EP.6 Motaras Commotion -2
EP.6 Motaras Commotion -2
First of all, I wanted to clear up one misunderstanding.
It was true that I hadn't wanted to come to Motaras.
Partly because I was a homebody by nature, and partly because I didn't want to waste my time on something unbearably boring.
You could even say it was no different from hating Motaras itself.
But that didn't mean I had any intention of ruining Motaras itself.
Destroying something merely because you hated it would mean there was something fundamentally wrong with you.
So...
"I didn't do anything wrong."
"Kyaaaak!!"
"Everyone evacuate!"
The cheers and shouts of the crowd had turned into screams and shrieks,
"Put out the fire! Now!"
"When are the firefighters coming?!"
and the arena, once heated by the passion and sweat of the audience, was now literally burning hot,
"Aaagh!!"
"Over here! There's an injured student!"
"Let's move him to safety, quickly!"
and the festival, once filled with students' dreams and hopes, had now become a scene of despair and panic.
Hell, in a word.
And into this place, masked and armed figures had stormed in, but every single one of them was looking quite bewildered.
They had come to sow chaos, but things were already this messed up, so it was only natural they'd react that way.
"Welcome to the burning Motaras."
Once again, this was not my fault.
***
Let's go back in time to the moment of the kiss.
"N...No!"
"Yes♡"
A fox's dropkick flew toward the crow who was trying to forcibly kiss me.
Having finished her prediction, the crow evaded with a light movement,
and the fox's missed dropkick struck the ground with enough force to crack it.
"Are you trying to defile my husband's mouth with that filthy beak of yours right now?"
"I'd say it's cleaner than your beast-stinking fur, don't you think?"
"Don't talk crap. My fur is meticulously washed and brushed every single day so that my husband can hug me anytime."
"At least you admit your mouth is dirty."
The two of them began fighting again.
But since Miho's form was invisible to the audience, they were panicking.
Cracks suddenly appeared in the floor, Yata was caught on camera seemingly talking to empty air—it was more than enough to baffle the crowd.
"Both of you, stop it right now!"
I'd been trying so hard to hide their identities, but if they fought like this, people would get suspicious.
Erasing the audience's memories was something Miho's ability could probably handle, but we couldn't stop all the footage from spreading.
Especially in our current situation, already under watch from other Divine Beasts, causing a disturbance like this... was dangerous.
"Kkyuii!!"
Before I could even calm down my two companions, Tia suddenly let out a scream-like cry.
"Huh?! Tia, what's wrong... Ah!"
That was when I realized: the cup of sweet-and-sour chicken Tia had been holding had fallen to the floor.
Apparently, the ground tremor Miho caused had made her drop it.
"Kkyuu...! Kkyuii...!!"
Droplets of water began to bead at the corners of Tia's eyes.
At this, a red light started flashing on my survival signal.
"Tia! I'll get you a new one later! Don't cry..."
"Kkyuiiik!!"
Too late.
"...Huh?!"
A massive gust of wind shot out in front of the wailing Tia, swept through the surrounding area,
and then struck the electronic display board on the opposite side of us.
"Urk...?"
The display board had its base cleanly sliced off.
The moment I realized that the wind Tia had launched was a wind blade, goosebumps erupted all over my body.
If that had flown just an inch toward the audience...
"...Urp!"
A scenario so severe it made my stomach acid rise played out in my head.
I had to calm Tia down, somehow!
"Kkyui! Kkyuiiik!!"
I quickly hugged the baby dragon, who was now streaming tears and even snot, and patted her back.
Focusing especially on stroking beneath her wing where her Companion Mark was, I engaged in the kind of bonding that improves a companion animal's mood.
At that, Tia's crying gradually subsided.
It seemed I had finally managed to calm her down.
"Everyone get out of the way!!"
This time, chaos erupted on the opposite side of us.
Tia's wind blade had severed the base of the electronic display board. As it swayed on the verge of collapse, the spectators beneath it fled in panic.
A moment later, the display board couldn't bear its own weight any longer, came crashing down, and completely wrecked the spectator seats below.
"Kkyuit?!"
Tia, startled by the sound of the display board falling.
"Kkyuiiik!!"
Startled, she began wailing at the top of her lungs once more.
"It's okay! Everything's okay! Don't cry, Tia!"
I tried soothing her again, but perhaps her startled little heart wouldn't recover so quickly, as she kept on crying.
"Fire!!"
"Now what?!"
A short circuit in the wrecked display board had started a fire.
And to make matters worse, a drunkard had been drinking high-proof alcohol beneath the display board, and the alcohol he dropped ignited upon contact with the fire from the short circuit, creating a blaze.
And this blaze...
"Kkyui! Kkyuii!!"
...was spread in all directions across the stadium by Tia's rampaging wind, evolving into a massive conflagration.
"Crazy...!!"
Successive major disasters.
But as if it still wasn't over, the spectator stands we were in began collapsing.
The crack Miho had made in the floor earlier was completely split apart by the vibrations of the fleeing crowd's footsteps, causing it to cave in.
"This is absolutely insane!!"
With no other choice, holding Tia tightly in my arms, I had to evacuate to the relatively unburned stage.
One truly fortunate thing was that the stadium had an open ceiling, so there was no worry of suffocation.
But I was now stuck, unable to move an inch until the firefighters arrived.
"How in the world did things end up like this...?"
Anyway, why hadn't Yata foreseen this situation?
When I looked over at her, Yata lightly bonked herself on the head with one hand and stuck out her tongue.
"Sorry! I was supposed to take the fox bitch's attack head-on, but I dodged it without thinking, and the future changed!"
'Yaaaaaaa!!'
And so, I learned a valuable lesson: anyone can make a mistake.
It's just that the price of this particular lesson had spiraled out of control...
***
Back to the present...
The situation could be summed up as follows:
We had come because we heard terrorists were going to cause a disturbance at Motaras.
But as it turned out, we were the terrorists.
You couldn't even argue against that.
"Haha..."
Black smoke billowing into the sky, spectator stands blazing fiercely, civilians evacuating in a frenzy.
I didn't really know why I'd ended up in this chaotic mess.
Anyway, now that the terrorists had finally arrived, there was only one thing left for us to do.
"Sorry! I'm really sorry, but please take the blame for our mistakes."
"What does that...?"
-Bang!
I would pin this entire incident squarely on the terrorists.
They were going to cause trouble anyway, right?
So I'd think of it as saving one person's life and just have them help me out this once.
They'd been giving me a hard time all this while, after all.
"It's the terrorists! The terrorists are attacking!"
After firing a shot at the lead terrorist, I immediately shouted as loudly as I could, loud enough to echo throughout the entire stadium.
At that, many people, seeing the terrorists who had entered, reacted with shock and fury.
Just as planned, they seemed to think the whole chain of disasters was the terrorists' doing.
"K-Kill that son of a bitch first!"
The terrorists aggressively aimed their guns to shoot and kill me for inciting and framing them.
Unfortunately for them, though, unlike back at the abandoned building, I wasn't alone.
"...Have you lost your minds?"
The screams that rang out alongside the gunfire came not from my throat, but from the throats of the terrorists.
Right before the bullets reached me, Miho had used her ability to deflect them back in the opposite direction.
In other words, they'd been hit by their own bullets.
"Seems the udon you all had to eat went straight to your heads, didn't it? Otherwise, you'd never dare to harm my husband."
Miho's words came out in a low, chilling voice.
I could tell she was even more enraged than when she got angry at Yata's behavior.
They probably wouldn't die a gentle death...
"Hey! What's going on!"
Another group of terrorists emerged from a different entrance.
They seemed so shocked by the sight of the burning stadium and the vanguard writhing on the ground in agony that they could barely even speak properly.
"For Lady Yata!!"
"For her!!"
Fanatics wearing crow badges swarmed toward them, and the backup squad was swiftly subdued in an instant.
Their methods, however, were somewhat... problematic.
"Is it... really okay for them to do that?"
Some killed without hesitation, while others subdued their victims with bizarre rope bindings.
But that was a turtle shell bondage...
"Our kids are just full of youthful vigor!"
Was all that youthful energy not being channelled in the wrong direction?
"Mm... well, it's fine, I guess?"
These guys were troublemakers threatening me and the citizens, so it was true that it didn't matter what happened to them.
Still, I couldn't help but feel a little pity for them, getting subdued so easily and suffering all sorts of humiliation.
"Come to think of it, I had such a hard time against guys like them."
Back at the abandoned building, I'd struggled immensely just to barely handle them...
Realizing that my efforts back then had been a complete and utter waste of energy made my heart ache as if it were breaking.
"I want to cry..."
"Kkyuit!"
As a tear trickled out, the baby dragon approached me.
As though it were her turn to comfort me, she placed a tiny hand on my head and stroked it.
"Thank you, Tia..."
In a stadium where everything was burning, where nothing remained but gunfire, screams, and chaos,
I had to comfort my heart while receiving consolation from a baby dragon.