Shatter That Vessel (4)
A game with no variable in it but luck. Which meant the solution was simple: bring the luckiest person you knew.
It was logic of the truly simple kind, and an illogic that someone, somewhere, would have laughed off as supernatural superstition. And yet Mary's time with Sister—her relationship with Zion—had left her with a single conviction. However impossible a thing appeared, if it could be reproduced again and again, then it was already no different from science.
At the very least, Mary believed it. Ninomae believed that luck followed that woman.
…Well. Whether Mary's logic was sound or not, Sister had already been called in. There was no taking it back now.
"Uh… yes. Hello, everyone. If you know, you know—but this is Sister, an acquaintance of Shutan's."
"…Why is Sister at Mary-chan's house?"
And the question every viewer had been sitting on, Tachibana Rin said aloud.
Her avatar's eyes—uncharacteristically—were wide and violet. For Rin, that was about as flustered as the expression got.
"Ah, actually, we're not gaming at my place right now. I just popped over to Sister's house for a bit."
"Heeh. Mary's bolder than I thought. Moving pretty fast, aren't we."
"Moving… n-NYEH?!"
Sae's teasing lilt. A beat late, the meaning landed, and Mary let out something dangerously close to a scream.
"But the viewers are all thinking the exact same thing, you know?"
And with that, Sae began reading a few of the comments aloud—the sort of chat best summed up by a single line.
"Hey. What were you planning to do, going all the way to Sister's house, you pervy Mary-onee? Hm? Sae doesn't get it, so explain it to me♡"
"I-it's not— that's not what this is…"
The tone was mocking, and yet it carried a strange magic, tickling at something deep in the chest. An inner masochistic streak, perhaps. Before Mary could scrape together an excuse, Sae's voice came crashing in again.
"Hey, hey, On—"
"Be quiet, nyan!"
"—Eep?!"
A sharp thwack, like something being struck. Then Sae's groan. The reaction was so real you could almost believe she had actually taken a knuckle to the forehead.
"I told you not to tease innocent kids too much, nyan. Didn't I, nyan?"
"Uuu… what the heck. Why did that actually hurt…"
"Answer."
"A-yes ma'am! I'm sorry!"
Of course that wasn't actually possible, and no one was casting some art that let them hit a person from across the network. She must have reacted the instant she heard the desk being slapped. Remarkable reflexes.
"And what is this supposed to be, nyan…?"
"Silent superchat… Hm. Kid. Feel like taking about five more?"
"As if?! At least throw it at my stream before you start saying things like that!"
For the record, this superchat had popped on Rin's broadcast as well.
Leaving the noisy voice chat behind her, Mary shot a glance toward Sister.
"I only came over because my computer broke and I needed to borrow one. I really, truly was not planning anything weird!"
"Ah. And what happened right before we went live doesn't count as weird, then? A rather narrow category."
"Wha— what are you suddenly saying, you—?! If you drop a loaded line like that, the viewers are going to get the wrong idea!"
Mary yelped, startled clean out of her seat by Sister's words.
"So. What did you call me for?"
"Forget that and explain what you just said! No—more to the point, you were definitely watching my stream, weren't you, Sister?! You know exactly why I called you, and you're changing the subject on purpose!"
"Oh dear. Caught, was I."
"I can't stand her… Why does someone that cool turn into such a villain the second a stream goes live……."
"There are an awful lot of silent superchats today, aren't there? …Haah. Anyway, which cheese am I supposed to pick?"
"I'll be praying behind you, so choose whichever way your heart leans."
"Huh?"
"It ought to work. Probably."
"Riiight……."
Ninomae looked thoroughly unconvinced, but if she didn't believe it, then what? Seoyeon had already gone to the back of the room and sunk into prayer.
"Eek— Sister's actually kneeling in the corner?!"
The viewers and the other members couldn't see any of it, of course, so she made sure to ham the scene up and explain.
"That woman is dead serious, nyan……."
Tama muttered that maybe she ought to recite a blessing herself, nyan and all. And whether the prayer truly had any effect or not, Mary went on choosing the safe mousetraps.
The moment she cast off her hesitation, the cheeses began to vanish. Fifteen. Ten. Five. Then Tama survived again, and it was four.
"Fuuu… n-ngh!"
A choice. The mousetrap held its silence.
"Heh, look! This is Sister Power!"
"No. I got this far without any special prayer myself, nyan."
"Tama-chan, pointing that out is forbidden. A VTuber has to protect people's dreams and hopes."
"You're quietly framing this like I did something wrong, but thinking it over, that was just a perfectly reasonable— kuh?!"
Clack. Thwack!
In the next instant the mousetrap sprang and flattened Tama's light-brown mouse.
"It worked!"
"Damn it. Figures. Summoning Sister for a luck game is cheating, nyan……."
Yugure Tama—Akaba Akane, the shrine maiden in active service, who knew exactly who Sister really was—muttered it with unusual sincerity. And with her words, a line of text rose on the screen.
Mary waited for the ending, grinning from ear to ear.
"…Huh? Eh?"
The scene that followed dragged a vacant little sound out of her. Two names hung on the display.
"So both sides get the points, and it's three to two, nyan?"
"Correct. Under Divine-Demon War rules, a draw is a victory for both sides by default."
"Eeeeh……?"
In other words, the win belonged to the Rin–Tama team, who had reached three points first. Mary's face only grew more lost.
Only then did Sister, just risen from the floor, come over and speak.
"You truly didn't know? Tachibana was sitting on nineteen points. Even a third-place finish this round would have been enough for her to escape."
"No, I was only paying attention to my own score……."
"Since your defeat was already certain, I assumed you'd called me hoping for at least a shared win this round. If only for your own satisfaction."
She added that if this hadn't been, for all practical purposes, an exhibition match, she wouldn't have helped even for a request from Shutan.
"Borrowing the Lord's power for a bet didn't sit quite right with me."
"Uuugh, if you put it like that, then I'm the bad person for calling Sister in just because I got blinded by the match……"
"No. For the record, Shutan's RP is an evil true-ancestor queen."
"……Ah. Right."
"Hey— quiet, you servants!"
Once the uproar had settled a little, Sae and Rin stepped to the front again. The two who'd been brought in as backup had ended up stealing rather too much of the show, but the stars of this planned broadcast—the Divine-Demon War—were still the two of them.
"Loser loli. So. How are you feeling."
"Kuh… shut up, you old hag."
"Apology. Sorry I'm too strong."
"Grrrr… you only won because you brought a decent teammate, and you've got the nerve!"
"Connections are part of ability."
So. The defeat declaration? Tachibana Rin's eyes pressed her for it. It didn't show well on the avatar, but Sae bit down on her lip. There was no helping it. Those were the rules of the war.
"Hey, I'm a weak, worthless little brat, and I was way too cocky picking a fight with Rin-onee, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…! Nngh! Is that enough?!"
"Mm. Satisfied. I'll have to prepare a good line for the next war, too."
Separate from the penalty, which changed every time, there was a line the loser had to proclaim—one dictated by the winner. Having shouted it, Sae's eyes even glistened.
"Winner's right. It doesn't come around often, so packing it full of personal feelings is the profitable move."
Rin looked triumphant. Even the corner of her mouth had lifted, just a fraction.
"Anyway. Then, as for the penalty, the two of you on the losing side can sort your schedules out next—"
"Wait!"
And just as the mood was about to settle into a natural ending, Sae threw a stone and set the ripples going all over again.
"It's not like both of us absolutely have to eat that, right?"
"Meaning?"
At Rin's flat counter, Sae cleared her throat. Once.
"…Eeh, out of nowhere?!"
MHIB was, at its core, a party game of random minigames played one after another. There was also a mode, though, in which the players simply chose a single game and played it as a one-off. That was what was unfolding now, on the monitor before Komori Sae's eyes.
A circular arena of cheese. Two entrants: the demon Komori Sae, and the vampire Mary Tepes. A fight to dump the penalty—one specially made, viciously spicy dish—onto exactly one person was about to raise its curtain.
"All right. Only one of us walks away. Even if it's you, Mary-onee, I won't yield when my life's on the line!"
"…I'm ready."
Of course, this was a show for the stream and nothing more. Look at what it actually was, and it was a farce that wouldn't even have qualified as an exhibition match. The balance patch—Sae sealing her own jump, because the mode disadvantaged Mary—meant nothing in practice.
Even so, I can't make Ninomae-chan eat something that monstrous.
Mary, who had come gladly to help her. Mary, who had carried them alone just so they could get this far. Annoying brat concept or not, Sae was not cruel enough to dump the entire penalty on someone like that.
Wanting to avoid the penalty was no small feeling. If she had been Bansei Marin the human being, and not a VTuber, it would have been a rather attractive choice. But her Komori Sae would never do such a thing. She mustn't.
In a sense, it was closer to an obsession with the role—even if what came out the other side looked like self-sacrifice.
Sae drew in a breath. She meant to hand Mary a tidy little victory. If she let her guard down the way she always did, then took a counter while pretending it was a slip, the picture would be perfect. Or simply snatching up the hammer—an item that hard-countered Mary—wouldn't be bad either.
And then, all at once, something felt wrong.
Through the call, Mary's breathing was strangely tight. She sounded like someone who had truly steeled herself. Was the Mary Tepes she knew this kind of person? Over one leftover chance to escape a penalty—and it was only a stream—enough to bare her fangs like that? Even though she must have noticed there was a good chance Sae would let her win?
Strange. Something was there. The moment Sae decided as much, the whistle blew to start the match.
Fake madness cannot defeat real madness. She remembered that line, glimpsed somewhere on the internet, in that very instant.
The two mice began to move. Sae, who had grasped the truth by a hair, dashed at once. She even burned the jump she had sealed as a handicap, closing on Mary at full speed. Then she mashed the attack button, and the punch the red mouse threw landed clean. The yellow mouse, mid-charge, locked up in hitstun and stopped dead.
The red mouse could not stop. She had thrown herself in at top speed without a thought for controlling her momentum. Of course she couldn't.
Splash! Sliding across the cheese, Sae vanished into the milk.
"…What are the two of you doing?"
"……Ah. You were trying to blow yourself up from the very start, nyan? Mary-chan."
Tama murmured it as if something had finally clicked.
"……."
The silence stood in for Mary's answer. She had charged for the out-of-bounds the instant the match began. There was no talking her way around that.
"…Onee?"
"No, I mean— how do I put it. If only one person takes the penalty, the amount they'd have to eat goes up too, and Sae-chan really can't handle spicy food, right?"
"Onee?"
Sae's voice came back at her, pressing, as if interrogating her over what she had just done. It wasn't the usual loli voice. Her real voice was leaking through, little by little.
She was angry. Mary understood it on instinct.
"So you really were trying to take the penalty in my place."
"Well, I was trying to sacrifice myself for Sae-chan, so shouldn't I be getting thanked instead…"
"Sacrifice?"
"Y-yes. No. I guess not. I'm sorry……."
She tried to answer back. Under a pressure from Sae that was nothing like usual, Mary folded almost at once.
"Sacrifice? Sa-cri-fice? You're going to do this again? There's a limit to being a hopeless goody-two-shoes. If I asked you to take a knife for me, would you do that too?"
"Uh… wait. First I'd need to know what kind of knife…"
"You're actually considering it?! You. You're still young, so take a little better care of your—!"
"A-ahem. What are you all talking about? Obviously Sae-chan is a cute little girl. You idiots don't even know something that basic."
"Um, but now that I think about it, Sae-chan was planning to lose to me on purpose too…"
"Hah? That's a completely different conversation!"
"Hiiing."