The Power of Moe

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Don’t forget, I’m not from this world,” I said, trying to sound as mocking as possible. “Do you really think my magic can be detected by your little toys? Did you ever detect magic when I used any of the things I brought here?”

  The terrorists were clearly shaken. So far, everything was going according to plan.

  Until Alessio shouted, “K-Kill him! We have the empress here! He can’t possibly be using an area-of-effect attack!”

  Well, shoot. He was sharper than I thought.

  Seeing the men draw their swords, I felt a chill run through my body.

  Yikes! Crap, crap, crap! Don’t look this way!

  At that exact instant, there was a soft exhalation of breath, and Minori-san was moving. She had already loosened her bonds—or rather, had cut the rope enough so she could easily break them at any time. She stood up and reached out to grab the nearest guard by the arm. He was astonished. And a second later, he had been smacked in the face hard enough to lay him out.

  The fighting arts the JSDF used were fundamentally different from traditional Japanese martial arts—or so I had read somewhere. It wasn’t about spiritual discipline, only about what would actually work in a fight. There were no discrete phases—take a stance, move in, strike. It was just one motion, and then it was all over.

  At the same time as she was dragging the guard toward her, Minori-san had buried her elbow in his face. He was already off-balance, and she hit hard. The move took no time at all, defense was almost impossible, and it was vastly more powerful than a simple elbow strike—and I recalled hearing that the spot right under the nose is a vital pressure point.

  Whatever. The guard was instantly rendered unconscious. The patriots, not quite able to comprehend what had happened, stood staring stupidly. Minori-san took advantage of the opportunity to grab the fallen guard’s sword; at the same time, she spun the man’s body around with her left arm, using him as a shield.

  “Grr—kill that woman!” Alessio got his wits back about him first and set his men on us. But they still hesitated. Yes: it was because I was there. They thought if they turned their backs to me, I might hit them with magic.

  What a ridiculous misunderstanding on their part. Of course I couldn’t use magic.

  There was someone else in this room they should have been much more worried about.

  “Alessio!” one of the men shouted, pointing at the leader’s hip. They had finally noticed that the magic-detection crystal was glowing. “S-Someone’s using magic!”

  They didn’t know when I might drop a spell on them, and Minori-san was standing there with a sword in her hand, clearly ready to use it. That was why it had taken them so long to notice what the crystal was doing.

  “It’s that woman!” One of them pointed at Myusel.

  Bingo. She had been looking at the ground, as if she might faint, but in reality she had been chanting a spell. We’d actually had a two-step plan in place: I would distract the guards with my phone trick, which Minori-san would use as a springboard for her attack. But even she was just distracting them from what Myusel was up to.

  The men turned toward the maid—but it was too late.

  “Tifu Murottsu!” she exclaimed. “Storm Fist!”

  No sooner had she completed her incantation than an intense power struck the men. Some ball of invisible force slammed into the terrorists. I didn’t know exactly what spell Myusel had used, but it was obviously something that hit your opponents with a shockwave. Two of the men simply flew backward, striking the wall. For an instant they hung there, like wall scrolls, before sliding down onto the floor. The whites of their eyes were showing, but they were twitching, suggesting that they weren’t dead.

  “Dammit!” one of the terrorists exclaimed.

  “Don’t move,” another of the startled men growled, grabbing for the nearest noble kid. “Or I’ll—”

  But his hand never reached the child—because Minori-san cut it clean off.

  “Hrrgh?!”

  A huge amount of blood began to spray from the stump. The man stumbled backward, and Minori-san took advantage to land another elbow—another enemy down. This meant four of the men, in other words a third of the terrorists’ strength, had been incapacitated. But then—

  “It burns, it chars, through heat it destroys...!”

  One of the guys standing over by the wall had placed his hands near his stomach as though he were holding a ball, and he was chanting something. A sphere began to float up out of his hands, totally ignoring the laws of physics—it was a globe of red light. I might not have known jack about magic, but even I could tell a fireball when I saw one.

  This was bad. It sounded like his incantation was finished. But just as I was starting to really worry—

  “Most foolish of you.”

  The words came from Petralka. Amazingly, she stood calmly and faced the guy who looked like he was about to launch a magical attack at any minute. The man was obviously surprised, but he could hardly interrupt his spell now, and with the wall behind him he couldn’t back up any farther.

  “Imalfu Muurubu! Bloom of Flame!” he shouted. It flew straight at Petralka, and yet—

  “Haagh!”

  An instant later, it was shooting back toward him, like someone had caught a hand grenade and tossed it back. I must have been right about the fireball thing, because both the spellcaster and the terrorist next to him burst into flames. Screaming, they rolled on the floor, desperately trying to put out the fire. A few seconds later, it disappeared, but they were already out of the fight.

  “So she’s got magical protection—an amulet!” Alessio growled.

  “An empress has many enemies,” Petralka said, almost in a whisper. “Threats domestic and external. Assassination is nearly an occupational hazard. It only makes sense that we should take measures to protect ourself.”

  “But I was sure you had no magical items...”

  “Obviously, if we carried our magical equipment openly, it would be confiscated. So we always keep our protection close to our body—indeed, our very body is itself a magical item.”

  Alessio was shocked. But then again, so was I. Petralka doing what she’d just done was not something we had discussed as part of our plan. And what was this about her body being a magical item?

  “Magical detection devices only pick up functional magical objects separate from human bodies, is that not true?” Petralka said. “Otherwise, they would react to people’s inherent mana, and be useless as detectors.”

  Most likely, there was some kind of spell or incantation engraved on Petralka’s body, such as in the form of a tattoo. Her knights might be able to defend her against someone who rushed at her with a sword or something, but if the attack was magical—especially if it was an ambush from mid- or long range—they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. So the empress made sure she had counter-magic that would allow her to deflect such attacks.

  “Now, then.” Petralka first glanced at Minori-san, who had taken out two more terrorists in the meantime. Then she stared right at Alessio. “It looks like you’re the last.”

  “Stop right there!” For some reason, Alessio looked triumphant.

  Even as he spoke, we could hear a dull sound as of metal objects scraping together.

  “The Consuming Flame...!”

  Alessio was standing next to the magical fire weapon. He was holding something that looked like a metal card, which he inserted into a small slot. Evidently it was some kind of key to arm the bomb.

  “Now I need only a simple incantation to cause my little friend here to explode. Believe me, you won’t have time for any spells. Take one step closer to me and I’ll set it off. If you don’t want to be annihilated, then do as I say.”

  I’d noticed Alessio wasn’t attacking like his lackeys. It must have been so he could pull this ploy. And it was working for him; none of us were moving. I suspected even Petralka’s defensive magic wouldn’t be able to withstand an attack of that magnitude.

>   “Ha!... Haha!” Looking around the room, Alessio began to laugh in that crazy way only cornered people can. An instant later, though, his expression hardened. “Hey, where’d that outlander whelp go?”

  I guess he’d finally noticed. Specifically, noticed that I wasn’t there.

  Well, I wasn’t far away. Only one wall separated his room from where I was in the hallway.

  “Ahh, who cares? As long as I have the empress, I can force them to negotiate.”

  “No, I really don’t think so,” I said as I walked back into the room, having found what I was looking for.

  “You?!” Alessio stared at me wide-eyed. It’s only natural that you might doubt the sanity of a former hostage walking right back up to his captor. Obviously, I was no young brave, no manga-style hero. I didn’t have any earthshaking powers. Heck, I could hardly pass gym class. But I did have...

  “Hey, what’s—?” Alessio was staring fixedly at me.

  “Oh, this?” I held the item in my hand up to about waist level.

  It was a red metal cylinder topped with a black plastic lever. A tube snaked away from the top, ending in a nozzle that looked kind of like a trumpet.

  “We call it a fire extinguisher,” I said.

  I mentioned that I had the JSDF put fire extinguishers here and there around school, right? But this one was missing something—namely, the safety pin.

  “Huh...?” Alessio said dumbly. I pointed the nozzle at his face and pulled the lever as hard as I could. The next instant, a pressurized cylinder boasting a top range of seven meters expelled reddish-white smoke directly at him.

  As anyone who’s ever used one will know, these handheld fire extinguishers are so powerful it’s like they’re trying to blow out each individual flame, rather than just stop the fire with their chemicals. It would be bad enough being anywhere in the spray—I have to imagine that standing directly in front of the blast hurts.

  Alessio gave a little shout, as if afraid, and threw both his hands across his face like he was being doused with poison. He jumped back, away from the magical fire weapon.

  “Expl—hrgghff!”

  Naturally, he was in no state to chant a magical spell. The contents of the fire extinguisher had gotten everywhere, the fine white mist making it look like someone had spilled milk all over the room. You couldn’t breathe without getting a lungful of extinguisher chemicals; everyone in the room, including Alessio, began to cough.

  Fire extinguishers can actually be pretty dangerous: if you use them in an enclosed space where the chemicals have nowhere to go, it’s possible to suffocate. But, well, this was an emergency.

  Alessio, who had taken the spray full in the face, looked awful; he was clawing at his throat and gasping for breath. At least that might keep him from intoning any spells for a minute.

  I tossed aside the empty fire extinguisher and dashed for the magical weapon. I groped at the surface of the weapon until I found the key and pulled it out as quickly as I could, then I heaved a sigh of relief—or tried to, but instead I ended up coughing violently.

  Ugh! Totally not cool!

  For the record, the reason I used a fire extinguisher was because we were dealing with Imarufe Bisurupeguze, the Consuming Flame. I had no idea if an extinguisher would work against fire sprites, but if the idea was that they ignited in order to release their ultimate power—well, then, I thought there was a good chance that flame retardant might blunt the effect. Luckily, in the end the bomb didn’t go off anyway.

  “Over here, everyone!” Minori-san ran over to the window and opened it. The room we were in was on the first floor, so we could easily escape through the window. Minori-san hadn’t gotten her magic ring back yet, so in theory, her words should have been incomprehensible to the Eldant people in the room—but under the circumstances, no one had to understand her language to know what she was saying. One by one, the hostages got outside.

  One might argue that since we had taken out all the terrorists, we were safe... But then again, we hadn’t killed them, so they could come to at any time. It was in the interest of safety to get the hostages out of there as quickly as possible.

  As the open window let fresh air into the room, it gradually became easier to see. And what we saw was Alessio standing not far away from us. He was just staring into space.

  I could see where. He and his compatriots had gotten all their equipment ready, and prepared themselves mentally—I’m sure they never expected to have it all blow up in their faces (figuratively speaking). And it wasn’t the imperial army but a hostage who had done it.

  Alessio wiped the extinguisher chemicals off his face with his sleeve. His expression was one of pure despair. Most of his hostages were gone, just a few of us left in the room with him. His most important catch, Petralka, was just that moment climbing out the window, helped by Minori-san, who had climbed out ahead of her. It looked like everything was finally all right. I let out a relieved breath.

  But reality isn’t like anime or manga. It turns out actual terrorists are way worse than fictional ones.

  “Hrgh!” Alessio grabbed his sword off the floor and shouted hoarsely, “Did you think—Did you think I would let it end like this?!”

  He flung the sword as hard as he could. Despair and madness must have given him superhuman strength, because the fifty-centimeter blade flew straight as an arrow. Straight at Petralka’s back.

  The spell that protected her body was only a countermeasure against magic. An edged weapon could hurt her just like anyone else. It was supposed to be her royal guard that protected her from physical threats.

  The soft, almost wet sound of the sword digging into flesh seemed impossibly loud. I froze with my hand outstretched. I was neither close enough nor quick enough to do anything about the attack. The sword cut through cloth easily, burying itself deep in its victim’s body.

  That is to say—in Myusel’s body.

  Petralka had turned around in astonishment. She may not have seen the moment of impact, but when she saw Myusel standing behind her with her arms held wide, a sword lodged in her body, she surely understood what had happened.

  “Urgh...”

  Myusel’s beautiful features contorted with pain, and she collapsed to her knees.

  “Myusel!”

  Who had called out? Was it me, or Petralka?

  At almost the same instant, there was a roar, and then Alessio slumped forward. I didn’t know when Minori-san had gotten her 9mm back, but she had just fired it from her spot on the other side of the window.

  “Myusel!” I rushed to her side. She was lying on the floor, her breathing strained. Beside her, Petralka was looking down blankly at the groaning half-elf.

  I knelt down next to Myusel. The weapon had pierced her abdomen, and her white maid’s apron had turned red with blood. The sword wasn’t quite right in the middle of her stomach, but it was still possible that it had damaged some internal organs. I tried desperately to draw on the modicum of knowledge I had gained from reading manga and novels. Internal wounds were very bad news. They weren’t like superficial injuries, where things were likely to be okay if you could stop the bleeding. They might require surgery.

  I wanted to pull the blade out immediately, but I thought I remembered hearing that if you didn’t do it carefully, it could make the bleeding worse—that it was better to leave the sword where it was. Arrrrgh! Dammit! I’m so panicked, I can’t think straight!

  “Why...? Why did you...” Petralka was murmuring uncomprehendingly. “After we...”

  Her voice was cracking, and so quiet I could barely hear her. But I suspected I knew what she was saying. Just before our ordeal, Petralka had very suddenly and rather unfairly fired Myusel from her job. For that matter, she had suggested the half-elf find work in a brothel instead. After all that, what reason did Myusel have to protect the empress?

  “Didn’t... Didn’t I...” Myusel was trying to speak with her trembling, bloodless lips. “Didn’t I look... cool...?”

&nbs
p; “Huh?”

  “Just like in... one of Master’s manga... I wanted to be... like them...”

  It dawned on me: there had been a scene much like this one in the very first manga I had ever read to the two of them. Myusel still remembered it—as, I suspected, did Petralka.

  “Are you—Are you some kind of idiot?!” Petralka shouted. “What do you mean, like them?! Cool? What are you talking about?!”

  Petralka reached out and grabbed Myusel with both hands, heedless of the fact that she would get covered in blood. She shook the maid repeatedly, like a bratty kid trying to wake up her oversleeping older sister.

  “Is that why you did something so—oh! Oh, no!” She stopped shaking Myusel and started shouting. “The blood—the blood! Someone! Someone, quickly!”

  At that moment, almost as though they had been waiting for her summons (although I’m sure they hadn’t been), we heard the clanking of several sets of armored footsteps. A group of knights and soldiers burst into the room, all exclaiming, “Your Majesty!”

  “Your Majesty, are you all—”

  Petralka interrupted. “Get this woman to a doctor, quickly! No, wait—bring a doctor here, as fast as you can!”

  “Your Majesty? That girl is just a—”

  “Do as we say! This is a command from your empress!”

  The edge of anger in her voice caused several knights to jump in surprise and then run out of the room. Petralka turned back to Myusel and whispered, “Don’t you die...”

  But there was no answer from the maid.

  “Do not die, we forbid it. Do you hear us, Myusel?! This is an imperial command!”

  The empress began to cry like a child. The remaining knights and soldiers stood around, obviously uncomfortable and completely befuddled about what to do. Petralka stayed with the motionless Myusel, whispering the same words over and over, both an order and a plea: “Don’t die. Don’t die.”

  Our footsteps echoed noisily in the stone hallway. Somewhere in the distance, a bird was chirping. It was a beautiful, clear morning, or at least it looked like one.

  I walked wordlessly through Eldant Castle. Minori-san was a few steps away. Given what had just happened, she was carrying not only her usual 9mm handgun, but a duralumin suitcase. It looked like a normal piece of luggage, but inside was a 9mm machine gun—small-bore, in other words. The suitcase could also double as a shield. It was a bit of special equipment for protecting VIPs. Apparently she had requisitioned it in an almighty hurry.