by Yuu Miyazaki
“Um… That is a problem.” Saya let go of Ayato and stood deep in thought.
Julis seized the opportunity to pull Ayato behind herself and took on a threatening stance.
“Well, it’s still possible to register as a stand-in,” Lester suggested. “There’re always some teams who get hurt.”
“Right. Then I’ll do that.” Saya snapped her fingers.
“And who will your partner be?” Julis asked cautiously.
“Ayato.”
“Denied!”
The two of them began arguing again.
Even as Ayato let out a long sigh, Ernesta’s words came back to him. “But I won’t make it so easy next time.”
She might have been only teasing, but it stuck in his mind. Just what is “next time” supposed to mean…?
“Honestly… Don’t scare me like that, Ernesta.”
Having signed the official agreement, Camilla admonished Ernesta outside the Seidoukan school building.
“Hunh? Whatcha mean?” Ernesta looked back innocently, but Camilla had known her too long to be fooled.
“There was no need to go out of your way to tell them you were involved in that incident.”
Camilla was referring to Ernesta’s declaration in the training room. She had essentially outed herself as the mastermind, causing the Seidoukan students to go on the defensive. There was nothing to be gained from that.
“What’s the big deal? This cooperation agreement puts the whole thing behind us. They can’t dig it up and use it against us now.”
“That’s true, but…”
As Ernesta pointed out, the agreement was advantageous to Seidoukan, and it was hard to imagine them breaking it.
“Anyway, I appreciate the support from Ferrovius. For realsies. Things would never have gone this smoothly unless we dangled Lux technology in their faces.”
“That’s not a problem. It’s technology with real barriers for practical implementation, anyway. Just remember that you guys at Pygmalion owe us one.”
This was the plain truth. That particular technology was revolutionary, but it was hardly in keeping with the vision of Ferrovius—or of Camilla herself.
Rather, it belonged to the same category as Dr. Sasamiya’s weapons.
“Hee-hee! Anyway, you sure were provoking that blue-haired girl, Camilla! What a rare sight.”
“I wasn’t provoking her—that was just how I felt. Anyway, the preparations are going well, I presume?”
“Yup, smooth as can be! We were able to get Sonnet and Methuselah to quit their opportunistic spectating and join our side. So Tenorio won’t be able to make a move for a while.”
Ernesta said this like it was nothing. But in fact, they had the summit under their complete control.
“You really are good at this game.”
Camilla had never doubted her own talents. Even in Allekant, where so-called geniuses gathered from all over the globe, she considered herself equipped with the skills to lead an enormous faction.
Still, spending time with the girl in front of her now, she was occasionally reminded of the obvious difference in their natural gifts, both as researchers and as faction leaders.
“The student council president made out well at the Rikka Garden Summit, so I guess the table is set for us! Now to give my babies a final tune-up…” But now doubt clouded Ernesta’s expression.
“Is there a problem?” Camilla asked.
“Sort of. Thanks to Silas, I’ve got plenty of data for the drive systems. But the output systems haven’t really stabilized yet. We have some ideas, but I think that part will take a little more time.”
“If he’d just come to Allekant, things would have been much easier.”
“Well, no helping that. Dantes and Stregas don’t go willingly to our school. I mean, hey, no one wants to be a guinea pig!”
Hearing Ernesta’s cheerful tone, Camilla couldn’t keep a sardonic smile from her lips. “So you trick and manipulate them instead?”
“Yup! I’ll do anything. Anything it takes to make my dream come true.”
Ernesta looked at the sky tinted red in the sunset. Playful mischief danced in her eyes as usual, but Camilla knew that behind them lay a serious and dangerous resolve.
“Is that why you said you wanted to meet them all of a sudden?”
Still gazing skyward, Ernesta nodded. “Yup. I think Mr. Sword Fighter is going to be our toughest opponent at the Phoenix. So I wanted to see him once before the tournament!”
“Ayato Amagiri, was it? True, the data we have on him is quite impressive…”
Camilla thought of the young man and how he still had something of childish innocence in his face. Despite what they knew, to her he only seemed like an easygoing and ordinary boy.
It was difficult to see him as much of a threat, even taking into consideration his Orga Lux, the Ser Veresta.
“I sure would like to have just a little more data on him. Mm-hmm, just a little…” Ernesta was talking and nodding to herself.
“You’re not up to something, are you?”
“Um, I’m not sure yet. My dolls still need tuning up, and we don’t have time to make arrangements with another school. The best thing would be to get something to happen inside Seidoukan, but that’s harder now that we don’t have Silas anymore. And I’d need to set up all the devices to actually collect the data…” Ernesta went on muttering to herself, but then raised her head with a sudden realization. “Oh, that’s it. I could do that.”
“You thought of something?”
Ernesta nodded happily to Camilla’s query. “Tenorio have been on our case lately, right? They’re all like, ‘You didn’t do Allekant any favors with that Silas incident!’”
“They have some nerve, after what they pulled.”
Compared to the Tenorio blunder from four years ago, Ernesta’s recent faux pas seemed trivial.
In any case, the primary objective in her involvement with Silas had been to gather data on the mana transmission efficiency of a telekinetic. And on that score, she had been completely successful.
What was more, Ferrovius had agreed to pay the price for that experiment. Tenorio had no grounds on which to object.
“Well, maybe it’s about time we gave them a chance to redeem themselves. That would be fair, right?” Ernesta grinned gleefully.
“I’m not following.”
“See, if I’ve failed but they succeed in cleaning up after me, they will have produced superior results, right?”
Now Camilla was beginning to see what Ernesta had in mind. “So you’re going to send Tenorio after them.”
Ernesta let out a sly giggle. “Ooh, it’ll be fun to try for two birds with one stone, don’t you think?”
Seeing her immersed in a new scheme, Camilla couldn’t help but smile.
She was extremely reckless and irresponsible, but a surprisingly steadfast friend.
And while Ernesta caused her a lot of grief, for Camilla that was a small price to pay.
CHAPTER 3
WITH LIGHTNING-EDGED SPEED
“So, can you find out anything about those two?”
“Oh-ho-ho, I see, I see. Allekant students in our school, huh?”
It was lunch recess, the next day, in the classroom of first-year homeroom three.
Ayato had asked Eishirou about the two girls from Allekant. Eishirou nodded in good cheer as he dexterously sliced an apple with a knife-shaped Lux.
Eishirou seemed strapped for cash these days. The apple appeared to be his entire lunch, and even that had been a gift from their dorm neighbor, whose family ran a farming complex.
“Getting the scoop on students from another school. Now, that might be a tad steep.” Chomping on an apple slice, he rubbed the thumb and first two fingers of his free hand together.
“How much can you get me for buying you lunch today?”
“Sold! It’s been ages since I’ve had a serious lunch!” Eishirou stuffed the rest of the apple into his mouth al
l at once and whipped out his mobile device. “I’ll tell you on the way to the cafeteria. So, Camilla and Ernesta, right?” He led Ayato out of the classroom.
Since he had to keep the incident with Silas a secret, Ayato couldn’t explain all the details. For Eishirou, however, just the names were plenty to go on. The faces displayed on his air-windows were none other than the two visitors from the day before.
“First, we have this exotic beauty… Her name is Camilla Pareto, and she’s with Allekant’s Research Institute. She represents Ferrovius, the largest faction in Allekant. She specializes in Lux development, and the winning team of last season’s Phoenix used Luxes developed by her group. Fighters using her weapons also won a lot of points in the other Festa tournaments. So she played a significant part in Allekant taking second place in the standings last season.”
“Wow, I had no idea she was so important.”
Now that he thought about it, her crisp, dignified demeanor, her sharp gaze—everything about her suggested great proficiency.
“And the other one is Ernesta Kühne. She’s renowned as the greatest genius in Allekant and represents the Pygmalion faction… I don’t have much information on her, though. All I’ve really heard is that she’s quite the eccentric.”
There was no mistaking that.
Ayato’s face grew hot as he remembered the sensation of her lips on his cheek. Even leaving that aside, she seemed to be very high-energy in general.
“And she managed to raise Pygmalion from a third-rate faction to a leading one,” Eishirou went on. “She’s got skills, that’s for sure.”
“What are these Ferrovius and Pygmalion things?”
“Well, each school has internal power struggles, but Allekant takes it to extremes. They’re split into different factions based on research topics, and the factions compete for research funds and good fighters in the practical class.” Eishirou opened yet another air-window. It showed what looked to be a pie chart. “As I just mentioned, the largest faction is Ferrovius, which is involved in Lux development. As you can see, they have roughly half the resources in Allekant.”
“That’s pretty dominant.”
“Well, they’re massive, but on the other hand they lack unity. And the thing is, at Allekant, the research council has more power than the student council. In the research council, it takes two-thirds of the vote to pass a motion. So to get anything passed, they have to ally themselves with another faction. Before, they had been teaming up with Tenorio, a faction that focuses on bioenhancement. But a few years ago, Tenorio apparently made some huge blunder that caused them to fall out of favor. So recently, Ferrovius formed an alliance with Pygmalion.”
This all sounded very complicated, Ayato thought. “What’s Pygmalion’s research focus?”
“Cybernetics and Puppets, I think.”
That made sense. So it really was Ernesta who made the dolls that Silas controlled. And the fact that some of those dolls had been designed specifically to fight against Julis and Lester proved that Ernesta already had some data on them. Maybe “mastermind” was not such a bad description after all.
“So, I have a basic question,” Ayato said. “Why do Allekant students participate in research? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just leave that to their IEF and let the students concentrate on the Festa?”
“Well, I think it comes down to compatibility. Genestella are far better suited to doing research involving mana and prana. In fact, most of the famous scientists in meteoric engineering are Genestella. If you’re going to recruit Genestella scientists, why not educate and develop them, too? That’s Allekant’s MO.”
“That seems like a lot to ask…”
“Actually, when they started out, Allekant was just as weak as Queenvale,” Eishirou explained. “But as soon as the student researchers started producing results, they became one of the strongest schools in no time. Besides, if you want to go into research, no other school will give you the freedom that Allekant does.”
“Huh. Wait, hold on…” Ayato realized that they were taking a different route than usual.
They had gone through the high school building toward the walkway to the middle school building.
“Hey, Yabuki, isn’t the cafeteria the other way?”
“Well, you said you were buying. So why not make the most of it?” Eishirou, who was walking in front, turned to give Ayato a mischievous grin. “I thought we could live it up at Le Maurice today.”
“What?!”
Le Maurice was the most expensive place to eat on the Seidoukan campus. It was situated at the edge of a wooded area somewhat removed from the school buildings. Lunch there would cost at least three times as much as at the Ursa Major dining hall where they usually ate.
“Information from other schools takes effort to gather and fact-check,” Eishirou pointed out. “This is a good deal for you, trust me.”
“Oh, all right…” Having made the suggestion himself, Ayato didn’t see a way out of it. Sighing in resignation, he took out his wallet to check the contents. It was possible to pay electronically at almost any business in Asterisk, but he rarely did so. It wasn’t really his style.
“Ooh.”
“Whoa!”
Eishirou had stopped suddenly, and Ayato—who had been recounting his cash with the faint hope that there might be more than he thought—almost bumped into Eishirou’s back. “Hey, careful. What’s going on?” Ayato asked.
“I just saw something for a possible story is all.” Eishirou’s eyes shone like a child’s upon finding a new toy.
Following his gaze, Ayato saw two figures standing behind a pillar in the connecting hallway. And he recognized them.
“Hey, that’s…”
It was the same girl he’d slammed into in the same walkway, and the middle-aged man she had called her uncle.
They were far enough away that Ayato couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t seem to be a friendly chat. While it looked short of a full-on argument, the tension was palpable.
“Heh, who’d have thought I’d pick up a scoop on Kirin Toudou in a place like this. I must have racked up some good karma!” Eishirou had already taken out a worn notebook from his pocket and started scribbling away without looking down at his pen.
“You know that girl?” Ayato wasn’t sure how Eishirou might have racked up any good karma, but he was curious about her.
Eishirou’s writing hand paused as he looked back at Ayato in shock. “Are you serious?”
“Uh, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you know, Kirin Toudou happens to be our—”
Eishirou got that far into his sentence when a dry slap rang out.
The man had just struck the girl across the cheek with his open hand. “I thought I told you that’s not your concern, Kirin.”
“But Uncle, I…”
“Did I give you permission to speak?” The man raised his hand again, and Kirin flinched.
“That’s enough of that.” Before the older man could bring down his hand, Ayato was there between them.
Kirin’s eyes went round with surprise.
“Who are you?” the man demanded, scowling. His eyes looked down on Ayato with a chilly contempt, and his voice dripped with undisguised hostility.
“I may not know the details here, but I don’t think you should raise your hand against a defenseless girl,” Ayato said.
The man smiled derisively. “Don’t make me laugh. You and your lot are here fighting for your own greed. And you’re going to lecture me?”
“We’re not just fighting. We’re competing. And that’s not the same as one-sided violence.”
The man glowered down, meaning to intimidate him, but Ayato faced him evenly.
The two glared at each other for some time. Finally, the man shook off Ayato’s hand with a sniff. “I was just disciplining her. This is a family matter. Stay out of it.”
“Family…?” Ayato studied the man more closely.
He seem
ed to be in his early forties, and he had a strong build, confirming Ayato’s earlier impression. He was quite tall, though maybe not as tall as Lester, and beneath his well-tailored, dark brown suit were sturdy shoulders and a broad chest. The man carried himself in a way that hinted at a background in martial arts, but he was not a Genestella.
“My name is Kouichirou Toudou. Kirin Toudou is my niece.”
Ayato turned to look at Kirin, who looked frightened, but nodded all the same.
“Now get out of here, boy. It’s not as if a little slap can really do any damage to you Genestella.”
“That may be true, but we still feel pain.”
At those words, Kirin looked up at Ayato with a gasp.
Then she opened her mouth as if to speak—but her eyes wavered with indecision, and she swallowed the words she was about to say.
Kouichirou, meanwhile, wore a sneer of displeasure. “You’ve got some mouth on you for a student. What’s your name?”
“Ayato Amagiri.”
Kouichirou took out his mobile device from his pocket and handled it with a practiced precision to open an air-window. “Amagiri, eh? A nobody,” he scoffed. “Not even in the Named Chart.”
Apparently it didn’t take him long to get a handle on Ayato’s identity. But then the condescending disappointment in his face suddenly turned to something more serious.
“Hmm, so you have the Ser Veresta. I suppose you’re not completely worthless…” Kouichirou looked down at Ayato with a confident smile. “Very well, boy. If you disapprove of my actions, tell me what you’d have me do.”
“Huh?”
“I’m willing to hear you out. Speak your mind.” Kouichirou self-importantly crossed his arms.
Ayato hesitated, but only for a moment, before he spoke clear and firm. “Can you promise never to strike her again?”
“Fine. I will.” Kouichirou nodded magnanimously and a cruel smile spread across his face. “But only if you win in a duel.”
“A duel…?”
“Uncle! Please don’t!” Kirin protested in surprise, but Kouichirou paid her no attention as he continued:
