While they didn’t understand Japanese, the soldiers seemed to infer what was happening from the atmosphere, and they looked aghast at Kyouhei.
● ● ●
Emmitt frowned as she peered through the compact binoculars—or rather, opera glasses. “Sis,” she said.
“When we’re working—”
“Elsia, something strange is happening,” Emmitt interrupted, not letting Elsia finish her complaint about being called ‘Sis’ while they were working.
Elsia and Emmitt—the two of them were originally freelance informants for Colonel Walser. They had detested the boring family trade back in Potsdam and left home before entering this line of work.
There were only a certain number of freelance informants at a given time. They were never given particularly important duties, just simple surveillance. Often, they were used—as disposable pawns, essentially—for low-success and ridiculous missions. There were only a certain number of jobs, and should they fail, or be caught by enemy forces, they would still be external agents to their hiring organizations, so there would be no risk of an information leak.
Well, there were a lot of things going for their reliability.
Leaving that to one side...
“Something strange?” Elsia asked over the radio.
The sisters were often split into two units: one to maintain surveillance and one to monitor for movement further away. The closer one would maintain the surveillance, and the other would secure transport should the contact one lose sight.
On this occasion, Emmitt was on a scooter close by, while Elsia was a little ways away in a small car.
“The observation target is heading for the Nanbu house at great speed.”
“You said that earlier,” Elsia said irritatedly, in a poor mood because it was the second day of her period. “The colonel’s troops are deployed, so it’s perfect, right? There’s that saying in Japan about dark lines.”
“The saying’s about a duck with a leek,” Emmitt corrected her. “There’s more of them now though.”
“More?”
“Yeah. There’s that... acquaintance of the target, Mizuhito Hibiki, and...”
“...And?”
“It looks pretty shifty...”
The ‘shifty thing’ then roared past Emmitt as she spoke. “You little shiiiiits! Hold the fuck up!” issued a voice from it.
The ‘it’ was a white Mercedes, an AMG at that. It had gone trim as well, and had dark tinted windows. It may as well have had ‘gangster-mobile’ painted on it. The front had a massive dent in it, and it was chasing after Pamil and Mizuhito.
It was the car that had hit the guardrail trying to avoid them when they’d stepped out into the road.
Whether the two noticed or not, they just kept going. The car might have been racing against someone on foot and another on a bike, but the road they were taking was fairly difficult to drive on, so the Merc’s—with its size—had a hard time catching up. In fact, it was taking more and more damage on the way, which was just making the driver angrier and angrier.
“It won’t be good if the target reaches the house with that on its tail, will it? The whole thing is illegal.”
So obviously it would be better to keep witnesses to a minimum.
“Let’s just report it to the colonel,” Elsia said.
“That’s probably for the best,” Emmitt nodded, cutting off the transmission. She let out a sigh and started the scooter’s engine.
But then...
“You there in the Mercedes! Stop!”
The whine of sirens started up as a black-and-white car passed her.
● ● ●
Of course, Pamil wasn’t paying the gangsters or the police car behind her the slightest bit of attention.
Mizuhito, being himself, was relishing the attention, so was as far from fear and panic as you might expect.
The two of them burst straight into the warehouse district.
Although...
“Kyouhei’s so outrageous!” Pamil condemned as she ran.
“Right! He’s outrageous!” Mizuhito agreed.
“Sanae is a good person, but diving right into snu-snu just because she said she loved him is absurd!”
“Right! It’s absurd!”
The two of them were completely convinced that that was the case.
“Besides! I told him that years ag— ...Hmm?” as she ran, she folded her arms in thought. “...What? Years ago?”
“What’s up, Pamil-chan?”
“I’m sure I met Kyouhei a year ago.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Right, so why did I just say ‘years ago’? Hmm?” she frowned at the contradiction in her words.
An instant passed.
Pamil blinked. She felt like something had gone past her mind, literally too fast to comprehend.
Another instant passed.
“Uraaaaggggh?!” The gangster car that was chasing them slipped, this time hitting a telephone pole head-on and coming to a stop.
“Hmm?”
Even Pamil stopped and looked at that.
The tire had suddenly burst. The car would have been moving at 30 kilometers per hour at best, but a blowout on a dirt road would cause a fair accident on its own.
However...
Pamil turned to look in the complete opposite direction from the Mercedes as the air hissed out.
“Royal Searcher Eye!” she yelled, narrowing her eyes.
Her eyesight, beyond any human—in fact, even falcons would tip their hats to it—caught sight of something about 150 meters away in a corner of the warehouse district.
That something? Part of a scoped rifle.
“Hmmm?!”
The shooter would never have expected that Pamil would spot them from such a distance. All that was visible was the muzzle of a gun protruding over a warehouse’s roof. A normal person would have simply thought it part of the warehouse.
“What’s up, Pamil-chan?” asked Mizuhito.
“...Humm,” she grumbled, her brow furrowed.
She was certain—that car had been sniped. Modern tires weren’t so easily punctured by nails or broken glass, and that was all the more true with low-speed city driving.
Pamil had noticed the unusual situation and clenched her first, her arm shaking. “Damn you...”
“Pamil-chan?”
“Damn you! Why would you go so far?” Pamil demanded. “You’d go that far to have snu-snu with Sanae, Kyouhei?!”
She was completely wrong, but Kyouhei wasn’t there to make that point. The person who was with her was someone that’d go along with anything if he found it funny—an idiot who’d sell his soul to the devil to stand out.
Therefore...
“Very well, then I shall unleash all of my strength to halt your snu-snu!”
“I don’t really get it, but that’s the spirit, Pamil-chan!”
“Right!”
There was of course no one to stop them. If anything, Pamil was sprinting towards the Nanbu house even more furiously now.
● ● ●
“Rejoice,” Walser said happily, looking down at them when he returned. “I’ve received intelligence from our scouts. Princess Pamil is heading in this direction.”
Kyouhei let out a strangled cry.
It was over. Pamil would be here before Shuuhei could notice and do anything.
“There’s apparently an additional hindrance with her, but we should be able to deal with that rather quickly. She will be here in another three minutes,” the colonel added.
“Pamil-chan...” Sanae managed in a trembling voice.
Whatever would happen, Pamil arriving would change the situation. Still, against the colonel’s troops, whatever powers Pamil had, she probably wouldn’t be able to exfiltrate them both.
There was the very real possibility that Walser could arrange some kind of demonstration to make Pamil listen. Something like having Kyouhei or Sanae shot in a hand or foot. With two hostages, he might even kill one of them.
The only thing certain was that Colonel Walser was after some kind of information from Pamil—but what? The Bergmann Kingdom was anomalously advanced, and there was some cause for that unique to the royal family.
But...
Pamil came here with nothing, he thought. She’d not even had a shirt over her shoulders.
In that case...
Is it something only the royal family know? Something like an ancient ruin? A lost legacy? You see that kind of stuff a lot in manga and anime...
A ‘manual’ to work from certainly would quicken any scientific or technological progress.
But...
If that were the case, then there was no need to take hostages and ask Pamil; there were several other ways to search for it. As mentioned earlier, she’d shown up here without a stitch of clothing, so it couldn’t have been something material that she had herself—unless it was implanted inside her.
Damn it, I just don’t know, Kyouhei sighed.
It was all just far too sudden. Pamil being a real princess, her having superpowers... Even that was surprising to Kyouhei, but he could more or less buy it—except for one thing.
...Pamil’s current personality was just made after the fact to disguise her, Kyouhei suddenly thought. Well, they simply made her lose her memories and then gave her those weird presumptions; they didn’t change her personality itself.
Creating a personality from nothing would be too much effort. Or maybe the ‘advanced’ Bergmann technology could do that without a moment’s consideration.
At any rate, whatever he wants is something only Princess Pamil would know... So the weird body double fantasy is a data leak prevention method...?
On the other hand, the colonel might have had a way to restore her memories. At the end of the day, a masquerade that could never be undone was pretty meaningless. The people that had installed the delusion must have had some kind of ‘key’ to unseal her memories. Though whether that was possible here or if they’d need to return to the Manninger Commonwealth, the former Bergmann Kingdom...
“Now, the princess arrives,” the colonel announced, bringing Kyouhei back to the present.
A moment later...
“Kyooooooouuuuuuuheeeeeiiiiii!”
That scream, along with a thunderous roar, filled the air.
Kyouhei and Sanae looked up in surprise. At the same time, the soldiers all turned to the source of the noise.
It had come from the entrance—the loading area. The large metal shutter was big enough for an entire truck to come through, and about four meters wide. It was normally sealed, and you couldn’t open it. Because opening and closing it constantly was too much effort, they normally used the side entrance next to it, though.
However, that shutter was now open.
Or rather, the shutter was no more.
The door was supposed to slide open to the left and right, but it had bent right in the middle and then been blown up, along with the soldiers who had been guarding it.
The entrance gaped open, and standing there—haughtily and impossibly—was a slight figure. Her golden hair was gorgeous, lit behind by the setting sun.