“I hope you remembered that Kana and I can’t get through your barrier,” Harue said. James could hear her clearly through the headphones, which were blocking out the noise of the helicopter very effectively.

  “I could have passed through it,” Kana said haughtily. “I chose not to, as it would have shattered our ally's defences.”

  “Very generous of you,” Harue said wryly. “And since putting a hole in the barrier is still a concern, I hope you’ve got an answer?”

  “It’s being handled,” Professor Toei said. “You’ll have to disembark early, but there will be a ceremony prepared to let you in.”

  “Huh,” Harue said. “You guys are really working the Shinto, aren’t you?”

  “This is Japan,” Professor Toei said, almost offended. “We have cooperative relations with many groups, but the shrines have been a reliable support over the years. And aren’t you supposed to be a Shrine Maiden?”

  “Well, sure,” Harue said. “We’re just more used to being ignored by the government, instead of hired by them.”

  “That might have something to do with the non-religious activities of your shrine,” Toei said primly.

  Harue laughed. “Probably!” she agreed. By the time she finished giggling, they were almost over the island.

  The JSDF private who was accompanying them must have been briefed on what was going to happen. She got a peculiar look on her face when the pilot called back that it was time for the jump. She made sure all the passengers were strapped down, then checked her own safety line. She gave one last unreadable look at the schoolkids sharing the cargo bay with her, before wrenching open the side door.

  A blast of sound and air smashed into James, pushing him back into the uncomfortable jump seat and almost overwhelming the effect of the headphones. It felt like the sound was going around his headgear, transmitting to his ears via the rest of his face.

  Kana and Harue seemed unaffected. Unfastening themselves, they walked over and stepped out of the chopper without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Catch you later!” Harue said, just before she dropped away. The private shook her head. She looked down out the door for a brief moment and then closed it.

  “Proceeding to landing site,” The pilot said calmly. James wondered if this was an unusual day for him.

  By the time they’d landed and made their way over to the edge of the site, the ceremony was well underway. James started in surprise when he saw who was conducting the ceremony.

  “Midoriko-senpai?” he blurted.

  She ignored him. She was dressed in a shrine maiden’s costume, performing a graceful dance around a circle that held Kana and Harue. Harue had reverted to her fox-tailed form, while Kana was still human.

  In one hand, Midoriko held a complicated-looking staff with lots of bells, and in the other, she had a frond of some kind of fern. Her katana was strapped to her back, looking a little out of place.

  James watched as the ceremony came to an end. Midoriko finished her dance and used the staff to draw two lines breaking the circle. She laid the frond between them and bowed to the two girls inside.

  They both bowed in response. Harue bowed lower than Kana did. Then, they stepped out of the circle.

  “I’m in your base!” Harue crowed.

  “Yeah, yeah, please don’t make me regret this,” James said. Harue just winked at him.

  Midoriko stepped up and bowed to him. James awkwardly returned it.

  “Are you well, James-san?” she asked.

  “I’m fine; I should be asking you that question. Are you sure you’ve recovered from…wherever you’ve been?”

  Midoriko smiled. “Thank you for your concern, but I am quite all right. I’m afraid that I can’t say much about what we were doing, but our efforts were not in vain.”

  “Well, good,” James said.

  “Come on, dude!” Harue said in badly accented English. “Show us the giant robot!”

  “Um, sure. Is that all right?” James asked, looking at Professor Toei.

  He nodded resignedly. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  The entire group headed over to the Jade Warrior and rode the cherry picker up to the cockpit. Harue sat on the railing on the way up, leaning back as if she were daring the Professor to scold her. He just sighed and looked away.

  There were a few technicians riding up with them, and one of them was the first to enter once James opened the cockpit, taking photos in every direction to see if anything had changed while James was away. Harue had to be held back.

  “Aw! I wanna see!” she protested.

  “Have a little patience, child,” Professor Toei said exasperatedly. “We’re doing science here. The sight will still be there in two minutes.”

  Once the formalities had been observed, matters went much as they had last time. The only difficulty was getting Harue to stand still long enough to be scanned by the white light. She insisted on examining every part of the room closely, even going so far as to sniff at most of it.

  “This is wild, James! You have no idea!” she said. She slapped her hand face down on an unoccupied piece of wall. “You see!”

  “Nothing happened?” James said.

  Harue giggled. “Exactly! Nothing happened!”

  Suki and Mitsue looked just as confused as James. Kana just looked aloof, which could mean anything. “Would you care to explain what you’re talking about?” Suki asked.

  “Nope!” Harue said, laughing.

  James was getting better at understanding what the controls were telling him. Or the controls were starting to understand him more. Whichever was the case, he thought he knew what the stations were for now.

  “Um, I think I’ve assigned you, Suki, to… Health? Wellness?”

  “That sounds nice,” Suki said. Most of her focus was still on the giggling Harue.

  “That could refer to the pilot’s health or perhaps the health of the machine,” Mitsue mused. “Or both.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Maybe,” James agreed. “Yours is… Alignment?”

  “I shall endeavour to ensure that we are always pointed upward,” Mitsue said, bowing. There was a slight smile on his face when he came back up again.

  “That’s good,” James deadpanned. “I don’t want to have to fight the Dragon God upside down.”

  “What do the other ones do?” Harue asked, jumping over.

  “This one is… Mystic Threads of Flowing Sight?” James hazarded.

  “I like all of those things,” Harue claimed. “Give me that one!”

  “The other one is… Fire Flower Mountain?” James said, ignoring her. He knew better than to overlook Kana.

  “Acceptable,” Kana said. “Fire is good. Mountains are strong.”

  “That’s as good a way to decide as any, I guess. Stand over there.”

  James inducted Kana first, and the technicians took a careful bearing with her holding the tracker. While they did that, James inducted Harue, and the techs took another set of measurements.

  With that done, Professor Toei gathered them in the conference room for a presentation.

  “Here’s what we have so far.” He brought up a world map with two arcs drawn across it.

  “Why aren’t the lines straight?” James asked.

  “The map projection,” Professor Toei said. “A straight line on the surface of a sphere appears curved when you flatten the sphere out.”

  “Oh,” James said, feeling dumb. The two lines curved out from the Sea of Japan. One headed northwest, passing through China and Russia before curving down through the Scandinavian peninsula and into Western Europe. The line stopped in Spain, but James thought it would miss Africa if it continued.

  The other line went just a little north of true west. It passed through Korea and into China, curving over India and going straight through the Middle East. It terminated in Africa.

  “As you can see, we have many possibilities for the locations,” Professor Toei said. “We’re doing research right now, to see if there are any known archeological sites along those lines. Now that all the roles have been filled, we need to move you to another location and get another reading. That way we can triangulate an approximate location.”

  He looked down as his laptop beeped.

  “Ah, yes, here is the track for the new keys.”

  He pressed a button and a new map popped up. This one was of a smaller scale, only showing Japan, Korea and the coast of China “Oh, this is interesting. They’ve flagged that the new headings point right at Kagoshima and Tokyo. That’s worth looking into.”

  “That could be a coincidence, though, couldn’t it, Professor?” Mitsue asked. “The keys could be in… Southeast Asia or… Alaska?”

  “They could,” the Professor agreed. “But we were expecting at least some of them to have been recovered. If they have, I’d expect to find them in some museum or research facility. We’ll know more once we get a triangulation.”

  “Where are we going to take that reading from?” Suki asked.

  Professor Toei frowned. “The further the better, but we can’t take you too far from classes. I’ll see if I can arrange for a two-day trip to Okinawa next weekend.”

  Mitsue sat up straight in his seat. “We’re going to Okinawa next weekend?” he asked.

  “Yes… It should be fine. We can get a commercial flight without raising too much suspicion.”

  Mitsue stood up and bowed to the Professor. “Can Midoriko-senpai come as well?”

  “What were you thinking?” James asked his friend. They had finally gotten a chance to talk about it, now that Midoriko wasn’t there. Midoriko had come back with them on the helicopter, but she had work to do on the base, so they went back to the school alone. Professor Toei had left them once they got back to the dorm building, so James could finally speak.

  James had been asking the question with his eyes, ever since Mitsue had started pushing for Midoriko to be included on their day trip. Now that they’d finally gotten a chance to ask it aloud, Mitsue knew exactly what he meant.

  “I couldn’t let this chance go by,” Mitsue said defensively. “Sun, sand, swimsuits. I won’t have a better opportunity to ask her out.”

  “There’s already a beach just down there,” James pointed out. “If you wanted to ask her to swim with you, you could have. But you haven’t managed to say five coherent words to her since you met her,” James pointed out. Not that he was any better. Suki could reduce him to babbling with just a smile. He was just fortunate that she didn’t seem to mind.

  “I will do it, James.” Mitsue declared.

  “Have you taken Suki down to the beach for a swim?” Harue asked with a sly smile.

  “Narble,” James said. The thought of Suki in a bikini shut his brain down, leaving Suki to answer for him.

  “Not yet,” Suki said. “I wonder if I should get a new suit? I haven’t used the one I got, but it might be fun to have my boyfriend pick one. What do you think, James?”

  James gathered all his resolve. None of the fights he’d had compared to this challenge. The crash landing, running the gauntlet of baseballs or getting shot at with magical arrows. None of that compared to this.

  “I… think…” he said, carefully enunciating every word. “That the swimsuit you’ve already chosen will look amazing.”

  “Good answer,” Suki giggled. “I shall look forward to showing it to you, then.”

  “Are you happy now, Kaori? Is this what you wanted?”

  The words were screamed out at top volume, and everyone instantly recognised the voice. They were on the girls' floor, but James wouldn’t have been surprised if they had heard it from the lobby.

  “Junko!” Suki exclaimed. She rushed over to the girl’s room. The door was closed, but Junko’s voice was carrying right through it. Suki knocked.

  “Junko? Are you all right?” she called out.

  The door opened. Kaori was standing behind it, looking haggard. Before she could speak, Harue pushed past both girls with a curt, “Idol Club business!”

  James and Mitsue stayed outside, feeling helpless but not wanting to intrude. Kana also remained in the corridor, looking interested but not concerned.

  Junko was in the room. Her makeup was smeared from crying, and she glared at Harue spitefully.

  “You!” she snarled. “You must be happy. You’ve got everything you want now. I’ll have to quit the club, I’ll have to quit everything!”

  “Junko…” Kaori pleaded, but Junko wasn’t listening.

  “You!” she said, pointing at James. “You’re an American! I need your gun, so I can end it all in front of these traitors! Let them see what their betrayal led to!”

  “No,” James said firmly.

  Junko drew herself up haughtily. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” she screamed.

  “I… do,” James said. He didn’t, exactly, but it didn’t matter. “I don’t have a gun and I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.”

  “Enough with the histrionics, Junko,” Harue snapped. She grabbed the taller girl by the shoulders and forced Junko to face her. Junko struggled, but Harue held her without effort. “What happened?”

  “What happened? I had to return the Frames! Thanks to your interference!” Junko’s voice was filled with condemnation. “Only, I couldn’t! They wouldn’t take the Artemis back, because of Matsuri!”

  “What did Matsuri do?” Harue asked.

  “Well, according to Mitsuri, she… uh… recalibrated the phase-conduction lattice in the servo-neural interface? Oh, and she mentioned redirecting some… kinetic flux overflow into the auxiliary inertia dampeners, whatever that means. I don’t know! All I know is that she voided the warranty!”

  “Oh… that’s going to cause some problems,” Harue said.

  “Problems? Problems?” Junko’s voice dripped with spite. “I haven’t gotten to the problems yet! Because I wasn’t able to get a refund for the Artemis, Daddy decided that I was being irresponsible with my purchasing decisions! Me! He’s frozen my credit card!”

  “Is that what all this is about?” Harue said. She almost managed to hide her amusement, but Junko picked up on it.

  “That’s right, laugh! You got what you wanted all along. I’m disgraced! I can’t stay in this club, in this school anymore!”

  “Junko, Junko, Junko,” Harue said. She gave the girl a little shake. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I am not,” Junko declared.

  “You are,” Harue retorted. “You think the only thing you have of worth is your credit card?”

  “Well, I—how will I live, without it?”

  “Your accommodation and tuition are paid for,” Harue said. “Meals are covered. You already have enough clothes. You still have top grades. You can sing, and dance, and that is what we wanted you for. Not your money.”

  “But I need—”

  “You don’t need it. The only thing you’ve lost is the one thing that was holding you back.”

  “But, won’t having the Artemis still here cause problems?”

  “Mhmmn… yeah, it will. But we’ll deal with that.”

  “No… I should take responsibility!” Junko tried struggling again, but Harue’s hold was unbreakable. She eased Junko over to the bed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Harue said. “Just get some rest, while we check things out. We’re a team, and we’ve got your back.”

  “O—okay,” Junko said. She slumped as soon as Harue sat her down, as if exhausted.

  “You stay here,” Harue said. “Kaori, keep an eye on her.”

  “Sure…” Kaori said hesitantly. “What will you be doing?”

  Harue frowned. “I suppose we should find Matsuri, and see if she can reverse whatever she did.”

  “Oh! I guess there isn’t a problem after all!” Harue said, looking around. They hadn’t found Matsuri in her room, and the next obvious place to check was the Frame shed.

  The shed wasn’t empty, by any means. The student projects that had been moved aside to make room for Junko’s toys were still there. What was absent was any of the new Frames.

  “Do you think it got sent back somehow?” James asked.

  “Well, I—” was all Harue managed to say before she was interrupted by a metallic crash. They all turned to look at the entrance.

  Shion was standing next to a scattered pile of Frame parts. From the way she was looking at them in satisfaction, James assumed that she had just kicked them over. Before any of their group could say anything, Shion tore her gaze away from the mess and addressed them.

  “Hey. Losers. Matsuri’s in trouble.”