Volume 2B, Chapter 56: Howler in the Theatre
From whose point of view
Is it a tragedy?
And what is the opposite?
Point Allocation (Sentiment)
The people of London watched the overhead swordfight between King Lear and Michizane.
Even in their houses and behind their shutters, they could hear it and feel the wind.
The king pushed forward with repeated uses of his two swords while the Far Eastern noble responded with his lightning sword.
The white lightning sword arced through the sky and white light scattered when it was blocked by the crossed swords of its opponent.
They crossed swords with each other, launched a sword toward their opponent’s openings, deflected their opponent’s strikes, changed height and angle to attack again, and launched new strike after new strike.
They exchanged blows as if dancing and as if testing their opponent’s limits.
They wielded their weapons almost like wings, took steps that seemed to kick up waves, and turned the streets of London into the footing for a battle with all the roaring wind and white sparks that entailed.
The king and noble’s swords met and groaned as the two stepped sideways over the Thames and created great flowers of sparks from their swords with Westminster Abbey between them.
The people obeyed the queen’s command by leaving their shutters and curtains closed.
However, the queen did not rebuke them for peering through the cracks or cheering.
“Don’t lose!” shouted the Hamlet girl.
Hearing that, the king gave a small smile under his armor.
Everyone knew that Shakespeare’s Logismoi óplo turned any attacks against her into internal Blessings, so they used that fact.
“Open the divine network! Choose your words carefully when cheering Shakespeare on! Tell her she needs to fight better! Otherwise it won’t reach her!!”
However, they also said something else with great expectation in their voices.
“Who’s the idiot who made Shakespeare call out King Lear!?”
Honestly.
“This isn’t something we’re supposed to see for free!!”
Neshinbara wrote.
He had not moved from his position on the bridge and Shakespeare had not moved from the end of the bridge.
To write was to imagine, so even if they could not see it, they could read the battle between king and noble from the text their opponent wrote and give their character the appropriate action.
Words were convenient.
However, words could not perfectly represent or convey one’s imagination. Even when writing “red”, the red the writer imagined would not be the same red the reader imagined. There would be two different colors.
However, it was that very ambiguity that made imagining and creating with words so much fun. How could one best build up the vision in their head and how could they best convey it to others?
That’s right, thought Neshinbara. I want to get something across to her.
The girl in front of him sent more words his way.
<
The moonlight was briefly obstructed as the king began to run.
Neshinbara responded by dedicating his instructions to the noble.
That’s right, Neshinbara muttered in his heart. This is the opponent that will guide me to my future.
Who was she? Which one was she?
Long ago, he had met a girl who could consult herself about things. His time with her had been strange and lively. Perhaps because there were two of her, she had learned everything quickly and he had been unable to keep up.
They had been in a boring place and they had quickly finished reading every book available to them.
It had begun with discussions of their experiences in coming that far. Before long, they had started discussing fun and occult things and they eventually added in legends and the dramas popular in the city.
…And then we started making them ourselves.
Because they had been doing it to kill time, they had been completely serious. And because she had been able to consult herself, her works were always well-made. He had thought they were just like what an adult would make.
When editing each other’s works, she had performed a hellish double-check of his works and he had rarely found much to correct about hers.
Even now, that probably remained true.
He would not.
He gathered strength.
That was right.
He agreed.
Neshinbara wrote while hoping it got through to her.
“Hey,” she asked. “Which do you think I am?”
He thought about her question for a bit before answering.
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “But I did remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” he answered. “When you were with me you spoke a lot more formally.”
“…”
“When did you start speaking so casually?”
“Well…” She spoke slowly and quietly. “When you left.”
<
<
<
“Then where did I go!?” she shouted. “Where did the formal me go!?”
<
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<
<
The manifestation of Michizane vanished and the remaining king fell to his knees and opened his mouth toward the night sky.
The tragedy had ended. The scream indicating the loneliness brought by the king’s righteousness would be released into the heavens.
However, some words stopped it.
“Eh?”
She saw him. She saw him still typing words into his sign frame.
“Brings an end to his righteousness? How!?”
He did not give voice to a reply, but he did type one with text.
“That’s impossible!!” shouted Shakespeare.
Neshinbara shook his head.
“No, it isn’t.”
“How?”
“With some editing.”
While they faced each other from the bridge and just off the bridge, he held up his right arm.
“I broke down your Macbeth as a spell and rewrote it. Of course, I was only able to do it because I’m in this festival your stage created.”
Overhead, a young warrior appeared and stood calmly before the wailing king.
Shakespeare looked up at him.
“But then…this isn’t Macbeth! Macbeth can’t complete his usurpation!”
“No, it’d probably make for a terrible play. But stories are flexible. It may be a failure as a version of Macbeth, you can always make a different story on that groundwork. And I wonder if the people who’ve seen Macbeth a few times have ever wondered this.”
He spoke while moving his feet forward and across the rest of the bridge.
“Why couldn’t someone have made Macbeth into the king?”
So…
He had one thing to say.
With those words, Macbeth stepped forward.
In that instant, the mad king rose and indeed regained his sanity. He gathered his movements, prepared his one sword, and performed a steady counterattack.
However…
Precisely that happened.
<
In the end, the king embraced his usurper.
<
King Lear slumped down as if nodding.
Everything but the still moonlight vanished as the two of them stood at the end of the bridge.
She hesitantly brought a hand to her chest.
“I…”
She shook her head and asked him a question now that he had crossed the bridge.
“Which one am I?”
Neshinbara nodded and gave a simple answer.
“Why not just say it’s the one that liked me?”
“Eh!? Wait! What’s this!? That came out of nowhere!”
“I mean, it’d be kind of sad if it was the one that hated me. So if we don’t know, this way is more convenient for me, don’t you think?”
“What?” asked Shakespeare while her face and ears grew red. “You idiot! Th-this isn’t about convenience. …And there’s no way to tell them apart based on that!”
He wondered if she knew what that implied and he gave a silent sigh while hoping that didn’t mean both of them hated him.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’m here, so where are you?”
She thought about that and lowered her head.
“…Here.”
“You made your way to England and did your very best here.”
Her glasses glanced up toward him when she heard that. She then leaned over and pulled a small book from the paper bag behind her.
It was the first printed work Neshinbara had ever made.
He shuddered as he wondered why she had it and questioned why his past embarrassment had to be shown off here as well.
“You only made fifty copies, so it was it not easy getting one. I paid an exorbitant amount at an auction in Genova.”
She audibly flipped through the pages.
“What was with this Sexy Dynamite Beam? Is it dynamite or a beam?”
“That’s your issue with it!?”
“What’s wrong with that? Honestly, and I was wondering if you and the illustrator were close.”
“Sorry, but that isn’t happening. There’s just no way.”
He seriously thought that, but Shakespeare did not seem to care.
“I think it was pretty original at the time for the heroine princess to be twins.”
“Yeah, about that…”
“The bigamy end was even more original.”
He had been prepared for this, but it essentially meant his life was over. She laughed and then slowly pulled a white and black shield from the paper bag.
It was the Logismoi óplo.
“As promised. The queen will probably scold me and the people will say things about me. But…”
But…
“I don’t need it anymore. I’ve seen most every kind of criticism and I’m sure you’ll need it soon.”
“Are you sure? You’ll lose your inherited name.”
“Probably. And it’s going to be tough gathering ether fuel.” She shrugged. “But King Lear without the king dying can work. After all, the real King Leir was deceived by two of his daughters, but he was saved by his youngest daughter Cordelia and he restored peace. Shakespeare only modified it into a tragedy.”
So…
“The only one who can inherit the name of Shakespeare is me now that I’ve experienced something even greater just now.”
“You seem pretty confident and you do work for a complicated queen. But as long as you remain Shakespeare, I suppose the king will still die and he won’t hand the throne over to the usurper.”
Neshinbara suddenly pointed to the right.
“Hey, can you look over there for a second?”
“Eh?”
As soon as she looked over, he swiped the shield from her hands.
“Ah.”
By the time she turned around, he was already running away with shield in hand.
“Eh!? What!? What’s going on!?”
“You’re up, people of the city!!”
The city replied to his shout. The people banged on their shutters from within. The percussive notes almost sounded like applause and Shakespeare gave a troubled smile in the moonlight.
“So we can have a Macbeth who becomes king, can we?”
Bitterness entered her smile and she brought a hand to her chest.
“Then can we have a king who wants to be with Macbeth?”
She bowed and an even greater din sounded out.
In the Tower of London’s changing chamber, Mary watched the end of the play using London as its stage.
…Why are Musashi’s people here?
She thought on the meaning of the kunai Milton had brought her.
“Is it Master Tenzou?”
As soon as she muttered that, a sudden voice came from the door behind her.
“Mary, the city seems to have grown rather lively.”
It was the Fairy Queen. Mary turned toward the voice and listened to it through the door.
“Let’s play a game, Mary. The same game we used to play with father.”
The words delivered after a breath backed Mary’s suspicions.
“Let’s make a gamble to see whether we should give our time to the fool who may be here soon.”
However, she heard another noise on top of the voice. It came from the distance on the south end of the city.
…A wolf’s howl?
“Oh?”
Elizabeth gave a small sigh before continuing.
“Will the French wolf try to steal England’s moon?”
Walsingham saw the silver wolf stand up high with the light behind her.
With her arms crossed and her curly silver hair blowing in the wind, she perfectly overlapped the second moon.
She was to the north of the plaza. That spot had been empty before, but a wooden pillar had been formed for her to stand on.
The trees of the forest had been cut into logs with the wolf’s chains and then connected vertically.
She had her back to the moon while higher than the city of London.
And she spoke.
“A pillar standing in a park has two meanings. The first is a symbol of vegetative growth as seen in the maypole or the festival of Beltane. The other is one you should be well aware of as part of the public morals committee.”
“Scaffold.”
“Judge,” replied the wolf. “Once, a certain non-human girl from Hexagone Fran?aise was executed by England. It was during the Hundred Years’ War. Hexagone Fran?aise was on the verge of being ruled by England when the Maid of Orléans saved them. The girl led a unit of non-humans to liberate Hexagone Fran?aise, but she was captured by England and executed.”
Walsingham had heard of this from Drake. He would occasionally mutter about it.
Because of that, she had once looked into it.
“It occurred in the land of Rouen which was mainland territory belonging to England at the time. I have heard that even England sent members of the Testament Cross-Borders Unit during the history recreation of the execution. However, Hexagone Fran?aise sent a similar unit of non-humans.”
Walsingham knew that much. But for some reason, the closer Hexagone Fran?aise unit had never arrived despite being called for. That was why Drake suspected his grandfather’s unit had been betrayed.
However…
“Do you know the truth behind the execution? It seems the Hexagone Fran?aise unit arrived on the scene first, but the execution had already begun. They did not make it in time. No, from what I have heard, it was a little different than that.”
That is…
“The Maid of Orléans apparently wished for her own death. After all, she was of the angel race and she was prepared to disappear into heaven once her role was complete. She supposedly said, ‘This will bring an end to the war.’ No one else there wished for it to happen, but she was burned to ashes and ascended into heaven. And the truth of her martyrdom was not allowed to remain in the recreation of the Testament descriptions. So…”
At that point, something fell from the wolf’s shoulders and hips. They were fragments of silver that shook as they fell. These were the scattered pieces of the broken silver chains. The mist was slowly clearing over the plaza down below and the fallen fragments produced metallic noises around the wooden pillar rising up from there.
However, the wolf gave breath of satisfaction.
“The primary non-human force that fought alongside her managed to take some of her possessions from the scene. They were the execution tools that had been consecrated by the flesh, blood, and ashes of that holy maiden and angel. And they were made in England. One was a set of chains. The autonomous tools had enough power to bind an angel and they were later given the characteristics of an immortal race so they would not meet the same fate as her. And did you know this?”
With the moon behind her, the silver wolf opened her mouth in a crescent moon of a smile.
“On the night of a full moon, non-humans can use their full power.”
She then wrapped the silver chains below her feet. They looked like ripples or a lake surface reflecting the moonlight.
She sat in the center of the expanding ripple of silver, she raised her head toward the moon, and she howled.
“Ahh…”
Mitotsudaira did not resist her non-human instincts that throbbed in the moonlight.
She gave a slow, unsteady, yet carrying voice as she let her pulse run through her body and changed her voice to an “o” sound.
“Ahh… Ohh…!!”
Her voice continued trembling as it came forth and grew so high-pitched it seemed to travel endlessly through the sky. The wolf’s howl to the moon was joined by countless rustling sounds came from the earth.
The fragments of the silver chains fallen there shook and then made a sudden movement.
“Ohhh!!”
The shattered silver chains ascended. They clung to the wooden pillar of execution as if embracing it. They crawled up it with a sticky flowing motion, but their motion joined together with each other.
“————!!”
Two sprays of ether light rose along the surface of the wooden pillar. Those particles of light signaled for the broken silver chains to bathe in the moonlight and regain their form.
“These non-human chains can recover in the light of the full moon,” said the silver wolf. “You have returned to your birthplace, silver chains.”
She slowly stood, tore the four chains from the execution pillar, and lowered her arms. However, they were not bound by the chains. It looked more like they had torn the chains apart.
“It is a very old story and I do not know if it is true, but that is why I agree with Musashi’s princess. Musashi’s knight will also save any who have resigned themselves to execution.”
Then what would she do? The silver wolf stood with her back to the moon and faced Walsingham who was prepared to fight.
“Now, then.”
And she took a step into midair.
Just as Mitotsudaira set foot on a single silver chain stretching from the ground to the sky, Walsingham fired directly at her.
This is dangerous, realized Walsingham. This is a dangerous opponent.
A clear sound filled the sky and the white line she had fired was blocked by a log tossed up from below.
At the same time, she launched her hound’s blades toward Mitotsudaira.
However, the silver wolf took action with the three chains she was not standing on.
“I’m in top form!”
The three of them were thoroughly wrapped around the logs rising from the plaza and they were sent Walsingham’s way.
The wolf did not hesitate and she used her full strength to attack, so Walsingham jumped forward and down.
With the attack coming from the front, she could not attack in that direction with her cannon or blades.
However, she could see behind her, so she jumped below Mitotsudaira so that she could move past her.
As soon as she kicked off the roof, three strikes hit the straw roof, but they were meaningless if they did not hit. She placed her left arm beneath her feet and kicked off of it to accelerate further forward and down.
She continued on and instantly passed below the silver wolf.
“————!”
Because she had used the three silver chains to attack the roof in front of her, Mitotsudaira could not turn them toward Walsingham right away. She could use the remaining chain she was standing on, but it did not hold a log and so Walsingham could deflect it with her blades.
While facing away, Walsingham aimed toward the wolf who was turning toward her.
However…
“You forgot something.”
Several lemon halves were thrown toward her back and they had already been squeezed of all their juice.
Mitotsudaira had presumably gathered them with her silver chains and the yellow objects were suddenly thrown toward the center of the back of Walsingham’s hair.
“…!?”
She lost sight of her target for an instant.
It was only a slight gap, but the enemy arrived in that instant.
The final silver chain that the silver wolf had stood on raced toward her.
However, she could deflect the light chain which did not hold a log. She only needed to strike it with a surface made from her hound’s blades.
And she did so.
However, Walsingham then saw that the deflecting blades were the ones deflected into the sky.
“!?”
Rather than simply having the final chain pursue Walsingham, Mitotsudaira herself pursued the hound while turning around.
She also saw the silver chain completely deflect the enemy’s blades into the sky.
…I did it.
The enemy clearly did not understand what had happened, but Mitotsudaira did. This was the same as what Horizon had shown her before.
“The trick to peeling an apple while holding the knife backwards is to twist it.”
The instant Walsingham’s blades had reached the chain’s holes, she had rotated the chain as if twisting. Before the blades could gouge into the holes, she had grabbed them with the holes and thrown them.
It was the same as providing an instant rotation as soon as someone grabbed your hand.
However, coming up with the idea and mastering its execution were two different things.
She had gotten training from Naomasa who studied martial arts, but she had been thrown to the tatami mats countless times and gotten into the same martial arts debates every night at the yakiniku restaurant. There, she had learned that Naomasa preferred salt over yakiniku sauce and that she needed to begin twisting her hand before her opponent grabbed it.
…And for some reason, half the class flocked to the restaurant and destroyed it!
Ignoring that last part, the chain and martial arts were the same. She had to twist the chain before the blades came to deflect it.
That would shorten the chain’s reach yet raise its attack power. Also, it could wrap around a joint-less automaton like Walsingham and prevent her from escaping.
And so she used that chain she had swung.
“Don’t think a hound can defeat a wolf on a moonlit night.”
She gave the silver chain a wrapping rotation and slammed Walsingham’s back into the fountain down below.
Mitotsudaira descended to the ground as if pursuing the enemy that had caused a great splash after being thrown down.
She then saw Walsingham’s back spring up. Without turning around, the hound accurately aimed her cross cannon at Mitotsudaira and fired.
“Bite!!”
In that instant, Mitotsudaira leaped toward the cannon.
She swung her arms as if folding them in prayer and fully closed the cross’s connection with a sharp blow.
The cross cannon lost an outlet for its power and it expanded while Walsingham held it over her shoulder.
It audibly ruptured, light burst out on Walsingham’s shoulder, and her hair shook. However, Mitotsudaira thrust her left hand forward as if holding it toward the light.
“This is it!”
While slamming Walsingham into the fountain with her left hand, she pulled something from the hound’s hair with her right and held it up.
“A Mouse!?”
Mitotsudaira looked at what dangled from her right hand amid the splashing sounds at her feet.
…A small Walsingham?
She had super-deformed proportions and she even had the proper head decorations and tail-like hair. However, she already had tears in her eyes.
“Noooo.”
She shook her entire body left and right as Mitotsudaira observed her. Just looking at her made her small form jump, but the larger body that was collapsed in the water slowly and awkwardly attempted to rise up.
However, the automaton in the water was only making simple, autonomous actions and Mitotsudaira realized what that meant.
“It wasn’t that you provided vision for the area behind her. You are the OS for that automaton, aren’t you?”
After a while the small Walsingham finally hung her head.
Whether that was a confirmation or not, Mitotsudaira sighed at the hound’s OS that had stopped resisting. She placed her on the stone structure surrounding the fountain and the tearful OS looked up in surprise.
However, Mitotsudaira had already run off.
“Please excuse me, but I must report this to my king.”
With a regretful swing of the hand to make the silver chain flutter, she intertwined her gloved fingers and brushed her lips over the nails. As she ran, she lightly bit the tips of her white gloves with her lips.
“I need to tell him it was thanks to him that I won.”
“I’m not going to let myself lose like this!!”
Masazumi was held to the floor by several skeletons.
Hatton currently held a dictionary over his head in prayer, so she pleaded to him.
“W-wait! Surely there’s a process for handling things like this!”
“I hate a restrained lifestyle! I hate it to death!”
“Are you really the Lord Chancellor!?”
He must not have wanted to answer because he ignored her. She could tell the situation was truly bad and she felt this was the end.
She belatedly realized just how much of a disadvantage her abilities put her in during a battle between representatives.
She felt like she was seeing the trick to such battles here.
…Physical ability and a personality that lets you ignore what anyone else says!
She knew both were impossible for her.
…But wait. My class is filled with people like that.
“Waaahhh! Am I the only one to get the short end of the stick!?”
“Perhaps, but that hellish pain has now reached its end!”
Just as Hatton swung down the dictionary, a sign frame from Asama appeared.
“Masazumi! Your Mouse went to you! It used a ley line divine transmission, so take it!”
“Eh!?”
She looked around, but saw nothing.
The surrounding skeletons exchanged glances.
“…?”
There was nothing there.
…It isn’t here?
The Mouse that was supposed to be there was nowhere to be found.
At the same time, Asama’s sign frame exceeded its allotted divine transmission time and vanished.
However, the Mouse remained absent.
“W-wait.”
Masazumi forgot about her own plight and felt a chill run down her spine.
That Mouse had not been attached to her. She had looked after it, but that and the treatment for its injuries were something any owner would have done.
She had not protected it. She had merely done the bare minimum.
She wondered if that was why it had not grown attached to her.
However…
…Isn’t it dangerous for the Mouse if it messes up moving through a ley line divine transmission?
However, she had heard that method was often used of the Mouse’s own will. It would use it when it wanted to see its master, when it was lost, or when it wanted to hurry back from an errand. The Mouse did it out of a desire for its master and when it had a proper recognition of its master.
She did not know why a Mouse that had not been attached to her would have tried to use it.
But…
“Eh? W-wait.”
Tears involuntarily welled up in her eyes.
No, she thought. Even if I survive this and return to the Musashi, will I only find an empty nest waiting for me?
That would be the same as with her mother.
And it was her own fault. The situation was partly due to putting herself into this dangerous situation and making the Mouse worry.
…Why?
Why had she done nothing more than worry for the Mouse instead of trying to get to know it better?
Had she been comfortable in the fact that it had not been attached to her and had she been afraid to grow any closer to it?
Had she been afraid it would dislike her?
…No.
She had once more done something irreversible.
What had she learned from her previous experience and what had she lost?
“No…”
As she muttered to herself, she saw Hatton begin to move.
He must have already said what he needed to say because he remained silent.
“—————”
As he swung down his arms, Masazumi let out a shout. She spoke the same words that had first leapt from her mouth when her mother had vanished and she had found the empty house.
“Are you gone!?”
There was nothing to speak an answer to that shouted question.
However, something did answer it with an action.
The front cover of the hard point part on her neck opened and a young anteater jumped out.
…Eh?
What it meant for a Mouse to have come to her and the meaning of a Mouse’s very existence was something that Asama and the others might have understood but that a Mouse beginner like Masazumi did not.
A Mouse’s place was not next to or near its master. It was with its master and inside the hard point part.
After hopping out, the young anteater spun around on top of her chest.
“————!!”
With a howl that could be interpreted as anger or strength, a multitude of sign frames appeared around the anteater. Masazumi had never seen so many sign frames and they were all anti-spirit purification exorcism spells.
Also, a divine text from Asama arrived.
“To celebrate the confirmation of the master/Mouse relationship and to act as an emergency flare for you, I stuffed in every attack spell I could think of. Simply delightful, isn’t it!?”
Is that anything for a shrine maiden to be saying? wondered Masazumi.
However, the surrounding Living Dead were clearly panicking.
As even more spells expanded outwards, they all exchanged a glance, let go of Masazumi, and spoke in awkward Far Eastern with calming gestures.
“Boss, how about we calm down?”
“Sic ‘em!!”
In the center of the danger, the young anteater did its best to comply.
As a beginner, its strategy was simple: it drew back in fear, closed its eyes, and fired every spell touching it in every direction.
“————!!”
As they all shouted out, a chaos of explosions that only affected spirits filled the inside of the transport ship.
From the heights of London, Dudley heard an explosion and saw a bright white light from the distant sea.
…That’s purification light, isn’t it?
In that case, Hatton was likely out of the fight. That Lord Chancellor is always too kind to people, she thought while focusing on her own battle.
She was currently firing arbalest quarrels at the black-winged Technohexen before her.
The Testamenta Arma named Brachium Justitia on her left hand allowed her to control weapons. Her aim was accurate and she sent eight short quarrels toward the Technohexen’s stomach.
However, the Technohexen swung her right hand and the white pen she held drew a white line.
“Th-th-th-that is the acceleration line you used in the Battle of Mikawa, isn’t it!?”
Before the Technohexen could nod, the line captured the eight quarrels. She had predicted their path and placed a quick heart shape there.
Before Dudley could mock her for drawing something so cute, the acceleration line accelerated the quarrels toward the end of the line. In other words, toward Dudley.
The heart-shaped acceleration line catapulted the quarrels directly toward her face. Dudley realized this Technohexen was no one to joke around with and she held out her right palm.
“S-s-s-s-smash!!”
She used the repelling ability of her right palm to hit back the eight attacks. However, she did more than simply hitting them back. She also used her Testamenta Arma to correct their aim in the instant she touched them. This way, they were sure to directly return to her opponent.
However, the Technohexen had already drawn a new acceleration line.
But it was not a mere line.
It was a drawing and Dudley understood why she would do that.
…That way it doesn’t count as a weapon!!
If it was not a weapon, she could not control it with Brachium Justitia. The Technohexen had learned that lesson from their previous encounter and she had overcome it with her own ability.
However, Dudley held out both her hands. The right hand could repel and the left could correct the aim. With those two abilities, she could send any attack back to her opponent just by touching it.
And she did so.
“…!!”
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