A Thrilling Turnabout! The Prologue to Allegro’s Revenge

♪ Modurato (present) ♪

There were two of us in the brick-walled cellar: the Administrator and me. Candlelight burned red around us.

“How prepared are you? Care for one last cup of coffee before you become the Garnet Prince?”

“I’ll pass.”

He held out the headgear in front of me.

“Once you put this on, all the negative memories of your life will come rushing through your mind. Your heart will be emptied out, and before long you will fall into darkness. Then you will become nothing more than a machine that slaughters the enemies before you. In exchange, you will gain energy that maximizes the consumption of resonance particles.”

“And after that, I charge in with the soldiers. Is that it?”

“Exactly. That is what it means to live in reality.”

When the war ended, I might very well die. Even if I survived, I would never enjoy a healthy life afterward. But that was fine. There was something fitting about being carved onto a gravestone as a brief, futile blossom of the age.

This too was fate. Just as I placed the headgear on my head—

“Hold it! How about you let me take that role instead?”

“Allegro!”

A dragonfolk man had appeared boldly in the doorway. He wore a fearless grin. The Administrator looked rattled.

“Impossible! I had the guards posted heavily around the place. How in the world did you get in!?”

“With my trumpet, a bunch of guards are nothing.”

“You mean to interfere!?”

“That’s right. I’m not about to let a pack of outdated old relics like you hijack the ideals of the rebellion. This is supposed to be a rebel army that opens the way to the next age, right? In that case, I might as well hijack it for my own personal grudge. As of today, this organization is no longer the rebels. It is now the Society for Fulfilling Allegro’s Revenge.”

“This is absurd. There’s no way something like this can be allowed!”

the Administrator muttered. He was right. It was completely absurd.

“You’re right. It probably can’t be allowed.”

Allegro blew into his trumpet and aimed the sound at the Administrator.

At once, the Administrator’s consciousness began to blur.

“You will not die well. Burn in hell…”

His knees gave out beneath him. His life did not seem to be in immediate danger, but he had fallen into a coma.

“I’ve been in hell for a long time already. And I clawed my way back up. I’m ready to die.”

Allegro turned his sharp gaze on me.

“W-what is it?”

“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll become this Garnet Prince thing in your place. I’ll become a soldier of the rebellion. And then I’ll interrogate Serpan.”

“Y-you expect me to trust you after a stunt like this?”

“Even without me, that man was going to hijack the ideals of the rebellion anyway, wasn’t he? You ought to thank me.”

“…”

I couldn’t think of a good reply.

“So I just put on this headgear with the red jewel, right? Let me try it.”

“That device drags the heart into darkness. It destroys body and mind.”

“Hmph. Fine by me. My life was already over anyway.”

I failed to notice that the candle flame was on the verge of going out. I could do nothing but shrink beneath the pressure of the sharp light in his eyes.

“Nngh… GYAAAAAH! I’ll overcome the past! I’ll have my revenge!”

Late into the night, Allegro’s anguished screams echoed around us. The Garnet Prince process brought with it an intense headache.

Ordinarily, most people tore the headgear off halfway through. But Allegro endured it. A terrifying obsession.

He collapsed onto a simple bed and slept like mud, snoring heavily.

By noon, I made my way to the command headquarters on the high ground. Morning would have been better, but I had chosen this time out of consideration for Allegro’s condition.

The guards saluted both me and Allegro.

“This is a more disciplined army than I expected.”

“Well, the ones milling around here are almost all private troops, after all. The units we send to the front don’t have morale anywhere near this high.”

When we entered the military tent, I guided Allegro to a model terrain map of the surrounding area.

Using a pointer, I indicated the landscape.

“This region is mountainous. The troops can only march two abreast along rough roads. With the front stretched so thin, logistics are crucial. Rabbit food like timothy-style grass fodder is bulky, so we need to compress it into solid pellets whenever possible. We have to be careful not to let the front lines be cut off from the towns. War, above all else, costs money. I’ve sent scouts to investigate, but it will be some time before we reach the plain where the enemy army intends to engage us. We do have some time, but we cannot let our guard down. The scouts must keep watch for any chance the enemy may launch a surprise attack from the high ground.”

“Hey,” Allegro interrupted.

“What is it?”

“I don’t really get the fine details, so let me ask two questions first. What exactly are logistics?”

“It’s the operation of transporting food, military instruments, and other equipment. Even battle-hardened veterans often fail at it. In the history of Otherworld Earth, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia is a classic example of failing at logistics.”

“And scouts?”

“Soldiers who go ahead to the battlefield and investigate. They report the enemy’s movements, whether there are traps, ambushes, where the attack may come from, the flow of resonance particles—information necessary for war.”

“So they’re risking their lives.”

“In war, every soldier risks their life.”

“Hey, doesn’t all of this get so complicated because you’re assuming large-scale troop movements in the first place?”

“Well, it is war. No matter how selfish a dictator may be, nobody does it unless they feel they have to.”

“I don’t really get it, but can’t I just handle it alone?”

“Hm?”

He had started saying strange things.

“Have you ever seen action movies from Otherworld Hong Kong? Or American or Italian Westerns. Japanese samurai films are fine too. Even simple old-school video games—shooters or side-scrolling action games.”

“You mean, mowing them all down by yourself?”

“Exactly. Oh, I’ve got an idea. Do you know Zhang Fei from Otherworld Romance of the Three Kingdoms? A giant of a man who charges through enemies on horseback and cuts them down one after another. See? War isn’t just about strength. Mobility matters too.”

“Unbelievable.”

Once someone went that far off the rails, there was nothing to do but stare in disbelief.

Unbothered, Allegro reached into subspace and pulled something out. It looked like a horse, but with the texture of a stuffed toy. On a slot where a coin would go, the Arabic numeral 100 was written.

“I borrowed a ride from an Otherworld theme park. Didn’t feel right putting a real living animal in danger, after all.”

“You’re planning to control that thing with your trumpet?”

“No way. If my hands are occupied, I can’t fight. That’s why I bought a foot tambourine for occasions like this. Well? What do you think?”

“Th-that’s lame!”

When lives were on the line, appearances were hardly the priority, but it was still unbelievably lame. Uncool. No grown adult should be doing something like thaaat!

“War gets started by people trying too hard to look grim and cool. Being this uncool is exactly right.”

“But there are limits to how stupid you can be!”

“Have you seen Kurosawa’s Rashomon? It was made less than ten years after a great war ended. Or The Bridge from West Germany. Or All Quiet on the Western Front. Killing appears in them, sure, but the moment people try to act cool about it, it just turns into a miserable struggle between people trying to run away. That’s what war looks like to people who know how pathetic killing really is.”

“You dare mock our ideals?”

“You shouldn’t go around trying to act like the star of some hard-boiled war film. If it’s war brought on by a genuine food crisis and the need to secure resources, I won’t approve, but I can understand the feeling. But when war breaks out because someone wants to live coolly at a time when there’s no real need for it, that’s just pathetic. People ought to loosen up more, like some shy old man in a warm and fuzzy Sunday sitcom anime. Instead of going bloodshot-eyed on caffeine all the time, they should sleep more. That Napoleon guy too—he kept expanding the war front until he couldn’t win anymore because he wouldn’t sleep.”

“Your interpretation of history is so sloppy historians would laugh at you! Cut it out already! You just say whatever you want! That self-centered streak of yours is exactly why the bureaucracy spat you out! A free-spirited intellectual like you would’ve done better starting a venture company in a garage instead of wrecking your career! You picked the wrong line of work, you absolute idiot!”

When I glared at Allegro, he gave me an almost apologetic little grin.

“Okay, okay. Don’t get mad. I’ll cooperate with your noble cause of war a little, all right? Basically, you want propaganda value from having me run across the battlefield in Poet’s form, right? I was a young bureaucrat once too, you know. I used to make discussion materials for opinion exchange meetings with citizen watchdog groups. Coordinating stakeholder interests is one of my special talents. So—let’s call it even.”

This bastard. Getting cocky.

But this was fine. Let him roam where he pleased. When it came to the Garnet Prince, there remained one method of control: brainwashing through magic performed with a pipe organ.

Let him do as he liked for now. Then, when the moment came, I would have him die as a piece on the board.

Heh heh heh.