True Education: ON (2)
For the briefest of instants, a look of pure bewilderment flickered across Betelgeuse's face as she turned to leave with a smile.
That, he thought, is timing.
A short while later, Betelgeuse — having been driven off under a baptism of salt courtesy of Icarus — was cruising through open space aboard her own ship, chatting cheerfully with her adjutant over comms.
"Hey, Aran. Did you see what Icarus just pulled?"
"…Yes, Commander. I saw it."
"Isn't that incredible? We came in as an expeditionary force with a handicap, so he only brought regular ships to match. Can you believe it?"
"It was genuinely surprising. He didn't even deploy the pirate fleet."
"I knew the rumors were just rumors — but the claim that he hit rank three with nothing but regular ships, barring a handful of gacha vessels… that part wasn't a complete lie."
"You seem quite taken with him, Commander."
"Obviously? If you ask me, that Icarus guy is going to place near the top in this event too."
Betelgeuse cackled as she said it. On the other end of the feed, her adjutant's expression grew deeply concerned.
"Commander, I understand. Please return to base now."
"Hmm?"
"Your fleet's loss rate has already exceeded forty percent. At this rate, you're in real danger."
"Fair enough. I did play with Icarus a little too hard."
Her adjutant was entirely right. Betelgeuse twirled a lock of the long, pink curly hair she'd been forcibly saddled with upon possessing this body, and answered with a grin.
"Alright then — I'll warp straight back to base. Have a welcome party ready for me, yeah?"
"I'll make the finest preparations, Commander."
Betelgeuse rose from her seat, watching her entire fleet — her own ship included — prepare to enter warp. A mischievous smile tugged at her lips.
He's worth keeping an eye on for a while. This user called Icarus.
And while she was at it, she decided surveillance was in order. Once she got back, she'd assign someone to mark him around the clock.
That was the plan — right up until the moment her entire fleet was about to jump.
BEEEEP—BEEEEP—BEEEEP!!!
"Huh?"
"Eh?"
The instant the warp was forcibly dropped, roughly fifty thousand pirate warships materialized around Betelgeuse's remaining force of fewer than a hundred vessels. At the same time, a Pirate Coalition battlecruiser emerged directly in front of the Hamburg-class light cruiser she had designated as her flagship.
"…Yeah, I've got a bad feeling about this."
Betelgeuse instinctively understood that she was fucked — or rather, given that she no longer possessed the relevant anatomy, that she had become the one getting fucked.
After Pink-chan — that is, Betelgeuse — had departed, I immediately set about stroking Marianne's hair in search of some peace of mind.
Except our black-haired little beauty was nowhere to be found inside the base. Not a single trace. Being a superhuman free of any hair-loss concerns, she hadn't even left a strand behind.
"Griyanaar. Have you seen Marianne?"
"Hmm. Rather than us, why don't you try Leonard? That guy who spends all day cooped up on his own ship."
"Ah."
And so, still a little awkward about it, I opened a channel to Leonard — who, ever since Oxianor's gender transformation, had become one of the only two regular male characters left on this base, and someone I'd at least gotten somewhat familiar with.
"Sorry, but there's nothing I can say about Her Majesty."
"Huh?"
Not that he didn't know — that there was nothing he could say. That only multiplied my questions. But before I could press further, he told me not to ask again, cut the line, and blocked me entirely.
Just like that, I was left stewing in curiosity over where on earth our pure, innocent little Marianne had gone and what she was doing.
At that very same moment, the Marianne whom Icarus was so desperately searching for was…
"Did you really think hiding on a destroyer instead of the light cruiser would keep me from finding you?"
"…What are you talking about, Pirate Empress?"
Rather than the Hamburg-class light cruiser Betelgeuse had set as her fleet flagship, Marianne had ridden an assault pod straight onto the bridge of a destroyer mixed in among the other ships nearby — bringing her elite personal guard with her. Now she was jabbing an accusing finger at Betelgeuse, who had been aboard that vessel rather than the flagship.
Betelgeuse kept a composed front under that pointing finger, but inside—
How the hell did she figure it out?
To avoid the catastrophic scenario of her flagship getting sniped and exploding mid-expedition, she had deliberately boarded an ordinary destroyer instead. And yet Marianne had seen straight through the ruse and tracked her down in an instant. Betelgeuse was thoroughly rattled.
But no matter how carefully Betelgeuse held her poker face, the very fact that she wasn't panicking in a situation like this told Marianne everything she needed to know. The pink-haired woman standing right in front of her was the bitch she'd been hunting.
The moment that realization settled, Marianne lowered her pointing finger. She raised a black-gloved hand, propped her chin on it, and let a wicked smile curl across her lips.
"Ahh. So you're the bitch who dared mess with my Oppa."
"…Oppa?"
As the leader of a major clan packing over ten thousand "pranksters," Betelgeuse heard that particular form of address and instantly knew she was completely, thoroughly fucked.
Even so, she had no intention of going down quietly. Having learned that the Pirate Empress had surrendered to Icarus, she tried to leverage that fact into some room for negotiation.
"Hold on a second. I signed a peace agreement with your commander, okay? And now you're threatening me and trying to attack me like this? Seriously?"
True to a clan named after the god of mischief, Betelgeuse clung to her composure and put on her best show of nonchalance. Unfortunately, Marianne's answer to that desperate bid for negotiation was—
"You seem to be under some kind of misunderstanding. I suppose I'll need to correct that for you."
"Huh?"
THUD!!
"Ghk—?!"
"First of all: I am not currently under any separate contractual relationship with my Oppa."
"Gah—! Cough! Cough!"
While pretending to hold a conversation — drawing Betelgeuse's attention to her words without the other woman even realizing it — Marianne drove her fist into Betelgeuse's lower abdomen. A fist that sat at the upper reaches of quasi-SSS-grade… no, fully SSS-grade by now.
Caught completely off guard, Betelgeuse took a gut punch with more impact force than a main battle tank's cannon. Her body actually lifted off the deck. Cruelty was forbidden under the system's protection, so even a direct hit from Marianne couldn't turn her into literal chunks of meat.
Of course, that only meant she was spared being reduced to Betelgeuse paste. It did nothing to stop the agony of her most sensitive female anatomy vibrating violently under the shock — nor the subsequent crash back down onto the floor.
Betelgeuse had no idea what had just happened to her. She lay sprawled on the deck, wheezing and drooling.
And yet, even faced with that pathetic, pitiful sight, Marianne's expression didn't shift in the slightest. She seized a fistful of Betelgeuse's pink curls, hauled the coughing, heavily bruised woman up by the hair, and leaned in close to her wheezing ear.
"That said, I'm not going to kill you."
"Kh… uugh…?"
Those sweet words, whispered like a devil's promise, made Betelgeuse's pink eyes flutter open with a flicker of interest. But the hope lasted only a moment before suspicion flooded back in — what kind of person says that after beating someone half to death?
Marianne gave a light shake of her head at the look on Betelgeuse's face. She paused, briefly fascinated that the hair she was gripping so hard still refused to come out, then leaned in once more to whisper against Betelgeuse's ear.
"What happened between you and Oppa… ended on Oppa's terms, didn't it?"
"…Th-that's true."
"And you gave Oppa a favorable evaluation on top of that. Consider that bonus points. That's why I won't kill you."
"…!"
Thanks to the system's protection, the possibility of Betelgeuse being physically reduced to ground meat by Marianne had never existed in the first place. But neither Marianne nor Betelgeuse herself knew that — so at Marianne's grand declaration, a thin thread of hope began to glimmer in those pink eyes.