Horizon:Volume 8C Chapter 68
Chapter 68: Confirmers During the Debate[edit]
Hm? What’s this?
Um…what is this?
Ha ha ha. What could this be!?
Point Allocation (No Answer)
Asama noticed everyone go quiet at Narumi’s suggestion that they would be the great enemy of the next era.
But one hand did go up – Toori’s. He tilted his head before speaking.
“So have we made any progress on our Apocalypse solution?”
“Well, we haven’t collected all of the Logismoi Oplo like Lord Motonobu told us to. So we still don’t know what the power to ‘influence the Apocalypse’ could be.”
Masazumi’s statement was no different from when they had checked on this before summer break.
Asama only had one thing to add:
“The Logismoi Oplo have started some kind of change or evolution with Horizon, so I doubt even Lord Motonobu could have told us what our Apocalypse solution will be.”
“I see.” Horizon nodded. “In other words, I have begun to live too free of a life and I have neglected to focus on the Apocalypse solution. Is that it, Asama-sama?”
“As much as I hate to say it, more or less.”
“Yay!” cheered Kimi, high-fiving Horizon. This is really awkward with Gin-san side-eyeing us like that. But then Horizon put a hand on her chin and said more.
“How about we take a field trip to see what this Genesis Project is all about?”
“Well, we do have to defend our actions at Westphalia after retrieving all of the Logismoi Oplo, but we know that won’t happen until after Honnouji,” said Naruze. “So what happens to us if the Genesis Project stops the Apocalypse before that?”
“We celebrate that the world isn’t ending?”
Masazumi had a point.
“But,” Asama added. This linked back to their discussion at the Sanada camp. “We still don’t know what the Genesis Project means by ending it but not letting it end.”
“Judge. If that means sacrificing something, then we must put a stop to it,” said Mitotsudaira.
“Isn’t there a pretty good chance of that being the case?” said Naito.
Everyone gave her a “whaddya mean?” look, so she tapped the sign frame Tenzou had made.
“The Honnouji Incident is all about Nobunaga’s death, right?”
So…
“I don’t know how it would work, but it could be that killing Nobunaga stops the Apocalypse.”
I don’t understand, thought Mary.
Next to her, Tenzou was crossing his arms in thought.
…How could executing Lord Nobunaga lead to saving the world from the Apocalypse?”
Mary tried to think up a way for that to work. After all, her situation had been similar. The plan had been to execute her and send her power back into England to defend England.
But there were too many unknowns here. Both about P.A. Oda and about Nobunaga.
The Tachibana Couple had relayed Lord Motonobu’s words earlier and Mary only now came to realize how hard it was to never give up on thinking.
You could not settle on an answer prematurely, but you could not give up and just say “I don’t know” either.
But just as there were some unknowns, there were some knowns as well. Such as…
“We think they are building ley line reactors. What does that accomplish?”
“Maybe they need a power boost for some kind of ceremony?” suggested Naito. “Now I’m starting to sound like Bara-yan.”
Then a hand went up – Kimi’s.
“Could they be summoning a god? Something like: I sacrifice my Nobunaga to summon Cause of the Apocalypse! Defeat it by the end of the turn or it’s game over for the world!”
“Um, Kimi? The Apocalypse is affecting all of the ley lines, so I don’t think summoning that would be possible.”
Mary agreed with Asama about that, so she provided some additional information.
“Gods and spirits are only a small portion of the ley lines as a whole. As powerful as they might be, they are nothing compared to the vastness of the ley lines. So the vast majority of the ley lines contain no conscious beings.”
“Mary-dono, would that be analogous to the ocean and the fish?”
“The ratio is probably even smaller than comparing the entire sky to all of the aerial ships currently airborne.”
That was true. If something existed in every part of the ley lines, the spirit world there would be overcrowded and cramped.
Those beings had influence and had control over different aspects, but there was no density there, which was what made it so fluid.
And in that case…
“Summoning the Apocalypse would probably require summoning this entire world.”
“Then how about this?” Naruze raised her right hand and looked to Mary, Masazumi, and the others. “What if they summon the Princess? Not that we know what the Princess even is.”
Mary nearly responded but stopped herself.
…The Crest could appear.
She could see Masazumi and Asama looking somewhat concerned as well.
But the Date Vice Chancellor raised her hand and tilted her head.
“The Princess is probably an individual mysterious phenomenon, right? What we’ve heard makes her sound like something more personal.”
So…
“Why would they need such a massive facility to summon her? Especially when it seems like she can be summoned if you just say the wrong thing.”
What did that mean?
“The personal Princess and the largescale Apocalypse are separate things. They seem connected, but they aren’t. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Regardless, this is one thing we don’t know: what is the Princess?’
So we’ve come back to this, thought Mitotsudaira.
“So you want to know what the Princess is?”
It felt like they were approaching the truth. Even in this discussion, they were able to make some speculation, even if it was built atop theories.
But the most crucial question remained unanswered. And at the same time…
…The Princess is targeting some of us.
Horizon, Masazumi, Mary, and – although she hadn’t noticed it at the time – Asama.
The fact that those four had been singled out and targeted suggested the Princess had a mind and worked on an individual level.
She was a mysterious phenomenon.
But the Apocalypse was different. It covered the entire world.
It was something else.
“Nate, is it something like the relationship between your mom and that forest she created?”
“No. You can think of my mother’s forest as a part of her body. Like she’s spreading out her skirt. It is humanity’s idea of fear, which allows it to contain many different things, but they all follow the same theme.”
But…
“The Apocalypse is different, isn’t it? It happened before anyone realized it, so it isn’t the same as humanity’s imagination or anything like that.”
“And yet we know two things exist here: the Apocalypse and the Princess,” said Mary.
Mitotsudaira had to agree with that. And to add onto it…
“In my mother’s case, defeating her is meaningless unless you destroy that entire forest too. Because they are one and the same.”
So…
“If the Princess and the Apocalypse are the same, killing the Princess would not get rid of the Apocalypse.”
And…
“The same is true if they are two different things.”
What did that mean? The 1st Special Duty Officer sighed before speaking.
“That means they aren’t summoning the Princess or the Apocalypse at Honnouji. It would be safest to assume they are planning something else.”
Something about what he said felt off to Mitotsudaira.
So did something about her own thoughts and what her king had said.
…Huh?
What was this feeling?
She wasn’t sure, but she needed to continue thinking about it. And…
“Is something wrong, Nate?”
“Not really. Something just seems off about the way we’re talking about the Apocalypse and the Princess.”
“What might that be, Mitotsudaira-sama?” asked Horizon. “If you could whisper some spoilers to me real quick…”
Wouldn’t spoilers here summon the Princess?
But that wasn’t what Mitotsudaira had to say.
…Yes.
“We’ve thought about this from several angles now, but we still don’t understand anything. That makes me wonder if we’re looking at this entirely wrong.”
In other words…
“Could the answer be entirely unrelated to figuring out the Apocalypse and the princess?”
“I agree.”
Mitotsudaira heard a voice come from the forest leading to the spring.
She looked that way to see the Secretary striking a pose in front of a tree. He wrung out his hair and sucked in a breath.
“We still have other mysteries to solve: the code left with me, Naruze-kun’s question, and Asama-kun’s dating of Honnouji. Perhaps we could find a different answer if we pursue those questions.”
So…
“It is crucial that we continue thinking. That is what has brought us this far. If all we have are fantasies, the question is whether we have the facts necessary to confirm or deny those fantasies. So how about it?” he said. “Turning up further information can be our homework assignment for the next week. And at the end of the week, we can have another in-depth conversation like this one.”
“Judge.” Masazumi nodded toward Neshinbara. “I was already planning to discuss these things on our last day here. In that sense, tonight is only meant to be the opening round. I wanted us to reach a consensus on our current thoughts.”
But…
“Crossunite, the Tachibana Couple, and the Date Vice Chancellor made some valuable points. If it comes to it, we might need to fight our way into Honnouji, so make sure you are ready for that.”
“Eh?”
Naruze’s eyebrows rose, but Masazumi wasn’t sure what that look meant.
“What is it, Naruze?”
Naruze exchanged a glance with Naito. And then with the others too.
What is this about? wondered Masazumi as everyone looked to Noriki. He smiled bitterly.
“I have to do it this time?”
He gave Masazumi a carefree smile.
“If it comes to it? This entire discussion made it sound like that was a foregone conclusion.”
Naito saw Masazumi frown, cross her arms, tilt her head, and then tilt her entire body. That last movement came with a voice.
“Huhhhh?”
She was clearly wondering how this had happened, but she had a more important question to ask.
“None of you questioned it when it sounded like we were definitely going to fight our way in?”
“I mean, we all knew you would go that route eventually.”
“Gin, this is very strange.”
“Yes, it is, Master Muneshige.”
It was amazing how easily those two could accept these things. But the one who had worked the hardest was Tenzou.
“I spent a lot of time and effort gathering and analyzing enough information for either option.”
“Tenzou, have Mary add another item to your lunches.”
“J-judge! I will see what I can do!” replied Mary.
She probably would. But…
“Seijun, are you saying you’d be willing to go the pacifist route if you had to?”
“I kind of thought I already was…”
She heard a few comments of “kind of?” and “thought?”, but then Naruze spoke up.
“Masazumi, I know it sounds like pass-a-fist, but it has nothing to do with punching people.”
“It does sound like that, doesn’t it?” said Naito.
“Look, I just like to plan for the worst-case scenario, okay?” said Masazumi.
Then she looked to Neshinbara and the others, doing a poor job of hiding she was only trying to change the subject.
“Um, anyway. Neshinbara, Naruze, and Asama. It’s fine if you don’t have an answer yet, but can you give us a status report on your questions?”
Adele saw Neshinbara say “very well” and remove his sleeves near the fire.
He hung them from a nearby tree branch and the water he couldn’t wring from them dripped out, but…
“Our punishments sure can be harsh,” said Adele.
“Personally, I thought it was a valuable experience because it let me hop in the Loup Garou royal family’s spring ahead of everyone else. There isn’t a spirit of the spring, is there, Mitotsudaira-kun?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
Then the Chancellor stood up, spread his arms and faced the Vicereine.
“Which of these did your arms launch into my spring: this history nerd Neshinbara, or this all-around cringey Neshinbara? Be honest.”
“I do not want either.”
“Okay, that’s an honest answer, but what’s the reward supposed to be in this case?”
“Aoi-kun, could you not say that while staring at me!?”
Adele decided not to choose and changed the subject instead.
“So Secretary, how are you doing with that code?”
The 4th Special Duty Officer had worked to motivate him on that during ImMoral Manga the other day. But…
“I’m having trouble at the moment, actually.”
“You mean you aren’t working on it?”
“No, I said I’m having trouble. I can’t seem to make any progress.”
He brushed back his wet hair and Suzu tilted her head.
“What kind…of trouble?”
“Eh? Oh, well, um, you know? It’s important to trust your intuition when trying to figure out what all those numbers mean.”
The 4th Special Duty Officer suddenly opened a Magie Figur. It was in comm mode and she glared into it.
“Hello, Kappa Printing? Oh, right, right. Hemisphere. That’s what I meant. Anyway, you do mail-order sales, don’t you? Could you let me see our Secretary’s purchase history?”
“Don’t abuse your connections to access my private information!!”
“You spent so much time getting your manuscript done just under the wire and then you spent all your time afterwards reading through your purchases instead of working. What makes you think you deserve privacy?”
A few Protestant sign frames appeared in front of the 4th Special Duty Officer as she glared at him. The 3rd Special Duty Officer leaned over to take a look and everyone else nearby did the same.
“Neshinbara! I see some titles from the elder sister genre on here! There is hope for you yet!”
“Shakespeare-san needs to know about this, doesn’t she?”
“Are these occasional history books so he can trick himself into thinking this is all for research?”
“Th-this is supposed to be private, so stop judging me for it!”
Four Eyes: “Could you stop signing the receipts ‘your honorable customer’? It’s pathetic.”
…She found that fast.
Then a question occurred to Adele.
“What does the Chancellor do with these things?”
“Huh? I’m not a coward like Neshinbara, so I sign my own name! Aoi Toori! Send it to Aoi Toori! And no hiding the title! I have them write down exactly what I bought and slap it on the package label! I make sure to thank them too! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The idiot high-fived his sister and Adele turned to Asama, whose shoulders were slumping.
“Do those purchases count as official expenses?”
“No, but I have considered it for the shrine maiden, knight, and silver hair ones.”
There were scattered comments about Asama being overprotective and Adele silently agreed with them.
But based on what she had heard…
“So have you not worked on the code at all, Secretary?”
“In my defense, I’m working hard to finish my summer homework so I can focus on the code as soon as possible!”
“Heh heh. Raise your hand if you have already finished your summer homework!” said Kimi.
Almost everyone raised their hand. The only other one who didn’t was the 4th Special Duty Officer.
“I was delayed by my ImMoral Manga manuscript too, so I still have about half a day of Far Eastern homework left.”
“Ga-chan likes writing essays, so she always saves them for last.”
“True. I just love it when they ask you to write what the author was thinking! I can write some nonsense like ‘The author had the protagonist get rejected by his love interest because he had fallen in love with the love interest and was too jealous to let the protagonist be with her!’ And when my answer gets marked wrong, I can rejoice because it means I’m an independent thinker. It’s not like we’ve actually asked the author about it, so it’s all about who can come up with the most convincing guess. Isn’t it amazing they actually put that on tests!?”
“But you always lose about 10 points to that.”
“No, Margot! Don’t bring reality into this! They’re the ones who asked me to imagine an answer!”
Adele thought she probably should focus more on reality, but she knew better than to expect that from the 4th Special Duty Officer. She supported a solid chunk of Musashi’s economy, so it was probably best to leave things be.
…And saying something could inspire her to write a doujinshi about me.
Next, the Vice President asked a question of the Secretary.
“So you plan to make progress during the coming week?”
“I have a hunch, so a week should be plenty of time.”
“What kind of hunch?”
“Heh.” The Secretary brushed up his bangs. “After following a few hunches, I believe the numbers are replacements for words. Now I just need to find the right replacement pattern.”
Everyone exchanged a glance.
Eventually, Noriki said “me again?”, approached Neshinbara, and slapped his shoulder with a smile. And…
“You already told us that last time.”
Novice: “Wait, r-really? I don’t remember that!”
Worshiper: “Actually, Neshinbara-kun, didn’t you say yourself it was a replacement for the kana? Back when we were having nagashi udon.”
Novice: “O-oh, right! I did say that! Yes, that’s right. I was starting with the kana!”
Unturning: “I remember thinking then that the 50 kana wasn’t going to work with a code that has triple digit numbers.”
Novice: “Yeah, that’s the real problem with this code. The highest number in it is 115, but the Song of Passage for example is 108 characters long. 115 is a lot.”
Obscene: “Ha ha ha. I know you can come up with some crazy logic to explain it!”
Flat Vassal: “That’s right. No one’s going to stop you.”
Scarred: “A society that lets people make mistakes is a wonderful thing.”
Horizey: “An excellent point, Mary-sama. People grow from their mistakes. Just look at Neshinbara-sama. A cautionary tale about what happens if you grow from too many mistakes if there ever was one.”
Novice: “Just when I think you’re being nice for once, you go in for the kill, Ariadust-kun!”
Sounds like he has his work cut out for him, thought Masazumi.
“Neshinbara, I doubt I would be much help on this, but feel free to ask for advice if you need it. We could even have a meeting about it.”
“No need. I develop codes and ciphers for my stories, so I just need to see this as an extension of that and try out a few options.”
“Then next up is Naruze.”
Neshinbara immediately responded.
“H-hold on! Don’t you have more of a reaction for me!?”
Four Eyes: “God, you’re a pain. Try being less obvious about how badly you want attention.”
Novice: “I’m not as bad as you!”
…Yeah, I really agree with him on that one.
But Masazumi did have something to say to Neshinbara.
“Keep working.”
And…
“Make sure you finish by the deadline. The printers aren’t going to wait for you to finish. And I know it’s a bit late now, but that cover was awful. And how could you leave it to someone else to throw a party once you were done? It worked out since Naito and Naruze made some extra arrangements and Aoi was willing to do it, but still. Oh, and make sure you pay your taxes. Got that?”
“You’re going to kill me with the pressure of that stream of consciousness lecture!”
A Magie Figure flew over and stabbed into Neshinbara’s forehead.
It came from Naruze.
“Here’s a reference site for the taxes. Don’t screw it up in any way that makes me liable.”
Then the Weiss Hexen shrugged.
“As for my project, I screwed it up a bit, so I’m redoing it from the start.”
Naruze opened a Magie Figur.
It displayed a single image, but…
“Is that…a pattern?”
Asama’s assessment was understandable. Naruze could see the image through the back of the transparent Magie Figur. It showed a distorted circular pattern created from a curve twisting in toward the center in a way that looked like concentric circles.
It was a kinetic pattern reminiscent of pouring cream in your coffee while stirring it.
However…
“This was a failure. I underestimated it. Or rather, I started from a mistaken assumption.”
“Sorry, but I’m not sure what you mean,” said the Tachibana Husband.
His confusion probably came from having seen something similar before. But not exactly the same.
“You might have seen a similar style since Tres España makes so much porcelain.”
So what was it?
“This is a type of trick art using bent lines.”
Gin understood why Muneshige was confused.
Naruze was correct that Tres España produced a lot of porcelain.
Of course, every nation produced porcelain by this time and porcelain of similar quality had always been produced in continental Asia and was beginning to show up in the Far East as well.
But Tres Españan porcelain had one distinctive trait.
“The intricacy of the patterns.”
Some were simpler, but they generally started with an Arabia-inspired design and added European culture on top. Glossy white plates or cups would have blue patterns drawn on and, whether those were flowers, ivy, or representations of seasons or the sky, the end result would be a lively geometric collage.
There would be so much blue it could be hard to tell it had started as white porcelain. And…
“Plates and such have their patterns designed around the inner curves so the pattern looks pretty when viewed from head on.”
So…
“Are you saying a similar pattern and structure was present in that location?”
“You don’t remember what was on the ceiling of that final room before it collapsed?”
Naruze’s question led Asama and a few others to open sign frames.
They must have taken photos of that scene.
The 1st Special Duty Officer had the most photos, including one from immediately after entering the hall of the underground ruins.
He had raised an illumination spell and that light gave a view of the stone hall as it was before anyone had entered it.
The collapse and flooding had barely affected it then. It was only a large, dimly-lit circular hall.
“The ceiling is curved like a dome,” noted the 1st Special Duty Officer.
His opened sign frame displayed the image with the brightness amplified. It did indeed show a shallow dome.
The photo Muneshige had taken was the same.
They had looked up at that dome in the ruins they had been granted access to as a reward for the Siege of Kanie Castle after the Siege of Odawara.
She recalled water covering the floor, but it hadn’t been enough to hinder movement.
That was where they had found their biggest disappointment.
…What is that?
Gin’s thoughts were cut off by movement. The Vice President lifted the 1st Special Duty Officer’s sign frame with her fingers and tilted her head.
“Didn’t we discover there wasn’t anything on the ceiling of these ruins?” she asked, looking to the center of the dome.
There was a picture there. People were drawn around the edge of the dome, holding hands and looking up toward the center. Looking toward…
“The other places had signs of something being carved away, but the one below Houjou had the Double Border Crest drawn there. So,” said the Vice President. “We still don’t know what any of it means. We only have more questions to ask. Like what the Double Border Crest was doing there.”
“No,” Gin replied on reflex. “Something bothered the 4th Special Duty Officer enough to investigate that place and something bothered me about the Double Border Crest on the ceiling, but I just now saw the link between them.”
Gin spoke the answer that had come to her without warning.
“The image that was carved away wasn’t on the ceiling.”
Gin recalled that moment.
It had happened about a month ago.
She had looked up in the Houjou ruins to see something similar to what they had seen at Novgorod and Sanada.
There was a domed space and people were drawn holding hands in a circle, but the center of the image had been carved away at the previous sites.
They had been told the Houjou ruins were the oldest ones and the image still existed there, but they only found the Double Border Crest there. And…
“The area of the ceiling carved away in the previous images seemed smaller than the area covered by the Double Border Crest.”
She hadn’t known what that meant at the time, but …
“Wouldn’t the simplest answer be that the oldest ruins at Houjou had depicted something different from the ruins in the other regions?”
“There is one other explanation.”
That being…
“What if the Double Border Crest had been given another role?”
“Huh? What other role?” asked the Vice President.
Gin nodded and the vassal tossed more wood on the fire. Gin’s words seemed to join the fragrant scent of the burning wood.
“It was a focal point for viewing the image.”
Masazumi was confused by the Tachibana Wife’s answer.
“Eh?”
But a moment later, she figured it out.
“So you were supposed to stand directly below the Double Border Crest and look up at the ceiling?”
“Judge. Exactly.”
The Tachibana Wife nodded and turned toward Naruze.
She spoke to the girl who was spinning her pen.
“Long ago, I imagine the dome ceiling was polished to reflect something on the floor.”
That was the “trick art using bent lines” Naruze had mentioned.
“The image was on the floor and reflected from the ceiling, rather than on the ceiling itself.”
Gin continued.
“So why were the Houjou ruins the only one without the ceiling image carved away, leaving only the Double Border Crest there?”
Because…
“I imagine the other ruins had a relief carved into the ceiling.”
“Whereas the Houjou one was…?”
“A drawing.”
And…
“I don’t know if it covered the entire floor, but whatever was on the floor would only look right when standing directly below the Double Border Crest and looking up at the ceiling. It was that sort of trick art.”
She couldn’t say why they had gone to so much trouble, but…
“I think the assessment of the Houjou ruins as older than the ones in Novgorod or Sanada was correct. I do not know what happened during the Age of Dawn, but it seems there was a period where they did not want to make a plain image of whatever it was, but in a later period, they simply carved that image into the ceiling.”
But…
“In an even later period, they carved away those carvings for whatever reason, but either the floors in the older ruins were too covered in dust and dirt or they weren’t aware of the trick art at all, so those ones remained untouched.”
“And Naruze noticed…?”
“Judge,” continued Gin. “The Houjou ruins had dust and dirt covering the floor, but the area was well preserved thanks to being underground and the flooding must have washed a portion of the floor clean. That is what you noticed, isn’t it, 4th Special Duty Officer?”
Naruze raised her hands in mock surrender.
“When I saw the Double Border Crest on the ceiling, it seemed unfinished to me.”
Because…
“You’d normally draw something other than the Double Border Crest in a space like that. It’s too small for the people to be looking up at, so I figured it was unfinished. That’s why I had the Chancellor stand in the center and photographed all around him.”
Naruze spread her Magie Figur horizontally.
It stretched past a panorama and the ends connected to create a 360-degree view. It showed…
“The water on the floor was wavy, so it reflected the light all wrong.”
But…
“There were some parts where you could make out pieces of the image on the floor.”
Her analysis said it was mostly toward the center. Which made sense if the reflection on the ceiling expanded it.
But thinking back, there had been signs even then.
“When the ceiling collapsed, the inside of the dome was really clean. It reflected the light and everything. I think that settles it. Back when it was made, the visitors would have stood below the Double Border Crest, looked up at the ceiling, and meditated on something.”
“Meditated on what?”
“I don’t know.”
How could she know? But the means helped reveal the ends.
“They were expressing something they didn’t want to be found so easily. It must have been some kind of secret faith.”
Yes.
“Books sold at a big event are great, but ones sold in secret at a small event are good too.”
“Don’t ruin this!”
They all took issue with her analogy, but she thought it was a good comparison.
Masazumi sighed after hearing what Naruze had to say.
She sat on a log chair and sighed again. Then she took a bite of her folded bread with jam inside.
…Oh, this is sweet.
Of course it was, but her sense of taste was unusually sharp right now. She sighed a third time.
“Is something wrong, Masazumi?” asked Mitotsudaira.
“Eh? N-no.”
How could she put this? If she had to describe how she felt…
“I’m relieved.”
They still didn’t know anything about the Double Border Crest, the Princess Disappearances, or the nonexistent academy, but they were pursuing the mysterious phenomena and the unwritten history they had discovered. However…
…I really did think we had hit a dead end at Houjou.
It had felt like all their efforts up to that point had been for nothing. So…
“I’m glad everything with Sanada’s Celestial Dragons and with the Prince of Orange weren’t for nothing.”
“It’s too soon to say for sure. I still haven’t completed the image.”
That was true, once she thought about it.
But they had hope now and that made all the difference.
And when Masazumi thought about the relief she was feeling now…
…That’s right.
The Double Border Crest was really weighing on her mind.
The Crest had first appeared to her when she had failed her name inheritance, her father had left for Musashi, and she was wondering how to go about her new life with just her mother.
Her mother had been a kind person. She could recall those memories with ease whether she idealized the memories or not. That had been Mikawa and her mother to her.
In a way, that had been the final home she could escape to even when she failed.
But it had been taken from her without warning and she had been forced to change who she was.
It wasn’t that she had never wanted to go back to the way things were, but when those thoughts did come, it was always to go back to before her father left or before she had sought an inherited name.
So that had been a turning point.
The Double Border Crest divided her life between Mikawa and Musashi. And in that sense…
“This is like vengeance for me.”
The Tachibana Couple looked up across the fire.
“What do you mean?”
“Judge. Maybe everyone has something like this, but…you know. There was this one event that forced me to change my course in life and led to where I am today. For me, that was the Double Border Crest,” she said. “Solving these mysteries and finding all the answers may be a way for me to avenge the person I was before that. Because then I can tell my past self I’ve seen all there is to see about the thing that gave her so much grief and took everything from her.”
So…
“I can tell her not to be afraid.”
“Seijun.”
“Judge,” she replied to the idiot. “I know. That’s how I saw things when I first started on this new path.”
Because…
“Where I am now, I would tell my past self she not to let it all scare her. I’d tell her to come here because she’s going to have even bigger problems to deal with before long.”
It was the same thing he had done: hold out your hand and tell them to come to you.
“Thinking back, I’m glad my father immediately called me to Musashi and I’m glad I agreed. If I had stayed in Mikawa and taken longer coming here…”
She couldn’t help but smile.
“Well, even a second’s delay in learning how to handle all of you would’ve been disastrous.”
Wise Sister: “Are you ready!? It’s Flat Politician Poem Time!”
Horizey: “Masazumi-sama, I appreciate the boldness of getting after Neshinbara-sama so much and then turning around and getting poetic about speaking to the Old Mikawa version of yourself!”
Scarred: “Please, Masazumi-sama is allowed to have moments like this. She can’t be all war all the time.”
Vice President: “That last comment was by far the most painful!!”
Naito sensed the nighttime atmosphere in Masazumi’s words.
…It takes this sort of atmosphere to share things like that, doesn’t it?
In the classroom, it had to be afterschool when no one was around. At the Blue Thunder…well, it would be at night again. It took an unusual space to feel like you could let out the secrets you kept inside.
This was somewhere Masazumi had never been and it was night. Naruze was occasionally glancing over into the forest. She was probably curious because this was the surface and it was an unknown land. Naito had scouted around a bit earlier, so she decided to show Naruze around tomorrow. So…
“Want to work outside tomorrow?”
“Sounds good. Since we’re here and all. I have some thoughts about these forests near M.H.R.R. And it should make for a nice change of pace in my work. “
The Magie Figur that Naruze had open displayed the pattern from before. She had been focused on drawing for a while now, but she had realized something about three days ago.
“Nooooo! I screwed up bad!”
She had used some colorful language while throwing several copied Magie Figurs against the ground to shatter them, so she must have been extremely frustrated. She didn’t often react so much, so it had drawn Naito’s curiosity.
And she hadn’t worked on the pattern for the three days since.
She was probably redoing her plans to ensure she didn’t screw up again.
“Ga-chan, about Take 2 of that pattern…”
“Judge. I more or less see what I need to do this time, but I want something to get me started. I’ve admitted to my mistake already, but I want something that makes me really motivated to get going again. I mean, I was pretty motivated the first time around, so if I’m going to go through it all again, I want to feel even more motivated. I know, I know. I sound spoiled.”
“Is the approaching deadline not enough to motivate you?”
“There is that.” Naruze smiled bitterly. “Thanks to that, I should automatically get started once there’s about 3 days left, but I need more if I want to get going sooner than that.”
Then Horizon raised her hand and pointed at the Chancellor.
“Shall I have him make something?”
“Just for me?”
“That is the idea.”
“Judge.” Naruze nodded. “Once that’s done, let’s take it with us and go for a walk, Margot. Even if we don’t go far, it can still feel like we had an adventure. So after a break, I can get started on my storyboard.”
“Way to ruin it all right at the end there, Ga-chan. Just make sure you do your work too, okay?”
That was when Narumi turned their way.
“So what was wrong with this version?”
“Reflect this one on the ceiling and it reveals…absolutely nothing.”
Naruze opened a Magie Figur, but it instantly changed form.
Everyone gasped and looked up toward the sky. A glowing umbrella had appeared there, large enough to cover them all. And from within…
“I modified a projection spell for this. And if I project the image I showed you with it…”
Naruze entered the proper command and an image appeared on the inside of the dome-like umbrella.
There was something in the center.
“What is that? It’s like a collection of scribbles.”
It was more like hatching lines distorted into a teardrop shape. It could have been seen as a face or as an animal’s torso. But…
“This is wrong. The floor actually swelled upwards a bit.”
“Oh,” said Suzu. She wouldn’t have been able to sense the image projected overhead since it was a purely optical thing, but…
“It was…the water.”
Naito knew what Suzu meant.
“The water covering the floor created a flat surface, so I mistakenly assumed the floor was flat too.”
“S-sorry. I scanned it…but didn’t…get that much.”
“It’s not your fault, Suzu. We were in a hurry, so no one expects you to have picked up every little thing.”
Musashino: “I was providing sensory assistance for Suzu-sama, so direct any complaints to me. Over!”
Me: “Eh!? For real!? When I tried to barge onto the bridge naked the other day, they had a defense barrier set up to automatically appear and kick me out! They didn’t even acknowledge my presence! Can you believe it!?”
Asama: “C’mon, Toori-kun. Try to behave, okay?”
Flat Vassal: “Asama-san! It was way worse than what he’s describing! You can’t go easy on him like that!”
Unfortunately, being strict with him only made him misbehave more.
But getting back to the topic at hand…
“You have to redraw it, don’t you?” said Naito.
“Judge, that’s right. So I’m starting by creating a 3D mapping of the space and checking what things would look like projected on the ceiling as I go. Given how close that underground space was to the water, it makes sense the hall would be designed to drain water. I completely overlooked that. But,” said Naruze. “That failure was painful enough I’m not going to be drawing this like I know what the answer’s going to be. The whole point is I don’t know what I’m drawing, so my plan is to use the photos I took as a base and then estimate what the other lines could be like and redraw them as necessary. It’s actually a lot of fun.”
“Oh? Feeling motivated now, Ga-chan?”
Naito was glad to see a powerful smile on Naruze’s face when she nodded. As for Naito herself…
…I need to think about strengthening Schwarz Fräulein and Weiss Fräulein.
The last time they had flown, she felt like they had managed a boost in speed and mobility. They couldn’t do gravitational control like those Spears could, but there were tactics they could use to make up for that.
She wished she could use the combat simulator that made use of the bridge’s model creation technology, but she knew Futayo’s warriors would be using it right now.
She just had to do what she could with what she had.
That meant she and Naruze both knew what they had to do. There was only one thing left to decide before getting to their homework.
“Asama-chi. How are you doing on working out the Honnouji Incident’s date?”
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