✦ ✦ ✦
Perhaps the blood loss was preventing Micona from thinking straight—she was rambling on, and it was unclear if she was talking to herself or not.
“I’ve got someone who needs me, someone who’ll heal me up, someone who worries about me, someone I love. What more joy could you ask for in life?!”
“……”
“Being needed makes people strong! Don’t you dare turn up your nose at that!”
As bleary as her mind was, Micona was focused on her target.
Shnk—
Until Eve sprayed something on her face.
“Ack…!”
Micona inhaled it—and her eyes rolled back in her head. She toppled over.
Eve gave Micona’s prone form a bored look.
“Dionysos’s knockout mist… When you’re on the brink of death, a puff of a liquor-like spray is more than enough to take you down. Still—”
Micona couldn’t hear anything, but Eve could not seem to stop herself.
“The nerve! Lecturing me about the joy of life? If being needed was enough to satisfy me, I’d never have become a demon lord at all.”
With that, Eve turned toward Azami again.
“When the people who need you are crushed along with their kingdom, what will you say then?” Eve chuckled. “I hope you cry your eyes out.”
Her pace quickened, hastening toward her destination.
“The joy of life, my ass,” she spat.
Micona was powered by something Eve lacked, and she proud of herself no matter how beaten she was—
Everything about Micona annoyed Eve like a bone caught in her throat, and her body language betrayed her irritation.
✦ ✦ ✦
At the north side entrance to Azami itself…
Ordinarily, this gate was teeming with merchants and tourists, day and night, but now—it was eerily quiet.
The gate itself was firmly shut—it had almost never been closed before, and that alone was ominous. Like when you hit up your regular store and find the shutter closed, leaving you to wonder if it’s gone for good or if a crime took place.
Azami soldiers were peering over the top.
Eve scanned their faces and sighed. “Lordy, so Micony was buying time? Well, mission accomplished, I suppose!”
The lady leaning against the pillar by the gate—like she was waiting for a date—raised a hand in greeting.
“It’s been so long! Look how young you’ve become, President—or should I say King Profen? Lady Eve?”
It was Rinko. As she spoke, she moved slowly closer, hands in her coat pockets. She was wearing an easy smile on her face, like they were about to go out for drinks at the pub by the station.
“This is quite the welcome party, Lab Chief Rinko. Or should I call you Queen?” Eve jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Micona, chuckling. “The sacrifice you sent out to buy time is sleeping it off. Glad to know you’re still a heartless taskmaster!”
“Heyyy! I’ve seen the error of my ways. I’ve improved my life and my character.” Rinko flashed a hand sign to the crowd behind her—and Micona’s classmates rushed off to her side.
“Hmm. Micony’s a popular gal! I see, I see— How inspiring!”
“Yeah, sounds like they went through a lot together. I’m a touch surprised you let them go.”
“Just a whim. I’m having fun picturing her face when she wakes up to see a smoking hole where your kingdom used to be. That’s what I’m here for!”
Eve took a step toward Azami—but Rinko blocked her way.
“Sorry, but you aren’t welcome in my house.”
“Yours, is it?” Eve was both appalled and impressed. A fellow alien, proudly claiming a new home—it made her want to tease. “Always took you for the type who’d abandon your family if the research demanded it. You certainly have changed!”
“I get that a lot,” Rinko said, wincing. “For that, I’m grateful to you. That may not have been your goal, but it helped me figure out what really matters.”
“Back at the lab, I figured extolling the virtues of family might make you easier to control. But you waited till we got isekaied first! Too late for my purposes.”
“I never would have met some of these people otherwise. I mean it— I am grateful for that. If nothing else.”
Rinko was holding a solid stance, just like Micona had.
Eve made a show of shrugging. “‘What really matters’? Families are nothing more than a shackle holding you down.”
“I think even you would figure it out once you had one, Lady Eve. They’re not holding me back. They’re putting wind in my sails.”
As this calm, leisurely war of words continued, the two were closing in on each other.
“I knew I’d have to fight you someday, but a bare-knuckle brawl in another world?”
“Live long enough, anything can happen. A social outcast like me can even find a family.”
“Ready when you are.”
“I’m ready right now.”
And with that—both vanished.
Torn grass danced in the air where they’d been.
And—
BOOOM!
The noise was like two big trucks crashing.
Everyone watching felt the vibrations, as if they were watching taiko drummers up close.
Even soldiers used to battle let out yelps of surprise.
The source of the noise was Rinko and Eve’s fists slamming together. Like two boxers bumping fists after the gong sounds, a hello by way of a solid punch.
That crack of thunder came from a slender beauty and an out-of-shape-looking scientist.
It felt wrong and deeply weird to the onlookers.
“President Eva!”
“Lab Chief Rien Cordelia!”
BOOOM!
Another blow came as they yelled each other’s old names.
✦ ✦ ✦
