Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===1: It Refuses to Fade to Sepia===

His final mission had been a lot more complex than most everyone thought. After all, it began with the Shogunate and the Kingdom competing to be the first to kill some terrorists, but eventually ended with him being pursued by both the samurai and knights while he tried to protect a small queen of only 10 years old.

It all started with the queen studying abroad in the Dejima-like New Yokohama Domain.

But a faction that wanted to extend those Dejima-like rules onto the mainland threatened the Shogunate with a letter written using the queen’s forged handwriting and took over a university on the island. However, they failed, their deception was discovered, and they had no choice but to hole up on the campus where the queen happened to be.

That faction was quickly suppressed and it looked like the incident was at an end.

But that was only the beginning.

It came down to a series of truly bizarre events, but the Shogunate’s armored samurai and the Kingdom’s armored knights worked hard to thoroughly slaughter that criminal group with their extraordinary firepower. Like some kind of sick military exercise held in the presence of the queen, they seemed to compete to see who could reduce more enemies to mincemeat as if that would earn her favor. Not only that, but they competed to see who could reach the small queen first and worked to obstruct each other, creating a devastating firefight on what should have been an enemy-less battlefield.

She was, after all, the queen of the Kingdom, one of the world’s most powerful nations.

Despite their isolationist policies, the Shogunate officials wanted a diplomatic contact point, and the Kingdom’s military officials were desperate to earn the distinction of having protected their queen. The samurai and knights below the officials went berserk in their attempt to prove their valor in battle. From top to bottom, it was utter chaos, like a game of ultra-heavyweight beach flags where steel and gunpowder blossomed. They were all supposedly working to protect the queen, but no one there was paying any attention to whether or not their stray shots would hit her or their steel feet would trample her slender body.

You would almost have thought they were more interested in retrieving her corpse – or a small piece of it – and bringing it back to their country for some kind of reward. It was like watching people who so revered the blood and bones of the saints that they started physically grappling over their relics.

And for those who wanted to do the Kingdom a favor to create a solid diplomatic connection, maybe that really was enough.

They all obeyed the righteousness and desire within themselves by grabbing for that soft flag with such strength they were bound to crush the life out of it, but very few actually managed to reach the queen.

From the Kingdom, only a knight named John Kniferidge.

From the Shogunate, only a Hidden One named Sugiyado Souha.

One used extraordinary armor and the other used an extraordinary blade.

When Sugiyado saw that 10-year-old queen in the greatest danger of her life due to so many people working to “rescue” her, why had he decided to intervene in a major world event even if it meant betraying his own country? No, why had he decided to protect that small life?

He could not put to words exactly why the scales of his heart had tilted in that direction.

But he felt it had been worth it.

That close yet distant neighbor had said she loved this country built atop outdated isolationist policies and that she had moved there to study abroad so she could learn more about it. That girl had held such an awkward, immature, and flawed ideal in her heart. But as wild as he had been at the time, he had decided she was worth fighting to protect even if it meant betting his entire life on it.

It had ended in a draw.

He had successfully protected the queen, but he had been stripped of his wings as a result.

Yes, because a true monster had shown itself there.