Chapter 5: Supreme Ruler Plots a Kidnapping
I should kidnap someone!
Mia shot up from her chair, toast hanging from her teeth, struck by a sudden flash of inspiration. She turned the words Ren had said to her before, “With your smarts, or lack thereof, you shouldn’t try to think too hard”, over and over in her mind, and came to the disheartening conclusion that he, in fact, had ridiculed her with that statement. This discovery prompted her to accomplish at least one evil deed, even if it killed her, and thus finally start acting in a way befitting of the Supreme Ruler of Evil.
Kidnapping, abduction, confinement, squatting—each of them evil deeds in their own right. According to the news, whoever perpetrated those always got sent behind bars, not to mention that a villain abducting children was a staple of the superhero shows she loved so much.
“But abducting a child will not do. Their parents would be beside themselves with worry, and it would cause undue distress to the public at large.”
Isn’t there someone well-suited to be her target, someone whose disappearance wouldn’t cause anyone grief?
“Or, maybe, someone who wants to get abducted…or something. No, that’s impossible, of course…” Mia sighed disappointedly and munched on her toast.
Summer break was finally here, so today, Mia, who now had more spare time than she normally did, was trying to finish her breakfast as soon as possible so she could go patrol the town as usual.
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“UGH… Will someone abduct me and take me somewhere faraway, please?”
“THEY DO EXIST?!”
It happened on an early summer afternoon, in a park where a chorus of cicadas filled the air with their ear-grating cries. Mia, feeling thirsty, had purchased a bottle of iced tea, and was in the process of drinking it on the nearby bench, when a woman who was sitting next to her suddenly mumbled that she wanted to get abducted.
Mia, still tightly gripping the plastic bottle in one hand, surged from her seat sputtering incredulously, “Y-You really want to get abducted?!”
“Huh? Yeah. Oh, if only that would actually happen to me, I’d be over the moon…”
“Incredible! And I doubted I would find someone. Well, I had better get to abducting you then! Come!” Mia grabbed the hand of the woman, who tilted her head in puzzlement, twirled her wand, and sonorously chanted the spell, “Fly with me into the skies!”
Their bodies immediately felt lighter than air, causing them to float upward, going higher and higher.
“Waaah?!” The woman screamed, holding onto Mia’s waist for dear life, her hands digging into her sides in a death grip.
“Ah! Hey, that tickles! Stop it! Hee-hee-hee!”
“Nooo, stop wriggling! Kya-ah! A-Aagh!” The bewildered woman shrieked, desperately clinging to Mia.
The ticklish clawing of her captive bothered Mia, but the kidnapping, and now screams of terror—everything else was just like in the superhero TV shows. Mia nodded to herself with profound satisfaction; this was it, now she was finally acting like a true villain should.
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FINALLY, their ascent stopped. Panting heavily over the insanity of the past few moments, the woman ventured a reluctant glance down. The park looked pretty small from where they hovered, as if she were looking at it from the apex point of a Ferris wheel. She shook her head with a vengeance—no more looking down for her.
What is this? What happened to me? Were people created with the ability to fly, and I just forgot? She was desperately trying to stop her racing thoughts and be rational, but how could she stay sane when she was floating in the sky!
While the kidnapped woman sought to stay calm or risk shattering the magic keeping her afloat, she glanced at her kidnapper who had crossed her arms and sat cross-legged as she slowly spun 360 degrees head over feet with a look of intense concentration on her face.
“All right, step one, abduction, is hereby complete. But what do I do next? Hm, shall I return home for now?”
“Huh?! Did you kidnap me with no forethought whatsoever?!” the panicked woman cried out in consternation despite herself.
The strange girl scratched her head somewhat awkwardly as she continued to spin like some kind of demented genie. “Mm, I just wanted to try to abduct someone and see how it goes. What do you normally do after you kidnap someone?”
“Eh?! Err, usually you demand a ransom, and if you’re not after the money, then you lock your victim up and rape them or something, I think?”
“Lock up? Rape?! Ransom?!” Her spinning came to a stop as Mia regarded the woman with eyes wide with terror, horrified at what terrible things she had come up with off the top of her head.
The woman, forgetting all about being suspended in midair, high in the sky, looked back at Mia with exasperation in her eyes. Her kidnapper was no longer spinning, but was still upside down in a cross-legged position gaping at her.
The two weightlessly bobbed around in the air in silence for a few charged moments. Mia, still staring her captive down, growled in frustration.
Ransom. She had no desire to demand money using threats. It wasn’t like that was the purpose she had abducted the woman for in the first place. She just thought that by kidnapping someone, she’d get one step closer to being a good—if this word could actually apply to her—Supreme Ruler of Evil, which was why failing to think ahead and make a plan about what to do next was very imprudent of her indeed.
Noticing Mia’s lapse into silence, the victim timidly inquired, “Hey, so, you can fly?”
“Hm? Yes, I can. Under normal circumstances, I would have to make you disappear as soon as you found out about me being a sorceress, but I can’t abduct you without using magic, so I shall let it slide this one time as an exception.”
“Wow, most of the things you’re saying go straight over my head. Don’t worry, even if tried to talk about this to someone, no one would believe me. Heck, I can barely believe what’s happening to me right now. Okay, so you whisked me away without thinking it through, right?”
Mia gave a breezy nod, to which the woman breathed out a tired sigh. “I just want to go far away from here…”
“…I see.”
“I want to get away from this town, go somewhere, anywhere. So, take me away, please.”
“I don’t mind doing that, but I’m somewhat short on money.”
When Mia told her captive about her financial situation, the woman exploded, her voice rising, “UGH, seriously?! You’ll bear the responsibility for taking me away, right?! As my kidnapper, you should at least do this much for me, your victim! It’s not like I’m asking you to take me overseas! Somewhere not that far away from here is fine, just take me somewhere!”
“I-I can’t!”
The woman grabbed Mia’s hands, bringing her spinning to a stop. Letting out a long sigh laced with anguish, she consented, “I guess it’s fine, even my kidnapper doesn’t care about me… Just drop me from the sky to my death. It’s not like a single person cares about me after all.”
Mia’s drifting attention snapped back to the woman. “D-Drop you here?”
“Yes, since even my kidnapper doesn’t care, I might as well die. Maybe someone will sympathize with me when they hear about my body splattering on the concrete over the news.”
“W-Wait I-I am not going to just drop you!”
Moaning with utter despair and tears in her eyes, the woman cried out, “How could I be so worthless that even my kidnapper hates me?!”
“Ah…” Mia searched the area for some kind of distraction, for someone to help, to no avail. Was this really what kidnappers had to deal with? Were kidnapped people really this depressed and suicidal? “Oh! I’ll be right back!” Mia said as she zipped off toward a vending machine.
Watching her go, the woman sat floating in the air with tears in her eyes. “Are you going to leave me too?”
Zipping back over a minute later, Mia held out the can of hot tea. “Here.”
“Huh? Tea?”
“Whenever I feel depressed hot tea always helps me calm down. Feel better?”
The woman sniffled, “Maybe if you got some food…”
Mia nodded. “I think I saw a convenience store.”
“No, no, no, I am much too depressed for convenience store food. There is a nice restaurant that does amazing takeout right over there.” The woman pointed to the east. “They’re quite expensive, but I am sure as my kidnapper you wouldn’t mind paying…right?”
Mia froze as the woman gazed pitifully at her. “I don’t really have the money—”
She sniffled again as tears filled her eyes. “I see, then maybe I should just die. Just let me fall to my death, if even my kidnapper is unwilling to get me some simple food…”
“All right, all right.” Mia rushed to pull her wallet out, quickly checking how much money she had. “I’ll take you.”
The woman smiled, her previous tears vanishing in an instant. “Wonderful, it’s right over there. Oh, and there is this lovely clothing store nearby that I have always wanted to shop at. You wouldn’t mind buying me something there too, right?”
“But—” Mia tried to object and was instantly cut off.
“Right? You wouldn’t be such a mean kidnapper and deny me this would you? Now let’s go, it’s right over there.”
Groaning, Mia began drifting in the direction the supposed victim pointed in.