Let's Try Self-Actualization (1)

If this weren't a genuine case of being kidnapped and locked inside a game, the public sentiment would have cratered hard enough to trigger a mass refund stampede by now.

And since I was feeling roughly the same way, my suspicion about what the hell she was thinking had ballooned to critical mass — until Jessica, who had been browsing the gallery right beside me, fixed me with a quiet look.

"Commander, now that I think about it."

"Hm?"

"I've realized something new about why Marianne isn't running away."

Her large rabbit ears twitched, and then she laid out a perfectly reasonable answer for the dubious expression on my face.

"In the original world, no matter what happened, you had to handle everything yourself, right, Commander?"

"...Yeah?"

"Which means that whenever Marianne got stressed — from training, from live combat, whatever — all that aggro would land on you."

"Mm."

"But that's not how it works now."

"...!"

From there, Jessica walked me through her full interpretation of the current situation. To summarize: in the original game, the player handled everything, so all of Marianne's aggro got pulled onto the protagonist. No matter how hard you tried to shower her with affection, the stress from training and combat would cancel it out to roughly plus-or-minus zero — which was exactly why the gallery users always said affinity management was such a nightmare.

But now, Jessica and the others were absorbing that aggro for me, which meant Marianne's stress toward me had dropped dramatically. Meanwhile I, who should have been racking up aggro and watching my affinity plummet, had instead become the affection-dispenser holding everything together. And the other Supers — Ignis, Belial, and Pashtura — had each been personally training her in their own specialties, so instead of jealousy over my favoritism, they felt more like they'd gained a little sister.

The result: unlike the original, the affinity drop from aggro was being split five ways among me, Jessica, and those three Supers... or practically speaking, almost none of it hit me, so call it a quarter. Meanwhile the affinity gains were stacking fivefold(!). Our True Empress had gotten so comfortable in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this cozy little nest that the flame of will behind her core principle — her goal of becoming a pirate master — had simply guttered out.

The problem was that no matter how hard I pushed her growth right now, as long as she remained "Mary Ann" instead of Marianne, the absolute ceiling was scraping the bottom of S-grade. Like it or not, if we didn't induce her to escape and grow on her own, the event couldn't progress — and our Empress would stall out, not as the True Empress but as something more like a washed-up colonel who'd given up on ever making general.

Which meant I had to do something. Now.

While Icarus fretted over how to make "Mary Ann" run away, the person in question had been wrestling with plenty of worries of her own lately.

Of course, these weren't the melancholy adolescent musings of some ordinary teenage girl.

...Can I really steel myself and go live out there in that brutal world?

Just as Icarus and Jessica had sensed, she was wrestling with her grand ambitions — and at the same time, replaying the circumstances that had brought her to this base.

After those damned pirates murdered her parents, she'd been kidnapped and forced to witness every kind of horror. To survive those bastards, she'd scavenged scrap through the pirate dens with wounds covering her body. She'd trusted a newly made "comrade," only to wake up fighting the guy who'd tried to kill her in her sleep and steal her knife. And more than once, she'd barely escaped becoming the outlet for the sexual appetites that were so common on pirate ships.

That life of constant, hair-raising danger had thoroughly sickened Mary Ann of the pirate existence.

And yet, even so, she had never once considered quitting. Part of it was the vivid, intoxicating sensation of her own pirate talent — a gift she hadn't even known she possessed — blooming into full ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flower. But more than that, separate from how much garbage those pirates were, she had felt something fated: the certainty that she could force every last one of those insects to their knees, and crush even the Pirate King who currently ruled them all.

Granted, right now she was barely the second mate of a small pirate crew. But for someone whose body had been stunted small and frail by hard labor and meager meals during her growth years, that rank alone was genuinely impressive by pirate standards.

So our Mary Ann had been a fresh-faced pirate seedling, dreaming of the day she'd deal with that muscle-brained captain and the first mate who constantly leered at her with filthy eyes, seize the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ship, absorb crew after crew, and eventually rise as the future Pirate King.

But that world of hers had come crashing down in an instant.

On what should have been an ordinary raid against a base parked out in the middle of nowhere, the pirate crew — karma catching up at last, maybe — was annihilated in moments by a fleet so overwhelming they couldn't even fight back. Every ship except the flagship was sunk. The captain, who couldn't see any path to victory no matter what he tried, had charged the boarders with his prized attitude and gotten himself carved into three vertical pieces, attitude and all.

And the first mate — who, for all his constant sexual harassment and leering, had at least been considered sharp — watched every single one of his strategies get dismantled and most of the ship's compartments seized in moments. Then he completely lost it and started threatening the enemy with a self-destruct. Mary Ann had been inwardly horrified.

You lunatic. Who the hell listens when a pirate threatens to blow himself up?

If he'd at least been waving a fake self-destruct button, she could have understood the bluff — a gutsy play to save the ship. The problem was that the first mate had fully lost his mind: he was clutching the real self-destruct button.

Naturally, the close-combat troops who'd stormed the ship pulled back at the sight. The idiots on the bridge started babbling that they were saved, and Mary Ann could only feel the sheer absurdity of it all.

You morons! If you pull that, they'll just snipe this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bridge with the cruiser's main guns and be done with it!

Of course, saying it out loud wouldn't have mattered. The deranged first mate and the surrounding meatheads had never once listened to their small, frail second mate. So the moment Mary Ann's famously sharp eyesight caught the distant cruiser's gun barrels swinging toward the bridge—

No time to hesitate!

—she drove the knife she always carried into the first mate's back in three rapid thrusts, twisted the last one for good measure, and killed him on the spot. She snatched the self-destruct button as it slipped from his collapsing hand, and through the faceless comm screen, toward the voice of a man who sounded reasonably young, she made it clear as fast as possible that there was still room to renegotiate.

"Hey, Oppa over there — how about you and I make a deal?"