HEAVY OBJECT:MonicaSS

Status: Incomplete

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Heavy Object AD >>War is Born of Knowledge and Education

Part 1

Paris, Normandy District.

As you likely know, that city existed at the very center of a safe country and was the combined capital of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s home country. Land values were so ridiculously high it was hard to even rent an apartment there. Buying one’s own home sweet home was completely out of the question, but there were a few locations that took up a large chunk of land even in Paris, one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

One of those was the Royal Techno Academy.

Quenser Barbotage had returned there this afternoon.

He wore the dark blue blazer of the Academy’s uniform. That Azur Soleil – azure sun – was the symbol of a prestigious school that strict mothers aspired to so much that they would throw their child into the entrance exam wars whether the child liked it or not. And blue was undeniably the color of the Legitimacy Kingdom. In other words, that uniform was worn by the children who would support the future of that world power.

Quenser traveled the world destroying the colossal Objects which could survive a nuclear bomb and the online news called him a Dragon Killer, but his proper home was this school full of green lawns that took students from elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and graduate school.

Allen Jackrose, a male classmate who wore the same uniform but wore plastic elbow and knee pads, had this to say.

“Hey now. If you were coming back from the battlefield, you should’ve told me. Now we can’t even throw you a surprise party. And did you come straight here from the airport? I hope you at least paid your parents a visit, Quensette.”

“Don’t call me that. That’s the legendary maid who only appears at the cultural festival. And I couldn’t stay at home because my old man is sheltering yet another girl like he’s taking in an abandoned cat. This one’s the illegitimate child of some noble and she’s been caught in the middle of some inheritance issues! I step inside my room to find that girl has transformed it into her independent nation of cake and tea. Ahh, I’ll have to find a cheap hotel to spend the night.”

“Your old man has got one hell of a chivalrous spirit for some plain-looking guy in a suit. He’s a knight from the age of Saint George. They don’t even make movies about that kind of retro hero anymore.”

“What he has is a kind of sickness, same as a compulsive gambler or speed demon. He doesn’t even think about how it will benefit him! From what I’ve heard, it was something similar that led him to marry my mom while they were still students.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve got the same blood in your veins.”

Since the Academy had an elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school, and all the related research buildings, the campus was both sprawling and complicated. It was so easy to get lost that visitors and hopeful students called it a dungeon.

They were in a dining hall.

Allen looked perfectly at home, but Quenser was looking around restlessly even as he leaned back in his chair and rested his legs on the table.

“I can’t believe I’m in here. The sign out front says it’s the noble dining hall, right? I feel out of place as a commoner. It’s like seeing the pink tiles of the girls locker room.”

“Quensette, I’m not going to even ask why you know the color of the tiles in the girls locker room. But is it that weird? It’s hard for me to tell as a poor noble with the proper ID but not much else. My home is a 500-year-old rundown apartment, you know?”

“That just makes it rarer. Is it a world heritage site made from an old monastery or something?” Quenser breathed an exasperated sigh. “Anyway, how have your film studies been going? Weren’t you saying you planned to sell your script to a distribution company? How’d that go?”

“I made a connection with a producer and got their digital business card.” Allen pulled out his smartphone and waved it around. “They’re actually holding a competition today, but that was before all this trouble. To be honest, I’m carrying a print-out of my script under my clothes. Once this is over, I’m gonna run right there. Hopefully I’ll look like the star showing up just in the nick of time.”

“So even the Academy’s geniuses have trouble finding work, huh? Why not get some help from that…what was it called? That club you can only join if your grades are near the top in the school? Um, the Golden Lion Club? You’re part of that secret salon, aren’t you?”

“That’s only useful if you want strict military and government contacts. It’s a complete waste of time for the more relaxed entertainment industry.”

“Wow, that sounds good to me. I want an in as an Object designer, so I wish you’d hand over all those connections.”

“Got anything useful to trade me? …Anyway, I’m just clever enough to get perfect scores on my tests. When they hold me up like some kind of genius for that, it all feels so silly I wish I could trade lives with someone else.”

Quenser and Allen both yawned.

They could hear some loud voices coming from outside the building.

“Speaking of the girls your old man rescues, have you heard what Monica is up to?”

“Lady Monica, huh?”

Quenser’s voice was dripping with scorn, but Allen leaned forward.

“I heard she’s become an idol that sells decently enough. She visits different battlefields around the world and introduces cutting-edge Objects for everyone back in their living rooms! It’s damn amazing. She really can turn anything into a success. Hard to believe that’s the same girl who had to be sheltered in your food cellar after her family collapsed. I bet I could write an entire script just telling her life story.”

“Ha ha! Her!? Smiling for the camera? Pushing her tits together and shaking her ass for some sex appeal? Not a chance! She can’t go a sentence without calling you a servant, she criticizes how you open a damn door, she insists you stand by her side to make her look better, and she can’t get enough of picking on a commoner like me! There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell she knows how to fake a smile!!”

“Um, uh…”

“And another thing. A battlefield idol reporter? She introduces cutting-edge Objects??? Nope, nope. There’s just no way. Wow, just imagining it gives me goose bumps. Besides, she’s lousy with machines! Whenever I brought her a portable TV or radio to keep her busy in our cramped cellar, she would break it before half a day was up and come crying to me every single time! Do you have any idea how many times I had to fix those things!? And how did that crazy girl even break them that badly!?”

“…”

“Hm? What’s the matter, Allen? You’ve gotten awfully quiet.”

Quenser looked confused and Allen finally spoke up in an apologetic way.

“Sorry, Quensette. I realize now that I really should have warned you sooner.”

“Warned me about what? Wait, don’t tell me. Did Monica get an extreme fan club here after her idol debut and they don’t take kindly to people badmouthing her? That’s just creepy!! There has to be something wrong with you to worship her of all people!!”

“Not…quite what I meant.”

Allen pointed toward Quenser.

No, he was technically pointing behind Quenser.

“Monica happened to have plans on campus, so she ended up returning here the same time as you.”

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!?”

He tried to spin around real quick, but it was too late.

Before he could, two arms wrapped around his neck from behind his chair. Someone’s full body weight leaned on him, a sweet scent and some warmth surrounded him, and a girl’s voice whispered in his ear as if to a lover.

The twintail demon rubbed her cheek against him as she spoke.

“Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeenserrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?”

“Hgh!! Hgh, Monikaaaaa!! Why are you here and why do you already have me in a headlock!?”

“Sorry if it prickles a bit. I was in a planning meeting for the surprise campus concert, so this Cinderella dress isn’t complete yet. It still has safety pins here and there. Hee hee hee hee hee.”

He could not turn around.

She had his head held in place and his butt had risen from the chair a bit, but she only spoke to him ever so gently.

“I’m sure you’re exhausted after your long trip, but let’s go have a chat over there. It seems you need a refresher course on how a knight and servant should treat his master☆”

“No, I’ve never forgotten a word you’ve said, Lady Monica. You are looking as beautiful as ever and your nobility is clearly greater than a mere external golden ratio because I can sense the glow of the soul within you! You remind me of a pure white blossom shining in the moonlight at the peak of Mont Blanc!”

“I don’t want blatant lies! Mont Blanc is snowy year round, so there are no flowers growing at its peak!! Come here, servant!! You dare remove your collar and forget your vow of servitude? Some reeducation is clearly in order!!!!!”

“Pff, wait, you don’t mean that thing where you tap my shoulders with that stick, do-…wait, no, no! Wait, Lady Monica! Why are you bringing that pepper shaker to my eye!? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait!!!???”

The look in Allen’s eyes was warm as he watched the sacrifice dragged away, chair and all.

(God, I’m jealous. What could be better than flirting with a former noble and current idol? Monica chose to be a battlefield idol reporter so she could chase after Quensette and Quensette keeps accidentally placing himself right in her strike zone. Why don’t they just get married already???)

But unfortunately, this was not the time to be flirting.

After all…

With a loud boom, the dining hall’s outer wall collapsed.

Yes, a handmade railgun shell had shot through the wall.

It was fortunate everyone was knocked to the ground by the shockwave because it prevented them from being skewered by the shower of wreckage that followed.

“Ugh, cough!!”

“Those goddamn teachers! Have they finally pulled out that experimental nuclear fusion pellet launcher!?”

Allen did not actually approach the window, which was nailed shut with boards, to check. Approaching the torn-up wall now would get you filled with holes.

He kept his head low and checked his smartphone.

If he had actually sent out a drone, it would have been immediately located and shot down by an experimental laser emitter. He was viewing footage from the swiveling camera attached to the top of the bell tower.

The green lawn had been torn up in places and tractors and snowplows with metal plates attached for armor were driving around. The things that looked like monstrous volleyball launchers were handmade cannons created by the best of each department. The naphtha-filled flamethrower was on the kinder end of the spectrum. There was also a compressed gas cannon using liquid nitrogen and a short-range missile launcher that misused proof-of-concept models for standalone rockets.

There was not just one side making a unilateral attack. Makeshift barricades were set up all over and people were leaning out from behind them to fire on the others. The students and teachers were using weapons made from the knowledge of their respective technical schools.

Either the school was self-governed or the police had decided their standard equipment was not up to the task because there was no sign of the local authorities. That was hardly surprising when everyone had firepower capable of blowing right through your average armored truck. A police car or riot shield would be as useless as paper. The police had only set up shields outside the fence to make sure no stray bullets escaped the campus.

The weapon that had attacked the dining hall was an especially brutal model: an experimental railgun loaded on the back of an armored truck.

Quenser saw something from the floor after his chair flipped over backwards.

He saw Monica recklessly and unsteadily attempting to stand up in her pinned-together dress and he saw more of the dining hall’s outer wall being blown away.

The railgun had been fired again.

“It’s gonna hit- bwah!!!???”

Before he could give a warning, he was flipped over again.

And as the shell cut across the dining hall, it caught perfectly on just the skirt of Monica’s dress, blew it away, and broke through into the hallway.

A few scraps of cloth fluttered through the air like swan feathers.

Quenser thought blood was going to drip from his ears, but he poured all his strength into his voice.

“That was some impressive control!! But that’s a railgun, right!? Why didn’t it blow you to smithereens!?”

“My dress is only pinned together, so only the outer cloth came off.”

“…I really don’t think that’s enough to explain it.”

“Do not act like I should be dead, servant!”

“Well, I’m not gonna complain too much when I get to see some skin!!”

Super-mini dress Monica belatedly hid her thighs behind a hand and used the other hand to slap him, but with how long she had known him, she should have known he would see that as a reward.

Woken up by the slap, Quenser dragged the twintail idol to the floor so she would not be hit by the third railgun shot and he shouted to Allen.

“Can we get student reinforcements!?”

“They won’t arrive in time from where they are. If we don’t get out of here now, the teachers’ troops will be in here.”

Some dangerous words were being used here.

And it was not restricted to Quenser’s group.

The shouts heard outside the building were very different from the healthy ones of runners and sports practice.

“Wahh!? Someone from that fanatical Animal Committee has finally unlocked the cages! Are those crocodiles!? No, they’re gators!!”

“Ulljenne and the others are not weapons!! Animals are our neighbors and must be protected!! If you keep complaining, I’ll sue you for defamation!!”

“Liar!! You put them in special-made reinforced suits to increase the power of their jaws!! Hey, someone bring in the taser! Hook it up to the battery and amp for the light music club’s guerilla concert!!”

“Outta the way! Don’t get anywhere near any water!! Charge complete! Let’s do this!! Prepare for discharge!!!!!”

A loud zap, a blinding flash of light, and several screams followed.

The railgun was frightening, but a pack of gators sent a different type of fear crawling along one’s fingertips. The overall situation was best described as chaotic and the makeshift strategy meeting continued in the dining hall.

Allen held his head in his hands as he spoke.

“Unfortunately, we have to abandon the dining hall. I guess that means the teachers will take the fridges and ovens. We’re losing some important infrastructure here. We need to hurry out of here with as much food and water as we can carry!!”

“In that case, we should tear down some curtains and make some bags. The Island Nation has these convenient things called furoshiki! They can make all sorts of bags depending on how you tie them!!”

“Quensette, what will you do!?”

“You’re abandoning this place, right?” The student grinned. “Then leave all the kitchen work to the legendary maid Quensette. I’ll tamper with the gas range a bit. When those greedy teachers come marching in here, the whole room will blow up and turn all the leftover food to ashes. There won’t be a single crumb left for them to eat.”

Allen whistled.

“Scorched earth tactics, huh? That’s pretty cruel. And if you have it turned to ashes right before their eyes, they’ll probably explode with infighting. And here I thought neither of you two would be returning home at a time like this.”

“To be clear, I never would’ve come had I known!!” shouted Quenser. “The second I entered the campus, the gate slammed shut behind me and fighting erupted all around me! But since I’m here, I’m gonna make sure every last one of them regrets it!!!!!”

“I was right to drag you two into this. Anyway, let’s scram and begin fighting back against those teachers!!”

“Wait, how long do you plan to keep holding me, servant!?”

“Until you stop shaking!!”

Once the necessary work was complete, Quenser’s group grabbed an electric nail gun and a makeshift slingshot bow gun made from a bicycle tire tube before leaving the dining hall.

Yes.

They were in Paris, right smack in the center of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s home country.

The radiant Royal Techno Academy was split between the students and teachers, creating a truly unprecedented battlefield.

Part 2

The teachers’ reinforcements arrived sooner than expected.

Quenser gave a frantic shout while running down the hallway.

“Hurry, hurry!”

“Wait, Quensette! You’re forgetting something!!”

“The teachers are already here, so the dining hall is gonna blow! Besides, I’ve got a weapon, food, my wallet, and a condom. What could I be forgetting!?”

“The heel of Monica’s pump broke and she tripped!!”

“Oh, geez, really!?”

Quenser was annoyed, but he ran back, placed his hands on super-mini dress Monica’s back and below her knees, picked her up princess carry style, and resumed his escape. He handed the twintail girl what he had been carrying.

“Kyah!! D-don’t touch me, servant!!”

“Shut up! Say a word more and I’ll silence you with a kiss!!”

They continued arguing back and forth as he ran down the hallway.

Both Quenser’s hands were full, so they had to rely on Allen’s electric nail gun and Monica’s foil, a light-weight fencing sabre. However…

“There they are! It’s the students!!”

“We can take them right now. Restrain them!!”

Some adults suddenly charged out from another hallway.

Quenser’s throat went dry, but…

“Servant. Sway to the right and take one step forward!”

Monica thrust out her sports sabre while still in his arms. As soon as it lightly contacted the lab-coat-wearing adults in the chest or thigh, bluish-white sparks exploded out.

“Abwah!?”

The professors collapsed and convulsed on the ground while Monica calmly brushed her hair back with a hand.

“Oh, excuse me. One of those was a male épée finishing blow. How indecent of me. But this is all those dimwitted teachers can manage. Fencing already used an electric current to determine a hit, so hook it up to one of the building’s AEDs and voilà.”

“Quit acting like you know how to use machines. I put that together as a sidearm for myself, but I see you still have a bad habit of stealing people’s toys.”

“Servant.”

“Forget I said anything, my lady.”

That said, it clearly had less to do with her fencing skills and more to do with the teachers being distracted by the skin exposed by the idol’s torn dress, but Quenser held his tongue since a high-voltage attack from a defibrillator was too much for him. And they could not hang around here much longer.

They started running again.

They needed to reach safety.

He and Allen broke through the glass covering the faculty smoking room and hid behind a thin partition just as a gas explosion blew up the dining hall behind them.

Quenser grimaced at the intense pain in his ears from the boom.

“Dammit! And I can’t even complain since I did it!!”

“Let’s keep going. We’re almost to a student barricade.”

They finally managed to scramble back to their fellow students.

There were quite a few students huddled behind the barricade. Nobles and commoners normally would not even share the same coffee beans, but they got along just fine when they had a common enemy.

Even so, they could not let their guard down.

Something cut across just past the barricade. And it was accompanied by an explosive noise that sounded like the buzzing of a bee amplified thousands or even tens of thousands of times.

“Um, as you can see, a machinegun is a weapon capable of tearing a hole in a single point by focusing its fire there. Now, you might think a Gatling gun using gunpowder is the most powerful of them all, but…”

“Shit! It’s that infamous professor! He’s as nutty as ever!!”

“Fall back, fall back!! Why the hell is he giving a lecture like normal with all this going on!? And the world’s most dangerous lecture at that! He’s got a whiteboard and a heavy machinegun! They couldn’t show this kind of experiment on an educational show!!”

“The explosive can also come in liquid and gas form,” continued the professor. “For example, if you take LNG meant for a gas turbine and keep just the right amount in the barrel at all times, you can get a truuuly incredible rate of fire like this.”

Fortunately, the crazy old lab coat man with wild gray hair apparently had the same 5-inch visual range as someone walking while using their smartphone, so he did not seem to notice them. He slowly cut across in front of the barricade while carrying the heavy machinegun on his back and rolling the wheeled whiteboard along with him. Of course, he was also firing an unbelievable amount of bullets as he did so. Those trying to escape bought some time with a wheeled barricade made by taking experimental steel panels mixed with heat-resistant reactive material and stuffing it into a giant metal basket meant to carry basketballs, but they could tell it was being worn down while sparks flew everywhere. It would not last forever.

Quenser gulped and spoke.

“Is he like the grim reaper wandering around an online game’s field? He could tear down these thin walls in an instant if he tried. The worst part is that he’s doing this while completely sober. Who the hell gave him a teaching license?”

“Yeah, but he’s one of the people officially recognized for bringing the Legitimacy Kingdom’s Objects from the First to the Second Generation. And he was on a list of the 100 scientists most likely to build a time machine this century.”

“So that’s what happens to a genius who loses sight of common sense. Quensette, try not to end up like him, okay?”

Once the explosive old man left and they breathed a sigh of relief, Allen explained the situation.

It had begun with some confusing matter related to the suspected misappropriation of funds for teaching supplies.

Top Student Allen simplified it as follows: a conflict between the teachers and students.

“Basically, some idiot teacher was bribed into purchasing a bunch of unneeded teaching supplies, so the students started protesting with a megaphone in hand because we have a right to a proper education. And it devolved into this.”

It was not simple enough to just say the naïve and idealistic children took issue with the messy world of the adults. Quenser had chosen the Royal Techno Academy to assist his dream of being an Object designer because its students were the treasures of the Legitimacy Kingdom. Its graduates would be directly involved in the growth of all that world power’s countries. Fail to properly educate them and the entire world power would suffer.

“The conflict started small, but it got way worse once the beautiful Student Council President was attacked after gathering the entire high school behind her. According to what I heard in the Golden Lion Club, she was independently researching the misappropriation of funds and was just about to submit a secret file to a prosecutor. And popular people have a lot of influence, for better or for worse.”

A pile of desks and chairs blocked a portion of the hallway. Quenser’s group was hiding behind those along with other boys and girls in the same blue blazers. Quenser and Allen handed out the food and water they had brought from the dining hall.

“You said this is a conflict between the teachers and students, but do all the teachers support that side?”

“How should I know? But if a teacher approaches with their hands up and insists they want to join our side, who’s going to believe them? They’d just get ganged up on and beaten. And anyone who refuses to take a side will just get attacked by both sides. You’ve gotta pick a side to protect yourself, but the teachers only have one option there. Everyone has to pick a side, but they won’t want to die.”

Quenser groaned.

Having no opening for surrender was its own kind of tragedy. People would be forced to fight to the end even if they did not want to fight at all.

“The Student Council President, who is getting complete bedrest at the hospital, was worried about that too. I only know what I’ve overheard at that salon, but her attempt to find some conclusive evidence apparently came from a benevolent desire to end this before the conflict grew. But the teachers rejected that by attacking her. It’s their own fault. And that’s what led to this macaroni western.”

“Is that really all there is to it? I mean, this is trouble at a school right? Won’t the government’s…um, what was it called? Office of Academics? Won’t the stuffed shirts there come mediate this?”

“Have you forgotten where we are? This is the Royal Techno Academy.”

“Royal means it’s funded by national tax money, right!? So don’t they have to follow the rules!?”

“Officially, yes. But the Office of Academics can’t actually do much since so much here involves military secrets. I sometimes hear about those bureaucratic issues at the Golden Lion Club. If one faction took control of the Academy, it would break the balance of power, so the Offices of Military Affairs, Academics, Administration, and plenty of others all want to be in charge. The school is effectively self-governed because it falls into a gap between all those competing offices.”

That meant the adults could not just talk this out.

In that case, they had to grab giant blackboard triangles and metal bats to fight it out until one side or the other accepted defeat.

War was the absolute worst thing humanity had created, but as more wars had been fought, Quenser felt like they had cleaned them up or at least specialized them with a structure that prevented them from lasting too long. The clean wars accepted by the housewives in front of their TVs would never have ended up like this.

(Wars used to be so long they could last for 30 years or 100 years, right? Who has time to mess with that?)

“Students like us outnumber the teachers by a lot, but the teachers have better tech. Each of their attacks is ridiculously destructive and some of them are trying to send out a bunch of remote-controlled unmanned weapons to fill out their numbers. Plus, they know the layout of the Academy better than we do. When you combine personnel with tech, it’s pretty much a stalemate.”

For one thing, what was the win condition here?

Did the students have to slaughter every last teacher to end this? And was the opposite an option? Since neither side could surrender, there had to be some kind of target they could destroy to end it, but what exactly could they destroy to convince the other side they had lost?

And.

If they did not convince the other side, they could only continue killing the enemy until they had. They had to keep providing “examples” until one side was too afraid to keep going.

At some point, the afternoon grew into evening.

Flames colored their surroundings and the air smelled of farewells.

“The Board Chairman and the Headmaster. We need to target them,” said Allen. “Those are their pillars of support. In a 2-hour movie, they’d be the ones to appear in the first 15 minutes and reappear in the last 15 minutes. And the evidence suggests one of the two was involved in the misappropriation of funds. It doesn’t matter if we actually find an account book. We just have to capture a VIP who knows the whole story. That should convince the others to give up. Then we can grab a megaphone and shout, ‘Are any of the teachers looking nervous!? Then they’re the criminals who got the rest of you innocent teachers involved in this battle. Once they’re gone, you can surrender safely.’ ”

Twintailed Monica responded to that with exasperation while tapping the floor with her stun sabre made from a modified foil.

“Wouldn’t that just start a witch hunt? You’re just asking them to hand over anyone who acts even remotely suspicious. They might just be a naturally heavy sweater.”

“It’s only fair. They’re already targeting the elementary school, middle school, and university Student Council Presidents because they’re the pillars of the students. Plus, the teachers will be easier to defeat if they start attacking each other out of suspicion. I don’t want to deal with this any longer than necessary, so I want to end this nonsense and run over to the screenwriting competition.”

Allen explained it all quite smoothly, but there was no real hatred in his voice.

His emotions had reached the point where driving the teacher’s to absolute destruction felt completely natural.

It was not that he would lose his cool and kill them.

He could kill them while keeping his cool.

The attack on the beautiful Student Council President may have affected the students more than expected.

As “outsiders”, Quenser and Monica had to exchange a glance and shrug. A lot more had happened in their short absence than they had expected.

“But VIPs like that will be strictly guarded, won’t they? What do we do about that?”

“That’s why we’re fighting over infrastructure now: food, water, power, gas, air conditioning, space to sleep, communications, etc. If this drags on long enough, clothing and detergent will carry a lot more weight. …Whatever happens, it’s important to drive your opponent into an environment where simply breathing wears them down. Then you attack their headquarters after they lose their focus.”

That was why Quenser, Allen, and the others had been in charge of the dining hall. Not even the toughest soldiers could keep fighting without food to eat. That had ended in failure, but the teachers had lost their chance at the food as well.

Similar things were happening all over campus. There was fighting over the drink and bread vending machines and even over the chlorine-smelling water of the indoor pool. That was due to a rumor that the tap water could be shut off at any time. They had heard there were students in school swimsuits and teachers in racing swimsuits beating each other with kickboards and lane lines.

“Hold on, Monica. Why are you eating macarons? Where did you get those from!?”

“Those Culinary Research Club girls over there gave them to me. They said something about morale being a surprisingly important factor. Servant, if you show me you have recalled how to treat your master, I might just grant you one.”

“Lady Monicaaaa!!”

“Well done. Now say ‘woof’ for me.”

The twintail girl pulled a snack from its clear wrapping and tossed it toward Quenser’s mouth. It was degrading, but sugar was absurdly attractive to his exhausted mind.

“Come to think of it, those girls were carrying bags of salt like they’re the most important things in the world.”

“Munch, munch. For real? I know it’s necessary, but I really want to avoid being holed up in here for so long we have to subsist off of water and minerals. Now that’s a scary thought.”

Then Allen’s smartphone received an email.

After scanning through it, he showed it to Quenser and Monica.

“It’s time to get to work.”

“What is it now?”

“Just when I thought we had cut off the teachers’ access to food, that meddlesome school store has apparently opened a mobile shop for the teachers. They’ve gotten some emergency rations from outside the Academy fence. Those meals were prepared by parents worried about their kids, but now they’re just going to fill the teachers’ bellies.”

“So our job is to get rid of that food cart, right?”

“Unfortunately. We’ll blow it away and capture the aproned young woman in charge of the store. We’ll threaten her with our projectile weapons and finish her off with Monica’s stun sabre. Does everyone know what to do?”

“Sigh. Why does it sound like I have the most dangerous job?” asked Monica. “Did the Legitimacy Kingdom’s spirit of chivalry decide to take a vacation?”

“Calm down. Now while she is an adult, she’s not actually a teacher, so this is something of a gray zone. But we know the teachers are relying on the school store, so this will help apply pressure to them.”

Part 3

Every part of the building was a brutal scene. The hallways and stairs were impassable due to piles of desks and chairs. There were holes in the walls and floors and collapsed building materials were scattered across the floors. The bulletin boards on the wall had only the corners of printouts remaining after the paper was violently torn away, perhaps for use as kindling.

Amid it all, a redheaded woman wearing a lab coat and a long skirt walked along a hallway of professors. She held a wicker basket, she stood tall with dignity, and she nodded at the armed men and women she passed.

“Hello. I am here with supplies. The water bottles won’t last too long since they were only filled from the tap, but you never know when the tap water will be stopped.”

“Oh, thanks. The students are right over there. Make sure they don’t attack you.”

After watching the professors rush to the front line, the woman breathed a sigh of relief.

She continued walking until she had left the danger zone and then she spoke to no one in particular.

“Looks like we’re in the clear.”

There was a sound like the wind beating at a curtain.

Quenser poked his head out from below her long skirt.

“Phew. Sorry about this for, um, a few different reasons.”

“It’s fine. I am an intermediary, after all.”

The Academy was divided between the students and teachers, but with an elementary through graduate school, not everyone knew each other. Generally, people only recognized people from the same class, lab, or club. They had used that fact to have mature-looking students change clothes, temporarily infiltrate the teachers, and gather intelligence.

But the opposite was not an option.

Unless there was a genius girl who had skipped a bunch of grades and become a visiting lecturer, not even the most baby-faced teacher could pass themselves off as a fellow kid.

“It’s this classroom, right?” said Quenser. “Okay, I’ll leave here. You be careful, okay?”

“I will. By the way, do I really look that mature? I’m hesitant to ask, but that means I look sexy and not old, right!?”

“I’m praying you can finally graduate this year. Also, the panties worn below pantyhose don’t have to be beige. Something more exciting would be better. Like red. Adieu.”

After a bitter farewell with the mature upperclassman girl, Quenser entered one of the empty classrooms. Allen and Monica were already there after arriving by different routes.

“Servant… Don’t you think your solution was somewhat inelegant?”

“Quensette, you never change, do you? But maybe you shouldn’t do that in front of Monica. Or are you trying to get her attention?”

“That doesn’t matter. We need to do something about the school store woman’s food cart that’s giving food to the teachers, right? You said there was a safe route from here, didn’t you?”

With impromptu weapons in hand and zip ties to use as handcuffs, they got started.

The hallways and stairs were blocked by occasional barricades and the areas controlled by either side were arranged in a confusing manner, but there were exits. There were holes large enough to crawl through in the walls and floors and some had rope ladders dangling from them. It was arranged so looking at the blueprint would not tell you where to go.

Super-mini dress Monica sounded annoyed (while being very cautious of her skirt during the extreme vertical movement).

“I hope you didn’t set it up this way just to make it feel more like a secret base.”

“Setting the mood is surprisingly important. A battle begins before the fighting actually starts.”

“S-servants should not act more knowledgeable than their master!!”

“You really haven’t changed at all!! Not that’s gonna stop me from enjoying the view up your skirt!!”

“Do I need to stomp on your face, servant!?”

While they argued, they made it outside the building. All the doors and windows were marked by the teachers and had gun turrets aimed at them, so only the holes in the walls were accessible. The flowers of a flower bed apparently happened to hide this hole from view.

They did not feel any freer with the evening sky overhead.

Allen spoke while curled up in his blue blazer with elbow and knee pads.

“Let’s stay low and follow the walls around to the back of the building. It’s a lot easier than sneaking through the ducts like in an action movie. The route between the middle school building and the shortest fence is their silk road. That will bring us right by it.”

There was no real reason to disagree. Quenser and Monica followed Allen as he led the way.

There was little cover outside, but that did not mean it was completely deserted. Some people with highly specialized bicycles used the almost complete silence to ride around out there. They were couriers. They were probably from the Cycle Racing Club or something, but they were transporting supplies between buildings or delivering letters containing information that could not fall into the teachers’ hands.

Since the teachers had an armored truck with a flamethrower on top making occasional patrols, that job really was putting their life at risk.

“Stop, Quensette. Don’t leave the bushes. We need a detour.”

“Seriously? But if we’re spotted, we’ll be blown to bits.”

“Look up. See those ‘party balls’ hanging up there? Those weren’t in the reports, so the teachers must have set them up recently.”

Quenser and Monica hesitantly looked up and saw something like fist-sized fruits hanging from the tops of the streetlights. They were cans full of explosives and they had razor blades blatantly tied on with wire. If those exploded over your head, you would be hit by a storm of blades.

“Those are tripwires, right? It’s different from the normal method, but there’s a straight line from the bottom of the can to the ground.”

“That’s why I called them ‘party balls’, Quensette. But there might be another switch besides that obvious tripwire. And that half-assed setup might go off just from a strong gust of wind shaking the can. It would be best to find another way around, right?”

They ever-so-carefully crossed that deadly territory.

After returning to the bushes and circling to the back of the building, they all groaned together.

“This is crazy. It’s that railgun!!”

“So even if it stands out too much, they’re completely focused on securing a food supply, huh? But that just shows how cornered they feel.”

“U-um, you’re kidding, right? All we have is my stun sabre, an electric nail gun, a slingshot bow gun made from a bicycle tire tube, and around 20 zip ties. Surely you aren’t planning to charge an armored truck with a pellet launcher attached!”

Monica’s face tensed with her modified foil in hand.

Her response was only natural after seeing that thing’s destructive power earlier. If the teachers noticed them, they would be blown to smithereens along with whatever wall they were hiding behind.

Quenser and Allen exchanged a glance.

“It’s not possible.”

“Not even a little.”

Twintail Monica breathed a sigh of relief when she heard that, but then things changed.

Allen pulled a small egg-shaped device from his pocket, surreptitiously tossed it toward the railgun truck, and spoke up while operating his smartphone.

“Allen to High School General Building Rooftop Team. Requesting support.”

“?”

It happened just as the battlefield idol reporter frowned.

“Activating marker. Volleyball regulars, go get it!!”

Several small scale explosions followed.

More and more melon-sized items were fired down from the rooftop.

In no time, the armored truck protecting the food cart was engulfed in orange flames. Rather than the dry explosions of explosives, this was the sticky flames of Molotov cocktails.

Quenser and Allen sounded carefree as they looked up at the roof.

“Damn, you gotta love those demons in bloomers.”

“It’s even hotter when they have those elbow and knee pads on. You don’t see them all geared up like that very often.”

“You mean like how the exact same busty girl has a way stronger upperclassman aura when she’s wearing a Student Council armband?”

“God is in the details, right?”

The two continued their calm chat while the explosions continued. Meanwhile, twintail Monica was nearly knocked to the ground, so she clung to Quenser and shouted. He enjoyed her warmth, but the proximity of the stun sabre caused his balls to shrink. He could not focus.

“Wh-what is that!?”

“You can’t tell, Monica? It’s a volleyball launcher. But the balls are filled with gasoline instead of air. What I threw over there was a kid’s personal alarm, so they’re using the GPS signal to aim the bombs.”

“Oh?” asked Quenser. “That must be tricky since they don’t break like a bottle would. What’s the ignition method?”

“Molotov cocktails.”

“Wait, so they’ve taped eye drop bottles all over them or something? Talk about dangerous!”

“Your slingshot bow gun’s arrowheads are pretty much the same, aren’t they? You stuffed a bunch of things in a glass fiber bag the size of a ping pong ball so the contents will scatter like a shower when it hits.”

“It’s more like a plastic balloon with caps attached here and there. The Academy developed it to scatter the jelly food for killing roaches.”

While those two described the weapons like they were on an infomercial, the railgun truck burned before their eyes. Monica was still clinging to Quenser and trembling.

“I-it isn’t going to fire back on us, is it?”

“Railguns – or rather, the large-capacity batteries used to power them – are generally weak to heat. With that much fire covering it, it’ll swell out like Island Nation rice cakes and stop working altogether. I mean, it is only an experimental prototype. It doesn’t have proper insulation or cooling.”

Incidentally, the aproned young woman pulling around the food cart had completely panicked and fallen onto her butt. They would not even need Monica’s foil or the zip ties. That woman had lost the will to fight.

“Does that complete our mission, Allen? If we don’t show some mercy soon, she’s going to piss herself.”

“Not a chance. There’s still some trash left over there.”

The problem was the burning armored truck.

“Then let’s end it quickly. The driver is going to scramble out before they roast to death and the volleyball team is leaning over the edge of the roof despite the danger. Let’s finish the driver off for good before they can cause some damage with a handmade rocket launcher or something.”

Quenser held the slingshot bow gun made from a tire tube and Allen held the electric nail gun as they began to approach the burning armored truck.

But then something odd happened.

A girl of about 10 ran out from the wall of a nearby building.

“Stop!!”

She ran on unsteady legs to reach the (remains of?) the armored truck, spun around, and held her small hands out as wide as she could as if to protect it.

The short-haired girl wore something like a red suit with a tight miniskirt and she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“That’s enough! Both sides lay down your weapons! It’s wrong for us to be killing each other like this!!”

All of a sudden, she was in tear-jerker mode.

Quenser’s group had been interrupted at the last second and was not sure what was happening, so they could not decide whether they should run out there or crouch back down.

“Who is she!? A pacifist from the elementary school!?”

“Wait, this is bad!”

The burning armored truck’s door opened behind the girl.

Just as they had expected, a large, muscular man grabbed the girl’s shoulder from behind. Then he wrapped his arm around her neck to use her as a shield.

“None of you move or this kid-…!!”

Quenser and Allen started moving before he had finished his threat.

With two dry sounds, orange sparks flew from the side of the armored truck behind the large man.

He cowered down and glanced back without thinking.

“W-wait, you understand the situation, don’t you? I have a hostage!!”

Quenser and Allen ignored that and boldly approached him.

But instead of burning with an indomitable fighting spirit, they did so while tilting their heads a little.

“Hey, Allen. Do you know how to shoot a gun?”

“Don’t ask me. You’re the battlefield student, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but they don’t let students touch them. So how are you supposed to hold one? Like this? Or do you hold it sideways like this? Looks like something from a mafia movie, doesn’t it?”

“No, like this. See?”

Another odd sound rang out.

The sparks coming from the armored truck behind the cowering man were enough to know a metal nail had shot right past him at high speed.

“Quit acting like you know what you’re doing. You didn’t even hit him.”

“Hm, that’s weird.”

“You’re supposed to use the…sight, is it called? Line that up to aim.”

“Yeah, but does your handmade bow gun even have a sight?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, not that it matters.”

“Wha-, wait, hostage!”

The large man trembled and stammered, but it was too late. It was obvious a 10-year-old girl was not large enough to function as a pure shield.

They continued approaching him.

And those inscrutable modern children spoke their conclusion in unison.

“We just have to keep trying until we hit.”

“We just have to keep trying until we hit.”

Only a scream followed.

The large man shoved the small girl away, turned tail, and ran.

Quenser lowered his bow gun and caught the girl, but Allen was different.

A few dull sounds rang out in quick succession.

And while watching the large man writhing on the ground holding his leg, he spat out some cold words.

“What an idiot. The hostage was the only reason he was still alive.”

But Quenser was in no position to make a witty comment.

The red suit girl in his arms gave him a solid chomp.

“Ow!? Wait, wait, let me explain! That was all an act to get him to let go of his hostage! It was all a plan that put your safety first!!”

“You fool!! Why do you have to take the easy way out? He had lost his will to fight. He was trembling. You didn’t have to go that far!!”

The struggling girl tried to approach the injured man, so Quenser quickly and firmly held her back. He did not want her taken hostage again.

But once twintailed Monica decided it was safe and finally came out of hiding, she looked at him like he was absolute scum. She poked him with the tip of her modified-foil stun sabre.

“Okay, servant. That was assault, groping, and kidnapping. That’s three outs. Better luck next life.”

“Wait, really!? You’re counting that!? But it was necessary to keep her safe. If I had let her go and do what she wanted, she might have been killed! Would you arrest someone for molestation after they rescued a drowning child from the ocean? Of course not!”

Allen also sounded somewhat gloomy.

“Quensette.”

“Please, say something. You’re about to start on an important plan to capture the Board Chairman or Headmaster, so you need all the help you can get, right? You don’t want to lose a useful soldier to bizarre accusations, do you?”

“Quensette.”

“Hey, Allen, what’s with that tone? Is no one on my side??? F-fine then. I’ll follow the safe country rules. But please let me choose my lawyer! I-If I’m remembering right, my aunt’s cousin’s friend’s neighbor’s tutor’s social media friend’s impersonator is an eloquent son of a bitch from some law office or another!!”

“This isn’t about that, Quensette.”

Allen pointed at Quenser.

No, at the girl in his arms.

“Now that I have a closer look, this is Board Chairman Elritta Champs-Élysées.”

“Hm?”

Quenser looked down at the girl in his arms.

She responded by clearing her throat.

Part 4

Apparently, a lot – a very, very lot – had changed while Quenser was gone.

“Wasn’t the Board Chairman a gray-haired old lady!? Why’d she de-age all of a sudden!?”

For the time being, they pulled the full food cart to the nearby high school gym which functioned as a student base. It was closer to dinnertime than lunchtime and the students there had barely had anything to eat, so after placating the rush of students with food, they asked what was going on.

The students inside the gym wore a variety of uniforms: basketball, hockey, tennis, squash, cheerleading, gymnastics, etc. Other than the thick hockey pads, there did not seem to be much of a logical reason for it. Maybe they were reducing individual anxiety by providing a sense of belonging or showing their team unity.

The meals they shared were sandwiches from Honey & Bread, a popular bakery just off campus which was a well-known battleground at lunchtime. That only increased the resentment toward the teachers for trying to steal the food.

Since the aproned young woman from the school store was in a gray zone outside either side of the fight, they had zip tied her hands behind her back, hung the personal alarm from her neck, and told her to walk out through the Academy’s front gate. They had of course already attached that GPS identifier to an email saying “I am a foolish turkey. Please do not shoot me.” Of course, this was not done out of kindness. They simply did not have the food or guards to spare for a prisoner and the more people they took with them, the harder it would be.

Finally, it was time to get down to business.

Allen sounded carefree as he grabbed a club sandwich.

“You’re thinking of the previous Board Chairman who had a stroke recently. It ended up not being life threatening, but she was replaced regardless. Now, the Academy’s Board Chairman has been part of the Champs-Élysées family for generations. Lady Elritta here was chosen this time.”

Quenser and Monica looked to the 10-year-old girl and exchanged a glance.

“Wait, wait. Allen, didn’t you say either the Board Chairman or Headmaster was involved in the misappropriation of funds? You’re saying this girl is the culprit? Don’t make me laugh. We’re not talking about shoplifting from a candy store here.”

“We can’t be so sure,” readily stated that awful friend. “The Academy is said to be the greatest educational institute for the sciences, but it’s come to light that its finances are actually in dire straits. The new Board Chairman would have had a bunch of problems dumped on her lap right off the bat, so she would have been desperate to find a way to pay off debts which had piled up for several generations. She didn’t make the debts, but they became her problem when the baton was passed to her. So if the devil began whispering in her ear, you can never predict what she would do. I mean, she could leave the actual financial calculations to her secretary or accountant. If she was told she could claim ignorance and get away with it, she might just agree and join the other criminals.”

“Wait, how little do you trust her?”

When Quenser asked that, Elritta (who had ended up sitting in his lap) tore a bite out of a fruit and cream sandwich with a sulky look on her face.

“That is not what happened,” she said while munching on the sandwich.

Any amount of spice must have been too much for her because she showed no interest in the honey mustard chicken sandwiches or the peppery BLTs. It was possible it was more the idea of spiciness she avoided than the actual flavor. The influence of people’s first impressions could be quite powerful in the culinary world.

“First of all, it is very odd that the Academy has split between students and teachers.”

“What? This isn’t some conspiracy theory about the Capitalist Corporations or Information Alliance infiltrating the Academy to sabotage our future Object development, is it???”

Monica sounded highly skeptical, but that was not Elritta’s point.

She had this to say:

“You have it backwards.”

“?”

“You think the teachers are trying to attack the students because they do not know how to deal with the financial malpractice and so you have to fight back, correct?”

“Yes. What about it?”

Allen sensed something ominous about that question, so he was very cautious in his question.

But Board Chairman Elritta gave a derisive snort and continued.

“That is backwards. The teachers are not behind this. The true villain is manipulating the teachers into attacking the students.”

The sandwich in Quenser’s mouth never seemed to reach his throat.

That premise – even as a hypothetical – was far too dangerous.

“Hold on. What does that mean?”

“The villain is not one of the teachers. You will never find a teacher who was involved in the financial malpractice.”

“Wait, wait! What are you-…?”

“What the true villain fears most is having the adults find the evidence of that malpractice. Not just childish complaints, but properly-researched adult testimony. So they split the Academy between students and teachers in order to get rid of the faculty members who were investigating the matter. You were unwittingly acting as the villain’s vanguard. To kill the very people who were revealing the truth.”

No.

If it was this much of a shock for Quenser, then how bad would it be for Allen who had been fighting this whole time based on a hatred he thought was only natural? He seemed to be having trouble getting oxygen to his throat.

He held his body in his arms, which produced a crinkling of paper from his stomach.

That was the script he had planned to submit to that contest.

Even if it was idealistic or self-aggrandizing, that was a product of his entire moral worldview.

“…”

Even when he thought at least one of the teachers was the villain, he would have felt some guilt.

But what if they were all innocent?

What did that make someone who had chased them around, beaten them, and shot at them?

How was he supposed to work through that guilt???

“I will explain it piece by piece.” Elritta sounded apologetic as she licked some cream from her fingers. “Let me get one important thing out of the way first. The misappropriation of funds for teaching materials does not exist. There was financial malpractice, but it was an entirely different matter.”

“A different matter?”

“This is a ‘royal’ academy that runs on public money, right? No matter how wildly it spends, that money is not going to dry up so easily. If its finances are in the red, there must be a good reason for it. And not something as insignificant as getting a kickback for purchasing unnecessary supplies.”

Then what was this about?

Elritta provided an answer to their question.

“War.”

“?”

“This is a different form of war.”

The Board Chairman’s answer did not explain much of anything.

She must have realized that because the red suit girl added more.

“Ahem. Objects are everything in modern wars. Even if you gather tens of thousands of puny foot soldiers, they will be slaughtered if just one colossal nuke-resistant Object is deployed. That prevents any simpler power games. If the other side has one Object and we have three, then we know the result before the fighting begins and we demand they withdraw. That is the ideal form of the clean wars.”

“So what? What does that have to do with the Academy?”

“Have you forgotten? Objects are nothing but technology and their development is influenced in large part by the subjects taught at the Academy. In fact, there are even rumors that an Object is being built in secret below the campus.”

“Surely that isn’t happening. We’re not talking about that Councilor Flide who the online news couldn’t quit talking about.”

“Yes, that part is not actually true.” Elritta grinned. “But it is possible to make it appear true.”

They were approaching the crux of the matter.

“On average, constructing an Object costs 5 billion dollars. So if you have 5 billion dollars and the necessary technology, you can breed speculation that you are building an Object. And like I said, it is the number of Objects that decides modern battles. …So what if you could fake the money part? Couldn’t you scare the Capitalist Corporations or Information Alliance into withdrawing before actually fighting?”

“Ah.”

This was all about the technological power and brand name of the Royal Techno Academy.

They could also fake or rewrite shipment records so it looked like they were getting iron ingots, heat resistant reactive materials, the various rare earths used in semiconductors, the silicon pellets needed for manufacturing high-precision targeting lenses, the electromagnets used to seal the plasma inside the reactor, and other materials.

But the money was most important.

“So the Academy only had to make it look like the government was giving us money for a nonexistent secret project. For example, let’s say Person A buys a diamond from Person B online. What if they kept returning the money and diamond in the real world and repeating the online transaction? If you just looked at the purchase history, it would look like countless diamond deals going in just one direction with lots of money traveling from Person A to Person B. But since it was all misdirection using the same money and diamond, there would be no actual expenses.”

What if the same thing was done but to make it look like 5 billion dollars was changing hands?

Each time, it would look like there was another new Object there.

If it looked like 10 or 20 more cutting-edge Second Generations had been built, anyone would recognize the danger. And no matter how much the Academy denied it, suspicion would only grow that they had an Object construction base hidden below the campus.

A gold crown, a gold chalice, and a gold statue. Show them off one at a time and it might look like a pile of treasure, but that cost nothing if you simply melted down and reshaped the same gold each time.

“The actual flow of money is quite complex and there are also faked records for materials and personnel to give at more verisimilitude when the data is intercepted. That is the general idea. It moves from bank account to back account, from euros to dollars, and from cash to gold. Of course, the total amount does change slightly due to a variety of handling charges along the way. The talk of the Academy being in the red is meant to cover this up. …However, this caught someone’s attention.”

Monica clearly had a head full of question marks as she elegantly grabbed a sandwich while the foil sat next to her.

But the answer came to Quenser first.

“Oh, I get it. Someone increased the total amount of those handling charges and whatnot to line their own pockets. This is a secret project, so the government can’t exactly hold a public investigation even if some of the money is being stolen. I mean, they have to be so very careful to trick the other world powers. If they announce the data about the 5 billion dollars was all just for show and demand the thief return the money, it would cause the delicate balance of military power to collapse. The political circumstances prevent the police or prosecutors from acting. In other words, it’s the perfect setup to steal all the tax money you want.”

Elritta turned around in his lap and held out an egg sandwich.

It was apparently a reward.

“Say ‘ah’,” said the little Board Chairman. She waited for Quenser to eat it before continuing. “That was why we acted behind the scenes to have the Black Uniforms drag the villain into the darkness. They would likely be imprisoned in a ‘nonexistent camp’ somewhere. My most trusted faculty members were working to gather evidence, but then the incident occurred.”

Quenser thought for a second before answering.

“…The attack on the beautiful Student Council President?”

“That one gave me a headache. It happened late at night, so it was too late by the time word reached me. She was given a heroic spin to perfectly cast all the teachers as villains. And I couldn’t explain the situation since I couldn’t reveal the secret project behind it all. Exactly like the villain wanted.”

Then what about that large man who had burst from the burning armored truck?

He may have been able to argue his case if he had tried, but he had kept his mouth shut to the end.

When the Board Chairman had intervened, he had thanked her with some quick eye contact and then used her as a shield.

But that had not worked as intended and he had been forced to flee from the crazed students.

And he had ended up writhing in pain on the ground after being shot in the leg with a nail gun.

Had he been clenching his teeth to protect the truth the entire time?

“You’re kidding, right? So even that infamous professor knew what was going on?”

“No, he’s just crazy. Like always.”

She was very clear on that point. And it was all the more impactful from a 10 year old.

But one person could not keep up with their casual back-and-forth.

“————”

Allen.

He slowly shook his head.

“That can’t be true. In the Golden Lion Club, the President said she was going to save the teachers. She said she would work out who was lining their pockets with the misappropriated funds and safely end the conflict before a war like this broke out. That was our last hope, but the teachers rejected that peaceful resolution!!”

“Do you know what the villain called the high school Student Council President? Foie gras. She was fattened up for the slaughter. They had everything set up for her. Simply put, everything she had found was a school play script prepared by the villain.”

“I…we…! We shot at the teachers!! We hurt them! And now you’re saying they did nothing wrong and they were victims!? How am I supposed to accept that now!?”

“That is why I hoped to stop you sooner. This was not your fault. The blame rests with me for weighing politics against the students and hesitating to reveal the truth. Yet I should have known this would happen if I remained silent.”

Elritta seemed unable to even place a hand on agonized Allen’s shoulder.

He had to come to terms with what he had done on his own.

But redeeming himself for his crimes was a different matter.

“So who is it?”

“?”

“Who’s the villain? You made it sound like all the teachers are innocent and someone else is behind it all. I can’t just ignore that.”

“Oh, that.”

Elritta had the look of someone that was asked why one plus one was two and realized just how philosophical a question that was.

“That is obvious.”

And just like she was explaining that one plus one was two, she gave the answer.

“It is of course Headmaster Cliff French-Connection.”