Nagoya, Japan

Saturday, September 3rd, 2050

I awoke earlier than normal. I beat my alarm by a good hour. It must have been a case of nerves.

Just as well. I had no time to waste. I gathered up my important belongings into a duffel bag: m journals in demonic script, which were my proof that I hadn’t just been “chasing co-eds” like Fera thought, my civilian clothes, and a few choice bits from my pile of pilfered goods. Mixed in with loose pens and buttons were coins, batteries, random snacks, and other mundane items I might find useful. At least my kleptomania could pay its rent sometimes.

I stopped short when I came upon my GoSato. I wavered on whether that should go in the bag or not. It wasn’t like there was regular electrical service back home, though I could probably figure out magic to charge it with the proper voltage. It was more that I couldn’t glance at it without thinking of Kiyo, and I knew she was about to become a regretful memory.

Ultimately, I decided to bring it with me. I could always dispose of it later if I changed my mind, and I could find a hundred bored noblemen in Pandemonium who would pay good coin for a working game console. The black scarf with the white and black trim Kiyo had made me, though? That I had to admit only had sentimental value, but into the pack it went.

Once my escape supplies were packed, it was time to get my other gear in order. First was Ratte’s communication fabricata, as well as a demonic unit from Dante. Fortunately for me, they were compact and had an entirely different feel in my pocket. I wouldn’t want to get those mixed up!

Maggie’s disguise wand and a few SD cards went in my deepest pocket. Hours of looking at self-impressed men on SatoGram had finally paid off. I could look like the good Nurse Kazushi, the vain Indonesian accountant, or a Hawaiian surfer as the situation demanded. The Nurse was the most complete disguise, since her SD card included the voice samples, but she was a layperson of the Holy Brotherhood. She might be the target of a dragnet, so I wasn’t eager to wear her form, even ignoring the gender bender aspect of the disguise.

A few other weapons that had “wandered off” in the course of my training found themselves on my person: a backup dagger strapped to my ankle, a set of fabricata brass knuckles, and a handful of fabricata bullets from the times I had gone shooting with Kiyo. The security around the training weapons was surprisingly lax; it just required some sleight of hand and misdirection. I had no gun to fire the bullets with, but experience had taught me they could store a spell and make decent magical grenades in a pinch. Hopefully I could save one for the trip home; the boys in Research and Development would love to inspect an intact magical bullet.

I stashed my bag in the back of a janitor’s closet on the bottom floor behind an unopened box of toilet paper. Next up was to swap my flawed fabricata circuit board into the Peace Bond Mk. II. It was still fifteen minutes before my normal wakeup time, so I expected to have the headmaster’s workshop to myself.

“Good morning, Mr. Marlowe,” said a startled Tachibana. “What brings you here without knocking?” The corpulent man was still dressed in a bathrobe and pajamas, though he still wore his signature bowler hat. I had wondered before, but he was clearly bald. He was fiddling with the Peace Bond transmitter. Leave it to a tinkerer to want to make tweaks the day of the bloody main event!

I bowed respectfully, slipping the board back into my pocket. “Good morning to you too, sir. I was hoping I could have a word with you.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling broadly. “What’s on your mind?”

What was on my mind? I improvised quickly. “It’s a case of nerves. I was hoping to get some words of encouragement before the War Games, and you’re the only one I know to be up so early on a Saturday.”

Setting aside his tools, he stood and made his way over. “Of course. Can I get you some tea?”

“That sounds lovely, actually.”

The cup of steaming green brew he handed me tasted so sweet that I nearly gagged. The mystery of his weight problem became a tad less mysterious. Oh, well. I sipped it down. One does what one must for manners’ sake.

He sat back down again, his poor stool protesting under the weight. “Nerves, is it?”

“I’m not worried so much for myself,” I said, perhaps being a bit more honest than I ought to have. Headmaster Tachibana had an openness that made him easy to confide in. I supposed that’s what made him a halfway decent teacher. “I’m worried that I’m about to let an awful lot of people down. My entire future hinges on today, and I’m worried I won’t be able to live up to what’s expected of me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Soren! This isn’t a real battle. The worst that can happen today is that your team places poorly and you stay in remedial classes.”

If only. “You’re right, sir.”

“I remember what it’s like to be your age,” he said. “I didn’t like losing either. I guarantee that overthinking things and getting yourself tied up in knots is will not help your performance.”

“You’re right, sir. I just need to focus on my duty.”

“Exactly. If it makes you feel better, I slept like a baby last night. I don’t have a worry in the world. Do you know why?”

Well, wasn’t that bloody wonderful for him! “No, sir. Why?”

“It’s thanks to you and Ms. Jones. All of the testing we did on the Peace Bond Mk. II guarantees that nobody is going to die or be hurt today.”

I’m not sure how I kept a straight face, but I did. I nodded, forcing something like a relieved smile to my lips. “Yes, that is a relief.”

Finishing off the sugary slop he called his morning tea, the headmaster hopped onto his feet. “Well, as long as you’re here, could you give me a hand? I need to get the transmitters and magical batteries up to the roof of the Tower, and you could save me a few trips.”

He was giving me easy access to the Peace Bond? Our Father Below does come through sometimes. “Of course, sir. Always a pleasure to help you out.”

It turned out to take eight trips, all told. The Peace Bond transmitter was the easy part. Hauling the two dozen batteries, each the width of my arm and made of dense metals, gave me quite the workout.

He nearly gave me a heart attack as we lined up the first load of batteries in the tower’s main hallway. “I believe there’s a cart in the janitor’s closet. That should make it easier to haul these to the elevator.”

“Let me, sir!” I might have been too eager after hauling a stack of batteries over, but I knew my luck. He’d somehow find a way to stumble upon my emergency pack.

He was right about the cart, though. We couldn’t use it on the grassy lawn leading to his workshop, but it made the second leg of the journey much simpler. Unfortunately, the elevator only reached the penultimate floor. We still had to make the last leg of the journey on foot, and since I was in the possession of two working legs, I ended up being the brawn while he wired the contraption together.

“Oh my,” said Headmaster Tachibana on our first trip up the stairs. “Someone seems to have left the door unlocked.”

“Do you think delinquents have been hanging out up here?” I knew the answer, of course. Delinquents like Kiyo and I, the day I’d ended Haru’s miserable life.

“Probably. I will have to let maintenance take care of it on Monday.”

I wiped the sweat from my brow as I hefted the last of the fabricata batteries into place. The whole lot of them positively stank of Rose’s lavender scent, and I had to stifle a sneeze. I hadn’t noticed them having a scent when they were inert before, but then I hadn’t been up close and personal with so many at once. “Do we need quite so many of them?”

“It may be slightly overkill,” he responded, sitting in the center of a center of the roof paved with gravel. “Think of it like this, though. We have hundreds of students who will be using the Peace Bond simultaneously in the midst of intense fights. Would you want to risk somebody’s shield running out at the wrong moment?”

I winced, my mind running back again to Kiyo’s tumble down the mountain. “Your point is well made, sir. It’s astounding that one transmitter can manage the whole student body.”

“That’s the beauty of blending magic and technology,” he said, busily tying rune-covered wires together. “As long as it had sufficient magical energy and everybody had a uniform with a unique identifier, we could shield eight thousand students at once.”

“Eight thousand…” Bloody Hell, Tachibana couldn’t die soon enough! The military applications for that sort of long-range defense were blatantly obvious. And to think the Wizard Corps told him it was a waste of time! Maggie and the rest had a point about their government.

I shook my head, clearing away my shock. I could be flabbergasted later. “Is it on now?”

“Not until we complete the magical circuit.” He hunkered down, just avoiding hitting his head on the transmitter’s large dish. He pointed to a metal plug at the base of the device, which led back to a rat’s nest of wires coming from the stacked batteries. “Once that connection gets made, the Peace Bond will run until we unplug it again or it runs out of power.”

“Fascinating.” I shivered as a breeze blew across my forehead. Being on the roof gave me flashbacks to when Maggie had interrupted Kiyo and I during a romantic interlude, and the powerful winds that had buffeted us. It was early yet, but by the evening the gusts of wind had been so noisy that we could barely talk right next to each other.

I managed to stop myself from exposing that I had been to the roof before. Instead, I said, “Aren’t there powerful winds up here? What if something knocks the devices over?” Those were going to be our leverage, after all, and the wires didn’t look too secure.

“An excellent point,” he said. “Let me handle this; you need your magic for the War Games.” He took a handful of seed from his pocket and spread it around the Peace Bond and batteries in a wide circle. Before I could ask what he was on about, he bent over and his body positively shimmered with magic. I think I would have seen his affinity at work even without my Mimic affinity.

In an instant, a thicket taller than me had sprung up around the machinery. The roots burrowed into the gravel, dissolving it like sugar in the Headmaster’s green tea. The level of the gravel dipped noticeably. Another pulse of energy flew from his body, directing the plants to wrap their roots and branches with those of their neighbors for support. He left a gap in the windbreak facing the stairway that was wide enough for him to pass through, which meant that two of me could have stood side by side.

“By the Dark Lord,” I murmured just under my breath. For the first time, I believed that he could have created the forest surrounding the Nagoya Tower from nothing. “That’s astounding. How did you… Sir, I’m no botanist, but don’t plants usually need soil and water?”

“It’s the effect of my Green Thumb affinity,” he replied. “While they’re under my care, they can feed off just about anything.” He pointed out towards the distant pines surrounding us. “The whole school was built on a contaminated industrial site. I am assured the soil is pristine now.”

I nodded, deciding not to call attention to his humble bragging. “Most impressive, sir.”

“I almost feel sorry for them,” he replied. “My magic was enough to nourish them to start with, but they’ll all wither and die soon enough. It seems like a waste of good seed. It’s not their fault where they were planted.”

“Nobody can choose that,” I replied. “They’ll just have to do their part.”

He nodded. “Thank you for the assist, Mr. Marlowe. We both have business to attend to, so I must bid you a good morning.”

“Yes, I’m meeting my team in the library,” I said. It was a lie, but I needed to throw him off the scent. The library was on the same level as the elevator’s top floor, so I could vanish in there for a moment without drawing his attention.

As expected, the library was abandoned that time of the morning, except for a stern librarian fumbling with a pile of musty books. I took a moment to admire the enormous stained-glass windows showing the school’s location on a map of Japan. I couldn’t judge from where I stood, but I estimated them to be around double my height. Some artisan must have spent days or weeks toiling away to get it just right. It almost seemed like a shame that I’d be destroying such a work of art.

Almost.

Once I was sure Headmaster Tachibana was gone, I slipped back upstairs. I made two modifications to his hard work. First, I swapped the good fabricata circuit board for my faulty one, guaranteeing that the students would be rendered immobile at the least breeze. Then, I diverted one of the batteries’ wires into a much smaller fabricata, a sphere I was able to easily hide between two of the power banks. There was plenty of power to spare, after all. “Thank you for being paranoid, Headmaster.”

Dante had come through again. The demonic fabricata was a technology jammer similar to what Haru and the other Holy Brothers had used during the botched attack on Mr. Maki, connected to a remote-control transmitter I could activate with a simple spell. Once I was safely away from the Tower, I could use it to jam anything more complicated than a vacuum tube for miles around. I didn’t think anybody would have the time to try and pursue little old me once the fireworks show started, but I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.