One of the many questions Haruka hadn't asked, yet had nevertheless received answers for tonight, was whether the meeting room at [Paladin HQ] could possibly be made more of an extension of its owner than it was during raid meetings.
The answer was, of course, yes, provided Diabel was the only person in the room when you walked in. His not having any of his groupies with him was definitely a surprise and a half.
"Good evening. Please, have a seat." he greeted, gesturing to the round table at the center of the small, stark marble room as their group streamed in. "Some of you made quite a stir by sitting out of this floor's raid planning, some of you I'm meeting for the first time, and some of you I haven't seen in quite a while." the man commented, looking first at Tomoe and the rest of Haruka's party, then at the larger part of the group, before finally focusing on Takeshi. "However, I'm led to understand that you've all had quite an adventure tonight. I'd appreciate a more detailed explanation than I've received thus far, but before that I think some introductions are in order."
He rose from his seat as Haruka reluctantly grabbed a seat near-ish to the door, on the left side of the table. "Representing the Paladins, the [Rune Knight], Diabel." he said, gesturing to himself. "I'm familiar with [Neko Cafe Nyan*Nyan], of course, and I've commissioned from Grimlock-san in the past, but I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with the rest of you."
Griselda, standing behind a seat near the middle-right edge of the table, beside Takeshi, nodded softly. "My name is Griselda. I lead a Mid Liner guild called the [Sorcery Hunters]. We became involved in this incident through my and my husband's connection with [Neko Cafe Nyan*Nyan]."
Takeshi nodded softly at his wife's explanation as she started to sit down, before following along in the gesture.
"Axer with the [Sorcery Hunters]. Nice to meet you!"
"Lizard, same guild. Didn't expect to come here today."
"Schmitt, from the [Sorcery Hunters]. It would have been nice to meet some other way."
"Glass. Same."
"Caynz. Same."
"Y-yolko. Same."
Griselda's teammates certainly put their personalities on display as almost half of them gave the bare minimum introduction before seating themselves, but well, put an awkward person in an awkward situation and you'd get awkwardness squared. As a pretty awkward person herself, Haruka could appreciate the logic behind it.
Silence reigned in the room for a few seconds before Cocabanana cleared his throat. "My name is Cocabanana, from the [Great Eastern Pharmacultural Society], a Side Liner guild. With regards to the use of mind control in this incident, I could be called the culprit, regretfully."
"H-Hey! You did it out of love, right?" Micchin protested, pumping her fists up and down in front of her chest. "Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but you shouldn't just treat yourself like a criminal here!"
Woah, woah woah woah, phrasing it as 'doing it for love' actually made it sound way worse than it was. At least phrase it as 'doing it to save me', girl!
Emi's gyaru friend didn't seem to win that debate, fortunately, as her obnoxiously businesslike boyfriend sighed. "Mind control, aiding a floor boss, I think any reasonable court would consider those criminal offenses, Micchin." he answered, before his cheeks started to change colors just the slightest bit. "And also! Saying I did it out of love makes me sound like some deranged stalker!"
"Right…right…" Micchin answered, nodding slowly at the last part after offering no answer to the first. "Anyways, I'm Micchin, Coca-pi's girlfriend and the victim here! I guess I almost got ate for finding the boss's lab or something, and my boo wiped my memories from that to keep the big bad from going through with it!"
Diabel gave a polite smile and nodded as the last pair of attendees sat down. "I see." he answered, probably doing a shitload of work to avoid having a more extreme response. "I'd like to hear a bit more about that, from the beginning."
Cocabanana covered his mouth and cleared his throat again. "I can speak to that where nobody else would be able to. Initially, very early on, I attempted to operate on the Front Lines, but I wasn't particularly talented at fighting or at even fairly basic magecraft. To compensate for that – and I realize fully how absurd this may sound – I developed a spell to control the minds of NPCs in order to rob AI shops and shortcut through quests, in order to try and remain competitive through the power of money. I would say that extended my time as a Front Liner by about a floor. Various rules changes have probably made it less efficient by now, as has the change over to a mostly player-driven economy, but I wouldn't say it was very effective even back then."
He was right, it did sound absurd. Mental Interference was relatively intricate magecraft – not advanced, in the sense that even mages who weren't anywhere close to specialists in it would know its mysteries up to a certain level, but deriving the basis for Mental Interference on one's own was pretty absurd!
"It was really easier to develop that spell than to improve your other skills?" Diabel asked, sounding a bit surprised – which wasn't surprised enough for this situation, really.
"The magecraft shopkeeper I mostly studied from at first mentioned the general concept a few times." the businessman LARPer clarified, bringing his hands together atop the table. "It wasn't offered as a spell, but it turned out to work well enough on NPCs when I decided to replicate it based on the theory, and unlike a spell you cast during a fight, it wasn't impacted overly much by my need for, well…long chants to focus on spellcasting."
Tomoe coughed into her hand by Haruka's side, drawing the room's attention to herself. "Is that why the spell you used to shut down the ritual included you threatening to blast the sky god's mom with a cannon?"
Diabel blinked. "As in, the poem by the Dogmeat General?"
The who, now?
"Well, yes!" Cocabanana answered, voice cracking a little – was he getting embarrassed? If so, huh. It was a terrible poem, but quoting someone else's bad poetry was less embarrassing than writing it yourself, right? "I use Chinese poetry as a mnemonic quite regularly – it helps with my memory. It wasn't much of a jump to use it for magecraft as well. However, we're getting ahead of ourselves quite a bit now!"
"Right. My bad for interrupting." Tomoe said, scratching the back of her head.
"In any case, the next relevant part to the story comes after I joined my current guild and used my savings to buy the guide on Familiars auctioned via Argo's services for my guild." Cocabanana continued. "...and then supplemented that resource by seeking out the first confirmed NPC tutor the moment the information became available. That is, of course, the [Fifth Floor] boss, Zolgen. After running a few fetch quests for him, using what means were available to me, he accepted me as his apprentice. That was shortly before he was revealed as the Floor Boss – approximately the day before the floor was cleared."
"But Zolgen wasn't dead when that happened?" Diabel asked rhetorically, pretty clearly prompting for more information.
"I'm somewhat doubtful he's dead now." Cocabanana answered. "As I understand it, the border between himself and his familiars was entirely nonexistent in the lore. However, at the time I thought he really was dead until around the [Eighth Floor], when he approached me to reestablish our agreement on the condition that I provided him with certain assistance. Quite frankly, I was terrified enough to accept at that moment even if he weren't offering to teach me anything." he explained, before swallowing hard enough to be heard even from where Haruka was. "But he was also offering to teach me a fair bit, and I was still looking for ways to advance the position of my guild, so I didn't report his survival when I first became aware of it – or at all. From there, my side of this story is as you've already heard it – Micchin discovered the space I used to sacrifice NPCs and mobs in rituals as instructed by Zolgen, whether to make familiars or to produce 'proper food' for him, and he pressured me to either give her to him or make her forget what she'd seen myself. I made my choice, and shortly thereafter she came back with present company in tow, whereupon they exterminated him from the premises with some assistance from myself."
Some assistance her ass. He'd put himself right on death's door firing off that ridiculous cross-system elemental barrage. Haruka didn't sit passively through that comment. "I'd say you played a pretty critical role in the proceedings." she signed. "Given that without your involvement, we may have remained trapped in the bounded field in the basement and been overrun, and given that you did a sizable chunk of damage with your multi-hit spell. How did you manage to use seven different elements anyways? I know it practically killed you, but it was surprising to see."
Under these circumstances, being anything but formal would feel like a misstep.
The man frowned. "The theory was never fully explained to me, but it's certainly not something normal. I'm an Average One in the eastern elemental system, but Zolgen told me that I had a special talent that I should be able to use to invert that and use the western elements as well. One result of that was the [Seven Deaths Spell] you saw – there aren't many other results, given the flaws of the method."
Ah, that sort of thing. He probably had an Origin like Inversion or Syncretism or something like that. Impressive that the game could diagnose something like and generate instructions for it, assuming one of the hijackers hadn't directly taken control over that situation. Maybe the reason this guy wasn't a Noted Player was really just that he'd been handfed too much and didn't own any of his own accomplishments?
"It's definitely a fascinating achievement." Diabel noted, calling attention back over to himself. "But I'd like to hear the other side of this story now. Who would be most able to speak to that among the rest of you?"
Emi stood up from Haruka's right side a second later. "That would be me. I stumbled onto the entire situation about an hour ago after helping some Mid Liners run a fetch quest. One of them had two familiars capable of casting the spells used by slimes, and after one of them died the other turned on him and needed to be put down, so I decided to check in with the manufacturer to figure out what the fuck the deal with that was."
Well, as ways to justify her investigation to people not in the know went, it definitely wasn't bad. Haruka wasn't sure about being that casual in this situation, though.
"When I found her, Micchin didn't even remember that her guild made familiars, despite bragging to me about it a couple weeks ago." Haruka's twin continued, voice taking on a sour note. "So I treated her for Mental Interference and called my guild for help, which resulted in more than I was counting on, in the form of Neko bringing Griselda's crew along. After that, we decided to go investigate the situation, catch whoever was behind it, and cut you in on the situation after the fact to avoid creating a pointless panic during the raid planning meeting or giving time for the mastermind to notice they'd been caught, because getting help from you would require telling a lot of people what was going down upfront, and you'd need backup from people who knew how to deal with Mental Interference in the first place, which as far as we knew, was just us – in retrospect, probably not as important as we thought at the time."
Diabel nodded. "I won't say it was the right decision, but I can understand your logic there, I suppose. However, I'd be interested to learn how you came to be confident in your ability to 'deal with' Mental Interference before this occasion, and why I never heard anything about it before now. The same goes for you, Cocabanana-kun."
Ah, yes, the big question that hewed really close to breaking the laws set out by the Clocktower.
"There's a reason you usually tell someone in a position to fix the problem when you find a zero-day exploit." Axer added, speaking out of turn and seemingly breaking ranks with her guild. "Sitting on that doesn't really help anything."
Diabel nodded without hesitation, speaking in a level, diplomatic tone. "Thank you for the comment, Axer-kun, but isn't that a bit confrontational for the situation?"
"Well, in our case, a few of us are pretty serious lorehounds." Emi half-lied, probably just about giving herself a stroke referring to it that way. "So we picked up on the possibility pretty similarly to how he did. Onee-chan was the first of us to do anything with the knowledge, which is how we ended up realizing it worked on people."
Oh man, if that wasn't a big lie, what was? Out of the three of them, she was absolutely dead last in order of people who'd learned to perform Mental Interference of any sort.
"Specifically, she created a spell to hide from mobs by keeping them from noticing her." Emi explained, keeping her voice within a normal range as she did. "Sort of fake-invisibility."
"It's based on the logic of an old stageplay." Haruka added. "The stagehands – the kuroko – dressed in all black to signal to the audience that they weren't part of the play, so even when they went on stage the audience didn't tend to notice that they were there, because they knew they weren't supposed to pay attention to them. Ninjas in those same plays dressed as kuroko for exactly that reason – to keep the audience from paying attention to them until the moment they struck. I used that same logic to create the suggestion that nothing needed to pay attention to me. Well, I never really used it in the field, though. It's not very practical in a group battle."
"Hm?" Yuki squeaked, probably picking up on the simplification Haruka had made at least in part. After all, when she'd surprised Yuki with the spell she'd let slip that she wasn't actually using that ninja trick – just something vaguely related.
"Anyways," Emi cut back in, holding up her palm. "After that, she, I, and Grim-nii decided to work together for a bit, to figure out countermeasures against the risk of something worse getting done with similar spells. It turned out to be a little useful in this case, at least. As for why we didn't mention it…"
She shrugged.
"Well, at the very least I kinda figured it was safer for the time being to leave it unsaid. Both for us and for the public. I mean, publicizing that kind of thing's risky – we could've gotten a reputation as the mind control people, or spreading the info could have actually caused more people to figure out Mental Interference itself." she explained, frowning. "If they know it's possible, they'll be more likely to look for it. I'm sure nobody in the [Paladins] would exploit it, but the more people who know, the bigger the chance the info will spread further, the bigger the chance it'll get trendy among [Red Players]. The average innocent probably can't reasonably get as good at defending as the average offender can get at attacking, so if the information hit the large scale, even if skill at [Mental Interference] didn't spread, it'd probably cause some pretty serious paranoia and mass panic. Of course, that all goes out the window once the secret starts spreading on its own."
"Ignorance is bliss isn't exactly a good motto to live by." Diabel noted, frowning as he did so. "If the options are not knowing about the danger and being comfortable and knowing and being scared, I'd rather have known and been scared so I could protect others from the danger."
"Sure, sure." Emi agreed, holding both hands up in a stop sign. "But prevention is really, really hard in this case. The whole Front Line is one to two hundred people who're already busy with something. The [Aincrad Liberation Force], [Church Aid Society] or both would definitely need to get involved to get any reliable on-call response ready, and even then, you're pretty much relying on close associates to notice after it's happened and report it. It's going to be a lot harder to protect people if the spell proliferates than just keeping the Front Line safe during raids is – I won't claim it was the smartest thing to do, but I was worried about the possibility of damaging the public's trust in your leadership by calling attention to a hypothetical risk you couldn't easily fix."
Haruka's eyes nearly went wide. Emi was really going hard with the bullshitting here! Just going "We didn't actually think about it." would have been a little humiliating, but going for this sort of high-minded approach to the cover story was cutting hard toward a high risk, high reward approach!
"And really, as far as we'd seen at the time, it was pretty unlikely to develop again." Emi continued. "Onee-chan and I both have Rare Elements, and we were in touch with Grim-nii while figuring out the implications. Cocabanana completely blindsided us here."
Then, Haruka's twin frowned. "Besides which, anybody who hears about this is gonna figure out, by implication, that the Nervegear can just…do that, that it's a tool whoever's behind this cyber-attack can play around with, and that's scary in a way none of us can do anything about. I figured even if we were perfectly safe from other players, spreading that knowledge around would be bad for the clearing effort."
Was Emi improvising all of this on the spot, or had she been planning her socially acceptable excuse for this the whole time? Haruka supposed after asking Takeshi for help with the problem, she'd been more or less committed to explaining that away, but still, having to implicate both him and Haruka herself and compromise so many people just to solve this little problem was…amateurish, at the end of the day.
Diabel's face was stone-rigid as he responded, and his voice was level. "I see. Well, if you understand that you made the wrong decision before, I suppose there's not much more I should say to you about it. And you, Cocabanana?"
The only reason to combine that body language and tone of voice was that Diabel was making a big effort to mask how he felt about this and coming up wanting. Either he was way more disappointed in them than he was letting float to the surface, or there was something fuckier going on that he didn't want to tell them about.
"...being perfectly honest, before I realized it applied to people, I just thought it'd seem creepy." the man admitted.
Diabel nodded quickly. "Understandable. In any case, I hope you'll understand my asking you in particular to stay in the custody of the [Paladins] for a while, while I think about the whole mess that's been dropped in my lap tonight and plan how to inform the heads of the other major guilds. Aside from that, I believe we're done here for now – but I'd like some way to get in touch with the rest of you, in case there's interest in your own perspectives, and in particular to consult with those of you with the appropriate skills on how to counteract Mental Interference."
| | |
Haruka slumped against the table and twisted her neck as though to crack it.
Emi really went and got them into something outrageous tonight, huh? It was sinking in even harder now that she was back home, but Haruka's sister just dragged her and Takeshi through a whole little adventure in tap dancing on the secrecy of magecraft and lying to the face of authority figures, and now they were scheduled to help Diabel protect people against the one thing that might save the lives of the players after the game clear. All because she pulled the right thread and discovered some strangeness at the right time.
Haruka supposed Emi had done her due diligence to investigate the possible leak on behalf of the Association, and discovering that the only source of the leak was the game itself technically brought the whole investigation to a close, but it was such a slapdash affair that she wanted to scream. They'd practiced together to undo Mental Interference, had they? Haruka hadn't done anything of the sort even once in her life! If someone were to try and classify her work on magecraft lately, the pseudo-invisibility which Yuki had so innocently revealed to everyone and Emi had then thrown under the bus at the debriefing, clearly marked her as more of a user than a defender.
Even saving Emi's friend wasn't really something Haruka could begrudge, even if she personally didn't think much of Micchin – or Michiko, apparently, but she clearly wasn't meant to have heard that – or her boyfriend. It was just the extremely sloppy and audacious way Emi had gone about the whole affair, let Tomoe take charge, and otherwise wrapped the whole situation up into a mess they had to solve now that bothered her. A proper response could have been mustered with just the two of them, provided they didn't do anything as stupid as go into the hostile workshop after setting it off. They could have run from Zolgen at that point and spun a much simpler narrative. It would have been great!
But, well, that was hindsight, she supposed. Aside from the factor where you never just waltzed into a hostile workshop like that!
"You know, onee-chan," her twin remarked, cheek resting in her hand on the opposite side of their dining room table. "the two of us don't have twin telepathy or anything fancy like that, so if you want to say something to me it's best to use your words instead of just making faces at me."
Haruka stuck her tongue out, eyes narrowed, before looking away. All the same, everything was so complicated now that her sister had made a colossal scene out of this investigation. What was the point of trying to keep the investigation group small if you weren't going to blank their memories of the investigation out before they could tell anybody?
"Oy."
A finger briefly tapped against the side of her head as Emi lunged across the table to demand her attention again. Haruka made a show of biting at it, but Emi just got even bolder and grabbed her by the tip of her left ear.
Yuki made a 'tut tut' sound off to Haruka's right, frowning at the both of them. "Haruka-chan, Emi-chan, please settle down. The two of you normally get along so well, so why would now be an exception?"
Emi released her grip on Haruka's ear a second later, but seemingly only so she could take the high ground as she made her next declaration. "I really don't know, Yuki. It's impossible to know for sure if my dear sister won't give any indication of what's bothering her."
Haruka sat up straight and crossed her arms in front of her chest, giving Emi a brief glare. She ought to be able to figure out perfectly well why Haruka was annoyed with her.
For fuck's sake, she'd need to explain this whole situation and why she didn't mention anything about Mental Interference before this point to Argo now! She couldn't think of much less appealing in a possible partner than them sheepishly admitting "Actually, I knew how to do mind control this whole time." after they got caught up in a big incident. Even if that didn't turn into a "Have you been mind controlling me, A-nyaa?" conversation, there was still the big problem scenario of "You didn't trust me, A-nyaa?" to be contended with.
It wouldn't be unreasonable for Argo to have those concerns, even.
"It was sloppy." she ultimately settled on signing. "You gave Tomoe way too much freedom of movement, and the whole group got dragged along by her. We should have been the ones calling the shots to manage the danger there."
An expression of the most civilian-compatible portion of her grievances over the incident.
"Well, what can I do about that, really?" Emi asked, rubbing the back of her head. "She's crazy headstrong, so as long as she doesn't understand the risks, she'll keep trying to be the problem-solver for things she's no good at."
Was this setup for another conversation about letting Tomoe and Yuki in on the secret? Haruka'd thought that one was settled a while back – as easy as it'd be to share the truth with them, it'd probably be terrible for their wellbeing. Haruka shrugged. "You could have left her out of the mailing list. If you'd messaged Grimlock and me after the boss meeting, we could have done a better focused sting operation, gotten to the bottom of things with Cocabanana, and let the cavalry handle Zolgen."
"But I panicked." Emi countered, shrugging at her. "You think I was thinking clearly there?"
Haruka let her hands fall to the table. She supposed in the grand scheme of their time in the game, the solution to an emergency was more often found in their party than in cloak and dagger shit.
"Um, Haruka-chan, on a different note–" Yuki cut in, frowning softly. "Wasn't the explanation you gave for your invisibility trick back there, well, something you said you weren't doing when you showed it to me?"
Haruka cocked her head to the side, smiling weakly as a door squeaked. "I needed to give him an explanation that sounded conclusive, or else he'd insist on the conclusive answer in that situation. If I let information spread far and wide about how I actually do it, it won't be any use in a situation where it's necessary. Besides, the answer I gave him will be useful for his private army, so it's all fair."
And not mentioning it at all had stopped being an option entirely when Yuki spilled that she had it to the entire group.
"Speaking of," Tomoe interjected, standing in the newly opened door with a towel over her shoulders. "Why didn't I hear about you being able to go all Predator mode any time before tonight?"
Haruka's head snapped her way, before she nodded over to Yuki. "I was going to use it to spook you, then tell you, but Yuki stopped me from making any mischief that day."
The woman nodded slowly. "Okay, but why didn't you tell me about it afterwards."
"Haruka-chan tickled me until I agreed to let her spook you with it some other time." Yuki admitted, sighing harshly. "It was back when I was isolating myself, and you were trying to help, so I didn't really want her to mess with you then."
"But it'd be okay some other time." Tomoe summarized with a snort, smiling softly as she closed the door behind her and strolled over to the low table and sat down on a cushion. "Alright, I see my position in this pecking order. So, why didn't I hear about the mind control shit in general, then? Is this more of the ignorance in bliss stuff where you figured it was better if I didn't know about the risk, 'cause it'd just worry me?"
Haruka was about to sign that yes, that was the reason, when Emi shouted abruptly, her voice frantic. "Because I was worried it'd be more dangerous to tell you, okay! When we clear this game, when we get out of here, you'd have been safer not knowing that much! I wanted to tell you everything before, but Onee-chan said it'd be a bigger problem to discourage you with the truth than to keep it from you, but after tonight I don't really know anymore! If I don't tell you, won't you just keep writing me off as a lore nerd? Won't you just ignore my advice and get yourself killed?"
Haruka's eyes went wide. No way, was Emi seriously going there? That suddenly? Seriously? Really really?
If Emi had given more advanced warning, she could maybe have shushed her, but as it stood tackling her to the ground wouldn't have been very subtle.
Emi gripped the side of the table hard as she took another deep breath. "You wanna know, huh? You wanna know everything? Okay! Fine! The truth is, I knew all about it before this game even started because magecraft is fucking real! I've been raised my whole goddamn life to carry on the family tradition and keep it a secret, and now this fucking game has me telling you about it! Fuck! Will you listen now when I try to tell you how shit works? Huh?!"
"Emi-chan?" Yuki squeaked meekly, leaning back from the table with two hands up as Emi started panting desperately.
"Huh? Uh, wha–" Tomoe gasped, covering her mouth with her right hand as her eyes narrowed. "Huh? Wha?"
She glanced toward Haruka, prompting a sigh.
No sense in trying to deny it now. "She's telling the truth." Haruka signed, frowning as she did so. "Magecraft is a real discipline. Always has been. It went from an open secret to a closed one at least several centuries ago. Freely disseminating the secrets of magecraft or revealing its existence, as opposed to carefully choosing a narrow line of descent and keeping the secret outside of that ingroup, is up there as one of the most fundamental crimes recognized by the Mage's Association. Even with this game tapdancing all over that law, I didn't think getting you more involved than you already were would be good for you or for our family."
"Fuckin…" Tomoe began, staring down at the table. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." she signed, frowning. "And just like in the game, I don't have any natural circuits in real life. Hence why Emi became the family heiress – though if I just had a normal level of circuits, she would have absolutely destroyed me in the contest to become heiress. She, and both of you, are monsters in that regard."
"Then, Haruka-chan-" Yuki began, leaning toward her with a gentle frown and half-lidded eyes. "Couldn't your family have done something to protect you from getting paralyzed or losing your voice? If magecraft is real, wouldn't that much be easy?"
Haruka snorted, absurdly softly, but still hard enough to be audible over the distance. "That didn't happen because of some disease. It happened because I tried to learn magecraft without circuits one other time and screwed up at awakening my Origin – think of it like the random seed for a person, or the basic material your soul is made from, it's important for magecraft but not usually the most important thing, and not knowing about it insulates you from its influence. I paralyzed myself with the neurotoxin magecraft I've been using here, more or less, but I lost my voice because, before anything else, Haruka Sanada came from Silence, and I sort-of returned to it."
"...Hey," Tomoe mumbled, raising her head and giving Haruka and Emi a series of glances. "That's all really cool, but why is magecraft a secret anyways? It's not something like hiding from the Spanish Inquisition or something, is it?"
Emi let out a harsh chuckle. "The Church is a problem we've all gotta deal with, but it's nothing like that Harry Potter shit. Ultimately, it can basically all be boiled down to two or possibly three resource conflicts that mean nobody really wants there to be a lot of mages. There's land that's good for magecraft, there's conflicts over the ultimate goal of magecraft, and it's generally accepted that spreading the secrets behind your magecraft literally makes it weaker, on top of being official doctrine. Suffice it to say, there's only a few thousand actual magi in the world, and people are already killing one another over the limited resources. Hell, our government – which is based out of London, actually – is a fucking real estate monopoly."
"If you can't get territory with good leylines to fuel your research off mana," Haruka added, frowning harshly. "It's generally accepted that your two options are to steal people's od en-masse, risking the secrecy of magecraft, or to give up and demote yourself to an ordinary spellcaster who doesn't do research at all."
"So what's the deal with this game, then?" Tomoe asked, frowning. "If it's such a bad idea to teach everyone magecraft, why would anybody push the [Thaumaturgy Patch]?"
Haruka shrugged, then Emi shrugged back at her and tossed out a wild guess. "I guess they've either got a massive grudge with the Clocktower, or they're planning some massive ritual that theoretically needs thousands of spellcasters. Either that, or they're out to prove some stupid point."
"Right. Okay." Tomoe gasped, drumming her fingers on the side of the table before standing up and starting toward the door. "Yeah. Huh. You two are in charge of magecraft stuff from now on, and uh… I'm gonna go get drunk in my room. Talk about this again in the morning?"
Emi snorted. "Sure."
Haruka had a sinking feeling in her stomach. They'd just gone too far, hadn't they?
"Haruka-chan, are we…in trouble now?" Yuki asked, resting a hand on her shoulder.
"Loads."
So much trouble. Sooooo much trouble.
Tomoe froze in the doorway after a second, glancing back. "Also, Emi, uh, my bad on the whole, uh… dismissiveness thing. For what it's worth, it was just kinda frustrating having you, like, wait for me to shoot my shot on answering a question really quickly, then jump in with a whole lecture on why I was wrong and how it actually works when we're in the middle of something. I guess you probably weren't planning on giving those lectures until I opened my dumb mouth, but…"
Emi gestured for her to continue.
Tomoe nodded back at her. "It'd just work better if we got those sorts of rundowns before they came up – when they'd be useful – or failing that, after everything calms down. If I say something wrong in a tense situation, uh… correct me right then if it'll actually cause a problem, but otherwise probably just make a note to come back to it later. I get that questions were being asked, but there's a time and place for a long-form explanation."
Emi grunted, leaning forward and waving. "Yeah, yeah, I'll try. If you're actually gonna let me take charge of magecraft stuff, that makes it my responsibility if things go wrong anyways. Well, bear in mind, if you challenge my answer or ask more questions, I won't just gloss over that either. You've hardly been innocent in all of this either."
Tomoe sighed. "Yeah…" she mumbled, before waving. "Anyways, good talk. I'm gonna go get smashed and pass out."
As the adult in their lives vanished beyond the frame of the door, Haruka cocked her head to the side. "Are you sure we should let her walk out like that?" she asked, hands forming timid signs. "If she gets drunk enough, she might start writing PMs to ask people what she should do or some dumb shit like that. I mean, she's a pretty stupid drunk, isn't she?"
Emi looked back her way and let out a snort, giving her a disbelieving look. "She's way too stupid a drunk for that – did you even see her after her first date? No way she can use a keyboard while sloshed."
"You two…" Yuki chided, her voice sharp as she gave one back and forth shake of her head before her eyes settled back on Haruka. "It's rude to talk about her like that behind her back, honestly."
Haruka froze under her best friend's gaze until the girl looked away, having apparently held off on making any additional comments on the secret she'd been keeping all these years.
A bark of laughter stole her attention back away from Yuki as Emi threw her hands up in the air and gave a quick, dismissive shrug. "Well, frankly, if she doesn't want me to gossip about what kind of drunk she makes she should set a better example."
Haruka rolled her eyes, letting out a long-held breath in amusement. With friends and family like she had, at least facing the music for this latest round of fuckups wouldn't be boring.
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And with this (after many fundamental revisions to the concept), the broad arc I had in mind since I first wrote up Cocabanana, Micchin, and the vtubers has finally been completed.
