The two acceptable payments Iris had suggested were me and the doctor. But if we couldn’t hand over either one of us, then...
“Does the agency have anything else of high value?” I asked the doctor.
“Well...” she replied, glancing over at Satsuki.
“No, other than that.”
I stopped her in her tracks. There was no way I was going to hand over Satsuki either.
“I know, I know. But in all seriousness, I don’t think we have anything worth as much as the three of us. All of our funds have been put into research, so we’re poor to boot.” The doctor briefly looked up and sighed before looking at Iris again. “But it’s not like you’re seeking out war for no reason, right?”
“Of course not. I just want to find the real Rekka... Though I admit I was fooled this time.”
“Let’s leave that in the past. There’s no point in stewing about it forever,” the doctor said, forcefully advancing the conversation. “So, how much do you think we can get away with?”
“Get away with...?”
“Let’s start with the battle against the agency. Assuming we have to fight at least once as you said, what happens if it comes to a draw? Would your fleet then retreat?”
“Like I said, King Satamonia and his ilk agreed to this, so my fleet is a rather large one. No matter how well defended the agency may be, I can’t simply return and say, ‘We just couldn’t beat them.’ They’d never accept it.”
I see...
As I listened to the conversation between Iris and the doctor, something finally clicked. My approach to this was all wrong. I’d been assuming this entire time that the results of the war were more or less preset. But I was now realizing that even if one side won, there wasn’t necessarily anything to be gained from it. So as Iris and the others were discussing ways for this to go down without us having to hand over anyone, my thoughts took a similar turn. What kind of story could we fabricate where a fleet of this size could fail to obtain their objective and no one would question it?
I at last had something specific to put my mind to now, but this was no easy problem to hash out. There were very few plausible reasons a federation fleet of this size would lose to anything. Especially the agency, as small as it was. It also wouldn’t make any sense if Iris tried to claim the fleet won against the agency but didn’t get anything about it. She’d have to bring back some kind of spoils for King Satamonia and the other warmongers to be happy.
Something... There had to be something. But what? What would allow Iris to return home empty-handed without anyone questioning it? What story would I have to tell?
Tokiwa...
The face of the light literature club president suddenly popped into my mind. She was always holed up her room writing, dreaming of becoming an author. Out of all the heroines I knew, she was the best storyteller. So if I told her I was stuck here, what would she say? Yeah, that’s right... She gave me advice about writer’s block once.
“When you get stuck... Sometimes you just have to switch things up a bit.”
I just had to switch things up... But how? What was I supposed to change? There were certain elements in this story that I couldn’t do anything about, like the cast. I couldn’t change the fact that I was here, and I couldn’t change the fact that Iris and her fleet were here. There was also no changing the premise to the story at this point: if the federation fleet attacked the agency, there was no way they wouldn’t win unless there was some major upheaval. It would have to be something like a secret superweapon hiding at agency HQ capable of wiping out an entire fleet... But we couldn’t play that out without causing serious losses to Iris’s fleet, which would put her in just as terrible a position upon returning home. We were right back to square one.
“Let’s say the agency surrenders before the fight. Then you can come in to inspect and realize for yourself that the tip you guys got was bad. If there’s no Rekka, there’s no problem, right?”
“In that case, Doctor, we’d demand you come with us instead.”
“Crap...”
The doctor and Iris continued their discussion, but they weren’t making much progress.
I have to switch up something... But what? How?
There had to be a way for the federation to “win” without us having to hand over either me or the doctor. What could make a plotline like that reasonable? No, if reasonable was all we were going for, then we could just say the doctor and I ran away and leave it at that. But that would still land Iris in hot water...
Ah, damn it! Why can’t I think of anything?! If only this were all some kind of mistake... Wait a minute. Was it?
“Hey, Iris?”
“Yes?”
Iris paused her conversation with the doctor and turned to me.
“There’s something I’d like to ask if you can remember. The tip the Greater Galactic Federation received... What exactly did it say?”
“Hmm...”
Iris looked at me dubiously for a moment, but without any particular objection, she began thinking on it. After a while...
“The report we received was anonymous and rather vague. All it said was something about how Rekka Namidare’s presence had been confirmed in this universe through various magics and technologies, and that you were being held by the agency—”
“Hang on,” I said, stopping Iris so I could ask a vital question. “The part of the message about the agency holding me... Did it say exactly where I was being held?”
“Huh? There’s only one agency, no?”
“I knew it!” I shouted, slapping my knees with my hands.
Iris looked at me curiously.
“What’s this about, Rekka?” the doctor asked, apparently also finding my behavior strange.
“It’s just like you said, Doctor. The extremists are an offshoot of the agency, but that’s not widely known.”
“That’s right.”
“Which means that to the outside, the agency is one unified organization. But in truth, it’s not.”
“Aha!” the doctor exclaimed, seemingly coming to the same realization I had.
“So... What? I don’t really follow. You’re saying the agency actually consists of two factions? What does that have to do with—”
“The extremists are the ones holding Rekka Namidare.”
“Huh?”
“That’s all you need to tell them.”
The agency was one organization as far as the outside world was concerned, but part of it had splintered off into a radical group that now functioned completely separately. They’d set up their own headquarters and everything. That gave us a chance to send Iris after the extremists—and she could still say she’d attacked the agency!
“Iris, you return to the command center after this and tell your people this: you found out that the people hiding Rekka Namidare are actually agency radicals. We don’t care if you win against them. But the doctor belongs to a completely different faction of the agency—the pacifists—so the federation can’t politically demand anything from her or the other pacifists, right?”
“I might just be able to get away with that... But by that logic, the pacifists and these so-called radicals are actually two different entities.”
Hearing this, Iris turned to the doctor for confirmation. She nodded and said...
“Indeed. We’re on very bad terms with one another and have diverging views on just about everything. It’s very fair to say we’re two different entities.”
“Hmm... And where might this radical base be?”
“Wouldn’t L know that?” I asked, turning to her.
“Well, yeah,” she said with a small nod.
At one point, she had been on the extremists’ side. Of course she would know where their base was. If the federation fleet was so certain to win, then we just had to change their target... This is what you meant by switching things up, right, Tokiwa? Maybe I was wrong and she’d just get mad at me for misinterpreting what she’d said, but right now I was thanking her from the bottom of my heart.
“All right. I will attack the radicals under the auspices that they are part of the agency. That information cannot be refuted with the information anyone has now, so not even King Satamonia will be able to challenge it. Moreover, the doctor does not have any ties to the radical faction, so we cannot rightfully demand anything from her regarding the radical faction’s actions.”
Iris summed up the plan for everyone, then looked up at me.
“Wh-What?”
“Nothing. It’s just...”
“Just what?”
“This brings back memories... The real Rekka that saved me, Satsuki, and Harissa was pretty much a regular human back then. He would squeeze out every last drop of wit to save us, just like this.”
“...”
I had heard how future Rekka had undergone a transformation that made him something superhuman. Surely that gave him more options when it came to solving stories. He had a lot more to rely on than just his wit, after all. While it wasn’t a question of which was better, seeing my old-school methods was clearly nostalgic for Iris.
“For now, we have our plan. All that’s left is for me to return. I’ll make up something about where I went and what happened with the intruders. Good luck to you all on your end.”
“Ah, wait a minute...”
When Iris stood up, I hurriedly called out to her.
“What is it?”
“Um, there’s one more thing I’d like to ask.”
“What is it?” she asked, her arms folded.
“If possible, I’d like you to refrain from attacking the extremists’ base too.”
“Why?”
“My heroines might be being held there, so I’d like the time to rescue them,” I answered honestly. “But I really don’t want to see anyone die here.”
In the end, that was it. And in response to my naive request, Iris said...
“You really haven’t changed at all there.”
She then poked my forehead gently with her finger and smiled.