86. Mari Episode
86. Mari Episode
Night had fallen over the Hyphen Kingdom as well.
The city of the elves, who rivaled even the demon race in magic, lit up the night with brilliant illumination as if resisting the darkness.
On a street meant for the city's wealthy, a noble young lady fumed and kicked a pebble with her foot.
"What kind of barbaric human acts like that!"
Born the daughter of a senator, Pamela could not easily quell her fury at the treatment she had received for the first time in 250 years.
Her attempts to somehow rationally explain Allen's attitude from earlier in the day ultimately led her to a thoroughly elf-centric conclusion: that humans simply lacked manners.
In her mind, the human race was a species above monkeys but below elves, so she was able to reach the conclusion that she would let his rudeness slide without further inquiry.
"Before that, I should tell my father."
But independent of that decision, she absolutely had to repay him in kind.
This was by no means an emotional retaliation, but an entirely rational judgment that if she failed to make an example of a human who had dared to insult her, other humans might treat her with disrespect in the future.
At least, that was what she believed.
"To start with, banning that studio's works from screening in the Hyphen Kingdom would be best."
Additionally, she would need to issue a declaration that Magical Mari was an elf-hating production.
Though the protagonist was an elf, to put it another way, out of the numerous characters, there was only one elf, so it was not entirely groundless.
Step by step, she added to her revenge—no, her punishment—against Bon Voyage Studio.
If a slightly prejudiced elf had witnessed this, they would have pointed out that it was too excessive a punishment even considering Allen's rudeness, and an elf with a fair perspective would have said she had it coming and blamed Pamela instead.
But as is often the case with like-minded company, there were only similar elves around her, so her convictions grew more entrenched with time.
Just as the opinion that they should challenge the studio to a duel as a public example was emerging among the group, someone called out to stop them.
"Wait a moment."
Pamela turned around with a snort at the familiar voice that had stopped her.
"Oh my, what business do you have here?"
"None of yours. I am challenging you to a duel."
Ceres, her hair hanging down drenched with sweat from searching for Pamela, made the declaration.
But Pamela sneered at Ceres's shabby appearance and refused the duel.
"Is it the Claudius family way to show up without warning and challenge someone to a duel without so much as a greeting? I refuse. I have nothing to gain."
"You do have something to gain. Weren't you after the role of Mari?"
"...Do you understand the meaning of what you're saying?"
"Of course I do."
The elf race obsesses over fame to the same degree that humans covet material wealth.
And fame was something directly linked to credibility.
Therefore, for elves, fighting a duel with a promise at stake was also an act of placing one's own fame on the scales.
Ceres had placed her own credibility on those scales and challenged her to a duel over the role of Mari.
Pamela suddenly grew curious.
What was it that made this young girl, not even a hundred years old, so desperate?
And from Celestia's following proposal, she immediately realized what it was.
"But if I win, you will issue a formal apology to Bon Voyage Studio and never approach them again."
Aha.
She had been tainted by humans.
For elves, a hundred was the height of their turbulent adolescence.
After a seventy-year infancy plagued by worldly greed, puberty arrived at around a hundred.
During this period, the body matures faster than before, and the mind softens to ripeness; at this age, emotion takes precedence over reason, and they begin to grow acutely sensitive to things like friendship.
And it was no exaggeration to say that which race they associated with during this period determined the values of half their life.
'How foolish.'
And in Pamela's eyes, Celestia was nothing more than a clueless little child who, by associating with the inferior human race, didn't know what was truly important.
She wasn't especially eager to steal the magical-girl role from such a child, but Pamela accepted the duel after reassuring herself that teaching a junior the bitter taste of life was part of a veteran's duty.
*
Pamela's group and Celestia headed to the dueling grounds.
In the empty arena, with no audience at the late hour, the two confirmed the rules of the duel.
The rules were nothing special.
To decide who was fit for the role of Mari, they would duel using only techniques Mari might use.
Celestia clenched her two fists and glared at Pamela.
Pamela was still maintaining a leisurely attitude at that point.
And then, a few seconds after the duel began, her leisure vanished.
Crack.
A punch from Celestia dislocated Pamela's left shoulder.
Objectively, Pamela, who had lived far longer as a Hero, was stronger than Celestia.
But Pamela's strength was the strength of a wizard, and as a martial artist, she was not particularly strong.
In a duel to decide the role of Mari, Ceres, who had been performing as Mari up to now, held an overwhelming advantage.
And that was precisely what Celestia had been aiming for.
Outwardly, she had appeared utterly emotional, but she had initiated the duel accompanied by her own rational calculations.
Only when the tide of battle turned dangerous did Pamela discard the composure she had maintained until moments ago and begin to counterattack Celestia.
Nonetheless, due to the difference in technical proficiency and understanding of hand-to-hand combat, the advantage continued to tilt in Celestia's favor.
Then, as a finishing move, Celestia grabbed Pamela by the collar and executed a shoulder throw.
As Pamela's weight rolled over her back and forward, Ceres rejoiced inwardly.
'I can win!'
But reality was cruel.
Thud!
Pamela, thrown to the ground, did not even flinch and caught Celestia, applying an armbar.
With no finesse in the technique, simply raw force yanking as if pulling up a radish, Ceres was helplessly dragged along.
"!!!"
And just as she was about to escape from the utterly brutish armbar, a point-blank energy bolt from Pamela slammed into Celestia's side.
Celestia's knees buckled from the unexpected pain, and the armbar was finally forced into completion through sheer power.
The armbar, with no consideration for the recipient, yanked Ceres's arm with force enough to tear it out of its socket.
Amid the pain as if her arm was being ripped off, Ceres clenched her teeth and protested toward Pamela.
"This... isn't Mari's method!"
"The Mari I play fights like this."
It was sophistry.
But in cold reality, refuting sophistry required strength above all else.
And before the overwhelming quantity of mana and the utterly brutish physical ability it generated, Ceres's technique held no meaning, so she could not refute Pamela's words.
When Ceres's reasoning continued further, Pamela simply ignored it, and no conversation could be established.
"Did you think if you won this way, I'd quietly hand over the role?"
"Would you? You were the one who proposed this duel. If you change your tune like that now, who would trust you?"
Maintaining the joint lock, Pamela signaled to one of her companions with her eyes.
The burly elf nodded and played back a recording magic tool.
The recorder contained the contents of Celestia's duel challenge.
However, the conversation about the duel conditions had been cunningly edited out, making it sound like a no-rules duel rather than one fit for the role of Mari.
Ceres had assumed that no one would dare defile the essence of a duel fought with one's reputation at stake, so she could never have anticipated this situation.
"What value is there in fame gained like that!"
"How naive you are, Lady Claudius. To obtain fame, one must not be picky about means and methods. Even if the fame is tarnished, is it not enough that it simply appears clean in the eyes of others?"
Celestia could only bite her lip tightly.
Because, in the end, reality was cruel, and even she could vividly envision the future unfolding exactly as Pamela described.
"Hurry and concede. Otherwise, your arm could be torn off, you know?"
At Pamela's menacing words, spoken as if it were nothing, Ceres bit down hard on her lip.
Setting aside victory or defeat, giving in and conceding like this felt too unjust.
Because acknowledging defeat now would feel like truly losing, she refused to utter the word surrender out of sheer stubbornness.
At her junior's obstinacy, Pamela sighed and applied force to Ceres's arm to teach her the bitter reality.
"This will hurt a great deal."
With those words, Pamela moved to wrench Ceres's joint out.
But to her embarrassment, Pamela slipped free while holding Celestia's arm and rolled backward.
"??"
While both Pamela and Celestia stood frozen by the incomprehensible turn of events, two figures walked in from the arena entrance.
Black and red.
Two pairs of eyes, brimming with ominous murderous intent, announced their presence through the darkness.
Just before the pair could reveal themselves under the lights,
Snap!
The figure with red eyes snapped their fingers, and every entrance to the arena slammed shut and locked with a metallic clang.
"Who goes there!"
One of the large-framed elves bellowed at the two figures.
But instead of answering, the pair simply conversed among themselves.
"Pia, I've been thinking. I've been living too nicely lately. People keep messing with me, so I think peace only lasts if I raise hell every so often."
"Allen, it's only been a hundred days since you personally dealt with those noble kids on the train."
"A hundred days is a long time. Even couples do a hundred-day anniversary event. Shouldn't I get to celebrate hitting a hundred accident-free days at that level?"
"Normal people don't cause incidents every hundred days."
The man and woman stepped into the light.
In stark contrast to their thoroughly playful exchange, their eyes carried a hostile, murderous edge.
Furthermore, unlike the school uniforms they'd worn during the day, the black formal attire they now wore—the color of the night's darkness—did not project friendliness in the slightest.
Allen erased the murderous glint from his eyes for a moment and spoke to Ceres with a good-natured smile.
"Good evening. Ceres."
"What are you doing here?"
"No need to get into the complicated stuff. Just get behind Pia."
At Allen's gentle tone, Ceres stood dumbfounded for a second, then stumbled her way over to Pia.
Pamela's group tried to grab her and demand where she thought she was going in the middle of a sacred duel, but for some reason, their bodies refused to move.
Only after confirming that Celestia had made it behind Pia did Allen drape his suit coat over Ceres and begin to loosen up.
"Pia. I'll leave the cleanup to you."
"Just leave it to me."
Allen strode toward Pamela's group, brimming with confidence.
His leisurely pace gradually quickened until, before anyone knew it, it had become nearly a sprint.
Sensing something was very wrong, Pamela's large-framed escorts moved to block Allen as if to protect her, and shouted.
"Do you have any idea who this is!"
"You're supposed to drop lines like that on a reasonable person, friend."
Allen lunged straight at the large elf and delivered an artful spinning kick square into the solar plexus.
The large elf poured mana into his armor, attempting to block the kick.
"!!!"
But the instant Allen's foot touched the armor, it disintegrated, leaving the now-unprotected solar plexus to meet his kick.
Along with the sound of a sternum shattering, the large frame crumpled to the ground.
Even in the middle of that, Allen looked down at him with a perfectly composed attitude and sneered.
"That's the fighting style of the Mari I play, you little shit."
*
While Allen leaped into the center of Pamela's group and vented every emotion he'd been holding back, Ceres watched his one-man show with admiration.
Pia, for the sake of Ceres who couldn't tear her eyes away for even a second, began to explain Allen's greatness.
"Allen has never once had his position as Leon's right-hand man threatened."
Pia knew Allen's strength well.
The Price-style martial arts, which circulated mana through the bloodstream and allowed him to unleash finishing moves like basic attacks the instant he made contact.
Allen, unlike his father, often grumbled that he wasn't smart enough and could only use lightning, but when combined with his alchemy, it transformed into an unstoppable killing technique.
Alchemy that disintegrated any armor it touched, combined with lightning that paralyzed every muscle in the body upon contact...
"Once you let Allen close the distance, there's only one way to win: don't let him hit you even once."
Short of defeating Allen purely through evasion without ever blocking, there was almost no way to beat him.
But against the founder of John-style combat, people in the entire Empire who could pull that off barely reached double digits, so even that was not a realistic countermeasure.
Making Pia's explanation rather pointless, Ceres remained unable to take her eyes off Allen.
Pia, who had been watching Ceres with a meaningful gaze, waved her hand in front of her eyes.
"Hello?"
"Yeah. I'm listening."
At Ceres's insincere answer, Pia's eyes narrowed.
"What is it that has you so focused?"
"He's cool..."
"I beg your pardon?"
At the exact same moment, a streak of red liquid trickled from Ceres's nose.
She didn't even wipe the flowing liquid away, staring fixedly at only one spot.
Seeing that, Pia's mood instantly began to sour.
"Hey. What exactly are you looking at? What is so cool?"
"..."
"Allen is cool, isn't he?"
"Yes... Huh? No, no. I misspoke. I just... I just meant the fight was cool! That's the path Mari ought to walk. That's what I was thinking."
Come to think of it, Ceres's combat style was actually very close to Allen's.
A combination of magic and hand-to-hand combat.
Anyone aspiring to become a magic warrior had good reason to study Allen's fighting.
But for some reason, Pia still found Ceres's answer unsatisfying.
"Really?"
The excited breathing, the elevated heart rate, the flushed face.
They were perfectly natural physiological responses for someone who had been fighting fiercely moments ago, but at this particular moment, they looked different to Pia.
As Pia stared at Ceres with that meaningful gaze, Ceres looked dumbfounded and shot back at Pia's words.
"Don't tell me you actually thought I was saying Allen was cool?"
"Hmm..."
"Hey! No matter how you slice it, what reason would I have to like that guy!"
"Hmmmm...."
The moment she heard that, roughly thirty reasons to like Allen listed themselves in Pia's head.
When the suspicious gaze didn't relent even after all this, Ceres crossed her arms and began listing the reasons she hated Allen.
He's an ignorant, accident-prone disaster who loves messing with people... etcetera.
Only after Ceres had painstakingly listed thirty of Allen's flaws did Pia finally withdraw her gaze.
"I'll accept that for now."
"Phew..."
"Phew?"
"I'm out of breath, that's all."
Just as Pia was about to resume her interrogation, Allen's fist, wreathed in lightning, landed squarely in Pamela's stomach.
Pamela felt every muscle in her body seize up, leaving her helpless against the follow-up attack.
Unable to flee or resist, unable even to plant her feet on the ground, she was beaten by Allen in midair, and only after his punches stopped did she go tumbling across the floor.
Seeing that, Pia decided to postpone the interrogation and moved to handle the cleanup.
But Allen's next action was faster than Pia's.
He suddenly drew a revolver from inside his coat.
In his hand was the pistol he'd affectionately nicknamed the Peacemaker.
"No way..."
Before Pia could even finish muttering, fire belched from the muzzle adorned with a heart-shaped charm.
"Be good. Hup."
Allen's incantation was just a bonus.
"Aaargh!!!"
One of the large-framed elves, his kneecap blown open, clutched the wound and rolled across the ground.
Allen stepped on the other leg of the rolling large elf to pin it in place, and spoke in a playful tone.
"Don't move. If my aim slips, I could hit a major blood vessel."
Bang
Aaargh!
He blew out both of that large elf's knees, then approached the other elves in the same way and aimed the gun.
"Now, now. Don't be nervous. I'll shoot on three, so take a deep breath~ Three."
Bang, bang
Aaargh!
"P-p-please spare me."
"Oh dear. Whatever shall we do. I'm so very sorry. This is all for your own good, so just hang in there a little while, won't you."
Bang, bang.
Urrghk!
"I told you not to move. See, I hit you wrong."
"W-wait!"
Bang
Krrk
After having removed the knees of every single large-framed elf, Allen finally aimed his gun at the one remaining person: Pamela.
In the very instant he was about to pull the trigger, he suddenly seemed to recall something and withdrew the gun.
Then, scratching his temple with the muzzle, he asked Pamela.
"I'm a bit confused here. Is shooting you, the only woman present, gender discrimination? Or is not shooting only you gender discrimination? I genuinely have no idea what the standard is."
Hearing Allen's philosophical pondering, a familiar headache came to Pia for the first time in a long while.