The European Union (9)
"Ahh... what the heck is with this typhoon?"
"Damn it..."
"And there aren't even any decent ports up there."
Hm? The group that had headed north came back earlier than expected, apparently chased home by the typhoon, and they were muttering the strangest things.
"No ports in the north?"
"Ah! My lady, good day to you. Yes, ma'am. Up north all we saw were little fishing harbors, nothing else."
"Huh?"
So they'd never even been to the island, huh?
There are some great spots over there, you idiots.
"Once the typhoon clears, let's go together. I'll show you the good places."
"Pardon?"
And so, after generously spending a full week eating hearty meals and loading up on weapons, they set out on the road.
"All right! We're headed for England!"
"Wait, well, it *is* an island nation. I suppose there'd be something worth taking."
"And once we get there, there'll be plenty to smash!"
Five full days of sailing later, they arrived at the lower reaches of the Thames.
"Whoa!"
"Is that a river or the ocean?"
"What kind of river is THAT wide?"
"Quit sightseeing! Blast anything you can see!"
These idiots were so mesmerized that, with buildings scattered all around them, they were just standing there gawking.
"Hey! Hurry up and fire!"
"We've gotta break *something*!"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. Boom. Boom. Buh-buh-BOOM.
Hmm~ now *that's* the smell of gunpowder! Lovely!
KRA-KOOM! KA-KA-KA-KOOM! BOOM!
"Keep firing!"
"Don't stop!"
Ah, beautiful. Buildings collapsing, dust billowing everywhere.
So London even tastes good covered in dust!
Time to show these wretched islanders what a real capital looks like.
"Your Majesty! We are under attack!"
"What nonsense is this?"
For a moment she thought she had misheard. Who would dare strike at England?
It couldn't be a rebellion — no noble existed who had the standing to rise against her absolute power.
Elizabeth I had built the second most absolute monarchy in all of Europe.
"A ship! A ship has entered the river!"
KU-BOOM. Boom. Boom. KRA-KOOM. BOOM.
And now the sound of explosions was drifting, faint but unmistakable, to her own ears.
"What are the defenses doing?"
"They're all dead! Nothing remains of them! You must flee at once, Your Majesty!"
"What?"
It was beyond belief. A fleet had punched through the countless ships and cannons guarding the river's mouth and sailed all the way here?
"We must hurry, Your Majesty!"
KRA-KA-KA-KOOM! Rumble-rumble-rumble...
"Gah!"
While she hesitated, the thunder of explosions and the crash of collapsing buildings rolled in from dangerously close by.
"Move!"
"Get Her Majesty out, now!"
"The Royal Guard! Where is the Royal Guard?!"
Elizabeth I, who had been residing at Greenwich Palace to attend to state affairs while enjoying the pleasant riverside views, fled as if the soles of her feet were on fire.
KU-KRA-KRA-KOOM! Rumble...
"What in God's name IS that thing?!"
She had never once heard of cannon fire shattering buildings into fragments like that.
Seated in her carriage, pulling away from the river, she looked back at her palace — and watched it crumble wretchedly into ruin amid the deafening roar.
"Whoa! There's so much stuff!"
"Ahahaha! Grind it ALL into powder!"
"FIRE!"
KU-KU-BOOM. Boom. KU-KOOM.
The three ships — the Blue Sharks and the Whale Sharks — churned up the river in single file, blasting moored vessels and buildings alike into splinters.
Rumble-rumble... crash-crash...
"Kyaaaaah! Run!"
"Pirates!"
"Somebody help!"
Early-modern London shattered into pieces, kicking up colossal clouds of dust.
Their guns' limited range meant they could only destroy whatever was in sight, which was a small mercy.
Anyone who ran with genuine effort could get clear in time.
"Oh? Something by the riverbank over there. Looks *really* expensive."
"Whoa. Is that a palace?"
"Hey! Pull that one out!"
"On it!"
The soldiers ducked below deck and hauled up relics of a bygone era — slingshots and crates.
They were genuinely antiques from the old days, and just as the men were musing that lobbing explosive shells might be easier—
"Heh heh heh heh."
"Kukuku."
What they pulled out was blasting powder. It seemed they truly intended to grind the riverside buildings into dust.
"Ready!"
Sssszzzzt—
"FIRE!"
THUNK.
The two of them lit the fuse, stuffed the charge into the bucket, and launched it.
Trailing a ribbon of white smoke, the projectile sailed off and landed somewhere near a building none of them could even see.
"Where'd it land?"
"Dunno. Can't really see from here."
"Think the fuse fell out?"
KUUU-WAAAAA-BOOM!
Then came an explosion on an entirely different order of magnitude from shells or Fist Potatoes.
"Holy—! That scared the hell out of me!"
"Blasting powder really is the best!"
Sssss... WHUMP.
They had squashed a lump of the stuff into a bucket and hurled it, and a single shot had taken out an entire building.
Apparently it had dropped squarely inside, or maybe right onto a support column.
"Keep 'em coming!"
"Heh heh heh."
Daehan's bomb fiends sailed as far upriver as their hulls would allow, and were cheerfully reducing half of London to a scorched wasteland.
"Huh? Did we break too much? There's nothing left."
"They said the water's too shallow further in. We can't go past this point."
"Tch..."
While London's defenders scrambled desperately toward the river, hauling cannon behind them, the ships that had wrecked half the riverbank turned about and began their retreat.
"Oh? Looking from this side, there's even more stuff over there!"
"Let's finish the job!"
KU-KRA-KOOM. BOOM.
And with one more pass on the way back down, nothing at all remained standing on the deep-water bank of the Thames's eastern shore.
"Ihihihihing!"
"Huff... huff..."
"What... what is this..."
When London's soldiers finally mustered their troops and hauled their cannon to the riverbank they'd been racing toward, there was nothing left.
Only the fading scent of gunpowder, the dust, and piles of rubble.
That day was a shock to them all. Their capital had been attacked, and the royal palace itself had been torn down — a catastrophe beyond imagining.
Now, with the exception of Poland-Lithuania and the Holy Roman Empire, the fire had leapt to the feet of every nation in Europe.
"We must go and negotiate!"
"Yes! Let us depart at once!"
"Exactly! Once talks begin, they'll have to stop the attacks!"
The Papacy's representatives from every nation hurried onto the road to Pyeong-an Naru.
As they boarded a ship flying the white flag, they were trembling with fear.
"Surely they won't simply fire on us regardless?"
"Who can say... Remember what they did at Venice..."
As the eyes of the company turned to the Venetian representative, his head sank lower and lower.
After all, his people had sowed that particular field.
Sailing quietly along, they could see Daehan's black ironclads passing to and fro without end.
"Damnation... I suppose they're on their way back from burning somewhere else, again."
"Kgh..."
"This is dire, truly dire..."
If Europe crumbled much further, it would spell disaster. Even now, the Ottoman movements to the east were deeply ominous.
After a voyage of more than ten days, they reached Pyeong-an Naru and knocked at the fortress gate.
"Who is it?"
"Huh?"
And of course, Daehan Language came pouring out.
They froze for a moment — not all of them spoke it. Fortunately, the Venetian knew the language, and stepped forward.
"We come as envoys of the European Union. Summon the lord of this city."
"What?"
"Summon the lord of this city."
"Hold on."
Tap.
The soldier guarding the gate did not like these fellows one bit. Who did they think they were, barking orders for the lady like they were calling some neighborhood mongrel?
He tossed them one curt word, slid the shutter closed, and went inside.
"Hm? What's going on?"
"No idea. Some bums begging for food."
"Tell 'em to try the restaurant down the street."
"Say, I'm kind of hungry. Want to grab a bite?"
"Sure!"
And so he settled back at his post, pulled out some jerky, and started cracking jokes and idly chatting with his comrade.
"Khh. Remember when we took the ship out, and we launched blasting powder with the slingshot? That was *exquisite*."
"Huh? We've still got that stuff left?"
"Found one in the warehouse, heh heh."
Just as the two of them were fooling around at length, the knock came again at the gate.
Knock-knock-knock.
"I say! Are you there?!"
The Venetian's voice had grown considerably louder, apparently out of desperation.
"Haah... guess they came back."
"My turn this time."
"No, mine."
Tap.
He went back out and slid the shutter open again.
"What is it now?"
"We wish an audience with the lord of this city!"
He was getting a little annoyed, but he still couldn't handle official business according to his personal grudges.
"She's busy. It won't be possible right now."
"What? Where has she gone? Then when might an audience be possible?"
"When she gets back, I'll pass the message along."
"Gah..."
It wasn't that the soldier particularly disliked the man — but at this very moment, Haneul was off aboard the Blue Sharks, busy pounding the coastal cities of western and northern Europe into rubble.
There was simply no one here to receive them.
"Is there not even a deputy? A proxy?"
"What did you just say?! Absolutely not! No one — NO ONE — may ever stand in her place!"
"Gah..."
WHUMP.
The soldier's blood had boiled for a moment. A *deputy*? For HER?
That was why he'd raised his voice — but it seemed the man before him was frightful of people after all, because the envoy crumpled to the ground.
"Whew... look, the lady simply isn't here. Come back when the ships return to port."
"Understood..."
The Venetian representative turned away, hollow and defeated.
A dozen or so of his colleagues crowded around him, hurling questions from every side.
But all he could tell them was that the lord was absent, and that they would have to wait.
"This is outrageous! We are envoys — they should at least offer us lodging!"
"We only *claim* to be envoys. We're envoys when THEY accept us as such."
"Uuu..."
Shoulders slumped, the Union's representatives had no choice but to linger nearby and wait for a ship to enter the harbor.
And so it was that Haneul, who had been ranging up and down the western European coast, exhausted her ammunition and turned for home — the Blue Sharks used smokeless powder, after all, and couldn't borrow the Whale Sharks' shells.
KEEEEEEEEEEN!
"Gah!"
"What on earth is that sound?!"
None of them had ever heard the whistle of a Blue Shark, so the guests lodging by the fortress gate leapt up in fright and peered out their windows.
There, trailing smoke behind it, a sleek black warship was carving through the sea as it glided into the harbor.
"Gasp... so that is the 'unsinking ship.'"
"Magnificent..."
"Insane. We actually FOUGHT things like that?"
For the first time, these men felt the same terror that had seized the Union's warships not long ago.
Only recently they'd been snorting at the rumors, dismissing them as gossip. Now here it was, before their very eyes.
"Quickly! Let us hurry at once!"
"Yes, yes! Now is not the time to waste!"
The envoys all went sprinting for the fortress gate.
"AHAHAHA!"
So refreshing! Absolutely refreshing! It feels like the Alpine air is being pumped straight into my lungs.
And really, I smashed everything I laid eyes on.
"Um... my lady? Could you perhaps laugh a little more... demurely? Laughing that wildly is, well, unbecoming of you."
Excuse me? I'm just in a good mood. What's the problem?
"Heheh. 'Unbecoming,' you say!"
"Honestly... have you by any chance heard of a certain story about people? 'Please, won't you stop making that face'?"
Huh? That does ring a bell from somewhere...
"Don't know it!"
Knock-knock-knock.
I was racking my brain trying to remember where I'd heard that when — a knock?
Did someone come looking for me while I was out?
"Ah! My lady. A short while ago, some men calling themselves representatives of the European Union came to see you. They're waiting now."
"Ugh..."
Already? I was hoping to drag it out a little longer.
"I'm tired. Tell them we'll meet tomorrow."
"Understood, my lady."
I mean... it's around lunchtime, but so what? It's not like anything's urgent on my end.
"Let's go get something to eat!"
"They appear to be an official envoy, my lady. Should you not at least greet them first?"
"What could possibly happen in a single day?"
Now then, what should I demand from them? I wonder if those kids even have anything worth handing over...