Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 6 - Chapter 2.1

CHAPTER 2

  A Heroic Encounter?

1

The day after we somehow managed to escape the Cursed Forest.

“Screw that! I’m not going outside after that shit we dealt with yesterday! I’m holing up in the safety of Hideout City for a while!”

I’m in my room at Hideout City.

I am chewing Alice out after she insists we return to the Cursed Forest despite our experience yesterday.

“You were the one who reported finding a giant robot at the bottom of the lake. Remember, Lady Lilith brutalized the mechanical lizard known as the Forest King until it was beyond repair. There’s a pile of this planet’s technology at the bottom of the lake. There’s no way we can just let it sit there.”

Alice ignores my pleas and begins to tug insistently at my arm.

“Let go of me, shrimp. There’s plenty of others with time on their hands if you need protection! Since Vi erased my save data, I’m busy trying to get caught up on the game!”

I peel off Alice’s hands and try to shoo her away when she turns to me.

“If you don’t cooperate, I’ll erase your data when you get close to the end.”

“Stop threatening me with my save data, dammit! Seriously! Given how often you back up your data, you, of all people, should know how serious of a threat that is!”

As I’m busy arguing with the cold, unfeeling android, the door suddenly flies open.

“Hey, Six, what in the world have you done?! Her Highness is demanding your presence at the palace!”

Snow just starts yelling at me the moment she enters the room, but I don’t think she should be throwing around accusations just because Tillis summons us.

“Hell of a greeting there, Snow. Whatever she’s mad about, it’s not my fault. I still have plenty of Evil Points at the moment. Go interrogate the other Combat Agents.”

“So there’s no doubt the culprit is one of ours, hmm?”

Yeah, no doubt about that.

I arrive at the palace, essentially being marched along between Snow and Alice, and notice that the palace exterior was dramatically transformed in the short time I was away from it.

There are two additional moats around the palace, and there is some sort of magical item that looks like bells installed at regular intervals around the wall.

There are also more soldiers standing guard at the gates, giving the whole palace a more intimidating air.

As we are let into the palace, I crane my neck toward Snow and ask, “The defenses are a lot heavier now, what happened?”

“The defenses were reinforced because some pervert was sneaking into Her Highness’s bedroom every night. Lately, she’s been determined to make the pervert give up and has been doing everything in her power to discourage them from sneaking in.”

Ah, so Agent Ten’s still been sneaking into Tillis’s room.

I don’t get what’s driving the two of them to such extremes, but…

“Y’know, this is the sort of thing where the two of them start enjoying it and start thinking about the other as a romantic partner. While she might feel relief when Ten doesn’t manage to sneak into her room, she’ll start to feel like there’s something missing.”

“If you say that in front of Her Highness, she’ll demand your head on a spike.”

It was just as we arrived at the courtyard while chatting…

“Your Highness, it’s all right. We’re here to support you!”

“All of you, offer your prayers! Offer your prayers so Her Highness’s voice will reach the heavens…!”

“Your Highness, there’s not a person here who will laugh at you! Please, for the sake of the Grace Kingdom and its people! Please recite the holy prayer!”

Tillis stood with her eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer in front of the rain-making artifact. She was surrounded by countless ladies-in-waiting with tense expressions on their faces.

Then Tillis opened her eyes and called out the prayer in a booming voice…!

“Dick Festival!”

Tillis gave off an incredibly hallowed aura as she gazed intently at the machine…

“Hey, Alice, can you believe it? The girl over there yelling about dicks is the ruler of this kingdom.”

“I mean, it’s pretty embarrassing for a young woman, let alone a princess. I sure hope her parents don’t find out.”

“Hey, quiet! This is important! She was finally willing to say the prayer after intense pleading from her retainers!”

Tillis apparently heard our voices, and her expression shifts from determined to beet-red in the blink of an eye.

But it seems her voice didn’t reach the heavens, because the machine remains unresponsive.

Seeing this, Tillis places her head in her hands and ruminates.

“This isn’t enough people, I see… One of the activation conditions is to have many of our people in front of it, but how does this artifact recognize that there are lots of people around? Requiring that it be in front of the people would make sense if it takes magic from all the people present. Does that mean there isn’t currently enough magic in the area to power it…?”

“Hey, Snow, Tillis is trying to shrug off the fact that she just screamed ‘Dick Festival’ by mumbling some technobabble.”

“Shh, not so loud! She can hear us! Her Highness is trembling!”

Tillis is now red as a tomato and her shoulders are shaking, unable to ignore us any longer.

“Sir Six, thank you for coming. We’ve been expecting you…”

She smiles at us with her flushed face, but it isn’t just her shoulders that are trembling. There are noticeable tremors in her voice as well.

“Alice, did you record that scene?”

“Of course, it’s stored in my internal memory. I can record anything I see, after all.”

“I’m not quite sure what any of that means, but it can’t be good. Please stop!”

As the ladies-in-waiting try to do the tactful thing and leave, Tillis waves them off to the side and pleads with us.

“I mean, why did you say something so stupid anyway? If it’s about solving the kingdom’s water problem, didn’t we bring you a useful replacement?”

Yes, by capturing the Demon Lord’s Army’s Elite Four member Russell of the Water, the kingdom should have been regularly refilling its reservoirs…

“About that… There have been mounting concerns among the citizens… Apparently, it’s hard for people to watch such a frail girl use so much magic to create water for their sakes…”

But…Russell’s a boy.

Welp, that’s one unexpected consequence of Tiger Man forcing Russell to dress like a girl.

“<Hey, Alice, isn’t there some way to fix that machine’s password?>”

“<There should be if we reformat the machine. But it’s more fun to leave it as it is, don’t you think?>”

Yep, she’s an android made by an evil corporation all right. I agree that it’s more fun to leave it alone.

Tillis tilts her head in curiosity as Alice and I launch into an exchange in Japanese, but then seems happy to resume the conversation.

“Let’s set aside the water problem for now… No, there’s another reason I’ve called you in today. There have been reports of suspicious people lurking around in the city—”

According to Tillis, someone dressed in an outfit similar to power armor shows up at night and meddles in various affairs around town.

Up until now, Tillis and the kingdom looked the other way on our less-than-admirable activities because they are relatively harmless, but the more recent incidents have escalated to the point of being serious problems.

For example, someone recently attacked the orc farms in an attempt to free the orcs.

Also, someone revealed the source of the meat used by a certain skewer vendor and cut deeply into his sales.

There are countless other examples, in fact—too many to name—but they are all clearly different from the pranks that we’ve been pulling up to this point.

“That’s gotta be one of our Combat Agents. I take my eye off them for one second, and they lose their damn minds.”

“Sorry, Princess, we’ll take care of it on our end.”

As we immediately draw the conclusion that it’s one of our people, Tillis shakes her head.

“No, Sir Six, at first I thought it was someone from your organization, but… The armor that the suspect was wearing was white, not black. That’s why I wanted your help investigating this matter…”

At Tillis’s words, Alice and I exchange glances—

“There’s a traitor in our midst!”

The moment we return to Hideout City, we gather everyone in a room and I make the announcement.

Kisaragi Combat Agents aren’t allowed to wear power armor that isn’t black. It’s not that white itself is prohibited. Alice’s dress is white, and Spider Woman likes wearing white-silk outfits.

“You call us together and blindside us with this?! You’re the one who tagged along with the girl in the Hero squad when they made a pass at you!”

“Keep your delusional bullshit to yourself! You’re the sorry excuse for a Combat Agent who fled back to Hideout City after a single night out camping!”

“All of us are veteran agents of Kisaragi! None of would choose now, of all times, to turn traitor!”

“Besides, we all belong to an evil organization! Is betrayal really that big a deal?!”

Their arguments made me want to smack them one at a time, but I calmed myself before responding.

“It seems someone in white armor is going around causing problems in the city of Grace.”

At those words, everyone froze in shock.

Power armor had to be black.

This was something that was true for all evil organizations throughout human history.

It was tradition for the bad guys to wear black, and for us cannon fodder Combat Agents, it was our most distinguishing feature as well as our cherished sense of style.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with betrayal. But we all know how important the color black is to our identity, don’t we? Remember how hard we fought when Lady Lilith tried to claim black as her color and change the power armor color because it overlapped with her title?!”

Yes, there was a time when Lilith said, “Black is the signature color of Lilith the Black. So I’m going to change the official power armor for Combat Agents to hot pink,” prompting all of us to take up arms and rise up in rebellion.

We united under the banner of outrage. Outrage at the idea of Combat Agents being forced to dress in hot pink, and outrage over the fact that this woman—whose real name was Yasuda—was using the moniker, “Lilith the Black.”

“Yeah, I remember that… That’s when you, Six, said, ‘If you’re afraid about the overlap, it’d be a lot cheaper to just change your name from Lilith the Black than change all the power armor.” We all called her Lady Yasuda for a while, didn’t we…?”

“Sure did. She ended up crying and begging us to stop calling her Yasuda when we were facing off against the Heroes.”

My colleagues think back on those days fondly. It was a reminder of just how important the color black was to us. It was something we had clawed back from Yasuda’s temper tantrum.

Which brings me to the question of why the hell she even calls herself Lilith the Black when she always dresses in a white lab coat.

As Alice watches the reaction of the Combat Agents, she nods to herself.

“Hey, Six, it doesn’t seem like they’re to blame.”

“But…Tillis did say the armor was similar to our power armor, right? Which means…”

I glance around at the agents, then decide to travel to visit a particular subordinate—