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“More importantly for now, I don’t see the heroines anywhere here.”
“I don’t either. But just in case, L, can you scan the room?”
“Just a moment.”
At the doctor’s urging, L placed her hands on the ground. Not a moment later...
Crack!
“Active defenses?! On the whole room?!”
L quickly pulled her hands away from the floor, but it seemed the damage had already been done.
“Tch...”
On the other side of the room, Yuuhi clicked her tongue.
“L-Lady Yuuhi?”
The higher-up she was talking to seemed none the wiser to what was going on, and he certainly didn’t see what was coming next... Yuuhi suddenly stood up and delivered a swift blow to his neck.
“Gah!”
He flinched briefly before collapsing to the ground.
“She knocked him out...?!”
But why? Wasn’t he a member of the extremists? I had a lot of questions, but no time to think. Yuuhi held a hand up, palm outward in our direction, and muttered a single word...
“Break.”
When she did, I felt something like a gust of wind brush my cheek.
Huh? What was that?
I could tell she had done something, but I had no idea what. I was at a loss. But in the midst of my confusion, Harissa seemed to figure it out.
“...Huh?! Be careful, everyone! The invisibility has been dispelled!”
“What?!”
Wait, the telepathy had been cut too? Was this Yuuhi’s doing?
“So you’re here already, Rekka Namidare. That was faster than I expected.”
“You know who I am, yet you’re not surprised to see me... I guess that means you really are the mastermind behind all this.”
“Mastermind? Hmph, is that what you’ve been calling me?” Yuuhi spat out boldly and hatefully.
There was so much I wanted to ask her, but it would all have to wait.
“Give me back my heroines!”
“...”
Yuuhi narrowed her eyes, not responding. She scanned the group of us, her gaze falling on L.
“So it was you that led them here, was it, L?”
“Shut up. You... You didn’t tell me anything. You just cast me aside. You don’t have any right to complain,” L said, glaring sharply at Yuuhi.
L was never informed about the attack the extremists had planned on the past, which was the start of all this. She took it as a sign that the extremists—that the mastermind—had abandoned her. She felt thrown away. Yuuhi, however, was the one frowning right now.
“You’re the one who has no right to complain, L.”
“What did you just say...?”
“Don’t you know, L? You’re already a heroine of this Rekka Namidare. You have been ever since the summer festival.”
“Huh?”
“I suppose you may not have realized it since you’re still in the middle of being saved. But given a little more time, you would have betrayed me of your own will.”
“...”
Yuuhi’s declaration left L at a loss for words. Whether her silence was because what Yuuhi said had struck a chord with her or because she was just that stunned at the accusation, I wasn’t sure.
“You seem awfully certain of yourself, Yuuhi,” the doctor suddenly interjected. “I’m surprised you have the gall to play it high-and-mighty after deceiving my precious L like you did.”
“If it isn’t the king of Laputa...”
“I’d love nothing more than to give you a piece of my mind right now, but there’s something else I have to ask first.”
“...”
Yuuhi showed no reaction to what the doctor said, which she took as a sign to continue.
“Is it possible that you know the whereabouts of our Rekka Namidare?”
Huh?
At first, I didn’t understand what the doctor was saying. I slowly replayed the sentence in my head... Wide-eyed, I looked back and forth between Yuuhi and the doctor.
“Wh-What do you mean by that?!”
“Remember how I told you there were two serious incidents that triggered the War of All?”
“Two triggers...”
I scanned back through my memories. The doctor had said that the first trigger for the War of All was the terrorist attack on the Greater Galactic Federation’s central congress. The second was the fact that my future self went missing.
“The real cause of the War of All was the disappearance of our Rekka Namidare, which started the rumors that one of the heroines was monopolizing him... And the reason they continued was because no one could prove otherwise. Not even Satsuki could locate Rekka with her Omniscient Magic.”
Yeah, that’s right. She’d said something like that before too. I remember thinking it was strange that... Wait, Satsuki couldn’t locate future Rekka with her magic? Just like... how she couldn’t locate the mastermind or the heroines either?
As I was turning all this over in my head, the doctor glared at Yuuhi.
“It only occurred to me today after all the time we’ve spent chasing you down... The thought that someone other than the current heroines might’ve been involved with the War of All from the beginning,” the doctor said calmly.
According to her theory, it was Yuuhi who had kidnapped future Rekka. And upon hearing this, Satsuki, Harissa, Lea, and Fam all narrowed their eyes sharply in her direction.
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that it hurt. It couldn’t be... It just couldn’t, could it? I wasn’t even sure if I wanted her to be right or not. All I knew was that I was on the edge of my seat.
After several moments of tense silence, Yuuhi opened her mouth...
“I have nothing to say to you.”
And refused to give us an answer. I swear the temperature in the room dropped a couple of degrees.
“...Shall I force her to talk?”
Even big-hearted Lea was saying some pretty violent things now. But in the face of sheer murderous intent, Yuuhi didn’t even flinch.
“Hmph... I expected you lot would show up eventually the moment that artificial life form named R got in my way and let Rekka Namidare escape,” she said. “Did you really think I would just be waiting here unprepared?”
Yuuhi pressed some kind of switch hidden in the sleeve of her jacket, and when she did... a rip in the air next to her tore wide open.
“A warp?!” Fam exclaimed.
“No... That’s more like a gate to another world!” Harissa declared.
But Yuuhi faintly shook her head.
“Saying it’s a gate to another world is close... But you’ve still got it wrong. This rift is connected to the other side of the mirror. The side that you would normally never come into contact with.”
“The other side... of the mirror?”
“That’s right. The space inside this rift is a pocket dimension not connected to any other world. I can hide anything in here, people included, and never be discovered by anyone.”
“What?!”
The Magic of Omniscience accessed the Akashic record, which was the annals of history across all worlds. But if what Yuuhi was saying was true, then the mirror dimension wasn’t part of any world... That’s why Satsuki hadn’t been able to learn anything about it with her magic. That... That had to mean...
“Come on out,” Yuuhi called.
When she did, several figures emerged from the rift.
“Wha?!”
I doubted my eyes.
“Huh?! I-It’s us?!”
I was surprised, but the future heroines standing next to me were in downright shock. It was because we recognized the people who’d emerged from the tear.
Satsuki. Iris. Harissa. Lea. Rosalind. Fam. Corona.
They were all heroines we knew well.
“Why are they following her orders...?” I muttered in disbelief, searching for a reason.
When I squinted, straining my eyes to get a better look at Yuuhi, I could see she was wearing an earring with a small red jewel. It... It looked familiar.
That’s a Doppel Stone! It can copy magical and psychic powers!
Come to think of it, the doctor had said Yuuhi used a Doppel Stone to wipe my memory of the heroines. If she had one with that kind of power, I could understand why the heroines were following her orders.
She must’ve copied Rosalind’s charm power into it!
Once I put two and two together, I could see it plain as day. The heroines all had a glassy, dazed look in their eyes... They were clearly being controlled. That meant I’d have to give them some kind of shock to snap them out of it. Yuuhi likely knew that, which was why she’d brought out the heroines with the highest combat potential. Granted, she’d brought out Satsuki and Harissa too.
“Go.”
With a simple order from Yuuhi, the past heroines all moved to attack us in a rather systematic way. Past Satsuki came for future Satsuki, past Lea came for future Lea, and so on. Basically, the girls were attacking themselves.