“Roger!”
On the lower deck, Dimension Breaker Nakatsugawa quickly tapped at his console. Spots at the rear of the silhouette of Fraxinus on the sub monitor flashed blue, and the autonomous units, Yggdrafolium, were launched into space. The armed explosive mines each deployed Territories and stopped, scattered around Goetia.
“Good. Now!” Kotori barked. “Fire convergent magic gun Mistilteinn!”
“Affirmative. Firing convergent magic gun Mistilteinn,” Maria responded, and the low roar of an engine starting up filled the bridge, while a dazzling flash of light filled the screen of the main monitor.
A torrent of magic jetted from the end of Fraxinus and stretched out toward Goetia. The instant before the shot was about to connect, Goetia moved impossibly, unnaturally, to the right and to the rear, and slipped through the Yggdrafolium to escape into space.
“Tch! Still skittering around, huh?” Kotori scowled in annoyance.
Captained by Ellen, Goetia’s most powerful weapon was not the ability to slaughter most enemies with a single blow, nor was it its endurance, nor its impenetrable defenses. It was its impossible mobility, movement the eye even had trouble following. Movement that defied the laws of physics. Unlike other airships, Ellen Mathers controlled it directly with her mind. This was the reason Goetia was unmatched.
Facing Goetia was like a large, ponderous automobile facing off against a chess piece freely moved about by a giant. While Fraxinus’s maneuverability had been largely improved thanks to the rebuild, it still lagged behind Goetia.
Or it would have if they had kept everything the same.
“Kannazuki!” Kotori called.
“Yes, sir,” the tall man standing to one side of her captain’s chair responded. This was Fraxinus’s vice commander, Kyouhei Kannazuki. He was wearing a headset to transmit his brain waves to a Realizer.
“Maria,” Kotori said. “Please shift Fraxinus to manual control.”
“Roger,” Maria replied. “One control Realizer is set aside, the remaining are allocated to magic generation.”
Kannazuki smirked as he touched his headset. “It is unfortunate that I do not remember this myself, but you said that in the pre-revision world, we were handed an exquisitely painful loss, yes? Unforgivable, both the Wizard yonder who injured my commander’s beautiful world tree and my own self for failing to protect it.”
“No need for passionate speeches,” Kotori said, rolling her eyes slightly. “I would appreciate, however, if you could take our revenge for that loss.”
“Of course.” He nodded eagerly. “Ah! But isn’t it the teensiest bit exciting to think that we suffered such humiliation whilst unawares, as if things had been done to us while we were in a coma?”
“Kotori. I must object,” Maria interjected, exasperated. “I do not wish to hand over control of the vessel to this person.”
“I get where you’re coming from,” Kotori replied with a sigh. “It’ll be brief.”
Kannazuki seemed to pay this exchange little mind. Actually, he seemed to take pleasure in it.
“We’re doing this,” Kotori continued. “Show them we’re not the same ship as before.”
“I understand. It shall be as you wish, Commander.” Kannazuki had no sooner replied with a bow than Goetia’s signal abruptly approached on the monitors.
Kannazuki narrowed his eyes slowly. The remaining Yggdrafolium at the rear of the ship fired and deployed to block Goetia’s course.
Given the speed and distance of the attack, any normal ship would have been unable to avoid it. Its only option would have been to switch its Territory to defensive and ride it out.
Any normal ship.
Just as it was on the verge of making contact with the explosive Yggdrafolium, Goetia veered sharply—technically, still facing forward, it shifted on a parallel vector and wove its way through Yggdrafolium to close in on Fraxinus.
“Goetia approaching!” a crew member called.
Now it was Fraxinus’s turn to spin around and charge. With the enemy this close, any normal ship wouldn’t have been able to evade a direct attack.
Any normal ship.
“…!”
The Territories of the two ships were within grazing distance of each other when Kotori felt a strange sense of buoyancy. At the same time, the main monitor image changed with terrifying speed from the view captured by Fraxinus’s front-end camera.
“Whoa?!” A baffled cry rang out on the bridge.
A moment later, the monitor showed Goetia’s profile as it passed through the space where Fraxinus had just been.
Not to be outdone, Fraxinus had carried out a parallel shift in trajectory independent of its thrusters. That strange buoyancy Kotori had felt was the effect of the Territory, which was set to protect the ship from the excessive thrust. Moving the bulk of such a massive ship nearly instantaneously was reckless piloting, and if the Territory hadn’t mitigated the shock, the bridge would have been overflowing with the blood and effluvia of severely shaken crew members.
“Hngah! What visits us?! The screen, it flips!” Kaguya cried from the rear, sounding somehow excited.
Kotori flicked the stick of the Chupa Chups in her mouth up and down as she grinned. “Just one showpiece of our refurbished Fraxinus. We throw up another Territory around only the body of the ship inside the original Territory. Activating both Territories simultaneously gives us more leeway with thrust and momentum,” she said smugly, then shrugged. “Although I’ve never liked that the idea came from the pre-reform Goetia.”
Maria’s voice came over the speakers. “There is no problem, Kotori. There are no patents on the Realizers or the airships. Which means…” The AI paused. “…The one that wins is the real one.”
Her inflectionless voice. The only expression on what could have been called her face was the letters M-A-R-I-A displayed on the sub monitor.
Kotori felt somehow like she could see the transparent figure of a girl smiling mischievously. The corners of her own mouth softened, and she fixed her gaze on Goetia.
“You’re exactly right, Maria,” she said. “Now then, how about we make them really understand who they went and picked a fight with?”
“Roger!” Kannazuki and the rest of the crew called out as one.
However, a single brow on the bridge furrowed—Nia’s.
“Mmm. Uhhh, li’l sis, you sure about this?” she asked. “Like, I’ll give you that this is amazing, but we just sorta copied our enemy and upped our speed. It’s not like we actually blew them out of the technological water, yeah?”
It was a valid view. Kotori turned her eyes toward Nia, and just as she was about to reply, Maria’s voice came over the speakers again.
“Who is this person? Is she the sort who tries to prove she is cool by simply complaining?”
“Nah, that’s not what I’m doing here.”
“You are the sort that always needs to speak to the manager, then. This is the sort of person who turns into a monster parent once they have children. It is embarrassing. Please stop.”
“Huh? Wait, she’s really coming at me,” Nia said, furrowing her brow in bewilderment.
Kotori shrugged. “We can only play the cards we were dealt. That means focusing on Goetia right now.” She pointed the stick of the Chupa Chups in her mouth toward the airship on the monitor.