It hadn’t occurred to them in the heat of the moment that calling for backup was an option, and an incredibly appealing one at that. Having seen some sliver of hope, the boys surrounding the girl clung to it and acted immediately. They rain off to the main event site to get the older boys. They left behind Elliott, the count’s second son, and a few others who lay collapsed on the ground.
The girl cracked her knuckles as she approached the count’s son.
“Deliberately decreasing your own numbers... You must be awfully confident.”
“Huh? What? Hey, somebody... Aaargh?!”
When the uninjured boys who’d gone running for help returned with three older boys, the girl had already finished getting her last kicks in and was leaving the scene of violence. When she saw the reinforcements arriving, she clicked her tongue.
“Wh-Why you little...!” When the eldest of the boys saw the tragedy in front of him, particularly Elliott’s battered state, he was overcome with a panic greater than any anger he might have felt. They had an obligation to protect Elliott, after all. They’d been brought together as Elliott’s bodyguards, but one little girl had trounced them, and the prince himself was all beaten up. He could say that he wasn’t there when it happened, but that would only make the adults more upset.
“Damn it! Beat the stuffing out of her!” the eldest boy barked.
“But Steve, she’s a girl...”
His comrades were still saying some naive nonsense and acting indecisive, so he bellowed, “You all think we’re going to get off scot-free after we let this happen to His Highness?! It doesn’t matter if she’s a girl. We need to clobber her and make her apologize to His Highness, or the adults are gonna be pissed!”
Steve was the most mature of the group and grown enough to consider just how bad of a position they were in. However, he was still just a ten-year-old boy, which meant he wasn’t quite grown enough to stay alert while he persuaded the other boys.
“Well? Do you get what I’m saying?!” Steve asked.
“Steve!”
“What?”
“Behind you!”
“Huh...?”
He turned around in time to see the girl, who’d gotten very close at some point, swing a long, thin pole down at him.
“She got Globnar!”
“Aaaah?!”
The girl had clobbered the eldest boy with a stick she got somewhere. The other two boys who tried to stop her met the same fate and joined him on the ground. With that, the backup they’d gone to procure had been wiped out.
Neither larger numbers nor older boys had won this for them. She was just one little girl, while they had more than ten boys, and all of them were older than her. Yet despite their apparent advantage, they saw no way of winning.
“What now? What are we supposed to do?!” one of Elliott’s followers asked.
They helped the less injured boys get up, but they couldn’t figure out their next move. The group centered around the prince were known for running amok, but they were revealing themselves to be indecisive. Still, they now knew not to take their eyes off the girl while talking, so they’d grown a little, at least.
Some of his followers helped Elliott to his feet, and he gritted his teeth as he assessed the situation.
“How did just one girl do all this?”
Since his cronies couldn’t lay a hand on her, Elliott thought until he had a flash of inspiration.
“Hey, everyone, throw rocks at her!”
He was suggesting that more than ten boys attack one little girl with ranged weapons. People had a way of losing their consciences when they found themselves backed into a corner.
The boys followed Elliott’s order and started picking up nearby rocks and throwing them at the girl. Not even she could fight back against this, so she backed away. When they saw her retreat, Elliott and the boys pushed their advantage and kept on throwing.
“Yes! We can do this!”
“We can win!”
Seeing that she was up against a number of opponents—a difference the boys should have been ashamed of even if they were to win—and that they were getting carried away because of that, she finally ran away.
“We did it!”
“Now corner her and make her apologize to the prince!”
If she’d lost the will to fight, now they just had to cut her off and force her to surrender. That was what they thought as they chased her, rocks in hand, but she climbed a tree.
It was hard throwing upward, and try as they might, they couldn’t reach her. They should have had her cornered, but there was nothing they could do about it in this situation.
Elliott and the boys gathered around the bottom of the tree and looked up. The girl was up in the branches, perhaps plotting a counterattack, as she glared down at them with a scowl on her adorable face.
The boys started discussing their countermeasures.
“What do we do? Our rocks aren’t reaching her.”
“We could wait, but there’s no telling how long she’ll stay up there.”
Just as they were thinking that they didn’t want this to drag on, a snapping sound came from up above.
“Hm?”
They looked up to see the girl hanging from a thick branch and kicking a lower branch with all her might. Before they even had time to wonder why, the thin branch fell right into the middle of their group, and the rather impressive hive that was attached to it, which had to be about twenty centimeters wide, unleashed a massive swarm of wasps.
“Aaaaahh?!”
“Heeeelp!”
The wasps must have assumed that the people gathered around the hive were the culprits, because they went after Elliott and the boys, not the girl up in the tree. Mad with rage, they chased the boys left and right. The boys fled in all directions, but the unlucky ones still hollered with pain each time they were stung. It was pandemonium.
Elliott, having somehow managed to escape the scene, sat down next to the pond. Everything had happened so fast that he didn’t know where he was now or what had become of his cronies.
“I thought I was a goner...”
Just as he was thinking that he didn’t even have the will left to stand, a shadow fell over him.
“Huh?”
Elliott, thoroughly exhausted, looked up to see the girl who’d climbed the tree. She was leaning back, and her foot was raised.
“What? Gwuh?!”
She hoofed him in the chest, and Elliott fell. He tried to get up, but she planted another kick on his butt. He fell again, rose to all fours, took another kick in the butt, and fell headfirst into the pond.
“Bwarghlarghlargh!”
He tried to scream “Somebody help me,” but all that came out were a lot of bubbles as the muddy water flooded into his mouth. He couldn’t tell if his head was facing up or down. He struggled like mad, but water kept getting into his nose and mouth. It rushed in to replace the air he’d exhaled without meaning to. With his lungs full of water, Elliott could no longer even scream as he thrashed about.
It’s hopeless... he thought.
“Bwah!” The moment he sensed his impending death, Elliott’s head surged out of the water. His field of vision suddenly cleared, and he could see the bright light of the sun once more. It was pure coincidence, though, that Elliott’s head had ended up above the surface as he flailed about, drowning.
Coughing and sputtering, he cried, “S-Somebody!”
Now that his head was above water, his lungs could finally suck in all the oxygen they craved. His chest swelled with air, and he called for help in a nasal voice in between spitting up mouthfuls of water.
The shore looked so far away. He’d ended up drifting as he struggled, and even his childish eyes could tell it was quite a distance to where the girl was standing. He flailed his arms and legs, trying to head back there somehow, but the sleeves of his shirt and overcoat got all tangled up, making it incredibly hard to move his arms. Even so, he’d almost made it to shore, when...
Pow!
Elliott’s vision shook. The moment he realized that something had hit him, the spot on his forehead where it had struck felt hot.