what about you?”

“I loved it!” the beast girl exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear. “I got to see all kinds of interesting things, and the food was great! I definitely wanna come back!”

“Er... Yeah, sure.” I privately wondered when or if there would be a chance to come back, but I decided to spare Elvia my concerns for the time being. “Next time I’d love to take you other places, not just Akiba.”

Despite all the kidnapping, being attacked by foreign spies, and on and on, it seemed like everyone had enjoyed Japan. Granted, maybe they had ended up seeing a pretty twisted side of it... But still, as a Japanese person, I couldn’t help feeling happy—maybe even a little flattered, to hear Elvia say she wanted to come back.

“We wish to go to—you know! Your I-ke-bu-ku-ro’s otome road!”

“Geez, of all the places. I think Minori-san could tell you more about Otome Road than I could.”

“You can count on me, Your Majesty.” Minori-san pushed her glasses up with her middle finger, a bit of a grin on her face. A beam of sunlight just happened to come through the window, flashing off her glasses and hiding her eyes.

“Oh, I wanna go to Nip-pori.”

Nip-pori? Did she mean Nippori Station?

“Why?” I asked. Otome Road I could understand. Or if she had said she wanted to see the big Gun**m at Odaiba, or go to Comiket, or Nakano Broadway, any of those would have made sense. But what was there at Nippori?

“Nippori has ‘fairies,’ doesn’t it? I want to see them.”

“Fairies...?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. There was a certain “rat kingdom” in Urayasu City in Chiba, the Ghi*li Museum in Mitaka, and the trendy Kichijouji District.

“There’s a forest of fairies!”

I thought about that for a few seconds.

“Wait—no, there isn’t!” I exclaimed when I finally figured out what Elvia was talking about. “You misheard!”

“So Japan does have sprites in it?” Myusel asked.

“No! No, it doesn’t!”

Yes, “fairy forest” was a current expression in Japanese. But I didn’t think it meant what they thought it meant! Who even came up with that tag for mashups of “Aniki” video clips?! And I’ve heard “fairies” was originally a pejorative term for people who are, you know, that way! If an innocent girl watched those videos without knowing what she was getting into, she’d be traumatized!

“It was Minori-san, wasn’t it? She had to be the one who told you about that! That sort of thing is practically her specialty!”

“How rude. You don’t have to assume it was my doing just because BL was involved.”

“So it wasn’t you?”

“......Well, yes, it was.”

She admitted it!

“But Shinichi-kun, I wish you wouldn’t lump Aniki in with BL.” She arched an eyebrow the slightest bit. “BL is fantasy! Aniki is the ‘fairy forest’! It’s an important distinction!”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t understand, ‘Sensei’!”

And I don’t want to!

Just as I was registering with terror the true depths of the Way of Fujoshi—or was that just the depths of its depravity?—the microbus came to an abrupt stop.

“Erk!”

“Eek!”

The screeching of tires combined with our shouting. Everyone was thrown forward, seatbelts digging into our bodies. At least they kept us from being flung out of our seats.

“What in the world?” Petralka demanded.

“M-Maybe there was a cat crossing the street or something?” I said, unable to imagine why we might have stopped so suddenly. I leaned forward to have a look. A trailer truck driving in front of our bus had apparently stopped, with no stoplight or anything. “Wonder if there was an accident.”

Minori-san leaned out of her seat and asked the driver, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know... He just suddenly...” The driver sounded as surprised as we were.

Come to think of it, what had happened to the sedans that were supposed to be running escort for us? I thought they had been keeping pretty close—had this truck forced its way in between us?

I heard some angry reactions from behind us. I looked back to see the sedan Reito-san was riding in stopped cold, and a line of cars forming behind him. Everyone behind our escort was honking.

In a word, it had all started when that truck stopped. Annoying, sure, but maybe he’d had an accident or something.

How naïve of me.

“...Huh?”

Just as I was considering the possible explanations, the truck’s trailer doors opened from the inside.

From the inside? How could a cargo container do that?

That had to mean...

I gasped.

About ten men piled out of the trailer. I suspected none of them were Japanese. There were several Asian faces mixed into the lot, but mostly they were either black or white. And they were all dressed the same: camouflage suits, simple body armor, and M4A1 carbines.

M4A1... The American military?!

The men moved quickly to surround our bus. I could see people in the opposite lane looking shocked by the bizarre scene as they went driving by. Maybe they thought we were filming a movie or something. As the soldiers fanned out around the bus, they held something up. It was a plastic sign that read in Japanese and English, Step out of the vehicle and follow our orders.

“I can’t believe it,” Minori-san groaned. “They’re doing this here?”

We were outside the city proper, but we were still on a public highway, where there was lots of traffic. That meant lots of witnesses, which meant covering up or explaining away this incident would take a lot of time and work. Apparently America thought capturing us was worth it.

Silently, I looked back. Reito-san and the others had climbed out of their sedans, but they kept their distance from our bus. The soldiers probably gave them no choice. They might be our bodyguards, but it was just a few of them—lightly armed—against almost a dozen guys with military equipment. Our escorts could hardly hope to face down assault rifles with nothing more than some handguns.

But I called out, “Myusel!” At the same moment, I undid my seatbelt and grabbed several of our sprite bottles from a bag. Myusel turned when she heard my voice, and the moment she saw what I had in my hands, she understood what I was doing.

“Yes, sir!” She unlatched her seatbelt, too, turning around in her seat and supporting herself on her knees.

Minori-san opened a window for me—she must have figured it out, too—and I leaned past her, reaching out the window. Elvia opened a window for Myusel, who leaned out the other side from me with a sprite bottle in hand.

When we were both in position, I flung a few sprite bottles outside.

There was a crack of shattering ceramics, and at almost the same instant—

“Tifu Murottsu!”

Myusel and I both intoned our spell. The magic turned into a pair of massive tornadoes; the army guys surrounding the bus were flung into the air. They didn’t get that high, but it did shove them backwards quite a ways, even sending some of them into the oncoming traffic. I heard honking and screeching brakes.

Perfect, and now—

“Again—Tifu Murottsu!”

Our second blast of magic hit the tractor trailer stopped in front of us, smacking it square in the behind. The tires seemed to be puncture-proof, but the force of the spell was so great it bent the axle itself. The tire came clear off the wheel, leaving the truck resting at a crazy angle.

“Now!” I shouted at our driver.

Neither the US army guys nor the truck looked like they were going to move anytime soon. Thankfully, the driver seemed to grasp what I was shouting about, and put the pedal to the metal. We made a violent move onto the shoulder of the highway, just squeezing past the semi trailer. The tires squealed as they tried to cling to the road, and Myusel and I, who had had to undo our seatbelts to lean out the windows, found ourselves badly shaken. Minori-san grabbed me by the collar just before I got tossed out into the street, Elvia rescuing Myusel the same way.

“You okay?”

“Y-Yeah, I think so...” I resumed my seat behind Petralka. I glanced over at Myusel, who was bowing her head repeatedly to Elvia. “Where are Reito-san and the others?” I looked back to find that the sedans were keeping right up with our bus. “Ah...”

I saw the car that had been running in front flipped over on the side of the road. It must have been hit by the truck trailer. A direct blow from something so much bigger and heavier could only have one outcome.

“Go! Just forget about the car!” one of the bodyguards in the sedan behind us shouted. He wasn’t shouting to me so much as to the bus driver and Reito-san. But could we really just leave them there?

It happened in that instant of hesitation: there was a roar, and an impact slammed me in the back.

“Wh—What the?!”

I looked back, and the first thing I saw was fire. And in the center of it, burning like the wick of a candle, the blackened trailer rocking back and forth.

It was the trailer. The trailer was what had caught fire. The roar must have been an explosion. But...

“Why?!”

Had I done this?! But I had just fired off some wind magic, nothing that would make the trailer explode... unless maybe we had ruptured the fuel tanks, and the gasoline had spilled out and caught on fire...?

But come on—how could a truck even blow up so easily?!

“Heeek...”

Was this really our fault? Yes, we had been trying to get away, but it would still be awful to have involved innocent people.

“Don’t worry about it.”

The remark came from Minori-san.

“But... But...”

How could I not worry about it? It was in the middle of the street, so I wasn’t afraid of the fire spreading, but what if someone had been hurt or killed in that blast...? It looked as if the flames and the burned-out trailer between them had completely blocked the highway. I didn’t think any cars were going to be following us after this.

“We don’t know why it exploded, but most soldiers are tough customers. They wouldn’t want to be captured. Put it out of your mind.” As she talked, Minori-san drew her handgun. It looked like the 9mm she always used, but it was subtly different. Her weapon had been confiscated by the Russian agents; this was a Sig Sauer P228 Reito-san had loaned her just before we got on the bus. Her usual sidearm was actually a Sig Sauer P220, so the P228, a variation on it, would be easy for her to get used to.

But anyway...

“To think the Americans would show up at the last minute...” Minori-san murmured.

The relaxed, cheerful mood inside the bus was gone. It was replaced with confusion and fear.

The bus ran along under a heavy silence. We didn’t talk.

Myusel was looking at the ground, and Petralka wore a stiff expression. Elvia was equally downcast and silent. Minori-san kept her gun in her hand and stared out the window, probably in case there was another attack.

The mood kept me from talking to anyone. I could only watch the scenery roll by. All I could see was the gray asphalt of the road, and the concrete-reinforced hills to either side. If I looked up, I could spot the green of trees and grass, but I felt despondent, like we were running through a valley of ash.

The only cars on the road were our microbus and the sedan immediately behind us. I didn’t even see anyone in the oncoming lane... Wait.

Wasn’t that strange?

I could understand why there weren’t any cars behind us; the remains of the semi trailer were probably still blocking the road. But why wouldn’t there be a single vehicle going the other direction?!

“Minori-san, don’t you think something’s wrong here?”

“So you noticed it too, Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san said, her face grave. Apparently she had picked up on the same thing I had. Well, that made sense.

“Is there some thing the matter?” Myusel asked when she saw our faces. At the moment, incidentally, there was no magic inside the bus, in the name of conserving our supply of sprite bottles. Hence Myusel and the others had to communicate in their halting Japanese.

“There are hardly any other cars,” I said, looking back out at the road.

Seriously: other than us, there was no one at all. It was noon on a weekday; it was impossible that we wouldn’t be passing other vehicles.

It was like... It was like everyone but us had been stopped somehow. Just coincidence? Or was this deliberate?

I shifted in my seat, pulling my phone out of my pocket. Maybe a quick check of the news online would show something...

“I’m not seeing anything special...”

No reports of unusual traffic situations. I opened Twitter. The credibility of anything there might be questionable, but events often made it to Twitter before they hit the official news channels. Maybe I would find something useful. I tried a search, and...

“Hm...?”

...found myself on an aggregator blog.

I started scanning the articles. “Find anything?” Minori-san asked.

“...Looks like there have been accidents here and there,” I said.

A lot of car accidents were happening. Other aggregator sites were also popping up bunches of reports of traffic accidents. Pretty soon, I got a news digest email saying something similar. The incident with the US Army truck was being reported as an accidental explosion. Not that the US Army was actually mentioned in the articles.

And all these accidents...

I groaned softly. I pulled up a map just to check, but there was no mistake: they were all happening on the road we were running along right now.

“I... I don’t want to believe it, but...” I said mournfully.

Could it be that even the exploding truck had been planted? That it had all been an act, the perfect way to “just happen” to block off an entire highway?

“The US Army... Just to catch us, they might be sealing off the entire area to keep bystanders away... These accidents... They aren’t accidental at all...”

Surely I was overthinking it—wasn’t I? I waited for Minori-san to say something, like “Even they wouldn’t go that far.” But she just grimaced and didn’t answer at all.

Instead, fiddling with her own phone, she asked the driver, “I’m sorry, but could you put on the radio? We need traffic information, anything about accidents—”

Then she stopped right in the middle of her sentence.

The only sound that came out of the radio when the driver turned it on was white noise. It wasn’t that we couldn’t find a station. These digital car stereos were supposed to find a channel automatically. If all we were getting was senseless noise, it meant either every radio station in the vicinity had simultaneously stopped broadcasting, or...

“...They’ve got us,” Minori-san said grimly after a moment.

“Oops... There goes our internet connection,” I said, watching as my phone disconnected from the web. There was something wrong with the signal. The little antenna symbol on the screen showed no bars at all.

“All signals are being blocked,” Minori-san said.

“You’re kidding...”

“We can’t communicate with the outside world. You were exactly right, Shinichi-kun.” Minori-san sounded absolutely desolate.

No phone. No internet. And no residential houses anywhere in sight. We were completely alone, without even a way to summon help. Not that I could imagine the police or the JSDF waltzing in to help us, considering that we were supposed to be a state secret to begin with. Even Reito-san had said something about the number of people you could trust to keep things confidential.

At any rate, this meant that now the US Army could go ahead and attack us without attracting general attention. Presumably, it would involve heavy equipment that made the soldiers earlier look like child’s play. I’m not saying there were going to be tanks, but maybe armored vehicles or attack helicopters—things our magic would be virtually helpless against.

“Is—Is okay?” Elvia asked anxiously when she saw our pale faces.

I was desperate to reassure her, but the truth was, there was virtually nothing that was okay about our situation.

“There’s a JSDF training facility right near the Sea of Trees,” Minori-san said. “If we could link up with the unit there, we might just be able to...” She looked around at me, Minori-san, Petralka, and Elvia.

It would have been even simpler if we could get the JSDF to come get us, but if the armed forces were too obvious, it might cause an outcry among a certain group of people who didn’t even feel the JSDF should exist in the first place.

And so...

“We have to keep going,” Minori-san said, “and fast.”

She was right: it was our only choice.

After that, all any of us did was look out the windows, our faces drawn. The one thought on our minds was that we wanted to get to our destination absolutely as fast as possible. We all stared outside less out of vigilance than from a sense that maybe the harder we looked, the sooner the Sea of Trees would appear.

How much farther do we have to go?

With no other cars on the road, the drive went very smoothly... too smoothly. I thought about telling the driver to go as fast as the bus was able, but if something sniped us while we were running hundreds of kilometers per hour, at the absolute limit, we would have nowhere to go. The bus might flip over, might even explode.

“...Come on...”

I was desperate to make it all the way to Mount Fuji without anything happening. But then—

“There they are!” Minori-san shouted, her voice agonizingly loud in the tense atmosphere of the bus.

“Where...?!” I looked around, but all I could see was the idyllic scenery.

Then I raised my eyes slightly, following her gaze—and I saw something out of my wildest nightmares. A brutalist lump of gray steel was going right over our heads with a roar.

A military helicopter. A CH-53D Sea Stallion, unless I missed my guess. I seemed to remember them being in the news about ten years before, when one belonging to the US Army in Japan had crashed.

Unlike anti-tank vehicles and other attack helicopters, CH-53Ds didn’t have any rocket launchers or machine guns or other obviously nasty weaponry. But these vehicles, used for personnel transport, were capable of carrying dozens of fully armed soldiers, and probably mounted at least a 0.50-cal machine gun to help back them up. “Backup” might not sound so bad, but it would only take one of those 12.7mm slugs to put a human being out of commission for good. Bulletproof glass? In the face of a military weapon designed to contend with armored vehicles and aircraft, our windows might as well have been made of tissue paper.

“Minori-san—” I turned to the WAC beside me. “Tell me there’s no way the Japanese government hasn’t noticed this!”

“They probably have. Considering there’s even a communications blackout and everything.” Minori-san was checking that she had an extra clip for her P228. The usual softness had gone out of her tone, telling me just how bad things had gotten.

“Okay, so that means the JSDF should be on its way, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Minori-san whispered, looking distraught. “You know perfectly well what would happen if the Self-Defense Force got in a fight with the US Army, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so...”

Japan and America were allies and friends, at least on paper. That meant our armed forces were supposed to be friendly with each other, too. Sure, the JSDF was sometimes criticized as not being aggressive enough toward foreign incursions into Japanese waters or airspace, but when that incursion came from a nominal ally, things got a lot more complicated very fast. It was hardly even a question of what Japan’s rights to “self-defense” were anymore.

Short version: if we were going to get out of this, we were going to have to do it ourselves.

Our microbus picked up speed.

Automobile versus helicopter: it was all too obvious which one was going to win in a race. I guess our driver just couldn’t stand the idea of simply stopping the bus without trying anything.

But then—

“Whoa!”

The bus decelerated violently, as if the Sea Stallion had landed right on top of it and was pressing it into the ground. The driver turned the wheel hard from right to left, trying to wriggle out from under the chopper, but it wasn’t going to solve our problem.

“We d-dob’t beel so good...” Petralka had gone pale, unable to endure the bus’s rocking. She was hugging her bag of anime merchandise tightly, fighting nausea.

“Itosejamu, donimu irerasu...” Majesty, stay strong... Myusel rubbed Petralka’s back encouragingly.

“Sorry, Petralka,” I said. She was just going to have to deal with it for the time being. We couldn’t stop. We couldn’t even slow down.

That was when I noticed the wall in the road up ahead.

No... Not a wall. A semi trailer. A big semi truck, like the one we’d blown up earlier, sitting sideways across the street.

Crap. They really had us.

We couldn’t turn back, and we couldn’t shake the helicopter. There were no other cars around, meaning no witnesses, meaning the army could do whatever they wanted with us.

What they wanted was to get confidential information, so it seemed unlikely that they would kill us immediately, but...

Is this because we beat up their other agents and ran away?

We had used magic and Elvia’s physical strength to overcome the first American agents who had tried to kidnap us in Akihabara. Maybe that led them to think Japan really had something big to hide, and convinced them to use force to get at us if necessary.

“Shinichi-sama, Minori-sama! That...!” Elvia was shouting and pointing behind us.

We turned around to see Reito-san’s car, apparently out of control, doing a huge flip. The hood had a massive dent in it, probably down to the engine—had it taken a hit from the helicopter’s machine gun?!

As we watched, speechless, Reito-san’s sedan ended up upside down on the shoulder of the road. It didn’t actually explode, but it didn’t look like they were going to be driving it anywhere, either.

“Reito-san!” I shouted, unable to restrain myself—but thankfully, it looked like the people in the car were safe. I saw Reito-san and the others crawl out through a window. There were no obvious injuries.

As for our bus, it slowed down—and then stopped.

The semi blocking the road was right in front of us. We had to stop, or we would have run smack into the huge, metal trailer that sat there like a wall.

“What do we do...?” I whispered, frantic.

My brain could hardly keep up with the situation. Seriously, what could we do? How could we get out of this?

Myusel and Elvia looked just as vacant as I felt. Even Petralka, who had been feeling so poorly a few minutes before, had all but forgotten her nausea in the face of what we were dealing with now. Pale, she was looking at Reito-san’s car.

Then I had a thought.

“Th-That’s it... We can just use magic again...!”

I grabbed a sprite bottle. Myusel saw me and did the same. We had already made this work once on a similar trailer. If Myusel and I both used Tifu Murottsu at the same time, we might be able to destroy this one, too.

But wait. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough. Even if we destroyed the trailer, if we couldn’t get it moved out of the way, there would be no point. And I didn’t know if Tifu Murottsu would have any real effect on the Sea Stallion, which could retreat higher into the sky at will.

Then I caught my breath: the door of the trailer was opening.

Almost immediately, soldiers began pouring out, just like before. So far, they had been using the exact same tactics as last time, but then—

“What are those things...?” Petralka breathed as she watched the US military encircle our bus.

All the soldiers spreading out around our vehicle wore heavy equipment. Bulky body armor, along with black-visored helmets that I associated more with the police than the military. Even Minori-san’s handgun probably couldn’t stop these guys.

And that meant...

“We’ve got to do this! Myusel!”

“Right!”

By now, Myusel knew exactly what to do. We each opened a window on opposite sides of the bus and threw out the bottles, smashing them on the pavement. We intoned our spells in unison, stuck out our hands.

Our voices overlapped: “Tifu Murottsu!”

Under the circumstances, I decided to aim not at the truck trailer, but at the soldiers getting steadily closer. Myusel’s and my wind magic each scored a direct hit on three of our assailants, blowing them away. But...

“It didn’t work?!”

Almost immediately, the soldiers sprang back to their feet. Apparently the shields and body armor were more about absorbing impacts than stopping bullets. I could see some kind of mat stuck to the insides of their shields. I guess after seeing us use Tifu Murottsu on two different groups of their operatives, the Americans had started to come up with some countermeasures. They might not have identified our magic as, well, magic, but they didn’t have to know what it was to be ready for it.

But so quickly...? I was reminded of just how terrifying a national entity could be when it really got serious.

“Tifu Murottsu!”

It didn’t matter. We couldn’t back down. Myusel and I released a series of Tifu Murottsu spells, knocking the soldiers down repeatedly, but each time they got back up. In fact, the more we hit them, the more they seemed to learn; they started staying close, shoulder to shoulder, moving in formation to help resist the effects of the magic.

It was hopeless. This wasn’t doing anything. But we really had no other cards to play. Myusel and I grabbed more bottles, more magic stones, letting off additional Tifu Murottsus. Until...

“.........Uh-oh.”

I discovered we had finally run out of supplies.

“Master...!” Myusel looked at me, her face absolutely bloodless.

We had used enough sprite bottles that we might be able to continue casting Tifu Murottsu for a while yet—but we were, if you will, out of gas.

“What do we do?” I asked myself, but I wasn’t getting any brilliant ideas for how to turn the tables here.

We couldn’t use magic, and our guns wouldn’t work. Those were all the weapons we had.

Obviously, fighting hand-to-hand was out of the question. Our opponents were armed and armored, and outnumbered us by better than ten to one. This wasn’t some video game; one lone hero couldn’t clear out dozens of anonymous underlings. Myusel and I didn’t really know how to fight, anyway.

Things were looking hopeless.

That was when the Sea Stallion landed directly behind us. The rear hatch opened, and someone emerged...

“Him...!” Elvia snarled.

Amidst the crowd of heavily armored soldiers, this person stood out in his black suit.

“What? Elvia, do you know him?” Minori-san asked.

“He’s the one who captured me and Shinichi-sama!” she said hotly. Apparently there was enough magic left floating around for the rings to work.

“That was while you were with the Russian agents, Minori-san,” I clarified.

Alan Smith—that was what he had called himself, anyway; it probably wasn’t his real name. An American agent who had tried to abduct me, Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia in Akihabara. I guess he had come to finish what he started. Maybe he was angry that a bunch of total amateurs had escaped on him.

“Get out of the vehicle,” Mr. Smith ordered us in Japanese.

Naturally, we didn’t move. We couldn’t.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but it seems the Japanese government is hiding something—something big. Would those techniques—something akin to ESP, perhaps—be part of it?”

He was asking the questions; we had no choice but to sit in the microbus and listen. But none of us said anything. We had no reason to give him information, and Myusel and the others were especially uninterested in helping the guy who had tried to kidnap them. Plus, Mr. Smith didn’t have a ring; they might not even have fully understood what he was saying.

Mr. Smith, however, just shrugged; he seemed to have expected our resolute silence.

“In any event.”

As he spoke, the soldiers flanking him raised their M4A1 carbines and started shooting.

The guns didn’t make that much noise; maybe they were equipped with special silencers. It was just a sort of muted bump-bump-bump. Then the windows of the microbus shattered into a million pieces. Reito-san had told me this glass was supposed to be bulletproof... but apparently not bulletproof enough to withstand high-penetration rounds from small rifles.

“You can walk out of there on your own feet, or we can drag you out. That’s really the only choice you have,” Mr. Smith said, looking at us with a thin smile. “Believe me, this ends the same either way.”

“Ugh......” Minori-san groaned and bit her lip. She still had the P228 in her hand, but she was probably thinking that one measly handgun wasn’t going to do us much good in this situation. A single careless shot could get her riddled with automatic-rifle fire.

Petralka sat silently, also chewing her lip. For the most part, she appeared calm—maybe being an empress gives you a lot of practice at that—but I could see her hands shaking where they rested on her knees.

Elvia looked lost, her gaze wandering from the inside of the bus to the American military outside. She was physically the strongest of any of us—but while she might be able to at least escape on her own, she couldn’t single-handedly turn the tide of this engagement. She knew all too well now what a gun could do.

“Master...”

Then there was Myusel, who was looking into my face. What should I do? her big purple eyes asked me. There was anxiety in them, no question, but they hadn’t been completely consumed by despair—a sign, maybe, of how much she trusted me.

But as for me... I couldn’t say anything. I wished someone could tell me what we should do.

I stood in the center aisle of the microbus and thought desperately. Was there some way to break out of here? We didn’t have to dispatch the entire American military force, we just had to all escape. If we could make it to the wormhole near Mount Fuji without them catching us, we won. But...

Even if by some miracle we got away from here...

Obviously, the Army would chase us. And what would happen if we went directly to the wormhole then? Wouldn’t it just give away the other world, the secret the Japanese government had been working so hard to keep? But if they captured us and forced confessions out of us, the secret would be just as blown.

If they did get us, Japan would have to either rescue us, or shut us up permanently.

And one of those things was a lot simpler than the other.

I looked from side to side, then down at the floor of the bus. Could there be a bomb hidden in the vehicle’s innards? It would protect confidentiality, if nothing else. Obviously the American military wouldn’t want this operation to go public, considering that they were arbitrarily undertaking illegal action in a sovereign nation. An exploding bus would help cover their tracks.

Argh. This was awful. We really seemed completely trapped!

What to do what to do what to do?!

If only I could at least get Myusel and the others back home to Eldant... Argh, but... how?!

My mind circled and circled the same thoughts, but that didn’t get me anything new.

“Come on, now, I’m not going to wait all day,” Mr. Smith called from outside.

Crap! We were out of time! Fast! I had to do something, fast...!

“Like a bunch of disobedient children. Fine. I’ll take you by the scruff of the neck and—”

Before Mr. Smith finished, I saw Myusel blink and look off in a strange direction.

“Myusel? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I—” She seemed to be looking past the semi, up into the clear, blue sky. “I heard a sound...”

“A sound...?”

Myusel, with her elven blood, had sharper senses than the rest of us—especially her hearing. If she was picking up a sound...

One of the soldiers outside pointed past the trailer and shouted something I didn’t understand. We looked where he was pointing and saw—

“A helicopter? Another one?”

A helicopter was coming our way. But if it belonged to the Americans, why were the soldiers so upset? I squinted hard...

“A Huey...!” Minori-san whispered.

A Bell UH-1 Iroquois, popularly known as a Huey. A versatile military craft capable of everything from materials transport to armed attack missions, the Huey was a masterpiece of aircraft design. It’s pretty much guaranteed to show up in any Vietnam War movie. It has a truly classic “helicopter” shape; it’s probably what a lot of people think of when they think “military chopper.”

Of course, the American military in Japan used them, too—or had, in the past. They were outdated now, so the US forces in our country were replacing their Hueys with the successor model. Still, the choppers were so accomplished that most countries still had some in service.

Like Japan, for example.

“That’s—”

As we watched, the Huey hovered just overhead, and the side door opened. We could see a man inside. He was holding a long rifle with a prominent scope. A sniper rifle?

There was a noise—ba-shoom! —and the semi trailer rocked from side to side. There was a lot more shouting in English by the soldiers. They were talking too fast for me to catch most of what they said, but I thought I could pick out the word “sniper.”

The trailer rocked several more times, and the soldiers’ shouting grew more agitated. It seemed like the guy in the Huey was sniping the trailer. When I looked close, I could see the trailer’s tires were deflated, punctured by sniper bullets. The Sea Stallion looked like it had tried to get away, but the Huey had positioned itself above the Stallion first, pinning it in place.

Yes: the Huey was on the attack against the American army.

“He’s on our side...?”

The enemy of our enemy was not necessarily our friend. This could easily be the Chinese or the Russians trying to butt in and collect us again.

Mr. Smith shouted something. The soldiers all turn their guns on the Huey...

“Oh...”

There was a sort of poink, an almost disinterested sound totally at odds with the fraught atmosphere. A lump about the size of a clenched fist went falling into the street. One of the soldiers nearby shouted and threw himself to the ground.

“Grenade!”

That word, I got.

The soldier wanted everyone to know that thing was going to explode.

An instant later—the blast the soldiers and I were waiting for didn’t come. Instead, there was a spray of dense, white fog that spread out and left us all but blind.

I could hear lots of confused shouting from the soldiers, along with the occasional pop of gunfire. Thanks to our now-foggy world, though, it was impossible to tell exactly what was going on.

“Just what in the heck... Huh?”

I felt someone take my hand firmly, and realized Myusel had come up just beside me. She didn’t understand what was going on, either, and she was worried. I squeezed her hand back, and—

“Hrk?!” That was when someone reached through the smoke and grabbed me by the collar. “Wahghghgh!”

“Eek!”

Myusel, still holding my hand, was dragged out the window of the bus along with me. Beside us I could see Petralka, Elvia, and Minori-san, as well.

“Wha...?”

I finally registered that the hand that had pulled us out of the vehicle didn’t belong to one of the American soldiers. At the very least, he was wearing a different uniform, and he wasn’t carrying an M4A1.

In fact, it looked like some other group had shown up in the meantime and was engaged in a firefight with the American forces. The crack of gunfire. Stumbling American troops. Their body armor kept bullet hits from being fatal, but with all the extra padding they had brought to protect against Tifu Murottsu, their movements were slow and restricted. The mysterious attackers appeared to be running circles around them.

“Where did they...?” I mumbled vacantly.

“They seem to have come from beside the highway just after the smoke grenade went off,” Minori-san informed me.

“Shitaato a doneirufu?!” They’re our friends?! Elvia asked.

“Esu imene fuo esu imene yamu ton ebu a doneirufu”—Our enemies’ enemies might not be our friends, Petralka cautioned her.

Everything had happened so suddenly, all we could do was stand there.

“This way, run!”

The order came to us in Japanese. We saw the black-clad man who had pulled us out of the bus gesturing to us. We could only see his eyes under his headgear, so we didn’t know what his face looked like, but this was about as suspicious as a person could get.

Still...

“Don’t just stand there, go!”

We all glanced at each other—then shared a nod and hurried toward him. I still wasn’t sure who this guy was, but his fluent, unaccented Japanese made him more likely to be an ally than an American soldier. I had one simple thought in my mind: that this almost had to be better than getting captured by the Americans.

We let the man all but drag us over toward the side of the road. We had to get down on all fours to manage the climb up the concrete-reinforced incline beside the street; we worked our way up for the better part of two meters, tumbling into a forest at the top. It made sense: the street was blocked by the semi, but you could get around it on foot if you left the road.

“That way,” the man said, pointing into the trees. We started running. We stumbled and almost fell several times, but worked our way ahead, supporting each other. It felt like we had been running forever, but it probably had been hardly more than a minute. We emerged into something of a clearing. And there...

“LAVs?!”

Two squat hunks of steel were parked in the clearing.

They were LAVs, Light Armored Vehicles, used by the JSDF. And across from them was a so-called armored fighting vehicle that looked a lot like the LAVs. If I remembered right, it was what they referred to as a High-Mobility Vehicle, widely known as a Hayate.

It was designed for personnel transport—the military equivalent of our microbus, essentially. Obviously, like the LAVs, it was a hardy off-roader prepared for any terrain.

And in the middle of the group of vehicles stood soldiers holding Type 89 assault rifles.

There was no room for doubt now. The American army’s attackers had been the Japan Self-Defense Force.

The black-clad man ushered us into the back of the Hayate. “We’ll handle defense from here on out. Hop in and get to Mount Fuji.”

The Japanese forces still at the scene must have done a good job with the holding action, because the US soldiers didn’t come after us. The LAVs and the Hayate ran through the woods for a while before getting back onto a proper road and heading for the Sea of Trees.

The man in the passenger seat glanced back at us and said, “I think we lost them.” Presumably he meant the Americans. I thought he might be the same guy who had pulled us out of the microbus, but it was hard to tell one soldier from another when all you could see was their eyes.

“So, uh...” I said. “Thanks for saving us.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job,” he said firmly.

“Oh, that reminds me, what about Reito-san... I mean, the man from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office?”

“Our air support confirmed that he and the others escaped the scene under their own power.”

I guess the Huey had been for more than just snipers and hand grenades. It was there to help the infantry insert and then keep an eye on them.

“Still...” the man said darkly. “Orders or no orders, I never expected to be rescuing you.”

“Huh...?”

It almost sounded like he knew me personally. Who was this guy?

The soldier took off the balaclava covering his face, revealing an imposing middle-aged man. His eyes were sharp, focused, like he wasn’t looking at anything except his duty. I found myself almost overwhelmed by the feeling that I was seeing someone totally committed to his job.

But even so, I just didn’t recognize him. For a second, I thought maybe it was Satou-san, the garrison commander from Eldant, but no.

I was sweating it out when the man’s expression softened into a wry smile. “Let’s just say when I was the one attacking you, I didn’t come off any better than those Americans.”

When he was... attacking me? Wait... No way.

I felt myself go stiff. Once before, when the Japanese government felt I wasn’t doing what it wanted, it had sent a JSDF special-ops unit to assassinate me. According to Matoba-san, the government had later tried to claim that the unit’s real goal had only been to “take me into custody.”

“Mass-ter?”

“Shinichi?”

Myusel and Petralka seemed to have understood enough of the conversation to catch on to who this man was. Petralka said something to Elvia in rapid Eldant, and the wolf girl poised herself to pounce. Of course, she was still wearing her seatbelt.

“Settle down,” the man said softly, looking directly at Elvia. “That mission is over. My job today is to get you all safely to the wormhole in Fuji’s Sea of Trees.”

“But why—?”

“Why? That’s a strange question,” the man said, the corners of his lips tugging upward. “Because they ordered me to. Because it’s my mission. We fight for the good of this country, just like we always have. It’s nothing more and nothing less than that. We leave our personal feelings out of the job—or don’t we?”

These last, ironic words were aimed not at me, but at Minori-san. She just shrugged, silent.

Fair enough—from the perspective of the JSDF, this man was right. It was like—how could I put this? For better or for worse, he was a professional. Obviously, it wasn’t like he was my new best friend or anything, but the unshakable confidence in his voice was bracing.

Geez... That whole thing was a seriously close call.

I thought back on the attack. With the help of the Holy Eldant Empire, we had been able to drive back the JSDF forces—but when I really thought about it, it was partly thanks to more than a little good luck. There had been a number of things stacked against the Japanese soldiers: they were in another world, something completely unprecedented; they were faced with magic and beast people and other things they had never encountered before, along with pint-sized female soldiers. If they had been ordered to make a second attempt on my life, would we have been able to repel them again? The men of Satou-san’s garrison had taken out some of Garius’s picked knights once, after all...

This guy was probably a member of a zombie unit like Minori-san. Officially, he was already dead. Officially, he might not even be a member of the JSDF. Maybe that was why he could engage the US forces, even if not exactly head-to-head. Considering that what the Americans were doing was blatantly illegal, they wouldn’t want to make a big deal about it in public.

Anyway...

“Elvia, it’s all right,” I said, and she relaxed.

“We’ll reach Mount Fuji soon,” the man said. “The facility garrison is waiting for you there. Link up with them and get in the elevator.” Then he looked forward again. Over his shoulder, I could see the familiar scenery coming into view.

We’re finally safe, I thought, letting out a sigh of relief.

Unlike when we first arrived, we skipped all the medical exams and everything as we left. They ushered us directly into the elevator and sat us down. We weren’t even given time to change clothes.

I sat in the center, flanked by Myusel and Elvia, while Minori-san and Petralka sat across from us.

As the elevator slowly began to move, Myusel’s fingers brushed mine, and she whispered, “It’s all right now, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Even the Americans wouldn’t follow us this far. I mean, if they even knew about this place, probably none of that would have happened to us. If worst came to worst, I guess we could probably jump out of this elevator and fall back to Eldant—I hope.”

I thought I remembered hearing that gravity reversed about halfway through, so that if you didn’t have a rope tied to you, you would slam right into the ground—but it probably wouldn’t kill you. Since you would be back on the magical side of the wormhole, you could soften your landing even more with a burst of wind magic.

“I think we’re safe for real this time,” I said.

“...Yes, sir,” Myusel said, looking truly relieved.

“Thank goodness,” Elvia said, letting the tension flow out of her body. Apparently she hadn’t been any more relaxed than I had this whole time. Seeing the way she flopped back in her chair, I realized how tired she must have been.

There had been moments when I wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out, but here we were, all safe. The feeling filled my heart and mind.

“But...” The gondola picked up speed as it descended. We would hit the gravity switch before long, and then it would be the Eldant side pulling us up. “I guess this means I’m not going back to Japan for a while.”

I was so happy to be able to see my family, and to savor Akihabara for the first time in so long. But if the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and whoever else were going to be chasing me every time I showed up in Japan, then I wouldn’t be able to just bum around and shop. Imagine if I went to Comiket and the Americans showed up and started making trouble. It wasn’t likely, but picture the consequences.

“I think I’m all set on Japan for a while,” Minori-san said with a dry grin. “I’m not sure I could survive too many more visits like that.”

“When you’re right, you’re right.”

“Now that they’ve missed their chance to get their hands on us, all those other countries will probably pile on the diplomatic pressure trying to find out about our other world, but I guess whatever the government decides to do about that doesn’t really matter to us. The point is, by the next time we go home, I’ll bet the situation will have changed.”

“They should just go ahead and own up to this place.”

“The government’s put a lot of money into this. They won’t want to give it up too easily.”

If Japan couldn’t make back its investment with the resources, technology, or whatever else it could get from the other world, then it wouldn’t be eager to tell everyone else on Earth about it.

“Minori-san, hurry up and make it easier to get back and forth between Japan and Eldant.”

“Excuse me, but that’s not my job.”

From beside Minori-san, Petralka said, “We shall certainly go to Ja-pan again!”

“Huh? Uh, Petralka, you’re not freaked out or anything?”

She had been one false move away from being killed pretty much that entire time. But she looked more excited than any of us as she answered, “There are so many things we wished to purchase in Akiba, but were unable to. And we were not able to go to Ikebukuro’s Otome Road, which we wish to visit!”

She kicked her legs excitedly. I guess she really had a great time in Akihabara. Mmm. How awesome is the enchantment of the otaku Mecca.

“The next occasion ought to be an official visit on which we can meet Ja-pan’s king. Ruler to ruler.”

“King?”

I guess she meant the emperor. Or maybe she was hoping to meet the person with the most political power? That would be the prime minister. But prime ministers in Japan tended to go down to scandals on a pretty regular basis. What would an absolute ruler like Petralka think about revolving-door leadership like that?

As I was mulling over all this...

“I think we’re almost there,” Minori-san said. The vibrations in the elevator got smaller, and then it came to a stop.

“I guess we’re here.”

“Yes, sir,” Myusel nodded. As a half-elf, she was affected by the density of a location’s magical energy. She had kept several charged magical stones on her person during our trip to Japan, allowing her to feel normal, but it seemed she could still detect the difference with a magic-rich place like Eldant. Could feel it in her bones, if you will.

“We’re home...!”

The feeling dawned on me slowly.

It wasn’t like we had been in Japan for very long. Just three nights, in fact. And we weren’t back at our mansion yet or anything. But still, I felt a sense of relief, like I’d gotten back to the place I really belonged.

Geez... I guess I really had gotten used to life in Eldant. I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or not.

“Okay!” Minori-san said, undoing our seatbelts for us. Then she opened the metal doors, and we disembarked from the elevator.

“Ooh...”

Waiting for us outside was a spreading vista of blue sky, full of white clouds, along with a field of grass rustling gently in the breeze. Translucent sprites flitted this way and that around the plain. And—

“.........Huh?”

There was something else there too, something that looked distinctly out of place amidst the idyllic scenery. A group of knights, standing with their armor shining and their capes fluttering. Not just a couple, either. I would have guessed at least a hundred. I knew there were several different divisions of knights in Eldant, and it looked like every person in at least one of them had turned up.

What was with the show of strength?!

On top of that, lined up behind the knights, looking like they could send the entire squadron flying with a flick of their forelegs, sat three gigantic monsters. Long necks, huge wings... Dragons.

I knew, though, that they weren’t the real thing. If you looked very closely, you could see seams running along the dragons’ “skin,” with metal armor just visible beneath.

They were Faldras. False dragons. Man-made monsters created by the dwarves and the elves. They had begun life as nothing more than a prop for our movie, but the dwarves, perfectionists that they were, just kept fiddling with the formula until they had created a full-on, magic-powered transforming robot. There had been some talk of mass-producing them as weapons for the Eldant Empire, and it looked like some of the prototype units had come along to greet us.

And there, right in the middle of the crowd of knights, were three people I recognized.

One of them was a handsome young man wearing a very displeased expression—Petralka’s blood relative, captain of the knights, and an important imperial counselor. The noble, Garius en Cordobal.

The second person was an old man with a long beard—Prime Minister Zahar, another top advisor to the empress.

Finally, standing slightly behind these two closest of Petralka’s advisors, almost as if she were trying to stay inconspicuous, there was a small dwarf girl. Lauron Selioz. She had recently become Petralka’s body double—or more precisely, she controlled the doll that fulfilled that function.

“Your Majesty, how good to see you safe!” Prime Minister Zahar immediately picked Petralka out of the group emerging from the elevator.

“Mm, yes, we have returned,” Petralka said, puffing out her small chest importantly before the entourage that had come to greet her.

But...

“Ahem.” A second later, she seemed to remember how it was that she had gotten to Japan in the first place. She saw the stone-faced Garius, along with Lauron looking apologetic beside him. Her own expression turned drawn, and she took shelter behind Myusel.

“Uh, um, Your Majesty...?”

“I’m very sorry.”

The apology came from Lauron, before Garius could say anything.

Apparently, it hadn’t taken long after Petralka left for the body double to be found out. To be fair, I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t figured it out. Lauron had Her Majesty’s behavior and speech down to a T, but she didn’t know anything about the empress’s daily duties.

“Your Majesty...” Garius glared at Petralka. Petralka peeked out from behind Myusel, saw the expression on his face, and ducked back behind the maid, trying to make herself even smaller than before. Myusel herself was literally caught in the middle, totally at a loss what to do.

As for me, I looked around at the knights and the Faldras and said, “Er, what’s all this...?” Admittedly, I could take a guess.

“We heard there had been some kind of trouble in Ja-pan, and came prepared.”

Bingo.

I assumed they had heard something via the JSDF here.

“But it appears you are all in one piece.”

“Yeah, somehow.”

“We’ve heard roughly what happened. Shinichi, you did well to bring Her Majesty back safely. You have my thanks.”

“Oh, uh, n-no problem.” I bowed my head. I had been sure Garius was going to be ticked at me, but I guess he realized that Petralka had stowed away without any encouragement from me.

“As for you, Your Majesty.” As he spoke, Garius advanced menacingly.

“Sh—Shinichi!!” Petralka must have decided that Myusel wouldn’t be an effective enough shield, because this time she jumped behind me, clinging to the back of my shirt. Er, uh. That’s highly adorable, Your Majesty, and makes me very moe, but I think this is one time I can’t help you.

“Majesty, what were you thinking, acting so recklessly?” Garius was just as angry as I had feared. I half expected him to grab Petralka by the scruff of the neck and give her a firm spanking. She might have been the empress, but Garius was her cousin—almost like an older brother to her. At times like this, he was capable of upbraiding her as if he had completely forgotten the difference in their stations.

“W-We wished to see Ja-pan for ourselves! We had no choice!”

“How did you not have a choice?!”

“We were careful to leave things in Lauron’s hands!”

Uh, I’m not sure you could call that being careful. (I thought, but didn’t say.)

It wasn’t hard to imagine Lauron, suddenly charged with being the empress, in a very tight spot. I felt bad for her. It was impossible, and she would have known it was wrong, but she could hardly refuse a direct order from Her Majesty.

“And we also made certain to bring everyone souvenirs! For you in particular, Garius—for you, we have these BL books we bought in Akiba...”

“...Majesty!”

For an instant, Garius’s eyes had been drawn to the manga Petralka produced from her bag—I thought. I was probably imagining it.

At length, overwhelmed by the force of Garius’s glare, Petralka’s head drooped and she said, “...We are sorry.”

“Your Majesty, your person is the very embodiment of this empire. Please don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger,” Garius said. “Elder Zahar and myself lost years of our lives worrying.”

“Erk.........” Petralka gulped as she realized how real Garius’s concern for her was.

For quite a while after that, Petralka could only stand there with her shoulders slumped while Garius continued to lecture her like a mother hen.

So, it had been a few days since we got back to Eldant. Matoba-san let us know that the American army had entirely withdrawn, and Reito-san and the other agents were safe. The two governments quietly decided to pretend nothing had happened.

I didn’t know what would come next, but it looked like, just as Minori-san had said, America and any other countries that wanted to know what Japan was up to would have to find a more discreet way of figuring it out.

Ayasaki Hikaru-san, whom I had trusted to run Amutech while I was gone, reported that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Other than, I suppose, the tizzy into which Garius and Prime Minister Zahar had fallen when they realized Petralka had snuck away with me.

On that note...

I heard that the empress, after her little adventure and her thorough scolding from Garius, was not allowed to leave the castle for a while. I felt kind of bad for her, but, well, I figured she could amuse herself with the souvenirs she’d brought back from Japan. She especially seemed to like that Gaishi Foreman.

Elvia was absorbed in drawing, the art books she’d gotten in Akihabara close at hand. Minori-san continued to watch out for me, doing her daily military training as usual. Myusel went back to being a maid. And me, I returned to my job as Amutech’s general manager.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is, daily life in the Eldant Empire went back to normal for us pretty quickly. Even if I was a little surprised to discover that, for better or for worse, daily life in Japan wasn’t what I thought of when I thought “normal” anymore.

Then one day...

“Hmmm...”

I was fiddling with my phone in my room at our mansion. I opened the photos folder to find a whole slew of pictures I’d taken in Japan.

Actually, a lot of them were shots of the newest arrivals that I’d taken at the various bookstores, DVD places, and game shops we visited in Akihabara. With Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia along, it had been impossible to really take a close look at what was new and hot, so instead I snapped pictures with the intent of “shopping” later—by which I mean adding them to the list of “pilot products” to import to Eldant.

I slid my finger along the screen, scroll, scroll.

After a while, the photos changed to pictures of people instead of products: my dad. My mom. Shizuki. Elvia. Minori-san. Petralka... and Myusel.

I was sitting there, just gazing at pictures of Myusel smiling here, there, and everywhere in Akihabara, when a knock came at the door.

“Oh, uh, come in,” I said. I found my heart pounding for some reason.

Just as I suspected, it was Myusel. “Master, I’ve brought tea.” She was wearing her usual maid outfit, and came into the room with a cart of tea and sweets. As she set about making the tea, just like she always did, I found myself gazing at her the same way I had been at my phone, which was still in my hand.

“U-Um, Shinichi-sama? Is something wrong...?”

“Oh, no! Nahh!” The Myusel on my phone was wearing trendy Japanese clothing. The one in front of me was dressed in a maid uniform. My eyes wandered back and forth between the two of them... “I was just thinking, the clothes you wore in Japan looked good on you, but this maid outfit is more like, you know, you.”

“Is... Is that so?” I didn’t know why, but she blushed a little. The way she glanced at the floor, slightly shy, was (as one might expect) exceedingly cute.

Afraid that the sheer moe-ness of it would completely overwhelm me, I deliberately changed the subject. “Say, uh, Myusel?”

“Y-Yes?”

“Back in Japan... I mean, a lot happened, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Petralka, she was saying she wanted to go back, but, uh, Myusel, do you—”

I wondered if she wanted to go back to Japan, too. Maybe our experiences had left her hating Japan—or should I say, the world on the other side of the hyperspace wormhole. The thought had been bothering me ever since we got back.

Myusel just blinked, not saying anything. The expression on her face suggested she hadn’t been expecting this particular question.

Then, suddenly, she broke into a smile and said, “Me? It doesn’t matter where I am, Shinichi-sama, as long as I’m by your side.”

“Huh...?” Now it was my turn to blink.

Whoa, wait. Is she saying...?

“...Oh, uh, really? You really think so?”

“Yes!”

She grinned from ear to ear, cuter than ever. But I purposely decided not to take a picture. Instead, I focused on Myusel, taking in every detail of this moment, so I would never forget it.

（つづく）

To be Continued...