Horizon:GT2 Prologue

Prologue: Wolf Forest and Night

Into the forest

Into the night

To a secret place

Point Allocation (Hushed Conversation)

●

The summer night sky was visible from the forest.

Two moons floated high in that sky.

They were both nearly full.

The modest moonlight poured down between the trees, reaching a grass and dirt ground in something of a clearing.

Every part of the world was colored either a pale white or a dark blue. But…

“Oh, they’ve started? Now this is feeling like a training camp. Or the preparations for one, anyway.”

With a girl’s voice, some red appeared.

That came from fire-colored illumination spells. A group of track suit girls held up a few of those flickering lights. They used a narrow path into the forest to reach the earthen clearing.

A few tents were set up on the levelled ground there. A candy house and a storage shed were built nearby.

“Hey, we’ve figured out the basic rules, so if you have anything you want us to work on, just give it here. We’ll do it for you.”

Some stoves were lined up on the shed-side of the tents and the boys there were performing some work while staring into the embers.

The moonlight and the glow of the stoves reflected off of some blades.

A short-sleeved ninja spoke in front of a collection of short swords, single-edged swords, double-edged swords, knives, scissors, and more.

“This is as good an opportunity as any, so we do maintenance on them using the spells Asama-dono provided. The spells should work better out here. And we can do another round of maintenance before leaving. That should work best.”

“This was only supposed to be ordinary maintenance, but it looks like a lot more.”

“What’s wrong with that?” asked the person lining up some late-night food on the side table instead of helping with the maintenance. He looked to the approaching girls, noting the girls in the lead and what they had in their baskets. “And it looks like you had a good haul. Do we have Mary and the white-black couple to thank for that?”

“Judge,” replied the white-haired automaton standing out front. She glanced down at the basket her arms were holding up at her feet.

“Without specialist knowledge, we never could have found these plants which can only be acquired at night. We also found some other things, including some rare ones, and Masazumi-sama checked to make sure they are not poisonous.”

“Eh? I didn’t realize Seijun knew about outdoorsy things.”

“I don’t, but I had a book.” A black-haired girl in a track suit stepped forward and held up the hard cover book she had held under her arm.

“Because passed-down knowledge can be dangerous. Sometimes it’s just that the traditional way of cooking something removes the toxin, so I was in charge of double checking.”

Then the girl, Masazumi, looked to the boys.

“Anyway, when will you be done? I get the feeling that’s going to take all night.”

●

Masazumi viewed the lines of moonlight reflected off the ground and the silhouettes working with them. The number of blades lying out on waterproof sheets had to be approaching triple digits.

…The others had an awful lot of weapons with them.

First prize there had to go to Crossunite, since he used close-range ninjutsu. In addition to his short sword, he had kunais, knives, and small metal claws. He had been carrying about a fifth of the total himself. Most of his blades were colored a matte black, but…

“Applying anything more than a minor anti-reflective to the edge of the blades would dull them.”

“Right, right.” The idiot stuck to serving the food while he viewed the lined-up blades.

“You’re great at being obsessive in the blandest ways.”

“What did I do to deserve that backhanded compliment!?”

“Hee hee. Master Tenzou, I think he meant it as a real compliment,” said Mary with a smile.

Behind her, Mitotsudaira tilted her head while she viewed the equipment with Asama and the others.

She turned toward Masazumi.

“By the way, Masazumi, do you not carry a weapon for self-defense?”

“Hmm. Only if someone tells me to. I don’t normally feel the need. But doesn’t Tsukinowa provide defense stuff for me?”

The anteater Mouse tilted his little head on her right shoulder.

“Maa?”

“Um, Masazumi? I have given Tsukinowa a few things, but the ‘up the butt’ spells are hard to aim and aren’t great for stopping attackers. Besides, those are divine techniques, so you can’t treat them so casually.”

“Enough about butts!”

“Calm down,” said Asama, tilting her head in the exact same way as Tsukinowa. I guess she is his boss. But the overall conversation wasn’t over yet.

“So, Seijun, do you not like carrying a weapon?” asked Naito as she began sorting the contents of one basket between mushrooms and non-mushrooms.

Masazumi could only groan in thought a bit.

“Hmm. It’s more like I doubt it would help much if I did.”

“Did something happen that made you think that?” asked Naruze as she began opening some wild plant recipes next to Naito.

Masazumi finally realized everyone’s eyes were on her.

They had the air of people dying for a good story.

“Sort of, but it was nothing really. Besides, some of you should remember it. Remember the trouble we ran into after I arrived on the Musashi from Mikawa?”

“Oh, um, you mean when my king got last place in the Commerce and Industry Guild’s gamble bungee jump held at the academy and ended up running around town with ‘loser’ written on him?”

“Or do you mean when the Chancellor opened the artificial beach on the side of the ship even though it was still spring, took some elementary schoolers hostage, and said he would release them if some swimsuit girls came to the beach?”

“How did that one end?”

Asama, Mitotsudaira, and a few others hung their heads and raised their hands, which was all the answer Masazumi needed.

“Adele went undercover among the elementary schoolers then, but he never noticed,” said the Aoi Sister.

“I was going to join the rest of you if he noticed! If he noticed!”

“Ahh, good times,” wistfully said the idiot. “Didn’t we end up doing yakiniku and then heading home?”

“Yes, and afterwards they discussed filling the artificial beach with freshwater and opening it during the spring for a flower viewing event. And they finally did it this year.”

“That doesn’t even scratch the surface of what happened back then. So which one were you referring to, Seijun?”

“I unfortunately remember all of those, but they aren’t what I meant!”

“In that case,” said Mitotsudaira in a tone that said “I remember now”. “You must mean the trouble during spring break last year. We mostly all did our own thing there and it ended up with a festival of attacks. Is that what you mean?”

Good, I got through this time. So…

“That was when I realized what kind of place Musashi is. It was also when I realized how conceited I had been and started to fear debates.”

“You, fearing debates? What in the world?”

“Is it that surprising, Tachibana Wife? It actually had a lot to do with Tres España.”

“We were in the New World during spring break last year. And at the time, I believe the nation as a whole had worked out a plan for constructing the Grande y Felicísima Armada and was discussing what to do about reentering Kyushu.”

“Probably so,” added Masazumi and everyone else nodded or gave looks of understanding.

If she was going to discuss this, she wanted to do it here. Because…

…Dad and the others don’t know very much about it.

It wasn’t that she wanted to forget it happened. It was more like they had to act like it never happened.

So while the others took a break, she picked up her basket.

“Okay, how about us girls head into the candy house to sort the plants and get to cooking? The work out here is unexpectedly loud, so we’ll probably sleep inside the candy house tonight. Is that alright?”

“I think our work is going to take all night too, actually. And wouldn’t Asama-chi and Mito-tsan rather use the Chancellor’s tent?”

Naito turned around to find Asama smiling bitterly while listing up some work spells for the boys.

“It’s not that big of a deal. And if it was, what about Horizon?”

They looked over to see Horizon over by the stove Aoi was using to cook. She had her back to them in front of a pot and a Dutch oven, but she had her arms off and…

“Horizon? Horizon? Um, are you eating something?”

Mitotsudaira hesitantly called out and the arms hurriedly hid behind the stove. Horizon herself made some noticeable gulping noises.

“No, no. I was most certainly not swiping food. Mitotsudaira-sama, you of all people should understand how the scent of this valuable syrup could draw someone over and make them sniff at and munch on- please disregard anything I said after the sniffing part.”

Horizon tapped on the Loup-Garou’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear, so the idiot walked up with container of prepared ingredients and spoke to her in an exasperated way.

“I did make enough for the girls too, so should I split it up so you can take it inside with you?”

“Yay!” Came the cheers from the girls. I guess the idiot’s cooking is actually respectable?

“Aoi, are you saying tonight is supposed to be that kind of night?”

“Judge. Things have been pretty monotonous with all the training and planning, so I thought this would be best. And this is what pulling an all-nighter is all about, right?”

“And we haven’t observed the stars yet,” said Balfette.

It was true they still hadn’t done a lot of the standard events for a summer night.

“I suppose a super strict training camp was never going to work out in the nature of Hexagone Française.”

Masazumi sighed. This was exactly why she had split up tonight’s work this way, so she was glad to see everyone else had the same idea.

“We’re headed to Kyoto once this camp is over. I imagine they’ll want us to be on our best behavior, so we should take this chance to relax.”

She waved at the girls, gathering their eyes and telling them to gather over here.

“Then let’s do this. We can sort these plants between edible, medicinal, and spell catalysts and make any initial preparations we can. I’m sure some of you will want to take a dip in the spring before going to sleep, so let’s make good use of our time.”

–Are you saying tonight is supposed to be that kind of night?

●

In the forest clearing, Mary first said goodnight to Tenzou and then approached the candy house with her basket of wild plants. But she was curious about one thing.

“Um, what story were you talking about earlier?”

She felt like she was prying and she was ready to back off if she needed to, but she still wanted to try asking.

“What happened during summer break last year when Lady Masazumi arrived on the Musashi?”

“Eh? Oh, that. It’s kind of a long story…”

“W-we don’t…really understand it…ourselves?”

Suzu tilted her head in a troubled way and Naruze opened a Magie Figur.

“I’m willing to list up what everyone knows if it would make a good doujinshi. We don’t really know much about it ourselves. Right, Asama?”

“Don’t ask me. I was only one of the observers.”

Asama thoughtfully faced forward to look at Masazumi who had arrived at the candy house’s entrance ahead of the rest.

“Hey, this door won’t open. What’s its problem? Does only Mitotsudaira have permission or something?”

“Oh, judge. That’s right. I’ll open it.”

Mitotsudaira quickly moved up front, but gave a glance back at Mary on the way.

Her look said to wait until they were inside to continue their conversation. Mary followed the others in with a smile of anticipation.

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