Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.5

INTERLUDE

Shadow Gale had acquired a cord and a TV, so she couldn’t keep hounding her captors for more. She decided she’d obediently accept the CRT and stealthily modify it.

“Thank you very much.”

Bowing her head to the armor, she set the TV in a corner of the room. Now, once the armor left, she’d actually get started.

Still sitting, Shadow Gale stole a quiet glance behind her. The armor was still there. Since Shadow Gale didn’t know where her eyes were positioned, it was kind of hard to tell which way her gaze was pointed, but she seemed to be looking at Shadow Gale.

Shadow Gale turned back to the armor and bowed her head. “Honestly, thank you so much.”

Picking up the remote control, Shadow Gale turned on the power. The screen was unchanged—it was still static.

Oh, she realized. If her goal was to get a TV to kill time, and that TV was a CRT that didn’t show anything, then why would Shadow Gale be satisfied? Putting herself in the armor’s position to consider it, it seemed too suspicious.

“M-man…it doesn’t show anything. Oh…dear.” Repeating the same thing to herself, she changed the channels. Shadow Gale knew nothing would show up, no matter what channel she switched it to. But now, she pretended not to know that. “This is strange. How odd.”

She emphasized with everything she had: “I’m not doing anything suspicious.”

“Gee, I guess there’s nothing I can do about this, huh? I borrowed a TV in order to kill time, but none of the channels are showing anything. Guess I have to give up…”

She heard the rattle of the armor moving followed by the metal door opening and closing. Shadow Gale turned around. The armor was gone. Shadow Gale’s acting had tricked her.

Pumping a little fist, Shadow Gale hurriedly cleared her throat to cover that. Even if the armor was gone, it’d be a bad idea to be openly glad about it. The four black creatures were still there. These guys probably wouldn’t go away. She had to move things along bit by bit, without them noticing.

But still, she’d finally made a bit of progress. From here on out would be the time to show off her technical skills, not her acting skills. But what first: the remote control or the TV itself? Starting work on the cable might even be an option.

Less than five minutes after Shadow Gale started to put a plan together in her mind, she heard metallic sounds coming down the stairs, and the door opened.

The armor was standing there carrying a cardboard box. Shadow Gale peered inside to find a game console from about two generations back plus a bunch of games.

“Ohhh right. True, I could play some games. All right. Hooking that up is easy, so…”

She’d never thought she would wind up playing video games in a place like this. But not doing that would make her look suspicious, so then she had no choice but to do it. Hooking it up, she turned on the power for the TV and the console. With the armor watching her intently, she had no chance for any modifying during this process.

Mashing the START button, Shadow Gale skipped the opening video.

If she’d played this game back in elementary school, she’d have mocked the bad graphics, cheap music, the kind of difficulty level that made it so you couldn’t tell what the target age range was, the incomprehensible story, and various other things. She figured she would probably have dropped the game with a blithe remark like “Only old farts enjoy retro games. To a young person playing it now, it may as well be just some shitty game.”

But giving it a shot now, this game was surprisingly interesting. She came to think that the graphics and music had their own sort of charm. A high school girl wasn’t an old fart, but she was fairly adult compared with an elementary schooler.

But as to whether it was fun, the answer was no. This situation was just too awful to be playing games. Even without turning around to look back, she could tell the armor was right behind her. She never heard the sound of the door opening and closing, and occasionally, she heard metal scraping. The armor was right behind her, watching her play the game.

Simple electronic noises sounded in the room. You wouldn’t see glaring red flashing in modern games. While slowly learning the mechanics, Shadow Gale made her way through the game. It was of the simple action variety, but playing it sometimes made her think, Oh, this might have a fair amount of depth. She seemed to recall this game had a bunch of sequels. It had to have been popular because it was interesting, after all. The only problem was the situation.

The armor was watching. Shadow Gale could feel her gaze. Her back prickled painfully.

If she was staying here with Shadow Gale because she was wary of her magic, then she wouldn’t have given Shadow Gale the TV or console in the first place, would she? No kidnapper would hand her smartphone over to someone they had kidnapped and imprisoned because the prisoner said she was bored. If the armor knew it would be used as a weapon, she wouldn’t have handed it over in the first place. And to manage her boredom, the armor could have given her a manga magazine, a puzzle, or a book of chess problems—there were any number of pastimes that didn’t use electricity.

In other words, this wasn’t out of caution. So then what other sort of reason could there be?

A memory popped into Shadow Gale’s head.

It had to have been around elementary school. Remembering now all the things she had done and thought then, she felt like she’d been quite the cheeky brat, but perhaps because there had been another far worse brat close at hand, she also felt like she might have been within a normal range.

Mamori had been playing a video game in her room. It had been an action game that game magazines had been buzzing about at the time, saying people were crowding to preorder it. Controller in hand for one hour, two, she forgot the passage of time as she continued playing, and without realizing it, Kanoe had come up behind her.

Sitting daintily on the bed, she’d watched Mamori play the game. Since Mamori had been in elementary school that meant Kanoe would also have been in elementary school at the time, but there had been an abnormal intensity to her gaze that had kept Mamori from concentrating on the game anymore, and she wasted lives pointlessly on stupid little mistakes.

At the time, Mamori had interpreted it like this:

Kanoe wanted to play the game, so she was pressuring her to “Hurry up and give it over.”

When Mamori had said, with all the sarcasm she could muster, “If you want to play, then take it,” handing over the controller, Kanoe had shaken her head, saying she didn’t want to do it. But then when Mamori kept playing the game, the pressure coming from behind had kept her from playing decently.

When she tried to give it over, she was refused.

When she tried to play the game, she felt pressured.

Even when she suggested, “How about I quit the game and we do something else?” Kanoe shook her head.

What other choices were there? If she was to ask Kanoe directly, “What do you want to do, miss?” she surely wouldn’t take it well.

Elementary school Mamori had considered. Just what did Kanoe want out of her? What did Kanoe want her to do? What would be the right choice of action? She thought and thought, and in the end, she didn’t even understand anything herself anymore, and selecting “It doesn’t even matter anymore” had been the right choice. That was how it had been then.

What about now? This situation did indeed resemble that time.

Shadow Gale closed her eyes for a while. After thirty seconds of slow counting, she opened her eyes. When she quietly turned to look behind her, the armor was still there.

Shadow Gale picked up the second controller and offered it to the armor. “If you want, why don’t we play co-op?”

Bringing up one knee with a rattle, the armor stood. It approached Shadow Gale, bent over, took the controller from her, and sat down beside her.

Can it play video games…?

This concern was proven groundless immediately after starting, when the armor went from a hidden warp into a bonus stage.