-.

I shrugged. "You know what they say – looks like Shalltear Bloodfallen, talks like Shalltear Bloodfallen, better hope is not Shalltear Bloodfallen."

"No. No, I do not. They do not say that." The girl gave be a bland, highly unimpressed look. I get that a lot. She pointed to the translucent crystalline wings coming out of her back. "Do you not see these wings?"

Now Monika and I both shrugged. "Flandre Scarlet."

/"Her wings are actual crystals though,"/ added Monika.

"I am a FAIRY, you ignorant louts!" the girl hissed.

"That… that just makes it worse, to be honest," I said in fairly conciliatory tone. Then in a side whisper "ᴹᵒⁿᶦᵏᵃ, ᵖʳᵉᵖᵃʳᵉ ᵗᵒ ᶠᶦʳᵉ ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒⁿ ᵗᵒʳᵖᵉᵈᵒᵉˢ."

/"Player, stop. You are being inexcusably rude. Why? Are you that drunk? Wait a second. Don't move. I need to stab you a little bit."/ She drove a hollow needle into my scalp. It didn't even hurt.

/"… Your BAC is .09,"/ Monika announced. Then she palmed her face. /"… While alcohol is primarily metabolized in the liver, it also is metabolized in small amounts in the pancreas in the brain. Accelerating alcohol metabolism increases the pa.s.s-through of alcohol in *all of them*."/

She looked pensive and leaned on one side of the captain's chair. /"Am… am I drunk driving right now?"/

Yeah probably.

"How fascinating," the fairy whispered, standing up to get a better view. "What manner of creature are you?"

"I AM A CHAR!" I replied, beaming with my hands on my hips.

"I was not talking about you," the fairy replied with a lidded stare. "Though you certainly are… a creature."

/"You are insulting my housbando, but I can't deny the truth of your words,"/ said Monika. /"But do that again and we will have less than polite words."/

Ohoho. I love it. My heart goes doki doki when when my wifey goes loki loki. Her tiny face looked so darn smug I can't take it.

The fairy reached down to pick up her teddy bear, and hugged it protectively over her lap. "You are all so mean to me, I do not deserve it."

"Now, now, let's have no more of that. Enough with the jokes. I will treat this seriously then." I pulled at a chair, and sat on the chair facing her; backwards, resting my arms on the backrest of the chair. "You have lured us here for a reason, fair one, so let us have a talk. No… wait, how about – let's play a game."

Monika quirked her left eyebrow on the picture-in-picture monitor view on my eyescape projected HUD. She mouthed silently /'Player, I accept you, but are you actually dumb enough to make deals with fairies?'/

I opened my hand and said "Come, [Wine]." A small boom and the white circle of a [Boom Tube] appeared over my palm. A bottle of red wine from Duke Alfred's wine cellar appeared. One of these days I've got to stop stealing from the house of Ortlinde, but the Duke chose his words… poorly… when he said his whole estate would be fine to treat as my own.

I can't say no to Sue. But Duke Alfred *also* can't say no to Sue.

The fairy's eyes glittered with interest at the magic. A couple more circles and a pair of wine gla.s.ses joined the bottle. And I said with a grin "Why don't we play a game called '[Answer me, these Questions Three]'?"

-.

-.

The rules were simple.

1) We would fill a gla.s.s with wine appropriate to how much we think a question is worth.

2) If the other party answers the question, we would have to drink the gla.s.s.

3) If the other party refuses the question, they would have to drink the gla.s.s.

4) We would take turns asking and answering questions.

4a) Questions may be combined or clarified with related queries without a penalty, since we were using full wine gla.s.ses instead of shot gla.s.ses. Rapid fire questioning only really works with that.

Oh, and special rule:

5) Monika gets to ask or answer anything she wants at any time.

-.

-.

"You go first," I motioned to proceed.

"W-what are you intending, trying to get a young lady like me to drink? What are your intentions, human?"

I stared back at her, completely unimpressed with her doe-eyed shrinking pose. "Oh come off it. You're probably some hundred years old lady, aren't you?"

The fairy straightened out and smirked. "I will have you that I am only six…. teeeh…"

"Yeeeees?"

"I am today six hundred and twelve years old," she replied slowly and calmly, with an impish expression on her face, as if asking 'Impressed yet?' "Thinking about the exact date is a bother, so consider me forever a… girlish… six hundred." At the end her tone trailed off. She didn't seem too happy about that.

"Good cultivation," I replied.

"But you have tricked me. That was a question already. You must be punished." She pointed to the round table. "Drink a full gla.s.s!"

"Fair enough." I smoothly poured out red wine to fill the wine gla.s.s to the brim, and downed it. This is no regular drunkard, boy, no regular drunkard!

/"Don't get pull into her pace, Player,"/ said Monika, her face, scrunching up in concentration. Her tiny ferromorphous body dissolved back into a dull black sphere, and with a sound of shattering gla.s.s, she appeared again in her semi-transparent holographic form looming behind me. /"You lured us here with your bear. You're the one who has questions."/

The fairy blinked, and her face slowly opened into naked interest. "That is also fair." She put her bear onto the table. The bear stood up and waddled over. With its fingerless paws the bear pulled the wine bottle closer, and then pushed the other wine gla.s.s closer to her fingers.

She poured wine to about a quarter of the gla.s.s. "You two – I have heard of you. Are you the famous dragon-slayers that just arrived? What are your names?"

"I am Zah Playah von Chara."

/"I am Monika."/

The fairy nodded, and then elegantly sipped at her gla.s.s until it was drained. "Ask your question."

I poured wine again almost to the brim. I smiled thinly and asked in a strong voice "What. Is your name?"

She blinked. "I am Leene. Matriarch of the Fairy Tribe." She put her hand on her teddy bear's head. The toy seemed to preen and leaned into her touch like a cat. "And this is Paula."

I nodded, and again quickly downed the gla.s.s. Monika turned and stared at me suspiciously.

Leene poured half-full into her gla.s.s. "You are a magician, correct? How many elements can you use?"

Monika and I glanced at each other. I shrugged. "All of them, I suppose."

Paula the bear raised both paws to its face, looking greatly surprised.

"Astonis.h.i.+ng. It is no surprise that you were able to defeat a dragon, then." Leene nodded. "As you know, I am six hundred years experienced. As a Matriarch of the Fairies, there is little about magic that I do not know. I myself can use all elements except Dark and possess four Null spells. Would you consider becoming my student?"

/"People can possess more than one personal magic?"/

"Indeed. As a spirit, how about you? I have seen you take a small physical form and this larger spiritual form. Spirits are different from the living in that what they do is an innate ability instead of learned magic. Are you capable of magic?"

/"I don't have regular elemental magic. I can manipulate it, but I can't just go [Come, Earth] or something like that. But when it comes to [Null] magic…"/ Monika shrugged. /"All of them, sure."/

"Both of you become my student, it will be a most fruitful partners.h.i.+p."

Paula the Bear got on its knees and began to make begging motions.

I shook my head sadly. "Unfortunately we have many urgent business to do. We can't learn new things except on the go."

"Understandable. It is the privilege of the youth to become heroes." She smiled. "But it is also the experience of the mature to know that persistence pays off in the end."

I poured almost full again onto the wine gla.s.s. "Next question then. What. Is your quest?"

/"Oh Compiler I was right, this is a Monty Python plot,"/ Monika moaned. /"Player, what are you up to?"/

Leene blinked. "That… is not easy to answer. Could it be said that I don't have one?"

"It depends. Is the life you live one that can do without any?"

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Leene leaned back and put a hand to her lips. "A quest. What an interesting idea. I suppose you don't mean merely an expedition, or a mission. A quest is a journey… and life itself is a journey. A quest can also mean a goal, an ambition…"

Monika began to hide her face in her palms.

"I have already achieved most of mine. In six hundred years… there is little more that I can want. I have already reached the apex of my power and authority, and any more would just be… tedious responsibility. If anything, I would prefer to let go of this high status and veneration that I hungered for so long ago."

She looked off to the distance, and sighed. She leaned back on her chair again, and began drumming her slim little fingers on the plush red armrests. "I suppose… my quest is to find interesting people, and to find my delights observing them. Does that satisfy you?"

"That is sufficient." I gulped down the wine. "Aaah."

"Then I will ask my question." Daringly she filled her own gla.s.s to the full also. She raised her gla.s.s and stared at us, from her viewpoint the stem of the gla.s.s right at the center between us. "Truly, what are you? And I mean both of you this time."

Monika tilted her head to the side considered it. It was a good chance to show off… but in this dark room, under the pale moonlight, it was a serious question that deserved a serious answer. /"I am a form of digital life… I guess you could say I'm a spirit of some sort. Player here says I'm cursed. I once was just a normal girl, but now this is what I am."/

"This is my quest: To return to her a living body and a happy life as a human being," I replied. "I am A CHAR, a man without a country, a man without a name, a man without a face. What am I? A man who can only look to the future upon the grave of his murdered past."

Leene nodded slowly and drank down her wine. Glug, glug, glug. "Good oath," she said. She motioned for me to proceed.

I poured half onto the wine gla.s.s. "Answer me this, my question three. What. Do you regret about teaching Charlotte?"

Monika looked up sharply. /"What? Player, you mean this-?"/

"Ooh? So you are acquainted with that old student of mine? How refres.h.i.+ng." Her smiled turned into a leer. "Just how… well-acquainted are you?"

"SO IT WAS YOUUUUUUUUU!!!" Monika and I screeched, while pointing accusing fingers.

Paula the bear flinched and staggered back, collapsing to sit on its b.u.t.t. It looked up in seeming confusion.

/"So you're the reason Charlotte is the way she is!"/

"I fear no mortal on this world except Charlotte!"

/"But she's so earnest and innocent about it all that we can't bear to take advantage or hate her for it!"/

"That girl needs whole heaps of therapy before she can even begin to start being in the right mental shape to even recognize a romantic relations.h.i.+p!"

"Fufufufu….! Yes, it seems you are well-acquainted with my little apprentice."

/ "Player, how did you know this particular fairy was the one?"/

"Charlotte's very… unwilling… to speak about her teacher, but she told me enough about her training. To be ruthlessly made to cast spells until she pa.s.ses out, then woken roughly to keep casting it again. Only a person with the Null spell [Transfer] and a very deep magic capacity can do that. Someone interested in magic, and bored enough to teach a little girl everything she knows. Someone jaded enough that they can only live vicariously though her students… the clues were there to grasp."

Also, because I was the only one willing and able to understand Alan when he's sitting down b.i.t.c.hing about the troublesome women in his life. Other people only go 'Are you bragging, you bastaaaard?!'

"Very good! You are correct. I am indeed Charlotte's mentor. Ooh, spreading evil tales about me, next time we meet, she is getting such a slap!" Then Leene smirked. "But that does not answer the question."

"So I will answer this question well. I regret only that she has rejected the practical value of my teachings! She should be a woman now, but she is so boring! Knowledge alone doesn't warm you at night! I only regret having wasted my time with a dull… worthlessly shapely… student like her!"

Finally she has revealed her true form as an envious perverted old woman!

Paula the bear hid its face in its paws in shame.

I stood up. "Thank you for answering my questions." I pushed the chair I was sitting on to the side. "Now it is only time for violence."

"W-what? How could you even think that about a delicate (young) lady such as me? Are you trying to sate vengeance upon me for your lover? Even though you claim to have your wife at your side? How shameless. How scary! You are such a thug."

… Yeaaah, you really shouldn't be saying that with that sort of smile on your face.

/"Just because you look like that doesn't mean we're going to underestimate you. If you don't have six hundred years of kicking a.s.s and taking names, this is going to get very boring very quickly."/

"I am drunk. You are bored." I waved a palm in her direction. "Let's fight!"

"How delightful. You are a frighteningly logical person. I like it! I accept!"

/"Those words I have never expected to hear,"/ Monika moaned into her palm. Paula the Bear approached to try to give a sympathetic shoulder pat, but its paws just pa.s.sed through Monika's illusionary body.

"[Program Execute: Open]," whispered Leene. She stood up, and the red chair threw itself backwards from behind her, until hitting the wall. Slam. Then the plate gla.s.s windows threw themselves slammed open as well. Her wings quivered.

Leene leaped backwards and into the sky. She floated delicately in the night sky, her dark bulb-like shape silhouetted against the full moon.

"Different students have different ways of motivating them. Some must be cajoled, others pushed. Such straightforward means also have their merits. If you win against me, I shall reward you. If you lose, you must bow three times and accept me as your master."

/"Wait, what was that just now? I heard something oddly familiar there."/

"Paula, stay." Leene pointed down. "You, come at me."

I exploded into action, following her up into the night sky. Have at thee!

-.

-.