Horizon:Volume 10B Chapter 41

Chapter 41: Observers at the Gathering

When we see each other tonight

I’m finally going to say it

Point Allocation (Good Work)

●

Mitotsudaira was with the others on the roof of the transport ship’s bridge.

It was 4 AM, too early to even think of as morning. The transport ship was a full kilometer lower than the Musashi. Far Eastern transport ships could manage to remain afloat at that altitude, but it was still cold and most of them were wearing coats or stoles over their summer uniforms.

The Musashi and the Azuchi were too close to say they were “in the distance”. The Azuchi in particular was still rolled 90-degrees, so it was like a wall in the sky.

The students who had evacuated with them were down on the deck. They were all those who it had been determined would be at risk if they remained aboard the Musashi, but that didn’t imply any fault on their part. They had been removed because their posts would make it difficult to escape if they had to abandon ship in a hurry, or there were so many people in their area that the escape routes would become clogged.

The decision had mostly come down to luck, so they were all using audio or video spells to cheer on their friends who were staying on the Musashi. Some were even using long-range divine protections to help prepare those friends for battle.

The transport ship was moving further away. In another ten minutes or so, a total of around 20 ships – counting both evacuation ships and guard ships – would have left the combat airspace.

…A lot of people evacuated before this all began, but there were still so many left.

Mitotsudaira normally saw the students who fought on the front line, so she didn’t often get a chance to see these back-up students and ordinary citizens.

However, her group was different from them. They were looking down from above.

…You can sense our higher status in this.

That felt awkward to her, but then Horizon ran over and used the running start to spit water from her mouth and over the edge, causing a panic down below.

●

“What are you doing!?”

Below, the front row splash zone was fleeing, but those further back hadn’t seen what happened.

“Wh-what is it!? Some kinda ninja attack!?”

“Did the Chancellor do something again!?”

“Ahhhhhhhhh! Heaven’s pissing on usssss!”

And the game of telephone ended up mixing all the speculation together:

“The Chancellor and the 1st Special Officer are pissing down on us!”

And back up atop the bridge…

“It’s amazing that not one of them suspects Horizon, but it’s unusual for the 1st Special Duty Officer to get dragged into it like this.”

“These are completely false charges! I’m innocent!” protested the 1st Special Duty Officer with Mary by his side.

Mary had left Excalibur’s pieces with a Musashi IZUMO craftsman who had evacuated with them earlier, but she seemed to have wilted.

…I can’t just ask her if she’s alright.

Mitotsudaira had a tendency to misspeak and cause problems, so she decided to hold back here. The 1st Special Duty Officer’s mere presence should help support her, but doesn’t that make him no more than a supportive piece of furniture? This is far too easy for him, if you ask me.

Still, I can leave her be for now, she decided.

“Would you please join me, Mary-sama?”

Horizon stood before Mary with a bamboo water bottle in hand.

●

…U-umm.

Since Tenzou didn’t try to stop her, Mary decided it must be fine and stepped up to the edge of the deck with Horizon. She looked down from the railing, but…

“Oh, dear.”

A group of mostly boys were looking up at them from below. The vassal stepped next to her, and:

“Should I throw my spear at them?”

“Well, they look ready for it, so I don’t think that would surprise them.”

Tenzou nodded in agreement and Urquiaga asked him a question.

“Don’t you think they would feel better if we threw you down to them?”

“They don’t need to feel better through violence!”

“Okay, fine,” said Wet Man, wearing a stole over his otherwise nude body. He took Tenzou’s bamboo bottle, slipped it behind his crotch mosaic, and stood prominently up on the railing.

“Oh, yeahhhhh! I love pissing into the night skyyyy!”

He dumped the water out while running along the railing, causing a major panic down below.

●

Tenzou watched the commotion below until he realized Mary was laughing.

She had her hand over her mouth to hide the smile there, but her shoulders were shaking.

“Mary-dono.”

When he called her name, she brought her bamboo bottle to her mouth and tilted her head back.

Her throat gulped a few times as she drank an unusual amount for her. When she lowered her head again, she turned toward him and took a breath.

And she spoke with the ends of her eyebrows lowered in a smile.

“I feel like I finally managed to relax.”

“If only you could have relaxed to something less vulgar.”

Despite his complaint, he spread his arms a little. Mary approached him and…

“I’m going to cry.”

“I-I do not mind.”

“I really am. And hold you tight.”

“Judge! I do not mind!”

“I know my grip is a tight one, but w-will you be alright?”

“Well, you sometimes grab my collar so tight it constricts my windpipe and I nearly die, so as long as you can avoid doing that?”

That made her laugh. With tears spilling from the corners of her eyes.

“––––”

As she leaped into his arms, the nudist turned toward Horizon and spread his arms a little.

“I-I do not miiiiind.”

Horizon lifted her knee in a rapid kick straight into his crotch.

Mary’s shoulders began shaking even as the tears spilled from her eyes, so Tenzou really wished those two would stop ruining the moment.

●

He has a tendency to ruin the moment, but that’s my king for you, thought Mitotsudaira as she watched him and the 1st Special Duty Officer.

And while her king fell to his knees and slapped his lower belly, Horizon beckoned her over. She approached, wondering what this was about.

“I will be sending my arms to help distribute supplies, so would you please accompany Toori-sama? Asama-sama seems busy right now too.”

“What about Kimi?”

Mitotsudaira spotted Kimi in a cleared space on the bow where she had opened an auditory spell and started acting as the leader of a Musashi cheer squad.

That’s Kimi for you, thought Mitotsudaira as her king stood back up. And he turned her way.

“Hey, Nate. Finally decided to come over, huh?”

So he noticed, she thought. She had actually been keeping her distance from him since they gathered on Okutama’s bow. Because…

“I am sorry, my king. …I lost.”

“Sensei intervened with her gorilla power, right?”

A non-rotating bamboo bottle slammed into the side of her king’s head with enough force to crush the bottle vertically, but she grabbed his hand and tugged to keep him from collapsing as the water splashed down. She then looked in the direction the missile had come from and saw Oriotri waving with Sanyou by her side.

“Um, Mitotsudaira? What was that I intervened with?”

“Huh? Oh, judge! Your homeroom teacher power!”

“That’s what I thought.”

The others whispered “homeroom gorilla power”, but she couldn’t be blamed for that.

At any rate, she had approached enough to touch her king. And as he brushed the water off of himself…

“Yeah, sorry about that. So what’s this about you and me having a kid?”

“You have one with Tomo and with Suzu too. And apparently there’s one with Horizon as well.”

“My hair is such a hard worker… Oh, but from what I’ve seen, our daughter seems to take more after you when it comes to hair.”

That did seem to be the case.

“Quantity aside, my hairstyle is largely maintained by a protection.”

“Yeah, I knew that since I’ve seen you when you just left the bath at Bell-san’s place.”

The memorial flew in to hit her king. She was still holding his hand, so she swung him away from the impact to absorb the shock, but then she realized his boke spell would protect him and returned him back to his original position. When the memorial sent him flying, the left arm caught him in midair, did a flip, and landed. Everyone cheered and applauded, so the left arm bowed and then ran back to its master.

…They’ve really gotten the hang of this.

Their bizarre actions when removed used to be mostly guided by Horizon, but they had started showing some definite personality of their own ever since their trip to Sanada.

After watching the arm go and turning back toward her king, Mitotsudaira saw him reaching his hand out toward her. He stuck his hand into her hair and more massaged than rubbed her head.

“Good girl. Stay, stay.”

“I-I am not a dog.”

“Yeah, you’re my knight.”

“But I don’t deserve to be. …I lost and needed Sensei to jump in and save me.”

“Only cause the other side got a little carried away though, right? Remember, Sensei’s a gorilla strong enough to erase someone from the face of the-”

A second one hit him, so she dealt with it the same way as before. And once her king recovered…

“To get right to the point, Sensei only intervened to say ‘no killing, okay?’, don’t you think?”

“Shouldn’t I just have done what she did too?”

Live or die, she had intended to draw on all her strength. So whether she lived or died would have been the result of that and she felt Kasuya had viewed it the same way. So in the end, Kasuya’s strength had simply been greater than Mitotsudaira’s.

But her king…

“You can’t kill, Nate. It’s just how you are, how I am, how Horizon is, and how we all are. Cause we’re doing this so we won’t lose anyone. So…

So…

“It’s not about winning or losing. That was a good way for it to end.”

“But if I am to be your knight…”

“That’s not enough, Nate.” Her king smiled. “You need to be my knight…and our kid’s mom.”

Beyond her king, Asama was adjusting some settings on several sign frames when she jerked awkwardly and shattered a few of the sign frames. Hanami quickly worked to repair and restore them, but Asama turned her head to glare this way.

Why was it Mitotsudaira could so clearly tell Asama’s hand gesture meant “deal with this”? She sent back a “will do” gesture and then asked her king a question as he rubbed her head.

“We are not actually that girl’s parents.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right from a biological view.”

But…

“If we go with that, it makes you wonder what we were like in the future, doesn’t it?”

“Well…”

She didn’t have an answer. He was right. In a future without her king, her position would be drastically different, to the point of being a complete stranger.

From her position here, she couldn’t imagine what she would be like there. But…

“If you don’t know, then the outcome doesn’t count until you do,” said her king. “And once you find the answer, you can go tell her. I’ll be super nervous about finding out if you got it right, but let’s do it anyway, okay?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, that girl’s been asking you the question this whole time. And she’s going to keep doubting until you give her an answer. Because…”

She understood. She had experienced something like it before.

“That’s how I was back when we lost Horizon and I let the despair win…”

“She doesn’t have someone like me. But she only cares about getting an answer from you. Whether or not she wins or loses. So if you can go and give her that answer,” he told her. “Won’t that be even better?”

She had to agree with that. But one thing didn’t sit right with her here.

“A knight shouldn’t need her king’s help like this.”

“Nate.”

“Yes?”

“When I pet you, rub you, and lick you, it’s not so much a reward for you as it is something I really enjoy doing.”

So…

“If you want to repay me for my help, you can just let me do those things even more.”

She nearly died as blood rushed to her face in response to everything that had happened over the last while.

●

She really self-destructed there, thought Asama in a detached way. But in a more personal way…

…Th-the same thing happens to me, doesn’t it!?

But she could at least use biological control protections to suppress her blushing and blood pressure, but she placed a lid on her standards by telling herself he had the most fun wrestling with Horizon. But…

…Naruze has drawn a few books about her doing it as an offering to her king, hasn’t she?

Naruze and Naito weren’t here right now.

Vice President: “Any luck tracing those two? Sorry for putting so much on your plate.”

Asama: “It all goes through me anyway, so I just have to apply a filter.”

The Protestants had sent a report. But…

Asama: “It seems the two of them landed in the mountains of a Catholic principality. They should have survival spells and protections, plus Technomagie is good for making those things yourself, so they should be fine as long as they weren’t injured…”

Smoking Girl: “We don’t know when we can go collect them, though.”

Even if the Musashi were no longer in combat, their course was still restricted to the national borders. In fact, they would have to follow that even more strictly after the battle was over.

Those two had wings they could use to fly to the Musashi, but flight was hard work. They could probably manage if they had fallen near a city where they could resupply, but…

Uqui: “A Catholic principality won’t be a kind place for Technohexen. Even if they find a city, it might not open its gates to them. Can you get a divine transmission through?”

Asama: “I’m trying, but the spells I have on hand don’t have enough power, so I’ll have to route it through the Musashi or the shrine later on.”

Those two had been defeated by their daughters.

Asama had as well. They had clearly been shaken by the situation and that had led to mistakes, but…

…It’s a complicated situation.

It occurred to Asama that each of the Ten Spears claiming to be their children had their own unique questions and thoughts about their parents.

Did they each receive the answers to those questions? Asama wasn’t confident about that in her case.

…And right now…

Other than Hashiba, the Ten Spears were aboard the ships that had evacuated to the other side of the two larger ships.

●

Angie was the first to sit down. She was already in her M.H.R.R. summer uniform and holding a bamboo bottle containing a refreshing drink, but…

“Ahh! It feels like admitting defeat, but I can’t help it! I’m sitting!”

Kasuya watched as she sat down directly on the roof of the transport ship’s bridge.

Yoshiaki sat next, followed by Sakon.

When Kiyomasa also sat, Fukushima followed suit next to her.

As for Kasuya, Yoshiaki pointed behind her and…

“Kasuya, aren’t you going to sit?”

“Well, my beast transformation still hasn’t fully faded…”

Specifically, her tail. It was a standard feature of bipedal nonhumans who retained their humanoid shape, but…

…My tail grows out from my tailbone.

Dog and cat tails generally extended back and up. That was because their caudal vertebrae extended back from their hipbone and was supported by their back muscles.

In other words, the tail grew like an extension of the spine.

That was the same with humanoids. When standing straight, the tailbone pointed straight down as an extension of the spine.

So when growing a tail during a beast transformation, it would generally grow straight down instead of backwards.

That wasn’t a problem during a complete beast transformation where even her clothing was transformed.

But this had been an incomplete transformation where her uniform remained and the tail still hadn’t gone away due to the lingering effects of the transformation. That made it a problem.

During a complete transformation, the clothing was based on the shape of her body, so it was something like an outer skin designed for two legs. It would force her downwards-pointing tail to stick back and up instead.

But her uniform wasn’t designed that way. Her tail was pushing down in the back of her inner suit, threatening to push down the underwear part. And if she gathered her strength to lift the tail behind her, it would lift her skirt up, which was a problem in its own way.

…So I’m stuck without a good solution!

This had happened from time to time before, but her tail at least had somewhere to go if she sat in a chair. That wasn’t the case when sitting directly on the floor. It would catch on the floor.

These issues were why bulky clothing had become in vogue for nonhumans starting in the middle ages and their uniforms were adjusted to let their tail out in an upwards direction, but Kasuya was a normal human most of the time and she couldn’t go around in a uniform with a hole in the rear.

The way the Mogami Chancellor’s clothes dealt with her nine tails was particularly famous among nonhumans and Kasuya wondered if she should come up with something like that.

But during the Keichou Campaign, she had seen her mother’s mother’s tail was directed upwards despite her age. That had earned an “Oh, she’s still got it!” reaction from Kasuya, but it also reminded her that she was still a long way off from being able to call herself the Reine des Garous.

“Hmm.”

“What’re you thinking about, Takeko?”

“Eh? Oh, just about my species.”

“No one will say anything if you just lie down. We’ll definitely be thinking it, though.”

“How is that better!?”

Then Hirano passed her a lernen figur. It was in a folder and she took a quick peek instead of fully opening it. She saw someone pictured there.

“Father?”

●

Kasuya had heard all about her father from her mother.

She had heard he was a good king.

…But he’s a nudist.

She had heard he was a king who never overlooked when someone was having trouble.

…But he’s a nudist.

She had heard he was a king who had corrected her mother when she had lost her way.

…But he’s a nudist.

She had heard he was a king who everyone wanted to support.

…But he’s a nudist.

She had heard he was a king who her mother respected and adored.

…But he’s a nudist.

When Kasuya groaned in thought, Hirano tilted her head.

“What is it, Kasuya?”

“I just feel like I’ve finally gained an objective view of his greatest flaw…”

Then again, this seemed less like an issue with her father and more like an issue with her mother’s aesthetic tastes or ethics, or maybe it was just something that took getting used to. But Hirano grabbed the lernen figure and…

“It feels to me like I’ve found the person who comes closest to matching my ideals and I’m not sure what to do about it… Am I really so much like my mom? Or rather, I can’t believe what good taste my mom has. How lucky of a life did she live to grow up with someone so incredible and willing. How could she have not gone for it?”

“You certainly have a lot of, uh, respect for him.”

“Yes. What’s wrong with being a nudist? You generally strip down in your room, don’t you?”

The nearby male warriors all turned their way, keeping straight faces.

“That is true, but you don’t have to say it in public!”

“We must take after him there. I mean, we each have a nudist father and a non-nudist mother, which makes us indoor nudist, right? It’s that great!?”

“I have no idea what could be ‘great’ about that.”

But Kasuya did have a thought on the matter.

“The Battle of Mikawa turned out differently here than in our world, but at this point I’m glad it did. At the very least, I’m glad what our mothers told us about didn’t happen.”

●

Hirano agreed with Kasuya.

The Battle of Mikawa their mothers had told them about had ended in failure.

“They didn’t make it in time for the Andamio de la Ejecución, their king touched the wall and vanished, and all they had left was remorse… They were then allowed to escape before they began the hard journey to collect the Logismoi Oplo.”

Their mothers and the rest collected the Logismoi Oplo and they tried to use them to kill destiny for the Genesis Project, but they failed.

Hirano and the others were now trying to stop their parents and their plan to correct the Genesis Project had led to the creation of a faction within P.A. Oda led by Matsudaira Motonobu.

Another faction was simply acting as the Oda clan and, if they came into conflict with the Genesis Project faction, they had decided they would fight it out and the stronger would take charge. That Oda faction had been led by Shibata’s group.

Takenaka’s original job had been to bridge the gap between the Oda and Matsudaira clans as a top official of the Saitou clan that existed at the midpoint between the two, but according to her…

“They told me they didn’t have anywhere near enough personnel.”

So she had been placed in charge of Hirano and the others instead. Ishikawa had later joined them and they had become something like a special forces unit, but…

…We weren’t really supposed to interfere.

That had changed at the Battle of Mikawa.

They didn’t know why it happened, but the two who were supposed to die survived and their parents hadn’t experienced their great tragedy.

“That came as a terrible shock for you and Katagiri-kun, didn’t it?”

“Of course it did,” replied Kasuya. “I mean, it had been so hard to just watch as our mothers’ expectations were betrayed and they went through such a terrible experience, but it had been necessary so we could ‘take over’ afterwards.”

But their parents had succeeded and they had followed the occasional news about their parents’ actions after that as well.

They had decided to interfere after the Armada Battle. That battle had ended more or less the way they had been told, but the Musashi had begun to show its own strength in combat. Takenaka had made the suggestion and Nobunaga had approved it.

Nobunaga thought the changes to the present were her fault. Because…

…In our mothers’ future, they created the Logismoi Oplo but the Genesis Project hadn’t taken its current form and Nobunaga hadn’t existed.

She had considered their intervention from the perspective of the Oda clan’s leader. She had made an impartial decision based on that perspective.

That was an automaton for you.

The present situation was the result.

But “the present” was changed. Their mothers weren’t grieving.

“If we are to be born into this ‘present’…”

Hirano imagined it.

“Can my mom actually do it?”

Her mother had a tendency to “pull back” at critical moments. That was how the other mothers had described her. But on that note…

“Will your mom be able to escape the doggy treatment?”

“M-my mother can act when she needs to!”

Then Katagiri raised his hand.

“I-I want my mom to stay the way she is! I don’t want her with that nudist!”

“Mh, Katagiri-kun, you can’t just call my dad a nudist like that!”

“Hirano! Hirano! That’s rich coming from you!”

“No, Kasuya, when Katagiri-kun says it, he’s talking about a filthy nudist. When I say it, I’m talking about a hopeless nudist. Surely you can tell the difference. Because for you he’s a kingly nudist. See, it makes perfect sense.”

“Someone! Someone please translate this for me!”

Hirano looked around to see a fair number of people glaring at her. Wakisaka sighed and…

“I’m glad this ended on a happy note for you, Hirano.”

“Did it not for you?”

“Well, I guess you could say it ended well, but shooting them down left a bad taste in my mouth and we never did get to ask them who was whose mama.”

“Right.” Kiyomasa raised her hand. “Everything went well enough with my mother, but with the other…I mostly just feel resentment.”

Someone made an “ah” of realization there: Fukushima. She turned toward Kiyomasa and…

“What happened with Kani-dono?”

“Well,” said Kiyomasa. “She did well…and called herself Uni.”

“Uni!?”

That had everyone’s attention.

●

Kiyomasa told the story of her battle against Kani. When she got to the part with Excalibur, Kasuya spoke up.

“Oh, so it was you who was making all those one-note Excalibur blasts while I was battling my mother.”

Kiyomasa wanted to protest calling it “one-note”, but she realized that was maybe accurate. And concerning Kani…

“She is with the Musashi evacuees now. Once this ship battle is complete, she should return to M.H.R.R. to complete the process to serve under Fukushima-sama again.”

“There must be a lot of details to work out when it is related to such an important history recreation,” said Fukushima with the corners of her eyes a little red and swollen.

She had been crying.

She hadn’t said anything out loud, but she had settled things with her mother and, while that was important when it came to understanding her mother, Kiyomasa could tell that was what made it feel so incomplete for her.

…It’s a difficult issue.

It was for Kiyomasa too and it had to be for them all.

“It looks like it’s going to go the way you expected, but it never quite does.”

“You mean your family issues?”

There was that, but she wasn’t being that specific.

“We’ve been awaiting this day both before and after we arrived here. We prepared for it, received assistance, and I think we achieved a decent result. But…for some reason I still feel some regret and wonder if we really did the right thing.”

“We’ve been thinking so much about stopping them, but once we do stop them, the rest is our responsibility.”

Yoshiaki was right.

Were they getting cold feet after belatedly feeling the weight of that responsibility? Kiyomasa wasn’t sure. At any rate, there was a lot they still hadn’t received an answer for, but they were happy aside from that.

They had managed to stop their parents before any sorrow befell them. So she felt they should accept that as good enough.

“Okay, okay, okay. The next phase is about to begin.”

Just then, Takenaka climbed the stairs to the roof. Seeing her, the nearby warriors cleared a path and the seated Ten Spears made an opening for her too. As they looked to each other and exchanged glances, Kiyomasa spoke to Takenaka.

“Good work.”

●

Takenaka thought she should be saying that to all of them.

“No, no. My strategy didn’t do much good, so it’s all of your good work we have to thank for this.”

“No, Takenaka-sama, I meant for everything leading up to this.”

Takenaka considered what that meant.

…How far back?

After being invited away from her clan, she had ended up here. She had been so young back then. At heart, at least.

“Well, at least I received a warm welcome. Not many workplaces will hand you an ero bag when you hold out your hand.”

She had received a lot of special privileges and such. And…

“The Double Border Crest and destiny were keeping an eye on all of you, but I was fine as long as I didn’t say anything weird, so there wasn’t much pressure on me.”

But it really came down to this.

“There were so many times when I thought it would all be so much easier if we just told the truth to Musashi. But the people who actually tried that and carelessly leaked your secrets ended up taken by the Double Border Crest…so I was so glad I didn’t do anything hasty. And I’m glad all of us made it this far.”

She said “all of us”, but Hachisuka’s mental exhaustion prevented her from leaving her god of war and Hashiba wasn’t here, but…

“Let’s keep on working together until the Genesis Project takes effect, okay?”

“…Testament!”

A good response. She then made a quick comment about what was to come.

“If you are going to go see your parents, make sure it’s after the Genesis Project is too far along for them to mess it up. Until then, you can travel between M.H.R.R. and K.P.A. Italia, so spend your time training or sightseeing.”

“Oh, we can’t visit them right away?”

It was unusual for Hirano to be so selfish at times like this. But these were the rules.

“No matter how this battle turns out, meeting with them would be seen as a provocation. So you can’t do that until the Genesis Project is past the point of no return.”

“Understood,” said Hirano with a hint of displeasure. Knowing her, she would gather data on her parents on her own. And she could even communicate with her mother via divine mail if it was part of their official duties as shrine maidens. Takenaka decided to overlook it if that was all she did.

“Oh? Is it starting?”

She turned around to see several red lights.

Far in the distance, the 90-degree-rolled Azuchi had opened fire on the Musashi.

At the same time, the evacuated orchestra club played a blast of music while several lernen figurs appeared in the sky over Osaka Bay to explain that this was a Testament Union approved history recreation.

“It is starting!”

An exchange of defense barriers and cannon fire had begun in the sky.

Back to Chapter 40

Return to Main Page

Forward to Chapter 42