The morning sun had barely crested the horizon when Yami and Magna returned to the Black Bulls' base. They walked through the main gate with the stiff-legged dignity of men who had endured something terrible and emerged fundamentally changed. Both were fully clothed now—they had acquired replacement garments from somewhere during the night, though neither seemed eager to discuss exactly where or how. Yami's cigarette was burning steadily between his lips. Magna's sunglasses were slightly askew. And both of them carried the haunted expressions of warriors who had faced an impossible foe and survived through sheer stubbornness.
I was in the beast room with Asta when they arrived, feeding the scaled wolf that had developed a particular fondness for biting the shorter boy's head. Asta, to his credit, had learned absolutely nothing from his previous experiences and was once again holding a chunk of meat directly in front of the creature's cage.
"Here you go, little guy! Nice and easy! No biting this time! We're friends now, remember? Friends don't bite friends' heads!"
The wolf lunged. Asta's head disappeared into its jaws.
"I WAS WRONG! WE'RE NOT FRIENDS! OUGA, HELP!"
I pried the beast's jaws apart for the fourth time in two days and made a mental note to include "teaching Asta basic pattern recognition" on my list of long-term projects. The boy was genuinely incapable of learning from negative experiences. It was either admirable or concerning, depending on one's perspective.
"That's the fourth time," I observed.
"It's a very friendly-looking wolf!"
"It tried to eat your head. Four times."
"Fifth time's the charm!"
"There will not be a fifth time."
"You can't know that!"
"I can. I'm removing you from the beast room."
"NO! The wolf and I are bonding! This is bonding! THIS IS WHAT BONDING LOOKS LIKE!"
Noelle appeared in the doorway, her silver hair immaculately brushed, her Black Bulls robe worn with the same disdainful reluctance she brought to everything involving the squad. She took one look at Asta—covered in wolf saliva, his hair sticking up in seventeen different directions—and her expression curdled into something between disgust and exasperation.
"What is that noise? I could hear you shrieking from the other side of the castle. Some of us are trying to maintain a semblance of dignity, and your constant screaming is making it very difficult."
"The wolf bit my head again!"
"Again? You've been bitten by the same wolf multiple times?"
"Four times!"
"And you kept putting your head near its mouth?"
"It's a friendly wolf!"
Noelle stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned to me. "Is he always like this?"
"Yes."
"And you just... let him?"
"I intervene when necessary. He needs to learn on his own."
"He's clearly not learning!"
"He'll learn eventually."
"When?! After the wolf actually eats his head?!"
"That would also be a learning experience."
Noelle opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. Her silver eyes flickered over my frame—the black robe stretched across my shoulders, the wheel rotating behind my head, the calm, patient expression I'd perfected for exactly these situations—and a faint blush crept across her cheeks. She looked away quickly, crossing her arms with the practiced haughtiness of someone who was definitely not flustered.
"Whatever. It's not my responsibility to keep the magicless idiot alive. If he wants to be eaten by a wolf, that's his choice."
"It's a friendly wolf!" Asta insisted.
"It's a MANA BEAST! It doesn't have friends!"
"That's what you think! You don't know its heart!"
"I don't need to know its heart! I just need to know that it keeps trying to EAT YOURS!"
Their argument was interrupted by the sound of the main doors slamming open. Captain Yami's voice echoed through the corridors like a thunderclap. "MAGNA! Round up the newbies! Meeting in the common room! Now!"
We gathered in the common room five minutes later. Yami and Magna were seated on the largest couch—or rather, Yami was seated, sprawled across the cushions like a lion surveying his territory, while Magna perched on the edge of his seat with the nervous energy of someone who had recently experienced significant trauma. Both were now fully dressed in fresh robes, their earlier nudity a memory that neither seemed eager to revisit.
Asta bounced on his heels. "A mission?! Is it a mission?! Are we going on a mission?! Is it a real mission with fighting and danger and heroism?!"
"Calm down, shorty!" Magna held up his hands. "Let me explain before you explode!"
Noelle tossed her silver hair over her shoulder with a practiced flick. "It had better be a mission worthy of a royal. I didn't join the Magic Knights to clean bathrooms and feed animals. I joined to prove my superiority on the battlefield."
"You joined because the captain made you," I observed quietly.
"THAT'S NOT—that's not relevant! The point is, I expect this mission to be appropriate for someone of my station!"
Magna and Yami exchanged a glance. It was the kind of glance that suggested the mission in question was very much not appropriate for someone of Noelle's station.
"Well," Magna said, scratching the back of his head, "about that. The mission is... uh... it's a cleanup job. In Saussy Village. There's a wild boar infestation that needs taking care of."
Silence.
Noelle's expression went through several stages of processing. First confusion, then disbelief, then outrage. "Wild boars? WILD BOARS?! You want a Silva—a royal of the House Silva—to hunt WILD BOARS?! Like some kind of common exterminator?!"
"They're magical wild boars!"
"THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER!"
"We lost a bet!" Magna blurted out, his face flushing with embarrassment. "The captain and I, we went to this bar in the village near Saussy, and there was this old man, and he challenged us to cards, and we lost. We lost everything. Our clothes, our dignity, our—" He shuddered. "Everything. And as payment for our final debt, we have to clear out the boar infestation. But we can't do it alone because the captain has paperwork and I have training, so we're sending you three instead!"
Asta and Noelle stared at him.
"You lost a bet," Noelle said slowly, "and now WE have to do your work?"
"That's the gist of it, yeah."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"
"HE BEAT THE CAPTAIN!" Magna's voice cracked with the remembered trauma. "You don't understand! That old man is a monster! A card shark! A gambling demon in human form! We never stood a chance!"
Asta, who had been uncharacteristically silent, finally found his voice. "Wait, wait, wait. So the captain—Captain Yami, the guy who's supposed to be one of the strongest mages in the kingdom—lost a card game, and now WE have to clean up magical boars?"
"That's about the size of it."
"But that makes no sense!"
"It doesn't have to make sense! It just has to get done!"
Asta turned to Yami, his face a mask of bewildered indignation. "Captain! You're supposed to be the one giving us missions! Not the one giving us YOUR missions because you lost a bet!"
Yami, who had been silent throughout the entire exchange, took a long drag of his cigarette. The smoke curled around his face like a veil, obscuring his expression. When he spoke, his voice was calm. Almost philosophical.
"Are you going on the mission," he said, "or are you going to die?"
The temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. Asta's indignation evaporated instantly, replaced by the wide-eyed terror of someone who had just remembered exactly who he was talking to. Noelle's aristocratic posturing crumbled. Even I, who felt nothing, recognized the weight of the threat.
"We'll go!" Asta shouted, practically saluting. "We'll definitely go! We were always going to go! Weren't we, guys?! We love boars! Boars are our favorite!"
"I never said—" Noelle started.
"We LOVE them!" Asta clamped a hand over her mouth. "Thank you for the mission, Captain! We won't let you down!"
Yami rose from the couch, his massive frame casting a shadow that seemed to fill the entire room. "Good. Magna's in charge. Don't die. I've got to go surpass my limits." He paused at the doorway, his expression contemplative. "I'm going to take the biggest dump this kingdom has ever seen. Surpassing limits starts from within."
And then he was gone, leaving behind a room full of stunned silence and the faint smell of cigarette smoke.
Noelle was the first to recover. "Did he just say—"
"We're not talking about it," Magna said quickly. "We're never talking about it. The captain's bathroom habits are classified information."
"HE TOLD US HIMSELF!"
"CLASSIFIED!"
---
The travel arrangements became complicated almost immediately.
"Okay," Magna said, rubbing his temples. "Before we can hunt boars, we need to actually GET to Saussy Village. It's not far—maybe an hour by broom. So everyone grab a broom and—"
"I can't fly a broom," Asta announced proudly.
Magna stared at him. "What do you mean you can't fly a broom? You're a Magic Knight! Flying a broom is basic training!"
"I don't have any mana! Brooms need mana to fly! I tried at the exam and nothing happened! I just sat there on the ground while everyone laughed!"
"That's... that's actually a pretty good point." Magna's brow furrowed. "Okay, fine. Noelle, you can take Asta on your broom. Ouga, you can—"
"I can't fly a broom either," Noelle said, her voice carrying the particular stiffness of someone admitting to a personal failing. "I never learned. As a royal, I was always transported by carriage or spatial magic. Flying on a broom was considered... beneath my station."
"You've got to be kidding me." Magna's sunglasses slid down his nose. "You're telling me that out of the three of you, only ONE can actually fly a broom?!"
"Ouga can fly?" Asta asked, turning to me with wide eyes. "Ouga, you can fly?! Since when?!"
"Since the exam," I said. "It's not difficult. You channel mana into the broom and direct it with intent."
"See?!" Magna gestured wildly at me. "It's not difficult! The giant gets it! Why can't you two get it?!"
"I have no mana!" Asta repeated.
"I'm a royal!" Noelle repeated.
"You can't just keep saying that like it's an excuse!"
"It's not an excuse! It's an explanation! A perfectly valid explanation!"
They argued for another ten minutes. I watched them with the detached patience of someone who had long ago accepted that emotional beings wasted significant amounts of time on unproductive conflict. Finally, when Magna looked like he was about to start pulling out his own hair, I raised my hand.
"I have a solution."
They both turned to look at me.
"Magna and I can carry passengers," I said. "Magna takes Asta on his broom. I take Noelle on mine. We all reach Saussy Village. The boars are hunted. The mission is completed. Everyone goes home."
Magna's expression brightened. "That's... that's actually a really good idea! See, this is why I like you, Ouga! You're reasonable! Unlike SOME people!"
"I AM REASONABLE!" Noelle protested.
"You tried to argue that being a royal meant you didn't have to learn basic transportation!"
"That IS reasonable!"
I walked over to the broom rack and selected one that looked sturdy enough to support my weight. The Black Bulls' brooms were reinforced—probably because the squad's members had a tendency to break things—and the one I chose had a thick shaft and bristles that hummed with latent mana. I swung my leg over it, settling onto the wooden shaft with the ease of practice, and looked at Noelle.
"Get on."
Noelle's face went through a remarkable series of color changes. "G-g-get on?! Behind you?! On the same broom?!"
"Is there another broom?"
"That's not the point! The point is—the point is—" She was gesturing wildly now, her hands flapping in directions that seemed to have no relation to the words she was trying to form. "Proximity! Personal space! A royal and a commoner on the same BROOM!"
"You can walk to Saussy Village if you prefer. It's about six hours on foot."
"I am NOT walking six hours!"
"Then get on the broom."
Noelle's mouth opened and closed several times. She looked at me—all six foot three inches of me, the black robe stretched across my shoulders, the wheel rotating behind my head, my grey eyes calm and patient—and her blush deepened to a shade that was approaching crimson. "Fine. FINE. I'll ride on the broom. But only because walking would be undignified. This has nothing to do with—with anything else. This is purely practical."
"Of course."
"It IS!"
"I agreed with you."
"Stop agreeing with me! It's suspicious when you agree with me!"
I waited. After several more seconds of internal struggle, Noelle approached the broom with the hesitant steps of someone approaching a wild animal. She swung her leg over the shaft—awkwardly, gracelessly, her royal dignity completely abandoned—and settled onto the broom behind me. There was a full foot of space between us.
"You'll need to hold on," I said. "I fly fast."
"I am NOT holding on! I am a Silva! Silvas do not cling to commoners like frightened children!"
"Suit yourself."
(Author note: I need more Power_____ Stones)