……
"Are you serious?" Tachibana asked in disbelief, holding the doc.u.ment up to Hiroki with an annoyed face. For about one (Sekai) hour he had been sitting there, with Hiroki hovering over his back getting him to approve the various requests his division had for him. And given that Prince Yuri was equivalent to a Brigadier General on Earth, Tachibana was going to be doing this for a while. Still, he hadn"t expected to see this sort of request popping up amidst uniform changes and building renovations. "You guys want a pool? What for?"
Hiroki grinned while placing the paper back on the desk before Tachibana. His amber eyes were playful. "We"re not always fighting Youma, you know? We need to relax, de-stress and have some fun."
That struck something within the young j.a.panese. If he remembered clearly, Sekai doesn"t have video games or manga or worse, sports. So what better way to start introducing volleyball to the country than through his own division?
"I have an idea." He grinned.
Hiroki was sceptical. Whenever Prince Yuri grinned like that, things always turned out to be a disaster. Either he blew up somewhere, or almost beat someone to death. "What could that be, Your Highness?"
"It"s called volleyball. And it"s a sport where ―"
"Sorry to interrupt, but what is a "sport"?"
"My dear Hiroki," Tachibana smiled, unable to contain his joy. "Have a seat first, will you? I"ll explain everything in great detail." He said as he pat the chair beside him. If all goes well, then sooner or later, he"ll be able to play volleyball again, just with superpowered people who are able to use elemental magic.
…
…
As soon as Jin parked in the lot, Seiya and Akira flew out of the car and dashed towards the entrance of the division. However, they didn"t have access cards either since this was Yuri"s division and his only. But they didn"t let this stop them ―they banged on the door until someone came to let them in. After all, they were the First and Second Princes, no one is going to let them wait. When a Mage came to receive them, she directed them to Yuri"s office, and the two walked with great haste in order to catch their brother before he does something irreparable.
"Yuri!" Akira screeched as he burst open the office door. There his new little brother was, sitting and chatting with Hiroki as though they were best friends.
"Why h.e.l.lo there, Second Prince of the Saishi Kingdom, Akira Tachibana," Hiroki started in an irritated tone, "How rude of you to burst the door open without even knocking?"
"Hiroki…" Akira was ready punch the man squarely in the face when Seiya stepped forward, preventing him from advancing.
"What are you doing Yuri?" Seiya asked, ignoring Akira and Hiroki.
"Hiroki says the division is bored when they"re not fighting Youma so I"m just suggesting a great way to pa.s.s the time."
"I"m not talking about now." The First Prince shook his head and walked towards the desk where the doc.u.ments were. He then looked to Hiroki and gestured to the door, after which the Mage promptly excused himself. When Hiroki had left, Seiya continued, "I"m talking about these." He placed a palm on one stack. "I told you not to do anything Yuri wouldn"t, didn"t I?"
"I know that, but I couldn"t leave them as they are. Hiroki told me that a Division Leader should not only lead his Mages into battle, but to also take care of them. Yuri isn"t here, and even if he was, he"d left them to rot! I can"t do something like that."
"Wow, you have a heart." Akira said, surprised. "I say we keep you and let little bro stay in your world. If he destroys it, then it"s Earth"s problem, not ours."
Seiya chuckled at Akira"s antics while Tachibana"s face lost its colour. For a fact, he knew that his counterpart was a walking time-bomb, but as it is, Tachibana had no way of getting back to Earth or the Prince to get back here. After all, this whole situation had been a fluke caused when Yuri hoped to see where Youma were coming from.
"Well, since that"s the case, just stamp the doc.u.ments and let Dad sign them with his signature. As you are, I doubt you can produce a signature."
"What?" Now, Tachibana felt offended. He was sick of them looking down on him because he"s a different specie. "What do you mean you doubt I can produce a signature? What"s so hard in talking up a pen and write one, huh?"
Seiya looked utterly confused. He hadn"t meant anything hostile or insulting when he made that statement, but it seemed as though his new brother did. It was sort of understandable, Tachibana was in a world in which he couldn"t even do the basic of basic things, so everyone around him had to be doing it for him or teaching him to.
"We don"t write our signatures." Akira spoke up, stepping from behind Seiya. "When Sei said "signature" it meant your Mana signature. You"ll place whichever finger you feel comfortable with on the slot and the paper scans the Mana flowing from your body to your finger." He explained. "Think of it like fingerprint scanning, but it"s scanning your Mana instead."
Tachibana was shocked. A paper that scans people"s Mana? How the h.e.l.l does that even work? But for his sanity, he didn"t dwell on it. Figuring out how Ningen technology worked was not on his to-do list at the moment. "Oh. But why don"t you use fingerprint and make things easier?"
"Because Yuri, with a fingerprint, anyone smart enough can head to an engineering lab and reconstruct your fingerprint. With your Mana signature, it"s impossible."
"So that"s why I can"t sign anything…" Tachibana looked downcast. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief given that the doc.u.ments that he"s seen so far only needed his stamp of approval.
"Yeah, even though you have Mana in your system, I"m sure you can"t feel it, let alone control it to sign anything." Akira gave him a comforting smile while patting his shoulder. He saw how down Tachibana looked, so as a big brother, he tried to rea.s.sure him. "But, you"ll be able to use Magic soon enough, so maybe then you"ll have your signature."
"Fine." Tachibana grumbled, returning to his chair around the desk. The atmosphere had gotten heavy from all that talk, and right now, he didn"t want to hear any more of it.
"But look at you! Leader of the Fourteenth Army Division!" Akira chirped, slapping Tachibana in his back far too hard for his Human body to handle. "Since school is on break, if any Youma attacks and your division is called, what are you gonna do?" He laughed, knowing full well that the young j.a.panese won"t be able to do much.
"Me? Can"t the King do something? As a matter of fact, isn"t it his job?" Tachibana knew that since King Ryoutarou had only two sons, the Self-Defence Force had to be divided between them, so King Ayumu controlled the Military while Eisen controlled the Police Force.
Seiya shook his head. "Dad gave Yuri this division as a means for him to realize his position and start doing his duties as the Third Prince. We"re all doing something related to our future posts now as well." He explained. "But Yuri was resisting, so Dad said that if he led his Division into battle against a horde of Youma and won, then he"ll get off his back until he"s thirty. Plus, Dad said that he wouldn"t help Yuri in no way, shape or form. The most he"ll do is offer vague advice and have him figure out the rest."
"And bear in mind, this was done in front of all the other Division Leaders as witnesses, so bro, I"m sorry for you."
"My G.o.d…That"s terrible!"
"Yeah, Yuri had gotten into trouble and Papa thought that what a better way to get him to do his duties than incorporating it into his punishment."
"But now I"m the one who has to suffer. I can"t lead a Division. I can"t strategize against Youma and whatever that may attack this country. I"m just an ordinary teenager."
"Don"t worry, if push comes to shove, Papa can disguise himself as you, or…" Akira trailed off as his eyes searched the bookshelves. "Or you just read a book or two." He reached for a couple nestled on the highest shelf and placed them on the desk. "These should help."
Tachibana gaped at their sizes. He then looked at Akira with an agonized face and all the Second Prince did was smile like the s.h.i.t that he was.
"How about you use those manga you"ve told us about?" Seiya said, trying to make things better. "Don"t they have something you could use as reference? I mean, you did say that this was like one of those "isekai manga" you"ve read."
Tachibana"s face brightened. If only Seiya knew what he"d just stirred up. "Hey, is it possible for Mocchi and the others to come here as well? Can they join the division too? I"ve read somewhere that your school is one of the feeding grounds for the military."
"Yeah, I think you could send out one of the Mages here to go pick them up." Seiya replied. "But to get them to join the military will be their parents decision, since they all are underage." The First Prince narrowed his eyes at Tachibana, failing to see the reason for his questions. "Why?"
"You"ve just inspired me, Seiya."
…
…
King Ayumu was swamped with work as usual. The investigation on his son"s attack hasn"t born any fruit apart from their previous discovery and Kouen had found Yuri"s attendants innocent. That led the Chief of Police to start suspecting that it may be someone from the Royal Family. There were many who wanted to capture him to be used as leverage, but King Ayumu couldn"t decipher who in the Royal Family would want him dead.
It couldn"t have been his wife or his other sons as they had more power and position than Yuri. As the third child, he was ent.i.tled to command over the Self-Defence Force. That"s it. Seiya was the next King, Akira was the next Prime Minister, and obviously none of them would want to kill their little brother. And if they did, they would have done so a long time ago.
It was then that he thought about his brother ―Prime Minister Eisen"s family. Eisen was out of the question as they both were dealing with work together, his wife Kimiko was busy fighting Youma, and their sons ―Michitaka and Kaichi were on errand for both him and their father, Isami was…
King Ayumu snapped up.
Isami was the only one that they never knew what he was up to. He was the only one who returned home after the other boys came home from school, and his explanation was that "he was busy" or "he was meeting with a friend for a.s.sistance" or something like that.
Isami wouldn"t try to a.s.sa.s.sinate Yuri, would he?
He knew his three boys and Isami has some bad blood going on, but Isami wouldn"t go that far, right? The King was baffled. He didn"t want to suspect his first nephew on such a baseless whim, but he was the only one that he was unsure of. Although, the King knew that sometimes the culprits are the ones that he"d least expect.
Putting that on hold, he began to look through the other doc.u.ments.
The first one was a report from the Fifth Army Division about successfully exterminating a wave of Youma that was heading to Nagano City. There were a few causalities but lucky, no deaths.
Satisfied with just that, the King moved onto the next thing, which had his eyebrows rising. This was a report from the special division ―The Purple Berets, about suspicious activity amongst a group of people located within the Kingdom. They operated close to the Stone Forest, and while they did nothing incriminating, it seemed as though they were scheming something.
At this, the King let out a deep sigh.
Anything with "suspicious group" and "Stone Forest" in the same sentence could only mean one thing. They were after the Earth Seirei that lived there. Since he was the one who created this entire continent, many sought after his power, for various reasons.
The biggest blunder on their part was that no one knew what the Seirei looked like. h.e.l.l, they don"t even know his name. There was one thing that everyone called him and that was "White Canvas" due to his special ability.
The King was tired of this, he"s experienced two wars over this very same Seirei and honestly, he wondered if "White Canvas"s" pursuers didn"t get the memo. He sighed yet again, as he"d have to send this information to the Earth Seirei, after all, they were on good terms. King Ayumu was the only one who knew his ident.i.ty.
Taking a break from this, he got up and looked through his window. In the faint distance, he could see the high rise buildings of his sons" school, and wondered how the young j.a.panese will manage school once they come off break. His tutoring had been progressing smoothly, although there were times when Tachibana had gotten frustrated.
In the King"s eyes, he wasn"t half as good as the original Yuri, but he managed to get his knowledge to a pa.s.sable degree. His Spearmanship however, was on another level. It was frighteningly comparable to his original son"s, and he wasn"t even using the other spears as yet.
King Ayumu was actually eager to see how much more will that monster evolve.
Just then, the telephone rang. He walked over to the desk and pressed the b.u.t.ton. A holographic picture of a well dressed man standing outside the door came up, followed by a voice:
"Your Majesty, Sir Takahiko Mochizuki wishes to seek an audience with you."
King Ayumu let out a sigh and pushed the b.u.t.ton. He really should do something about this. Maybe he should give his friends a special pa.s.s so that they could enter freely. Soon, the doors swung open and the raven-haired male entered.
"Your Majesty," he greeted with a bow.
"Takahiko." King Ayumu did likewise. When he straightened, he said, "No one"s here, we can drop the formalities."
"Much appreciated." Takahiko said with a smile. "On regards to the regulator, I can say that it"s completely safe."
"It won"t have any adverse effect on him after?"
"Nope! It isn"t made up of anything organic or metallic so he can"t get allergic." Takahiko said with confidence. "Plus, we have ten people who have been living with it for about thirty years now. It"s more than "tried" and "tested"."
"I see." The King said as he nodded. "I want him to get it done as soon as possible."
"Consider it done." Takahiko smiled.
Even the regulator that Tachibana wore was top-notch and the best of the best, King Ayumu was worried that somehow it may get ripped off later on. So, to ensure that the j.a.panese was safe and hadn"t needed to worry about dying from Mana poisoning, he had spoken to Takahiko about his worries. Luckily, the Scientist and his teams had created a new regulator years ago, but it was still in its "testing" stages.
"Great. Let me just tell him…" King Ayumu started but trailed off when he turned on his phone and saw the message Tachibana had sent earlier on. "Heavens!" He shouted when he read the message in its entirety. He rose to his feet and headed towards his door, leaving Takahiko confused.
"Uh, Ayumu? Is everything alright?"
"No! Yuri is at the Division Headquarters!"
Takahiko didn"t see anything wrong with that. Sooner or later, the boy would have met the Prince"s division anyway, so what"s the big deal if he meets them a little early? "Is there a problem with that?"
"Yes! I forgot to inform him that my son had a division! Who knows what kind of mistake Yuri can make because he"s being pressured by the Mages?!"
"I"m sure that Yuri can handle himself." Takahiko chuckled. "He may be your son from another world, but from what I"ve observed, he"s nothing like the Prince. He"s got his head screwed on properly and has zero psychopathic tendencies."
King Ayumu looked at Takahiko with a deadpan expression. "Regardless, I"m pretty sure that Yuri wasn"t the head of an entire military division consisting of five thousand Mages back in j.a.pan."
Takahiko couldn"t counter that one. "I stand corrected."
With that, the King left his office, Takahiko tagging along to see how the boy from j.a.pan was faring with an entire military division.