Long Live the Free Magical Girl!
For all of Crystal's cheerful badgering, I only went on wiping the bar with a linen cloth, slow and unhurried. Forcing a drink on someone was no virtue in a bartender.
"A drink is more fun, and tastes better, when you actually want it."
I offered a small smile and left Momiji to her own pace. At my words, the corner of her mouth lifted, just a little.
"You heard him. When the master of the drink speaks so plainly, an uninvited guest has no business forcing the matter."
"Ahaha! What, have the two of you already locked eyes? Winning over a stickler of a warrior in a single breath—bartender, you're not half bad!"
Crystal didn't seem the least bit stung by the rebuke. She tapped the bar lightly with her palm.
"Out at sea... are there things worth a magical girl's time?"
At the question her eyes flashed, and her tank-topped shoulders bounced with a great laugh.
"Kyahaha! Slight the sea and you'll wound me! The ocean is the true cradle of Aberrations—and the stage of this Captain Aqua Crystal!"
She shoved her empty glass forward and rushed on, delighted.
"It's a whole different scale from the little pests skulking around on land! House-sized octopuses crawl up out of the deep, and things like ghost ships come rolling in on the coast. That's when I call up my pirate ship and give them a nice, blazing broadside!"
Unbridled pride soaked her voice as she spun the tale. At the words naval gunfire, Hina and her minigun flickered through my mind. In raw firepower, this one might outclass her several times over.
"Well. Thanks to those bombardments, the coastal fishermen keep filing noise complaints, and the reports are piled mountain-high at the Association."
Momiji added it like a pinprick.
"Hey now! That's a victory salute! The sound of hope, fired off to protect the citizens—something like that?"
Not a hint of retreat. Crystal thrust out her chest and winked at me with one eye.
"Ah, bartender! Telling my own legend has made me thirsty again. This time, something that bites like a wave—one more glass!"
"Don't knock it back all at once. Rum is strong..."
She paid the warning no mind at all. If anything, she snorted and squared her shoulders.
"Hey now! What kind of pirate fears rum! This Captain Crystal's liver is as sturdy as the waves~ You think a little liquor is going to eat me alive?"
Still, an order was an order, and serving a drink to match it was my duty. I nodded and reached beneath the bar once more.
The base was the same as before: white rum and lime. I poured the rum into a glass packed with ice, added juice from a lime I'd just squeezed, and then, for the sparkling, wave-like bite she wanted, took a bottle of cola from the refrigerator. The cap hissed. Dark brown liquid spiraled up through the gaps in the ice, and the cola's sweetness would take just enough edge off the harsh rum to let her drink it with far more pleasure. Bubbles burst; sweet cola and bright lime drifted pleasantly across the bar. I drew the drink up once with a bar spoon, then set the glass—fragrant lime riding the fizz—in front of Crystal.
"Viva la chica mágica... a Cuba Libre."
A toast to a free Cuba, bent just a little to suit a magical girl.
Crystal's eyes went round as she took the glass.
"Viva... mágica? I don't really get it, but that slogan hits me right in the heart!"
She lifted it in one motion, watched the brown bubbles fizz and pop for a moment, then tipped her head back and drank in great gulps, throat working. When the glass was half empty, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and beamed.
"Khh~! Now this is the real thing! Sweet, and it bites—wakes you right up! The harsh taste is completely gone, too. A drink fit for this Captain Crystal's voyage!"
In high spirits, she began to rock back and forth.
"The harshness is only masked. That the base is rum has not changed."
Momiji's gaze, past the rim of the glass, was cool.
"I only hope you are not fooled by that sweetness into passing out disgracefully upon the deck."
"Ahaha! Don't you worry~ This captain never gets drunk! Hey! Bartender! One more of this sweet pirate's drink~"
She set the empty glass down on the bar with a clack.
The momentum she'd carried through the door was already nowhere to be found. The fingers wrapped around the glass trembled faintly, and heat had risen unmistakably from the nape of her sun-bronzed neck all the way to the tips of her ears.
…
And so our captain—who had emptied cocktail after cocktail of one rum or another, without a single bite to eat—sat with her face flushed red, while Momiji regarded her as if she were hopeless.
"Khh... so good... bartender... I really like it here. One more glass... no, just hand over the bottle of rum..."
Hot breath leaked from her mouth as she waved a hand at empty air, eyes unfocused.
"A-Aqua here... normally drinks like a champion... hic... I mean it! Back in the day... I mean, before I even turned into a magical girl... hic! Three bottles of sake, easy... a little rum like this is nothing...!"
Dragging up the past just to bluster—she was a drunk through and through. Her shoulder jerked once, hard, and then her upper body slid down onto the bar.
"You seem to have had quite a bit... perhaps you ought to rest a little now?"
At the polite suggestion, the shoulder that had been rubbing a cheek against the wood flinched and went stiff. Eyes that had been slack snapped open. She clutched her chest with both arms and leaned back in the stool.
"R-rest?! If I pass out drunk, you'll just throw me over your shoulder and—and haul me off to some dark, soft bed... h-hiiik!"
It was a voice so shrill and flustered it was hard to believe she had been commanding the ocean a moment ago.
"H-hey, you! I-I'm not ready for that kind of thing yet! R-romance, or... a man and a woman alone in a room... kyaaa! I don't know! That embarrassing, l-lewd stuff is not allowed!"
She buried her face in both hands and shook her head from side to side. I stopped with the linen towel still in the air and only blinked. For all her hearty exterior, her insides seemed to have even less resistance than the heroine of a pure-love comic.
Momiji, who had been watching the noisy misunderstanding, spoke coldly.
"Seaweed has clearly taken firm root in that head. He is merely worried you will vomit all over the counter and ruin his precious glassware. Take your nonsense back out to sea."
The cold rebuke did nothing. Crystal still had both hands over her flushed face and didn't know what to do with herself.
"Th-this is all because the bartender gave me liquor that was too strong...! It's not my fault...!"
Her voice was close to tears as she glared at me through her fingers and offered the blameless excuse.
Just then, from a corridor off the lobby, came the rustle of a broom and the sound of neat footsteps.
"What an unsightly spectacle this is, in the lobby."
It was Grace, passing through with a broom in hand. In a tidy kimono, she looked down at Crystal sprawled and flailing on the bar as if the sight were pathetic. She took the broom in one hand and, without hesitation, hoisted Crystal onto the opposite shoulder.
Crystal was on the short side, but even so it was a curious sight—slender Grace shouldering a full-grown woman as lightly as a sack of cargo. As expected, a magical girl's strength could not be judged by appearance alone.
"Attending even one master of this house is already more than enough to fill a girl's day. Before a great disaster befalls the counter, I will take her to her room."
"Ky-kyaaah! Wh-what are you doing! C-Captain Crystal can walk on her own! I don't wannaaaa!"
Crystal thrashed on her shoulder, but Grace's stride didn't waver in the slightest.
"You have taken on quite a task, Grace. On the way, do pour a basin of cold water over that seaweed-head."
Momiji tossed the encouragement elegantly at her back.
"I shall consider it, Lady Momiji. Rest comfortably."
Grace left a light bow, then vanished down the lodging corridor with the screaming pirate captain over her shoulder.
Only after the shrieks faded beyond the hall did I wipe the splashes from the counter with the linen towel.
"I'm going to pretend I misheard that just now."
I let out a light sigh as I muttered it. A man and a woman in one room. Romance. A combination of words hard to believe had come from a pirate captain who commanded the ocean. Watching her shout lines fit for a pure-love comic as if she were genuinely terrified, I thought she and Sister Clara might get along rather well.
"She may put on a show of heartily commanding the sea, but she has no resistance whatsoever to love stories, or to talk so blunt as that."
Momiji went on, toying with the empty glass.
"Throw her even a little teasing and she frightens herself and flees. A waste of the title Captain, if you ask me."
A faint smile touched her mouth.
"Thanks to that, we shall be spared the noisy display for a while. I ought to commend that shrine maiden for her trouble."
Momiji narrowed her eyes, and the lobby bar recovered the air of a quiet, dignified retreat.