Repatriation and Three Cups of Tea
Grandpa spun like a top before getting slammed into the wall. Whoa, isn't he about to get repatriated?
"You rotten old bastard! After everything, now you're laying hands on a man? You degenerate geezer, I'll kill youuuu!!"
"O-oh, it's a misunderstanding... a misunderstanding, Hera...!"
"Misunderstanding, my foot! You can just get repatriated right here and now!"
A mount, and then a beating flowing as smoothly as water! One-two, one-two — the woman's fists began raining down on Zeus's face indiscriminately.
"Kghack! Gkk—wa-wait a secom—"
"Die, die! Diiiiie!!"
Her physical capabilities were ordinary, so to my eyes it looked like an ordinary scene — and precisely because of that, the moment showed me what raw, primal violence truly meant. I was briefly overwhelmed by it before snapping back to my senses and tearing into the woman who had flattened my grandfather.
"Hold on a second...! Keep this up and he really will get repatriated...!"
"That's exactly what I want, you idiot!!"
"Fair point!!"
Carrying on that completely nonsensical exchange, I somehow managed to pry the goddess away. Maybe it's because I only have one arm, but this is exhausting...!
"Let go! Let go of meee!!"
The goddess's shrieks raked mercilessly at my ears. It was a scream I hadn't even felt from the monster on the eighteenth floor, one that made me wince despite myself. So this was the Hyper Ultra Hysteric goddess (Ultra-Sadistic Destructive Impulse). How terrifying, the Hera Familia...!
"Impressive work. To think you could rein in Hera's fury."
"...If you were just going to watch, couldn't you have helped?"
Come to think of it, I have no actual connection to either of these two right now, so why am I the only one suffering through this, breaking them apart all by myself?
"I have no taste for hobbies that suit a goddess's hysteria. Though I might consider egging her on."
You have a terrible personality?! And stop encouraging her!
I thought this while looking at the gray-haired woman standing behind her — Meteria's older sister, Alfia.
I'd thought it before, and I thought it again now. This woman's personality is definitely rotten.
*
After preventing Grandpa's repatriation ahead of schedule, I did my desperate best to calm the goddess down, brewing a fresh pot of tea as quickly as I possibly could and bringing it before her.
...Honestly, if we're counting grievances one by one, I'm the guest here. How did I end up in this position? Not that I particularly mind.
"It's nothing fancy, but please, have some."
"It truly is nothing fancy."
That's too much. I worked hard on it, you know.
The woman spat out her vitriol as though it were the most natural thing in the world and sipped her tea. Lady Hera — the ultra-hysteric goddess Grandpa had warned me so much about.
I'd wondered whether a god like that could really exist, but seeing reality for myself, I understood. Hearing about something and witnessing it firsthand were two entirely different things.
'The real thing is about 2.5 times more vicious...!'
So rumors truly couldn't be trusted after all.
"You too, Lady Alfia, please."
"I have no need for that filthy dishwater."
I brewed it so carefully — that's way too harsh?!
No matter how you look at it, calling it dishwater is going too far. Maybe not the best ever, but it's genuinely decent tea!
Just in case, I snuck a little sip, but sure enough, the taste was fine. At the very least, it wasn't so bad that serving it would have been an insult.
So then why...? Why does it feel like I've done nothing but suffer ever since I fell into this era?
Even as I chewed on these deeply philosophical musings, I realized the futility of it all and simply let it go. When had it ever been otherwise? I'd always lived a rough life.
"...Why are there three cups?"
"...? Three guests came, so I brought out three cups?"
At my words, Alfia fixed me with an intrigued look. What — did she think I wouldn't figure it out?
"Seems the name [Empress] has grown stale. To think I'd be seen through by such an apparent simpleton."
"...You've got no shame, huh? Nothing you won't say. Do you actually want to die?"
The empty air rippled, and a woman revealed herself.
It was my first time seeing her in the flesh, but that gaze lived in my memory. The unmistakable owner of the gaze I'd felt when I faced Maxim. Which meant this woman was the one and only Level 9 in Orario's entire history...
"You probably know already, but let me introduce myself again, sweetling. I am the [Empress]."
The highest-leveled being in history.
A woman whose level surpassed even that Colossus.
Gulp.
I hadn't come here to fight, but my body tensed up all on its own. It felt like my body temperature was starting to climb.
So the adventurers of this era really were no joke. Just standing beside her was enough to do this.
Alfia was the same — with just these two women here, if it came to it, they could probably sweep away the Loki and Freya Familias I knew from my original timeline.
My body was trembling in tiny fragments before that strength, and just then, Lady Hera, who had been gulping down her tea, rose from her seat.
"We're leaving."
"Huh? Already? But you said you had questions..."
"Not anymore. Nothing to ask."
Hera glanced briefly at my hair, scrunched up her face, and stalked out toward the basement exit. The Empress and Grandpa scrambled after her, and only Alfia and I were left behind in the basement, abandoned.
"...Um, aren't you going to follow them?"
"Not yet."
It seemed the woman before me hadn't simply come along as an escort. Without touching the tea I'd served, legs crossed, she sat like a haughty queen and stared holes through me.
No, wait — her eyes were closed, so she wasn't actually staring.
"Is there... something you need from me?"
Going by the circumstances, I was the only possible reason she'd stayed behind... but I couldn't think of what it might be. Could she have sensed something, since we'd crossed blades directly?
"..."
The woman said nothing, wrapped in silence. The strange atmosphere silenced me in turn, and a cold hush spilled over and filled the basement.
'I-I can't breathe...!'
It felt like a sense of oppression was bearing down on my whole body. The woman had something — not mere physical strength, but something else entirely.
Honestly, if we were just going to fight, I'd be spared all this nerve-racking scrutiny!
"You there."
Breaking the long silence, the woman finally opened her mouth.
Gulp. Tension hung in the air as I waited for her next words.
"What is your name."
"..."
My voice caught in my throat. The unexpected question scrambled my thoughts.
'My name... I definitely told her, didn't I...?'
Before our battle that day, I had given my name. Granted, not my real one, but there was no way she could have known that.
And yet she still asked for my name...
'Is she... testing me?'
There was no other explanation I could think of — and yet, for some reason, I had a feeling that wasn't why she'd asked.
*
"Hey, old hag, why'd you come out so soon? You said you had a mountain of questions."
Hera and the Empress were heading home, having left Alfia behind. The Empress couldn't hold back her bewilderment at Hera's bizarre behavior and finally spoke up.
Calling it Hera's eccentricity was generous, really — storming out of a seat barely qualified as eccentric at all. For a goddess whose eccentricities were her daily routine, a normal reaction would have been stranger. In that sense, her behavior just now had been a genuine aberration.
Hera, who considered breaking at least one thing per visit a baseline requirement, rising quietly and heading home? If she told her Familia members about it, she'd get scolded for passing out drunk on day-drinking.
Even she, who had witnessed it firsthand, found it hard to believe — imagine how it would strike everyone else. That was how far Hera stood from the word "calm."
Even now. She'd been called an old hag right to her face, and she hadn't so much as responded, simply lost in thought. She'd set out walking, saying she needed to sort through her thoughts, and yet the thoughts had only multiplied on the way back.
'What on earth is going on...?'
In all her years of life, she had never once seen this goddess agonize like this. As the Empress, Hera's closest retainer, it was something beyond imagination.
"You."
The goddess finally spoke. But her target was not the Empress.
It was the male god who had been trotting faithfully after them. Under normal circumstances he'd be lurking for a chance at harassment, but today, unusually, he seemed lost in his own quiet contemplation, burdened with thoughts of his own.
The sight only deepened the Empress's headache. She simply could not fathom what had gotten into the two of them.
She understood that that man was strange — but even so, there was no need to agonize to this degree, was there? Or what, were the two of them some secret lovechild's parents or something?
"What was that, back there."
"Are you asking because you don't know?"
Hera stopped and turned around. In her eyes there was none of her usual madness — only a sharp edge that sent a chill down even the Empress's spine.
The male god, who even on ordinary days fled in terror from Hera's glare, met that gaze head-on — and simply faced it, calm and unmoved.
"Tch."
It was Hera who looked away first. The goddess turned back forward and began walking toward home.
At the sight, the Empress could not contain her shock. Avoiding his eyes? Hera? Toward Zeus?
She had no idea what was unfolding before her eyes. Was she dreaming, perhaps?
Alone in her confusion, the Empress pinched her cheek to confirm reality — but regardless of her efforts, the expressions on the two gods' faces showed no sign of clearing.