Chapter ??

  Brrrt

  *Yorin*

  It has been a week since Hero Remmi last came out of her “workshop,” a structure wholly separate from the main house and half buried into the ground as if she fears something might escape.

  It is a rather large structure, ten arm spans across and half as many deep, with a thick wire running on poles all the way to the water wheel she installed on the river. The wire tickles with electric mana that powers ceiling lamps keeping the whole interior illuminated day and night, accompanied by all sorts of noises ranging from the cries of tortured iron to the clap of thunder.

  I’ve staunchly avoided coming anywhere near it. I have only been inside once, and that was more than enough. I can still perfectly picture the madhouse in my mind: Planks of wood, sheets of metal, gears, gaskets and tubes. There was no sense of order, except Remmi knew where everything she wanted was. Half-constructed assemblies of eldritch devices were scattered across tabletops, their purpose I wouldn’t even dare venture to guess.

  I have not wished a thing to do with it ever since. Let her keep whatever sacrilegious things she is twisting the elements with unseen by mortal eyes. It is better that way. Until today, I have kept to that view with the ironclad will one resolves to avoid a nest of hornets.

  But it has been a week since Remmi has emerged from that hellish hole in the ground, and someone must check on her. Noises have not ceased, and the lights have not dimmed, but there has been no sight of the Gunslinger Hero.

  By Empress Xuhitana’s orders and my former charge’s personal request, the alien girl is my responsibility, and so the duty to venture into that den of mad alchemy falls upon my own shoulders. Would that I could entrust it to Ayre, but … no. No, that child is my responsibility. I will check on her.

  Am I not too old for such cowardice as to foist the place onto a mere child such as the archer? I am ashamed for even having considered it for the slightest of moments. Though they both may be children, Remmi’s mind has already been warped by the ways of another world, and it would not do to inflict that madness upon her only friend of her own age.

  Thus steeling myself, I make my way from the edge of the property toward that withdrawn hovel at a pace I tell myself is better described as measured than halting. It takes an eternity and far too little time to cross the distance before I am standing in front of the steps down to a thick steel door.

  My heart quivers in my chest at the thought of what I might walk in on, but I still it again with shame. Remmi could be hurt or sick. Even in my self-flagellation, I dare not consider an even worse possibility. Surely, nothing so small could be the end of a summoned Hero entirely. The world, the System would never permit it.

  With the timidity of a rabbit, I take the few steps down to the door and find myself hoping it will be locked even as I reach for its handle. An utterly foolish thought. Such an obstacle would only be a passing inconvenience for me, I am well aware, and would serve only as an excuse to go no further.

  But the door is not locked, and it opens easily under my grip, welcoming me into the acrid air. It smells as would the wake of a lightning strike, as if the air, itself, were burnt by a great passing of energy. Still under that is the smell of a forge, of hot iron, coal fire and singed leather. The long table against the far wall is as covered with foreign detritus as the last time I was down here, and I find myself utterly unable to say whether it is the same collection of artifacts now as it was then.

  The rest of the space is filled with tools and machinery, only a small fraction of which I am able to identify. Much of it, I know, Remmi built, herself, for she could not find tools of the sort or strength she required. She had to build that which she would use to build her mad creations, completely disappointed with what Toleste had to offer in that regard. Some of it, though I may have no name, I can intuit its purpose from its design, but much of it is simply alien to me.

  I push deeper into the building, following the hissing, sizzling, spurting sound I am hearing from further in, and even with the lights overhead, I nearly do not recognize the girl when I see her.

  Remmi is bent down over some contraption, her form distorted by heavy leather gloves and a blacksmith’s apron. Thick goggles obscure her face and some sort of flame comes from her hand, though I can tell the origin is not magic. There is no sense of arcana from it. It takes me a moment to spot the spigot in her grip as she directs it at various points on the device. Some sort of hose leads away from the underside of her hand, some sort of fuel line, perhaps.

  Everywhere the flame touches, the metal glows white-hot, rimmed with angry orange, and the flame, itself, is a vivid blue that leaves spots in my vision when I look away. I try to look to the contraption, itself, but most of it is covered with an oily tarp. It is impossible for me to determine its full shape.

  I am nearly about to call out for the girl’s attention when the flame cuts out and Remmi exhales, still staring at the point in the metal she had been focusing the flame on. It befuddles me how she could be leaning in so close to a flame so bright, but no, it must be the goggles. Perhaps they are smoked to obscure the light.

  “Finally,” she proclaims. “That should solve the structural stability issues! If it can’t hold itself together through a little vibration, it’s never gonna handle full brrrt!”

  As usual when she speaks of the mechanics of her technology, even the words that are not simply gibberish make little sense to me. Instead of dwelling on it, I watch as she stands up straight and lifts the goggles up into her hair. This has the effect of making her eyes the cleanest part of her face, as the rest is covered in sweat, oil and soot.

  I mutter the Cleanse spell into existence and wave it over her form.

  She blinks as the soiling disappears from her skin and her clothes and looks up as if taking notice for the first time of another presence in the room. Her shock is immediately replaced with a bright smile. “Yorin! What a pleasant surprise! What are you doing here?”

  “I am checking on you,” I state simply, doing my best to maintain at least a neutral gaze, surrounded on all sides as I am by such chaos and madness.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “On me,” she repeats, her expression immediately going lost and confused. “What for? Did I do something?”

  I let my gaze become a little sterner. “You have not emerged from this workshop even once in the last week.”

  “Week?”

  Her gaze goes to a corner, where a pile of cheap bags and thin wooden boxes has accumulated. I recognize them immediately as the System’s ration packs purchasable by Heroes through its point system. Is that really all she has eaten for a week? Apparently so, as her eyes evaluate the pile for a moment, taking its measure, and she gives a slow nod of disbelief.

  “Wow, yeah, okay, I guess it has been that long.”

  I cross my arms under my chest, keeping my focus on her. “For something you profess to hate, you are entirely too prone to losing yourself in your crafting. What is it that has so enamored you this time?”

  That puts a wild grin on her face as she steps back and whips away the tarp from the device with a, “Ta-da!”

  My first full look at the machine does not provide me with many more answers than I possessed before. There is a large, roughly cylindrical assembly at one end with a pair of handles attached, before transitioning into a half-dozen metal tubes arranged in a circular pattern. I can spy a casing holding an electric stone shard behind the assembly, presumably to power … whatever it is.

  Remmi’s grin is wide as she props her hands on her hips. “What do you think?!”

  I raise my gaze from the device back to her. “I think it looks as though you bolted metal pipes to a sausage grinder.”

  That response makes her frown as she tries to process it before looking back down at the machine to see if she can make out what I see. She gives up in short order, throwing her hands out as she turns back to me.

  “It’s a minigun, not a sausage grinder!”

  It is my turn to return my attention to the contraption, which must weigh wholly half a dan. “Remmi, in no world does this … thing remotely resemble your gun, and even if it did, it would in no way qualify for the definition of miniature to it.”

  That just brings her grin back. “That’s because it’s not a miniature of my gun, but of a heavy mounted autocannon!”

  That last word is gibberish to me, but I can intuit what she must be saying. This mechanism is essentially a downscaled version of an artillery emplacement.

  That thought gets me staring her in the face. “You miniaturized a siege weapon of your world for individual use?”

  “Eh, I wouldn’t call it a siege weapon,” she waffles, rubbing the side of her head as she does when she tries to explain something. “The full-sized version is more for light vehicles and personnel suppression.” She holds a finger up for emphasis. “In fact, this is technically a miniaturized version of a miniaturized version of that, making this objectively a microgun, but everyone just colloquially calls anything with multiple spinning barrels a minigun.”

  She hefts it up and depresses a switch on one of the handles, which engages the electric shard’s power to some mechanism that begins to whine as the tubes start spinning faster and faster. Nothing fires since she apparently hasn’t loaded any projectiles into it yet, but she seems satisfied with its performance.

  “This thing’s actually pretty heavy compared to what we’d build back home, mostly because you guys lack lighter, stronger metals that radiate heat better. This thing’s mostly steel, and if it weren’t for the fact we’ve got super-strength, it’d be too heavy to use without bracing it, but I’m expecting the kick to be reduced with all of that extra weight, at least.”

  Remmi starts moving for the doorway and I immediately get a bad feeling.

  “Remmi, what are you doing?”

  Her grin has all of the excitement of a child getting to play with a new toy for the first time. “We’re going to try it out, of course! Can’t very well fire it off in here!”

  “We?”

  “Well, I won’t make you fire it,” the yellow-haired girl assures me as she shoulders past me with the machine, “but don’t you want to see what it does?”

  I most certainly do not want to see what it does, but I have a gnawing feeling that it might be necessary, if only to be on top of the inevitable consequences, and I follow her out into the field, toward the tree line opposite the direction of the village.

  Remmi pulls one of the “bullet” sleeves from the satchel on her hip and turns it over in her grip. Her expression can only be described as manic. “You wouldn’t believe how many points I’ve poured into my magazine size for the sake of this project! I’ll basically never have to reload my pistol in the middle of a firefight ever again, but I’m betting this thing still won’t be able to fire for a whole minute!”

  That … seems an oddly short time, and a great expenditure of bolts. “What can be accomplished in so little time?”

  That manic grin turns to me a moment before she jams the sleeve into an aperture on the machine. “Let’s find out!”

  The first burst erupts with such volume that I clamp my hands over my ears. I can see the fire leaping from the barrels as they each take such rapid turns that their movements become indistinguishable.

  Remmi lets out a shout in celebration, but only for a moment. Then she trains her attention on a large tree, and this burst is more prolonged, several seconds in length. It ends with the creaking of the tree before it crashes to the ground, the entire thing chewed through by the bullets launched from the minigun.

  My Heroic charge is laughing at the sight, while I stare at it in abject horror.

  “Let’s see how long it can really go!”

  I’m still staring at the remains of the tree and almost miss her declaration, but this time, she holds the button down and sweeps the weapon back and forth, unleashing lead in what can only be described as a deluge, laughing wildly all along as if all of the explosions of dirt and splinters are only for her amusement.

  When the noise finally fades to an echoed roar, I can only imagine a regiment of soldiers having been standing in the pockmarked field ahead of us. How many good men would have been torn to ribbons by such a terrible weapon?

  The eldritch being under my care doesn’t seem to be done yet, however, tossing aside the empty sleeve before pulling out another with a look that can only be madness. I am certain of it when I see the color of the stripe along the side: Red. She is loading her explosive fireball rounds.

  I start for her before I can even think of anything more to say than, “Remmi, no!”

  “Remmi, yes!” she crows and slams the button down. “PURIFICATION CANNON!!!”

  And I can only stare at the nightmare that is the great beam of light as wide as a man’s chest, throwing the entire clearing into dark relief as it erupts through trees, brush, stone and hillside to roar into the far distance. I cannot even feel my limbs as I watch it collide with a small mountain only visible through the path the beam carved, with an impact plume we can see from here.

  Remmi’s face is enraptured, eyes staring wide at that distant sight and smile wide enough to see all of her teeth. She lets the demonic machine drop to the ground as she begins to jump and holler, throwing her arms up into the air.

  “Yorin! Did you see that, Yorin?! Yorin!”

  She is trying to get my attention, but I did see it, and I wish I could look away. Even if I could, it will haunt my dreams for a season.