An Academy? That's Insane — 11
A week had passed since I began living with the Vetts.
A man came into the house and asked me who I was.
"Who are you?"
It was late at night. His face was black with soot, and his clothes poured off the smell of oil; he looked every bit a burglar as he stepped into the Vett house. The moment he saw me he startled and bolted back outside, then came in again wearing the expression of a man who no longer trusted his own eyes.
"This is our house, isn't it?"
An unfamiliar girl standing in your home would do that to anyone. I knew him. I had seen him in Victoria's memories.
"Morris Vett, yes?"
"Uh, yeah. And who are you? A friend of my daughter's?"
"Something like that. Beatrice got an urgent call from the company and went out. As for Victoria—"
I pointed behind me.
"Hey! I can cook too! Behold! The radiant splendor of alchemy! Huh? Dad?"
Victoria came out smiling and waving, bearing the culinary abomination she had produced.
What she had been meant to make belonged to the ratatouille family: a vegetable stew of eggplant, tomato, zucchini, onion, bell pepper, and the like, simmered together. The difference was that this one had been loaded with fruit and mustard sauce. For the record, neither of those last two appears in the recipe. Which is to say, it was an original creation.
"That's our dinner."
A shadow of regret passed over Morris's face. It was food his daughter had made. Couldn't he simply eat it and be glad?
Anyway.
After a brief introduction, the three of us sat down and ate.
The surprise was that it tasted better than I had expected, so I finished all of mine, while Morris and Victoria managed only a few bites and left the rest.
"Finish it. Especially the one who made it."
"Nnngh..."
I watched Victoria pick at her plate. Morris was the victim here, so I didn't press him—but when a daughter begs you to save her and eat what she made alongside her, how many families would refuse? A father of the my-daughter-is-a-genius variety might be another matter. Both parents worked, though, and Victoria had spent a great deal of time alone in the house. So. That says everything.
"I told you to taste it while you were cooking, didn't I?"
"I did! It was perfectly edible! And Bell ate hers just fine!"
Well, of course. Mustard and the other things one uses to season a stew were in there. From the second bite on, though, every flavor went its own way, and the result turned strange. Tasting something when you are hungry is not the same as tasting it when you are full, is it? Victoria's objection was easy enough to sidestep.
"I lived through an age when spices were hard to come by."
In the first era I had eaten food that was cooked properly enough. In the second, spices were nearly impossible to obtain. With the Heavenly Demon around I could get hold of things one way or another, but never use them as freely as I do now.
"So that's how it was back then?"
"Uh, Tori. This person doesn't happen to be someone who lives a very long time, does she?"
No wonder Morris was fidgeting. Until this moment he had taken me for Victoria's age and had been speaking to me without a scrap of formality.
"Yeah. She's probably older than you and Mom put together."
Morris lurched to his feet and began a stiff, hesitant bow, so I stopped him. Beatrice had adapted easily. This man looked as if he were suffering.
Once I had fed them both at least to the point where one could say they had taken in proper nutrition, I did the dishes. While I did, Victoria told Morris everything that had happened with me—which is to say, mostly the saga of Victoria's own adventures.
A short while later.
"So you came from another world?"
"She's the one who saved my life, Dad!"
A savior, yes. But I had also ground her future to dust, so taken all together it was probably a loss. I had hidden that part from Beatrice as well, and I had no intention of speaking of it from here on.
Anyway.
Victoria chattered on, showing Morris the ability she had gained. His clothes were steeped in the smell of iron and oil, and still she showed no distaste. She had chosen the profession of clockwork knight as her future because of Morris in the first place, so it was hardly strange. If anything, the smell only pleased her more.
When the story ended, she showed the ability off: drawing moisture out of the air to form droplets, then, in reverse, scattering those droplets back into empty space. Morris watched as if he were seeing a miracle, then sprang up without warning and ran off somewhere. A moment later he returned carrying an entire box of instruments and set about measuring the ability with her.
Some of the tools resembled things in my memory. Others I could not begin to name. He held them up to the water hanging in the air, or fastened meter-like devices here and there on Victoria's body and took readings.
"How in the world is this possible?"
"What is it, Dad?"
"It isn't drawing on any mana at all. I can't identify the force producing this bizarre phenomenon. Even a spirit would create a special effect through the mana around it..."
His gaze turned to me.
"By what law, exactly, is this occurring?"
He seemed to be one of those people they call scientist-like, full of the urge to investigate. I shook my head. I have memories of many kinds, and information, but I have never used any of it to try something myself. If I sift through what I hold of the Great Dragon, or of Yuanshi Tianzun, several suspicious entries present themselves—but it would be shameless to claim that I understand them.
"I don't know either. Not everyone who forms a contract manifests a superpower, and even when one appears, it is rare to receive exactly the same ability. It differs from person to person."
And that superpower, at least in the moment it comes, acquires a function capable of solving the problem its owner is facing—or else a power that can fulfill their desire with the greatest certainty. Broadly speaking, the two mean the same thing.
"You aren't bestowing the power yourself, by contracting with them?"
Morris looked at me as if something did not add up. I could see where he had gone wrong. He thought that if one made a promise with a god, the god conferred an ability.
"I cannot use mana—that power which, as a universal rule, interacts with living things and draws one's will out into reality. So a superpower must be a function the contracted person was already capable of possessing."
Victoria raised her hand beside us.
"That's right, Dad. I think so too! After I use this ability I get unbelievably hungry! And it's not like I can't use magic, either!"
For the record, Victoria can use magic. So can Morris, of course. This is a world that runs on mana as its power source, so a technician who handles it can manage magic to some degree. They simply are not people who study it as a profession; they learn only a little beyond what a truly ordinary person can do, and then they learn their trade. It is like someone studying earth science also picking up statistics.
Victoria floated a small orb of mana in one hand and shaped a mass of water in the other. Then she brought her hands together and set the mana orb inside the water. The two hung there without interfering. She separated them again, turned the water to vapor, and drew the mana back.
Watching, Morris clutched his head.
"When it changes phase, where does the heat that ought to be taken come from..."
Isn't that simply how the ability works? Even so, the corners of his mouth were creeping upward, as if he had been handed a new toy.
"Ah. Might I make a contract as well?"
He pointed at himself as he asked.
Hmm. It would be no trouble for me. I would rather like to. But if I cheerfully agreed to a contract here, Beatrice would put a bullet through my head. Perhaps because she has contracted with so many others, she has grown suspicious of the one she made with me. It is nothing but simple phrasing, and still she reads it strangely.
But aren't human contracts filthy things to begin with? There are what they call toxic clauses: terms you do not understand at the time, slipped in so that someday they cost you dearly. Human society is what you get when people like that gather. If I idly varied the wording, got caught out, and was picked clean, what then? So I do not change the text of the contract.
Anyway.
"Not everyone gains an ability. And if it is a contract, I recommend you speak with Beatrice first."
I shaped a gun with my fingers and lifted it a little.
"Mom did react kind of sharply. I think so too—if you don't want her on your back, the two of you should talk it over first. When Mom gets angry, nobody in this house wins."
"That's... true."
At Morris's forlorn sigh, Victoria patted his back. I watched the two of them, then, so they would not sink any deeper into thoughts of contracts, offered a new question to turn the subject.
"By the way, do the two of you come home in turns on purpose?"
In Victoria's memories, Morris appeared more often. When he was absent, Beatrice was there. Once midnight came, one of the two was always with her. Both had made time for Victoria, and the one who could do so regularly was Morris. I asked in order to confirm it, and he nodded.
"I got a letter saying something urgent had come up and she'd gone out."
"How long is Mom gone this time?"
"It said three days, for now."
"Ah. Then the client must have slipped up somewhere. If it runs past five days, the whole job's blown."
The two of them murmured and understood each other without any help from me. They looked like a family. It was nice to see.
"Dad. You're going in to work tomorrow anyway, right?"
"Hm? Yes. That's right. Why?"
As I recalled from the news on the receiver, tomorrow was supposed to be a holiday.
"Then can't we go visit where you work? Bell's here this time, and a little sightseeing wouldn't be bad, would it?"
Victoria's words were brimming with ulterior motive, and Morris looked troubled. He glanced my way. I shrugged to say he could do as he liked, and he bowed his head.
"All right. I can't be with you over the weekend either, so this is better. But you'll have to get up early. If you can't, I'll leave you behind."
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Victoria broke into a brilliant, satisfied smile. Going, as a clockwork knight, to the place where clockwork knights worked must have been a happy thing. Or perhaps it was simply the chance to go where her father worked. Or both. Tomorrow would not be dull.
I was sorting through what we would do when Morris caught the grinning Victoria by the arm with a smack.
"Uh, Dad?"
"Daughter. First, that superpower. Let us examine it properly. If using it makes you hungry, then energy is entering or leaving in some form."
"Ah—"
Perhaps she felt the unfortunate omen of what was coming. Victoria looked at me. But I was not on her side, and I was every bit as interested in testing the ability.
"I'll help keep her still."
"Ah... would that really be all right?"
"You may speak casually."
"No, then surely you may as well speak casually too..."
"My polite speech is a disability. I cannot fix it, so please understand that much."
All at once Morris wore the face of a man struck in the solar plexus. He nodded, pressed this device and that against Victoria's body, and began measuring again. She kept using her ability late into the night, and in the end she fled to her room.
