"Please, I would be most delighted to hear about this sister in the [Inner Circle]."
Having found a way to extend the conversation, the mouse-faced one directs Oracion and Val-sama towards the rgest circle of the gathering, pointing with one arm fully outstretched while facing the girls from the side.
As mousey takes scurrying steps towards the circle, Oracion cold voice calls out Val-sama from behind, out of mouse-face's earshot.
"Aren't you tired, pying pretend all night?"
"Senior, it isn't pretend if you are genuinely interested."
Val-sama stops mid-step, and turns her head with an open-hearted smile for Oracion, "Master once said, in order for others to be interested in you..."
"... you must first be interested in other people, tch."
Oracion reluctantly releases her underhanded grip on the table to follow Val-sama,
grumbling to herself about the stupidity of her master's ideals,
but she can't help but notice
out of the corner of her eye...
... a certain goat-masked guest in bck ce had been observing them
... with great interest.
"... like I was saying...
what's the point of equality,
if the highers cannot stand over the lowers?"
The speaker in the middle of the circle is a girl our age, her short grey hair gives her a young, boyish air, muted white long sleeved top reminiscent of a marching band's attire from long days past, tight shorts hug closely to her long and well-toned thighs showing off that princely zettai ryouki[1]!
"Fifteen years of an elite mennetic bloodline,
yet surpassed in a single sunset.
Surely this is some cruel jest!
Why would we allow clowns to carry knives?
In a rules-based, ethical, and and safe system,
menne would be categorized and ranked!
The benefits must flow all the way back!
Lessers making menne without check,
the cheek, the horror, the audacity!
What's the point of being elite,
if you cannot lord it over others?
Read my lips: 'No more menne magick!'
In the end, it comes down to equality, equality, that damned equality...!"
She raises a gss of champagne in the air while speaking, to a closed half-circle of guffawed agreement from the animal-headed crowd. Having received confirmation from the crowd, she downs the entire gss of funny yellow juice in it, letting out a closed-eye gasp, clearly not very used to the hard stuff! The rest of the animal heads join in clinking toasts, downing their gsses as well!
Clearly, our little prince is in good company.
Val-sama listens to the funny speech from the back of the crowd, too polite to sneak past the gaps like her mouse-masked guide did. Whiskerface tries to get the attention of its 'sister-in-arms' by waving, but fails to dislodge her attention from the more impressively-masked guests, and scurries back to safe harbor behind the crowd.
"W-well? My sister-in-arms, Prinz Rufti de Galopin is impressive, isn't she?"
Val-sama wordlessly smiles back with empty eyes.
"She's certainly very... overbearing."
Thinking that was praise for the Prinz, mousey thoughtlessly continues, "Sister-in-arms' ideals are profound. She's like The First, To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to---"
"No, I think not."
Val-sama's short and curt reply cut the Frommager off in its tracks!
Her face now a perfect and immovable pster,
"It seems our Prinz believes that only the elite deserve to lord over menne magick."
Mousey, not having caught Val-sama's change in tone, nods rapidly.
"How very disgraceful."
Oops...?
I'm sure that our golden-haired princess wanted to keep those words to herself?
Or not...?
At that moment, she attracted Prinz's Rufti's attention!
Having her hugbox pierced through, the Prinz turns to Val-sama, the very image of bale-faced benevolence! I might have seen this sort of face somewhere in my manga about dark swordsmen and daemonic horses grinning at virgin princess knights.
"I say, little rat, who is this? I know we invited people from all over tonight, even people from the [Shadowthrone]... But the Olden Families are in agreement... magick must go...!"
"Or else you must go...!"
Just as the Prinz raises a gss as a signal, the two heavyset guards that were standing at the ballroom's door come up directly and uncomfortably close behind Val-sama! The horseguys cross their arms in towering shadow behind her, blowing putrid tufts of air through their nostrils on Val-sama's head!
"I said it was disgraceful."
Val-sama doesn't seem to mind the towering bulkheads standing behind her, not taking a single step back; more interest in taking the first sip of sparkling water in her champagne gss, "If The First or the Founders were here, they would have ughed."
There was certainly no ughter from the aghast Prinz or her little circle of sycophants! Rufti's sort of bullying might have worked against the lesser willed (your detective included), but our princess friend doesn't seem to be moved by Prinz's not-very-subtle threat! Perhaps seeing that her princely stature was quickly losing its luster, Rufti pulls a line straight out of the glowie handbook on disappearing unwanted people,
"... it seems our golden-haired guest has had a little too much to drink!
Perhaps she needs some time alone in the wine celrs below!
It might remind her a little about hierarchy and majority,
just like in the good Olden Days!"
Just then, gss shatters, and something hurtles through the air, aimed directly at the grey-haired Prinz!
Moments earlier.
There are human limits that are not supposed to be surpassed. Take the forty-yard dash for example. My manga teaches me that seven seconds is a perfectly respectable time to cross from one end of the front garden to the next! That Madi-san is able to do it in four seconds ft already breaks the rules of physics and reaction time!
"Quiet, Aya-chan!"
Madi-san flicks the side of my face as we press our ears against a cup on the chateau's ballroom windows. Recoiling slightly in the orange light, I would like to start shouting that those who shout the loudest shouldn't flick faces, but I settle for a scowl at this purple-haired maniac instead.
This small cup is part of Madi-san's little bag of tricks she brings along with her whenever she's exposing conspiracies; which is all the time. Usually strapped behind the small of her back, you wouldn't see it on her visual novel sprite, but it IS there!
Having just endured the worst pickup lines in existence and some tomboy rping as the next Akechi Mitsuhide [2]...
... we might be the only people who noticed.
"Where is Oracion going?"
Just as the horseguys vacated their posts on the ballroom floor to menacingly stand behind Val-sama, I can't help but notice that Oracion took advantage of this lull and slipped through the steps leading out of the ballroom!
"Hmm hmm! This must be some sort of pn between the two of them!"
"It is...?"
I have to wonder about that.
Your thoughts, Madi-san?
Madi-san?
Madi-san had just removed her face from the window gss, bringing her cup with her.
"Hey! I haven't finished listening in!"
Why are you trying a rope to that cup?
Grabbing behind her, Madi-san produces a bck handled brush with dark tips, dabbing it most unhygienically on her tongue, she starts scrawling in bck ink on the letter paper!
"To... Prinz...
Nah, that's too long, we go with the cssic!!"
Tossing away the brush which dissipates in the air after use, Madi-san stuffs her cursed letter in the cup. She does an unnecessary backflip and takes a few one-legged hops behind her, winding her throwing arm backwards like a helicopter bde!
Stop. Stooopu, Madi-san!
Too te!
Madi-san hurls the cup straight at the window, those dexterous arms of hers having winded up enough force that for the tiniest of moments, I could have sworn that it caught on bright orange fire for a moment!
Motion lines abound as the foreign object smashes through the window, Madi-san doing an unnecessary high kick in the air, she ends this action sequence with a finger gun out of frame!
"Pow! Ehe!"
[SFX:Crash!!!]
The foreign object homes on the overly-rge head of the arc antagonist, nding with a painful clunk on her head!
[SFX: Crowd]
"Putain! Wha... What the f(あ)ck was that?!"
Rufti crouches down in pain, all the air defted from her high and mighty posture just moments before, both hands holding the top of her head as she hops around like a petite crab! The headless crowd didn't know what to do at this unexpected development, mostly babbling nonsense in confusion!
"It came from the side!"
"A cup...? This isn't one of ours..."
"Hey! There's something inside it!"
Eyeing the foreign object, Rufti rolls the cup over, producing Madi-san's letter from within.
Unwrapping the rolled up and unwanted letter, Prinz Rufti's eyes dite into tiny pinpricks upon reading it with two trembling hands:
U R A
FAGET
Go Go And Learn Moonrunes With Aya-chan![1]zettai ryouki- kanji:絶対領域Refers to the yabai bit of flesh that goes between a short skirt and thighhighs.
[2] Akechi Mitsuhide - A samurai from the Warring States period, known most famously for betraying Oda Nobunaga for deep and unfathomable reasons we STILL don't know about to this day. He was NOT a femboy, Madi-san!
