On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 14
Chapter 14: Dahna[edit]
–A conscience arrived late.
●
I saw everyone in the courtyard.
I didn’t recognize one of them. So I pointed at him and looked at his bangs.
“Seaweed Man!”
“Wow!? Seaweed Man!? What’s this about!?”
“Hello, I am Mr. Vomit.”
“The name’s Busty Olympus.”
“I’m Mucho!”
“Busty Mesopotamian Senpai.”
“I am Apology Man.”
“Good day. I am Temanko.”
After naming themselves, they all turned toward another goddess. She hung her head and spoke barely above a whisper.
“Hello, I’m Micro Bikini.”
“Speak up, Athena! Having micro in your name doesn’t mean you voice has to be micro too! Now name yourself with some spirit!”
The pressure must have been too much for her because Micro Bikini raised her head with a smile.
“Hello! I’m Micro Bikini!”
Busty Olympus nodded in approval.
“I can’t believe you actually said it. You’re hilarious.”
“Auuuuunt!!”
“That’s right! That was kind of mean! I feel sorry for her!”
“Right!? Finally, a normal response! How wonderful!”
“She’s actually wearing clothes right now, so she should be Former Micro Bikini!”
“Excellent point, Senpai! We need to be precise in our language! We shouldn’t spread lies!”
“Excuse meeeeee!?”
“You got a problem with that, Micro Bikini!? Are you saying Senpai is wrong!? Or are you trying to say you’re actually naked!?”
“Are those the only two options here?”
“More or less. …But there’s also some people here I kind of recognize but don’t really know.”
●
I saw Sumeragi-kun look around the courtyard again.
This would be his first time seeing some of the gods here, but…
“Huh? Who’s the track suit couple? I feel like I should know who you are.”
“Oh, I’m Beisu Funto. We actually met this morning.”
“I’m Beisu Seito. We also met this morning.”
“Oh, yeah. That sounds familiar. But wait…this morning?”
Sumeragi-kun smacked a hand to his forehead and turned back my way.
“Did I screw up again?”
“Welllll, we weren’t saying anything in case it would negatively affect you, but you actually rolled back. You were blown away over there somewhere.”
“I was!? You mean my mental memory of all the zoom-ins and frame-by-frames of you were blown away!? Who’s responsible!?”
“I-it wasn’t me!”
“I wasn’t even talking to you, but you still responded. I think I have a top suspect.”
“Ah ha ha! You idiot! You handed him the evidence yourself!”
“Eshita-san?”
“I-I didn’t do it either!”
“Come to think of it, aren’t you an inspector? So why didn’t you stop it or prevent it?”
“Hey, stop making me sound even more guilty! I’m supposed to be found innocent for everything cause I’m so cute! That’s how it’s always worked!”
“I am so sorry…”
It seemed like forever since I’d heard that one, but I decided to tell him what happened.
●
“Oh! So it was pinball!”
Izumi’s response earned a few nods of acknowledgment.
“That’s the natural interpretation, isn’t it?”
“I still don’t get it, but if Izumo says it, I can accept it.”
“Please accept it…”
“By the way, what is pinball?”
“Once the water’s gone, we can go to Oslo- no, that’s not the right atmosphere.”
“A lot of places allow smoking. Shifu and I go to the batting center a lot.”
“They have a lot of big arcade games there, so it’s a great place to see the latest releases. I either go there or to Monaco at the south entrance.”
“What are you two talking about?”
“Local places we can go to show off some real pinball machines.”
“What about the Daiichi Department Store? It’s a little cramped, though.”
“They have three machines, I think.”
“Kotobukiya next door is also a bit cramped now that they’ve added a crane game, but they have about that many.”
Raidou-san nodded and Touto-san nodded toward me.
I remembered meeting her in the locker room this morning. But…
“Did I meet you this morning too?”
“No, we didn’t. I’m TJ, head of the manga club.”
“Wait, what!? You can draw manga!? That’s so cool!”
Izumi’s exclamation left Touto-san speechless.
“––––”
After a moment, she managed to recover.
“Well, I have some skilled underclassman, so I was thinking of retiring this summer and taking it easy.”
After that, Touto-san pointed forward.
“So are we going to get the meeting of the gods started?”
●
I didn’t know what a meeting of the gods entailed.
“Kido-san, do you know what these meetings are like?”
“I do not. I believe the Norse gods have been to one before.”
“I’ve been to a few on our previous planet. …But it’s really not much different from how we usually hang out. The only real difference is you’re responsible for the things you say.”
<I will ask the local gods and spirits to keep the rain out of the courtyard.>
“I can do those water-related tasks if you like.”
<No, thanks,> said Balancer. <You should join Senpai-san in assisting the id- the human.>
“But I am not a creator god or a mother earth goddess.”
“That’s fine, though! I’d still appreciate having you! If Sumeragi-kun only has a weakling god like me with him, the other mythologies will think he just has some trash with him!”
“Please stay! If anything happens, I’d much rather get lightninged all the way to Yamanashi than get a ‘say bye-bye to your lifespan’ from the lifespan goddess!”
“Now you’re trying to provoke Senpai-san, aren’t you?”
“Huh!? Get it together, Mucho! If you want to be provocative, you’ve gotta go like this! Yes, like this! You need to strike this sort of acrobatic pose and then moan or something! Oh, and if you want to provoke me, you’d better show off an even better pose than this!”
“Who in the world would do that!?”
“Sumeragi-kun is so talented for getting Eshita-san to react like that.”
Did Kuwajiri-san have to glare at me like that?
●
“Are you sure it’s alright for me to be here?”
“What’s your divine rank?”
<She is 6th generation.>
“She is? But I thought the Scythians were from the 7th century BCE and Greek mythology began during the 15th century BCE.”
“The time period varies, right?”
<Correct. The generations do not refer to the time period they come from. It refers to how much the myths have changed starting from the 0th generation. By the 15th century BCE, Greek mythology had incorporated gods from the Middle East, Egypt, and the Mediterranean coast, been influenced by them all, and changed form, but Scythian mythology did not.>
“If Hurrian mythology and the nearby barbarian mythologies were 5th generation, then Scythian mythology must have been a direct descendant or close enough, right?”
<It seems like a minor miracle that a hunting people’s mythology managed to remain in that region until the 7th century BCE while providing a fair amount of variety in their gods.>
“I agree. And while Scythian mythology does have a lot of stories about the gods, they don’t have a ‘narrative’ linking those stories together. It lacks the narrative and patriarchal ranking of the gods unique to Laurasian Mythologies, so it is much more similar to a Gondwanan Mythology. Another reason it feels like a direct descendant of an older generation.”
“W-well, setting all that aside, this meeting of the gods is about the flooding, right? I can control rivers and seas, but this flooding is something else. It’s the kind of cataclysm a creator god or mother earth goddess directs against the earth, right?”
●
“Aunt, if they have concluded the flooding is a cataclysm caused by a creator god or mother earth goddess, why did they call sea god Poseidon here?”
“Well, you see. It’s quite simple.”
“…”
“Wait, did you say a creator god or mother earth goddess?”
“Auuuuunt!”
“Poseidon’s also an earth god, so you could suggest he’s on the same level as a mother earth goddess.”
“Yes. I was just about to say that.”
“…”
“Athena! You can’t let this level of nonsense get you down!”
●
Raidou watched the Olympus groups’ exchange before turning toward Kido.
“Kido, with the Olympus group behaving like this, I really don’t see a problem with you being here. You were viewed like a mother earth goddess in Greece, after all.”
“A busty earth goddess!? So like Shifu-senpai!? Then can she combine with the busty sky goddess, the busty sea goddess, and a few more to create the Mega Busty!”
“Did you really need to mention Shifu-senpai in particular there?”
“Also, I’m a harvest god. That’s not quite the same thing as a mother earth goddess.”
“In the opening theme, would the characters’ faces appear in profile together as the title rises up?”
Sumeragi and Tenma exchanged a firm handshake.
And Kido tilted her head.
“Is something the Greeks said about me really enough of a reason?”
“It matters that Herodotus of Greece said it and not the Olympus gods. Herodotus was human and myths can only be defined by humans. Even if it happened long ago, the Olympus gods can’t deny he said it.”
“Um, but wouldn’t that make Kido-san part of the Olympus group?”
“She was described that way as a Scythian god, so it should be fine.”
“And if the Olympus gods get argumentative, she can pull out that lightning weapon, right?”
“You’re supposed to be an inspector, you know?”
“I am a Scythian god, but Izumi has also defined me as his mother god. So I believe there is enough political justification to use the Greek definition and remain on Izumi’s side.”
“Yay! Thank you so much! Thank you so much!”
●
“Douhai-san? It worries me when something so small makes you rejoice that much.”
“Now, if we’re being realistic, Kido is a middle manager here.”
“Eh!? You mean she’s the assistant manager at our office!?”
“Hey, Sumeragi-chan? She is a minor, you know?”
“Not a problem! She stacked my porn magazines up on my desk this morning!”
“That sounds like a big problem to me.”
“Oh, I can’t get anything past you, Temanko! But that’s just some parent-child communication! Figuring out where I can hide them helps increase my intelligence! It just goes up and up!”
<So a new species of ape increases its intelligence by hiding porn magazines?>
“Yay! Jealous of how I’ve built up this towering intellect!? I bet you’ve never booted up to find your disks full of porn videos stacked up in front of you!”
“That would be both impressive and worrying at the same time.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“So why is she a middle manager?”
“Well,” said Raidou. “Like Eshtar touched on earlier, if something happens to Sumeragi, Senpai-san’s retaliation would be overkill.”
“We’re on the terraforming team, but since we’re Norse, we can’t always help out when those things happen.”
“So the two options are Keravnos Melan or death?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes, there is! Maybe it’s hard to tell when it’s never happened to you, but would you rather be blasted to Yamanashi or dry up and die!?”
“Or you could live an honest life.”
“Wow, you really went there! Did anyone ever call you boring when you were a human!?”
“So if I were Human-senpai here, it would be Keravnos Melan or death time for her?”
“That means it takes her less than 30 seconds to trigger it.”
“Which means Eshtar would get killed once every 30 seconds if Senpai-san were the only one here.”
“That’s a lot of dying.”
“Eh!? Since when are there so many of me!?”
“Is it like in Mario where you get stuck in the same pattern and die to the same Hammer Bros over and over?”
<In Eshtar’s case, there are a fair number of related gods in different areas.>
“Is that all I am to you!? But the original has got to be better than a copy! I’m the cutest of them all!”
“How many copies does she have?”
“For us, there’s Astarte and Anat who arrived through Syria. Anat is a god of war and harvest, but she’s a beautiful woman with an emphasis on maternity. She’s based on a Syrian idea and is treated like Set’s wife in our mythology, but she was quite well received here, even by the pharaohs.”
“Anything about her that’s of particular interest?”
“Yeah. In Syria, she had a tear-jerking story where she fuses her life with her dead husband to resurrect him, but we never had much narrative in our myths and the focus ended up more on what she was the god of.”
“…”
“That version sounds so much better than our version.”
“Heyyyyy! Show some favoritism for the home team!”
“Not even trying to hide it now, are you?”
“But anyway,” said Kido. “If Izumi or Douhai-san decided to take action, how that will be done and whether or not to stop it will be up to me. Is that correct?”
“It would be annoying if someone died every 30 seconds.”
There were some comments of “only annoying?” from the surrounding gods, but we were generally war gods so we were casual about these things.
●
TJ was relieved the human’s group had reached an agreement.
…Because only humans can “define” the gods.
It hadn’t been with this group, but she had attended a few meetings of the gods with primarily Egyptian gods in attendance. Even in the virtual manifestation, the gods would discuss matters when necessary. Such as with the DC.
“If I have it right,” she said, raising a hand. “Kido-senpai will be acting as something like the human’s guardian?”
“Yes, that is a good way of putting it. That is a lot of responsibility, so I need to focus.”
“Thank you for doing it. And just to be certain, you won’t actually be firing that Keravnos Melan thing here, will you?”
Kido glanced over at the Greeks and they backed away.
“Hey, wait! Why am I out front!? Can’t Athena’s god of war shield us?”’
“Gods of war haven’t been very helpful against that!”
“Between mother earth goddesses and sea gods, the former are what they want here, so you should shield me.”
“That authority bias is refreshingly blatant.”
TJ was a little worried, so she decided to ask.
“So, Olympus gods, have any of you been hit by Keravnos Melan?”
“…”
“No! It’d kill us!”
“Before, Zeus said we could probably manage if eight of us ganged up on the Echidna there.”
“And what happened?”
“She started the battle with Keravnos Melan. It didn’t hit us, but our gods of war gave in to the ‘force’ of it, breaking apart and deactivating on their own. Oh, and Zeus froze up in fear and pissed himself.”
“Sharing that story is quite the attack on your boss.”
“That weapon is just cheating.”
“The colossal water monster was destroyed by it and the same thing would happen to us. The thing has a complete manifestation and it’s way more powerful than when it was ours.”
Kidou-senpai looked to Eshita-senpai.
“Sounds to me like you’re dying in 30 seconds either way.”
“Ah ha ha. Don’t worry! I’ll be fine as long as I’m wearing at least 10 layers!”
“So we’ll find out which is stronger: a threat manifestation weapon or poorly-defined rules.”
“Maybe, Kuwajiri-san, but wouldn’t we be caught in the blast too?”
“You have nothing to worry about. I will not use Keravnos Melan unless the Greeks do something stupid.”
“Really? You can control yourself?”
“Yes, of course,” said Kido-senpai. “My Oktobasilia Drakon has seven other weapons I can use instead.”
●
TJ realized everyone was looking her way. The guards in particular.
“You should try not to provoke her.”
“We can run away if anything happens, so let us know right away!”
They’re just going to run? thought TJ, but given their divine rank, it was a sensible decision.
At any rate, she was apparently in charge here. So she raised her hand a little.
“So, uh, how powerful are those other seven weapons?”
Kido-senpai thought on that for a moment. And eventually…
“Compared to what?”
“Um, do you play video games?”
“Not really.”
“Then,” suggested TJ. “If we think of Keravnos Melan as equivalent to a sword, would the other seven weapons be more like a knife or a fork? Does that make sense?”
“Why is our creator god being so accommodating?”
“Don’t ask that. It’s just how she is.”
Shut up, you two.
Meanwhile, Kido-senpai nodded.
“I understand now.”
“You do?”
Kido-senpai nodded again and gestured toward the Olympus gods.
“If I summoned the other seven weapons at that miniature size, they could still destroy a god of war in one shot. And I have other Scythian weapons too. So there is nothing to worry about.”
●
TJ silently opened a Revelation Board.
“…”
“Um.”
“Hey! Calm down! Calm down, come back to your senses, and think!”
“Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy to call that ‘nothing to worry about’?”
“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t start that annoying analysis you cultural types love!”
“He’s right! So just let it go!”
●
Sumeragi-kun clapped his hands once.
“Oh, I get it! Kido-senpai’s Scythians were bare-boobed war lovers, so any of their weapons would be one-shot wins, right?”
“Um, Sumeragi-kun? That’s mostly accurate, but Kido-san isn’t bare-boobed. She wears tights over them, so-”
Then it hit me.
“Wait, are they called Scythians because they love tights?”[1]
“I bet they loved using tights to cover their boobs!”
“Sorry, I laughed a bit at that, but none of that fits with the language used when I was a god.”
“Big boobs worship has been around since life first formed, so it transcends language!”
<You claim the concept of bustiness has existed since the age of bacteria!? A fantastic idea! I must transport him to a hospital immediately, so please assist me!>
“Now, now,” I said, holding out a hand to stop Balancer. And…
“Kido-san? To put it bluntly, I was hoping we could do this in a way that doesn’t include murder, so do you have a way of doing that?”
“Let’s see… When I was fighting the Greeks there, what could they have done to keep me from blasting them?”
She thought for a bit with hand on her cheek.
And then she gave the answer.
“Suicide?”
●
“I think they’d probably be just as dead afterwards.”
“Um, Shifu-senpai, not probably. Well, maybe not for some.”
“Sorry, but all I could think was ‘well, that’s a new one’.”
“Yeah, and I was thinking this is the inevitable result of making a warrior people’s god into a middle manager.”
“Kido-chan is super sweet to her own, but she’s like a headhunter against anyone else.”
“Tooru-chaaaaaaaaan!? Shifu-chaaaaaaan!?”
●
“But,” said Kido-san.
“Listen up, Douhai-san.”
“Eh? What is it?”
“Before you go on thinking I love tights, that outfit is a compromise with modern sensibilities.”
“It do feel embarrassed dressing that way.”
“Kido-san! Kido-san! I feel like you’re missing the point here, but I award you 100 points! That answer deserves a perfect score!”
●
“Is it my imagination, or are they not giving me fair treatment as a goddess?”
“Aunt! Aunt! Do you finally understand what I mean when I say you’re not treating me fairly!?”
“When have I ever been unfair? Listen, you just have to deal with it if it comes from me.”
“Wow! Unfair as always!”
Meanwhile, two more people approached.
●
I saw someone arrive from the entrance.
“Hey, Egyptians, your other creator god is here.”
“Oh, Kunugi-senpai.”
“Sup. I’m leaving you in charge for this one, so I’ll be in the clubroom working. Call me if anything happens. Is that fine with you, or should I just leave?”
“Well,” everyone said.
“I’d really prefer if you stayed.”
“Each faction really should have a third year present.”
“More shields can distribute the blast more!”
“That last comment isn’t exactly convincing me to stay!”
“Don’t worry,” I said to calm him. And…
“Um, who is that behind Kunugi-san?”
My question was answered by movement.
I didn’t recognize this person, but she had long bangs and…
“Big boobs?”
“Eh? Oh, um, sorry.”
“No, you don’t need to apologize for them! Big boobs are a good thing! A great thing!”
●
“…”
“Wh-what is that silent look for, Shifu-san!? Yours are big too!”
●
With an “anyway” mood, she introduced herself.
“I am Drama Club Head Dan Anne from Irish mythology.”
Just after everyone else responded, Sumeragi-kun spoke up.
“Busty Long Bangs!”
| Back to Chapter 13 | Return to Main Page | Forward to Chapter 15 |
- ↑ Japanese for Scythia is “Sukitai”, which could be interpreted as “loves tights”.
