Mare Training: Warhorse Drill
Even under the threatening atmosphere, Sonia didn't flinch in the slightest. If anything, she tugged one corner of her mouth up and snorted.
The courage tempered through the Horse Spirit's training was showing itself now. Sonia thrust her chest out boldly and declared toward them.
"I was undercover. I was deliberately looking the other way. Tax evasion, unrecorded cash deals, goods of unknown origin… and the more-than-tenfold markup you just tried to pull on that girl. All of it."
Sonia tapped the toe of her shoe against the scrap of business card she'd spat onto the floor — already soggy with her own saliva. The paper was so shredded the lettering was barely legible. Everyone knew what it meant.
"I've got evidence of that illegal loan-shark pitch right here… so what's it going to be? Should I upload this to the Sky City Hero Community? I think it'd get a pretty good view count."
At Sonia's calm blackmail, the staffers' faces went bone-white.
This wasn't a simple undercover job. That hero might have been recording everything from the start. Once that thought took root, terror began to sprout in their minds.
As if driving the fear home, Sonia lifted her front leg — no, her leg — in a light, threatening raise. The black leotard stretched taut along the flex of her thigh muscle.
They'd already confirmed it. They'd seen it with their own eyes. The sight of a measuring machine recording the miraculous score of twenty-five from nothing more than a casual kick. That leg held enough destructive force to kill two grown men outright and leave a third half-dead — and they had witnessed it clearly.
In the end the staffers hesitated, then cleared a path. Unwilling to let their pride take the full retreat, one of them shouted in a voice thick with spite.
"We're taking every last coin back from those porters who sold us a decoy on a fake undercover job! That part we will not concede!"
Who ran this exchange, how their ledgers balanced — none of that concerned Sonia. Right now, only a hero's sense of duty remained in her head.
Getting this dangerously reckless bread-hat girl — the one who wandered around with a fortune stuffed casually in her pockets — somewhere safe. That was the only thing Sonia had to do.
"Do as you like. Just make sure no harm comes to that child. Neither of us wants this blowing up online and wrecking your business, do we?"
Leaving that last warning cool and sharp, Sonia didn't look back again as she walked out of the mare exchange. The bread-hat girl, gripping Sonia's hand tightly, kept her head bowed and followed in silence. From behind them came the noisy clamor of staffers cursing as they charged out to catch the porters who'd sold them a "false listing."
Sonia made her way carefully out of the market, wary that some thug might appear targeting either a mare named "Pipi" or the bread-hat girl's thick wallet.
At first she ran through the crowd holding the girl's wrist; then, growing impatient, Sonia didn't hesitate — she scooped the girl up lightly in one arm.
A princess carry. The girl's small, soft body settled into Sonia's firm arms. Like a proper Sky City hero, Sonia ignored the vulgar stares aimed at her sensual figure and left that dangerous place behind at the highest speed she could manage.
Only after they had fully escaped the night market's noise and garish lights — out onto a dark street where the distant city glow still offered some reassurance — did Sonia set the girl down.
She was just about to launch into a proper lecture — "You really have to be careful with loan sharks! No matter how desperate you are, never use them, and the moment you co-sign a guarantee, your life is over!" — when a black luxury limousine glided up without a sound and stopped right behind her.
What stepped out of the vehicle was a security Humanoid, moving with mechanical precision that left no room for error. As the Humanoid approached, the bread-hat girl released Sonia's arm — the arm she'd been clinging to for support only moments before — with unnatural ease.
"Are you all right, young miss? Might this be the mare you were trying to acquire this time?"
"No. Not… or maybe it is…?"
The Humanoid paid Sonia no mind whatsoever, confirming only the young miss's safety.
When the girl gave a vague nod, the Humanoid asked nothing further and returned silently to the driver's seat.
As if that were only natural, the girl opened the limousine's rear door and slipped inside. Sonia was left standing there like a roadside pebble — not the benefactor who had just saved her.
"Uh… uh-huh…?"
Tap. Tap. From inside the back seat, the girl lightly drummed her fingers on the luxurious leather. A silent invitation to get in.
"If it's all right with you, unnie… would you talk with me a little?"
Inside the limousine, gliding soundlessly somewhere, the air conditioning was pleasant and no outside noise reached them at all.
So the innocent bread-hat girl she'd nearly saved from loan sharks turned out to be the young lady of some enormously wealthy house. Feigning hesitation, Sonia eventually climbed carefully into the seat the girl had been tapping.
"Hmm… let me think where I should start explaining, unnie. Just a moment… Ah! That'll do!"
The girl pulled off the jockey's head-protection gear she'd been pressing down over her hair. Beneath slightly sweat-dampened locks, a young but determined face emerged.
She looked a year or two younger than Sonia. Her eyes, though, held a depth and sharpness far beyond her age.
"Well, unnie?"
"…Well what…? Taking the hat off… um… sorry. I'm not really up on celebrities or famous people. If you were deliberately hiding your identity, that means there are people who'd recognize you. So then… the purpose of putting on that innocent act…"
"Exactly right, unnie. Are you an adventurer, by any chance? Or… since you mentioned undercover work… a hero?"
"Th… that's… right?"
When Sonia shrugged her shoulders in answer, the girl brightened with a relieved smile.
"I'm the one who should apologize, unnie. I was the one who interrupted your undercover investigation, wasn't I? And… that heart of yours, wanting to help me for no reason at all — it felt so much like a real hero that I was moved! Ever since I came over to Sky City, the first thing that happened to me was a scam, the second was a scam, the third was a scam too… ahaha…"
"You came over to Sky City? From where? Nearby A-City? Or C-City?"
"Nearby… isn't quite right. I came from Floren. Most people understand better if I say 'the fantasy world.'"
The girl laid out her story frankly.
She had crossed over from the fantasy world of Floren and registered as an adventurer, only to lose everything in a dungeon and end up penniless. After that she'd bounced from odd job to odd job until she stumbled across mare racing as a local promotional draw.
She'd thrown herself in as both jockey and trainer and made it big — a wild, checkered tale.
"Floren is so enormous I've never actually met anyone from my hometown. That's why I wanted to talk with you like this, unnie!"
"…? I'm not sure how the conversation jumps to that…?"
Sonia, who had already introduced herself as a Sky City citizen, was flustered.
The odds were vanishingly low — and she didn't particularly want to bring it up first.
Then the girl's finger pointed at Sonia's head. More precisely, at the Military Horse ear-shaped hairband that fluttered atop Sonia's golden hair depending on the situation.
"That fantasy world called Floren… seems a lot wider than I thought, doesn't it?"
"I know, right… well… back in our hometown, if you say Military Horse, everyone respects it, but here people look at you funny, so maybe everyone's just living in hiding…"
A deep regret crossed the girl's face. She said she had crossed alone to Sky City for personal reasons.
During her adventuring days, she had lost her entire fortune in Alubi Dungeon. That fortune had been a precious heirloom passed down through generations in her home region — a place that treated Military Horses not as mere livestock but as an honorable profession.
"I've… succeeded like this, but there's no way to find what I lost in that dungeon…"
The Military Horse ears sprouting from the head of Sonia, who was just an ordinary Earthling. The proud, upright posture she carried unconsciously, trained like a Military Horse. The girl said that, clinging to a thread of hope, she had simply wanted to hear the story.
The girl's gaze swept Sonia from head to toe, appraising her "value" like an assessor.
(…This is going to be a long conversation, isn't it… Should I call this fate, too…?)
Caught between not wanting to get dragged into something troublesome and a hero's inability to turn away from the girl's earnest eyes, Sonia sank into deep thought.