“I awaken from my long slumber!” the girl from inside shouted, appearing amid the lingering smoke in a pose with her left hand covering her right eye. “Filolia returns beautifully to life!” I was left speechless. “Thank you all for participating in my awakening! Your names shall go down in the Chronicles of the Dark Hero, the Maniacal Brave, as chronicled by the great chronicler of the Crimson Evil Flicker, Red Shadow Wing! Bring all of your strength to bear!” She held the same pose, an expression of pure confidence on her face.
No one else was speaking. Silence stifled the lab for a moment.
Her real name was apparently L’yne. She had used being summoned to another world as an excuse to change her name to Filolia. That had been a bit of a red flag for me already.
“Mamoru, sorry to be the one to say this, but it seems the experiment has failed. We woke her up too quickly, and she seems to be suffering from . . . mental defects. We should dispose of this failure at once,” I suggested.
“Hey! Hold on!” Filolia said. She seemed shocked by my words.
“I warned you,” Mamoru said to her, looking exhausted by the entire thing. “Naofumi isn’t the kind of person to go for that kind of joke.”
“I’m not joking around! I’m the Dark Hero, the Maniacal Brave! I’m cool!” she retorted. Mamoru and the girl calling herself Filolia started to argue with each other.
“Filolia seems the same as always. I’m glad,” Cian commented.
“That’s a success?” I said.
“Yeah,” Cian nodded. She actually nodded. I wasn’t sure what to do with this information. “High maintenance” did not seem apt enough for what a girl like that would put you through. I suddenly had no idea about Mamoru’s tastes at all. When he told us about her, he had made her sound like she had her head in the right place. She was the one, he had told us, who said it was strange for Siltran to rely purely on the heroes to fight the waves. From the exchange I had just seen, she looked like a moron, nothing more. “She always jokes around like that,” Cian explained, “but when things get serious, you’ll want her around.”
“Okay . . . a shame she can’t be serious all the time,” I commented.
“I agree,” Cian said simply.
“I wonder if you shouldn’t have made some modifications before releasing her from the tube?” I said.
“That wouldn’t be reviving little old Filolia, now would it? It wouldn’t be the Filolia that Mamoru so wants to see again,” Holn replied.
“It would probably be better than this,” I stated.
“Just let them have their fun. She’ll be serious when we need her,” Holn responded. There were all sorts of reasons why I didn’t want to give this new nutcase the time of day.
“It sounds like everything you told me was legit,” Melty said.
“Why are you okay with this?” Raphtalia asked. Ruft and I seemed to have the same question.
“Haven’t you ever seen this, Naofumi? Raphtalia? Sometimes there are filolials who act like that,” Melty said.
“Okay. I’ve never seen that and don’t want to,” I told her. All the filolials I knew were airheaded gluttons. I’d never encountered one with an extreme case of chuunibyou.
“If the others talk with one like that for too long, the same tendencies get transferred over to them,” Melty continued. It was like some kind of sickness. I definitely didn’t want to catch that.
“Any way to fix it?” I asked.
“Filo and Chick tend to keep them under control, which stops it from getting too bad. But they can’t do anything to stop the original spreader,” Melty explained.
“Sounds hopeless,” I replied.
“Just think of it as her personality and let it go,” Raphtalia suggested.
“The only monsters we need in the village are the Raph species,” I asserted.
“You said it!” Ruft agreed.
“Please don’t reduce this issue down to that,” Raphtalia said. “Now can we please introduce ourselves?”
“Yeah, I guess we should . . .” I looked over at the two of them again. Filolia was waving her arms up and down at Mamoru, like a child, trying to convince him she wasn’t wrong. I decided to just go ahead. “I’m Naofumi Iwatani. I’m the Shield Hero from the future. Mamoru has been helping me and my friends out. Nice to meet you,” I managed. The girl calling herself Filolia turned to look at me. She did have a Filo vibe about her. I could understand if this was the progenitor of the filolials.
I held out some candy, which I’d picked up as a treat to take back for Keel and the others.
“Oh, thanks!” Filolia cried, reaching out for it at once and then starting to lick it happily. “So sweet! Delicious!” she exclaimed. It was starting to feel exactly like interacting with a filolial. I was confronted by the power of genetics.
“There, there,” I said, putting a hand on Filolia’s head and patting her.
“Naofumi?!” Mamoru exclaimed. Filolia gave a happy titter for a moment.
“Hold on!” Then she snapped back to herself. “How dare you touch the Maniacal Brave, the Claw Hero, also known as Brave Claws!” She tried to knock my hand away but was met with a solid wall of resistance, which she also started to complain about. “So hard! This guy is like a rock! I can’t move his hand at all!” I wondered how long this comedy routine was going to continue for. Maybe I could just laugh it all off, but I wasn’t sure that was the best idea. “Mamoru!” she said and proceeded to jump onto Mamoru. I was starting to worry about all the fresh crap it looked like we needed to deal with.
Mamoru, for his part, seemed nothing more than Filolia’s guardian. Right then, he was holding Filolia, stroking her head to soothe her.
“Look, you see. If you act normally with Naofumi, he’ll answer you back normally. If you joke around, then Naofumi will treat you like a child,” Mamoru explained.
“Boo . . . okay,” Filolia said. For a moment I seriously considered calling her Filo II. She felt like Melty and Filo combined together, with some of the old Ren mixed in.
“I’m Filolia, the Claw Hero and ally to Mamoru. You’ve come from the future? How lovely!” she said.
“Lovely, is it?” I muttered. I was getting more and more suspicious. I really didn’t want to get involved with her, but I continued the conversation. “And do you understand the situation you’re in?”
“Yes. Look at the forbidden arts you have dabbled with in order to revive me. I knew this was a profession that demands all forms of malevolence, but then I’m at fault for having been killed so easily . . . I’m ready to join you in working to atone for our sins and wish to bring an end to the waves alongside you,” Filolia stated. She seemed to like to say things in a roundabout way. Talking to her was wearing me out.
“Filolia. Your words, your words,” Mamoru chided her.
“I’m not enamored with everything you’ve done, but this is the situation we’re in now, so I’ll do my best,” Filolia said. It had taken all this time just to impart this simple information. This really was going to be a pain.
In any case, I seemed to have no choice but to accept her as both S’yne’s ancestor and one of the filolials.
“Okay. Then we’ll ask for your help . . . I guess. If you understand the situation, then you know what we’re trying to do, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. You’ve been helping Mamoru and my friends, so I’ll help you too. Whatever I can do to help you get back to the future, count me in,” Filolia said, giving another bow. “I can deploy these as my new optical wings. Some aspect of the Suzaku.” Filolia raised her claws as she spoke. The seven star weapons were the vassal weapons of the four holy heroes . . . the holy weapons. I wondered if the claws were a vassal of the shield. I didn’t have anyone using them in my party.