The Time of Planetary Governance That Breaks (Other People's) Heads. (2)
Of course, I was talking about the faction of the green-hatted, mustachioed Giacomo — in other words, the People's Party crowd who had floated an event window right in front of me and fired off a warning of "These folks are dangerous~!" — and it stood to reason that such a faction wouldn't just lie down and take a beating this easily.
Once they realized that the resistance had already been crushed and erased from existence itself, and that they too could never again amount to a meaningful force inside the Milano System, they did what most parties backed into such a corner always do: they gambled everything on seizing power with the help of a foreign power.
And who, exactly, was the target of this gamble?
First and most obviously, ACIC — who had already delivered a spectacular smack across the back of the head of the current Milano central government — was ruled out from the start. And while the Babel Cult was outwardly neutral, word had apparently leaked that its branch director had come all the way to the government building in person to negotiate terms, so they were off the table too.
Which naturally left the Earth Alliance Milano Branch — a place that, by my standards at least, had hovered at the very edge of my awareness all this time, seemingly doing nothing at all.
Of course, that was only how things looked from my perspective. For Giacomo, a native who had survived here for decades, the presence of the Earth Alliance branch — rooted in this system far longer than some upstart who'd lucked into success through one fluke stacked on another — was bound to feel far more substantial.
"That could have gotten rather tricky, I must say."
"Huh? Why?"
"The branch director of the Earth Alliance branch that Councilor Luigi Giacomo Forni visited to make his little 'request' — Mr. Ungar — gives anyone who meets him the impression of a guardian saint protecting underdogs of his own kind, you see."
"......???"
"Ah, of course you wouldn't know that, Doctor. To put it simply: Branch Director Ungar Wic Silver is a Black, transgender, disabled man."
"!!!"
It was news to me, but as it turned out, the branch director of the Earth Alliance Milano Branch was none other than the final boss of the politically correct spectrum — the kind of person who, in my old world, would have eaten the entire discourse alive.
Which meant that if Giacomo's faction had played the underdog card — "poor, oppressed common folk crushed under a tyrannical central government" — to a branch director who radiated exactly that kind of sensibility, there was a genuine risk he'd have turned against us and tangled the whole situation up in knots.
Had the plan gone off without a hitch, it might very well have landed as a checkmate against us.
But as everyone reading this has surely figured out by now — every single thing I've described so far has been in the past tense.
"Mmph! Mmmph! Mmmmph!!!"
"What the hell is this."
"The man at the front is Councilor Luigi Giacomo Forni, and the rest are the leadership of the Milano People's Party."
"I know that from the photo, Secretary. What I'm asking is why they've been delivered to our front gate, neatly gift-wrapped?"
"I only just confirmed it myself, but the Earth Alliance branch has sent word: 'We are returning the People's Party leadership that came to us in full.'"
"......Huh."
Giacomo's plan had failed catastrophically, and in return, the Earth Alliance branch had gone and arrested the entire Giacomo faction leadership and shipped them straight to us.
On top of the automatic resistance-hunting I'd been running with the Black Scourge, I was now watching automatic hunting being carried out somewhere that wasn't even under my command — and I could feel my brain shorting out trying to process what on earth had happened.
And honestly, could you blame me? After all, what had come out of Elena, Heisenberg, and the Demonia branch administrative clerks — that legendary duo of right hands — grinding their teeth and wracking their brains, was the conclusion that Giacomo's faction's final move would pose a serious threat to us. Both of those sharp pair-of-horses had signed off on it.
Yet contrary to every prediction, Director Ungar of the Earth Alliance hadn't shaken up the Milano System's interior using Giacomo's faction as his lever — fat chance. Instead, he'd rounded up the very faction that had come wagging their tails at him, trussed them up nice and tight, and even gift-wrapped the package before delivery. Neither Elena nor I could begin to hide our bewilderment.
Well, mercifully, that mystery didn't stay a mystery for long — the man himself, Earth Alliance Milano Branch Director "Ungar Wic Silver," soon came calling in person to explain.
And here was the one thing nobody saw coming: I had been told, quite definitively, that Mr. Ungar was the living trinity of political correctness — Black, transgender, and disabled.
What actually showed up was not the dark-skinned, dreadlocked, female-to-male transgender person with prosthetic limbs and legs I'd been described...
"Pyahaha-hah! Hi there! Director Benya of the Demonia branch!"
"......Secretary. Hey, Secretary. Is that really the Earth Alliance director?"
"The genetic scanner and the soul-identification spell both clearly register her as the same individual, but with such a completely different appearance, I confess I find it rather disorienting."
"She's changed so much from the Ungar I met before that it hardly qualifies as change anymore."
"Pyaha-hah! It's really me, so don't be too shocked, okay—☆"
A magically-tanned girl(?) had appeared, dressed in a pastel-toned mini dress absolutely dripping with frills upon frills.
Me, Elena — and even Heisenberg, who'd ridden up with us given the circumstances — every single person present stared at this magical girl(?) claiming to be Ungar, and our bewilderment crossed straight over into open horror.
***
Anyway, once we'd all gotten over the shock of that first meeting.
"So, um — what should I call you now, exactly?"
"Ungar's just my pre-transformation name☆ When I'm like this, call me Shirogane! Shirogane Yuki☆"
"Ah. Okay."
Having ordered the Giacomo faction tossed roughly into the underground cells, I sat down with the former Ungar Wic Silver — the current "Shirogane Yuki" — and set about untangling just what on earth had happened.
And in response to my question, Branch Director Shirogane Yuki had this to say:
"Not much to it☆ You're wondering why Giacomo and the People's Party leadership came to see me, right?"
"Hmm...... I'm no~t sure?"
"Pyahat☆ What a funny way of talking☆ Long story short...... they had the sheer gall to wave an underdog sob story in my face and demand that I back them and support them based on it. An utterly insolent speech, honestly."
"Ooh."
She kept up the cutesy character voice right up until she got to the point — at which moment, out popped a tone absolutely steeped in the weariness of a middle-aged veteran who'd seen it all.
Naturally, such an ominous reaction made me stare at her blankly, wondering what on earth the problem was, and perhaps because of that —
Branch Director Shirogane hurriedly corrected her expression and tone, declaring she'd gotten too emotional, and dove right back into character.
"Ahem, ahem☆ My blood just boiled at the thought of being lumped in the same category as that gutter trash who tried to coast through life on my back☆"
"Ohh?"
"Who do you think I am! Looks like this or not, I'm a veteran who served in the 13th Lunar War and fought at the Battle of Tannhäuser Gate!"
"Oh-ho."
"......Well, that's part of it, but fundamentally? Giacomo's faction and I simply aren't cut from the same cloth. Like a snapped thread versus a whole one. There's no earthly reason for me to grab a broken string and fall along with it—☆"
"You're not wrong, Director. Though I confess we were entirely unaware of that fact."
"Of course you were — the moment word gets out that I'm a combat veteran, all sorts of other strange characters come crawling out of the woodwork☆"
"Ah, I see."
As the conversation continued, it became clear that, at the root of it, Giacomo's faction had simply made the wrong choice from the very beginning.
And — though it was surely not what any of them intended — it also came out that, Black aside, the "disability" part of the PC trinity wasn't some congenital condition for Branch Director Shirogane at all, but rather a kind of medal earned as a decorated veteran.
When we heard that her limbs hadn't been lost to anything she couldn't fix, nor deliberately cut off out of some miserable ideology, but left behind as living proof of war, we all nodded to one another and agreed: the Giacomo faction had well and truly brought this on themselves.
And with that misunderstanding cleared up, the final question naturally spilled out of my mouth: "Then why, exactly, do you look like that now?"
And the answer Branch Director Shirogane gave me was...
"Then let me ask just one last thing — why did you show up as a magical girl?"
"Whew...... grown-ups have worries that little girls like you wouldn't understand☆"
"I'm plenty grown up myself, you know. I'm over twenty, believe it or not."
"Oh, really? Then you're old enough to hear it straight☆ Earthling men in their forties and fifties are, as a rule, desperately desperate to become magical girls☆"
"......Whuht."
With an answer that unexpected bursting out of nowhere, I was forced to experience that truly bizarre sensation of my brain coming to a complete and perfect stop.