A Ten-Minute Negotiation
Hmm. Within today, huh.
The moment I checked that condition in the quest message, I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
If this had shown up yesterday — or the day before — Marianne would have been off managing her pirates, and the quest would have tangled itself into a full-blown catastrophe. Fortunately, our Marianne had been lounging around the base since last night, living the easy life.
The second I saw that quest window, I called Jessica over.
"Jessica, sorry, but could you go fetch Marianne for me?"
"Yes, Commander."
She brought Marianne back from wherever she'd been chatting with the other pirates in the command center. The moment Marianne heard I'd asked for her, she came running with a huge, beaming smile.
I nodded at that bright energy of hers, then casually pointed at Princess Luka standing in front of me and gave Marianne the short, clean, no-frills summary of what needed doing.
Marianne's reply:
"A negotiation? Sure, fine by me."
"Really?"
Thankfully, Marianne herself seemed reasonably on board with the idea of sitting down to talk. We quickly decided to lend the two of them the reception room inside the base.
And the result—
Hell yeah. This is it. Right here.
The quest completion message popping up on its own filled me with genuine, massive joy. I went straight for the rewards—
>>> Preparing reward distribution...
This reward will only become available after Marianne and Luka's discussion has concluded. A related message will appear at that time.
Accordingly, the longer the negotiation runs, the further your base-customization time will be delayed.
Ah, damn.
It was a pointless little event, sure — but looking at it practically, the message wasn't wrong. Half the fleet had managed to limp home, the clock was already awkward, and while the wrecked ships still made my heart ache, I decided that as long as things had gone this way, I might as well throw every resource I had into restoring the fleet's composition and organization. Better to lock in an edge for the next big fleet battle.
Except, as all of us had already guessed — and as Jessica had already pointed out to me — there was more than one place screaming for resources. My grand plan of repairing everything below moderate damage and then rolling out capital ships hit a wall of frustration right out of the gate. Too many little thieves were already picking my coffers clean.
I finished the mission, so I should get the reward, right? (1)
It was a sad story, no question — half the expedition fleet, a full third of my total forces, had said their eternal goodbyes just to push that quest through. But on the bright side, I no longer had to personally dismantle ships, reallocate parts, and do all that other tedious busywork.
Anyway… good enough…
I resolved to stay as positive as possible, clamped down on my wobbling mental state, and — with Jessica's help — tried to push through the work somehow.
"Oppa! We're done talking!"
"Ack—"
I'd spent a decent stretch of time over here going hoeee and watching my sanity fray, but apparently Marianne and the princess's negotiation had wrapped up far faster than expected. Before I could even get anything done, Marianne appeared looking every bit as lively as she had before heading into the reception room — and with her came Princess Luka, floating along on those dress-tentacles-or-legs-or-whatever-they-were, wearing a faintly satisfied expression.
I stopped what I was doing and calmly opened the conversation.
"Ah — uh, that was faster than I thought?"
"Yeah. The Beast Princess here brought a pretty concrete proposal, and we skipped all the pointless posturing!"
Marianne said "pointless" right in front of the princess and laughed about it. Behind them, a faint red glow bled into Oxianor's eyes as she attended the princess. From the perspective of a gentleman who prized manners, Marianne had just taken every scrap of respect for the princess and dunked it in the trash — so of course the anger was rising.
But Marianne was the Pirate Empress, and she was stronger than Oxianor herself, even with all the reinforcement she'd received as a dual-purpose escort and attendant. The red glow lasted only a moment. I watched Oxianor snuff out her temper in an instant and snap back into priority-on-the-princess, excellent-anger-management mode.
So this is what being an adult looks like…!
Separately from all that, I couldn't help wondering what on earth they'd done. A conversation that was effectively international diplomacy had been settled in under ten minutes. Weren't these things supposed to take hours at minimum, with working-level staffers talking themselves hoarse?
Even just watching the politicians and diplomat uncles from our past lives, the lines that got thrown around were always some version of:
"Oh, our talks take forever, lol."
"Diplomacy is all about talking in circles until you want to die — you end up burning massive amounts of time whether you like it or not, lol."
Those kinds of comments were extremely, extremely, extremely common. So my confusion about how this was even possible kept climbing — and maybe it showed on my face, because Marianne grinned at me and started explaining, saying she already knew what I was curious about.
"Oppa might be wondering, but it's nothing special."
"Hm?"
"Ah, but I can say this, right? Oppa's going to be stuck between us anyway."
"Ugh… ah — of course!"
"Commander Icarus is the bridge between us. There should be no issue."
And just like that, unlike a moment ago, she checked with the other party and observed proper etiquette. Free-spirited to the end — who else but a pirate.
I settled in for Marianne's masterclass rundown of the negotiation.
A short while later, once the explanation was finished, an event message popped up in front of me with a neat little summary of everything she'd just said.
The secret alliance between the Space Kaiju and the Pirate Union had, until now, been an alliance in name only.
Of course, the leaders of both factions — the Beast Queen and the Pirate Empress — understood the situation and kept their direct forces under control so that problems would not arise.
But the commanders belonging to the two factions, along with the independent frontline units, had no proper directives. Clashes and incidents broke out at the drop of a hat.
Judging that even a secret alliance would only accumulate mutual damage if things continued this way, the Beast Queen dispatched her own princess — someone who could present proposals directly to the Empress — and put forward the following terms.
Pirate Empress Marianne, for her part, found the proposal clean and satisfying, and—