"Haaah...!"
A heavy, breathless gasp escaped Takao's cherry-pink lips. Her body was even imitating a human's perspiration response, producing sweat to release excess heat and cool itself down.
As a result, her white one-piece dress clung tightly to her damp skin, outlining every curve of her shapely figure.
"This might be bad..."
Takao murmured under her breath. Her misty eyes had taken on a distant, almost intoxicated look.
This was already the fifth time she had replayed the "recording" she'd stolen from Kongou. The experience was so immersive that it felt as though she were actually there, and each viewing left her feeling increasingly strange.
She was becoming more and more fascinated by the protagonist of this "movie." She desperately wanted to see what happened to him next.
Every time she replayed it and reached what could be considered the climax of the story, Takao felt her core growing hotter than before.
Or, to borrow a human expression, her heart was beating faster and faster.
She understood at least some aspects of human society. Their Mental Models had been created in human form, after all.
Hiei and her group had even gone so far as to form something called a student council.
Judging by human standards, then, what Takao was experiencing now seemed to be romantic attraction.
Had she fallen for the protagonist?
Or was it closer to obsession?
Maybe she was simply a fan who had developed a crush on an "actor"?
"But is this really a movie?"
Takao rose to her feet and pinched her chin, muttering thoughtfully to herself.
The data was so extraordinarily precise that she had to magnify it a million times before she could barely make out individual pixels.
That meant it was even more detailed than the virtual environment generated within the Fleet of Fog's Joint Tactical Network. The resolution was so incredible that the world in the recording looked completely real.
This was also the first time she had encountered such optimized programming in a data model.
Of course, the optimization program had been included when she downloaded the data from Kongou. Otherwise, Takao estimated that recreating imagery this realistic with the processing capacity of the Fleet of Fog's Mental Models would require at least a hundred times as much storage space.
In short, Takao suspected that the recording wasn't fictional at all.
Perhaps such a place truly existed, and everything had been recorded through some form of ultra-high-precision scanning.
But if it was real, then what about the humans in the recording?
Those scenes had plainly taken place somewhere beyond the solar system.
The only way to uncover the truth was through Kongou.
Unfortunately, given Kongou's personality, asking her would be equivalent to admitting that Takao had stolen the data. Kongou might destroy her on the spot.
What a headache.
And Takao really wanted to see what happened to that man next.
The recording had ended with him attempting to prevent a planet's destruction. He had joined a group of apparently augmented human warriors in an assault on a gateway to Hell opened by daemons.
The final scene showed them arriving at the gateway, where an enormous army of daemons awaited them alongside what appeared to be traitorous Space Marines.
A vicious battle was about to erupt—and then the data abruptly ended.
"One more time. This time, I'll set the synchronization to one hundred percent..."
Takao murmured to herself.
This time, she would immerse herself completely and become one with the man.
Come to think of it, Kongou's abnormal behavior had probably been caused by experiencing the recording at full sensory synchronization too.
Even Kongou had nearly failed to endure it. Takao could only imagine what kind of unimaginably dangerous ordeal the man had faced.
Meanwhile, in a corner of the sky Takao had failed to notice, a flock of seagulls flew past. One of them looked subtly different from the rest.
The flock eventually reached another battleship and began circling overhead. The unusual seagull descended and landed on the hand of a blonde woman.
"Takao."
Kongou quietly spoke her name.
Takao had actually dared to deceive her.
Good.
That made it even easier to use Takao as her test subject.
Kongou returned her attention to the Superdimensional Channel.
The man had finished exterminating the xenos creatures and had already retrieved what he wanted from a facility twenty kilometers beneath the planet's surface.
Through extensive observation from the channel's omniscient perspective, Kongou had determined that the facility hadn't originally been constructed underground. It appeared that some tremendous catastrophe had dragged it beneath the planet's crust.
Now that the man had obtained what he wanted, he was speaking ill of her in the chat channel.
More accurately, he was warning the other members that she was a dangerous individual and advising them not to invite her or visit her world recklessly.
The man truly seemed to know a great deal about her world. Everything he mentioned matched information Kongou already possessed.
However, that alone couldn't prove that the channel's members genuinely came from different worlds, nor that information about her world existed as a fictional "work" in another universe.
To prove that, he would have to reveal information that Kongou herself didn't know but which still existed within her world.
Knowledge of the future might qualify, but she could only verify such information once the relevant events actually occurred.
Since joining the channel, Kongou had yet to say a single word.
[Fleet of Fog First Oriental Fleet Flagship Kongou: Tell me something that will surprise me.]
This was her first message.
[Golden Toilet: What's the current date in your world?]
[Fleet of Fog First Oriental Fleet Flagship Kongou: September 27, 2054.]
[Golden Toilet: At that point, your Mental Models haven't existed for very long. I think they officially came into existence on May 1. Oh, right—the missing I-401 is hiding in Yokosuka and has remained silent all this time. She was given an order to obey a human, though I don't know whether she's found him yet. Also, I-401's processing power is comparable to that of a battleship. You should ask the Supreme Flagship what's going on. Ask her what connection she has to a certain Kotono Amaha, who once lived among humans. And Musashi may already have a human captain by now.]
The man didn't need to say anything more. Those revelations alone made Kongou's expression darken.
Without hesitation, she immediately opened a communication channel with the Supreme Flagship and transmitted all those questions at once.
The response came almost immediately.
The Supreme Flagship asked to speak with her privately and requested that, if possible, Kongou refrain from sharing this information with anyone else.
Excellent.
It was real!
Fury surged through Kongou.
She wasn't angry because the Supreme Flagship and the others had made contact with the humans she despised. Nor did she regard their behavior as a betrayal of the Admiralty Code—or of herself.
Kongou already had doubts regarding the Admiralty Code's orders.
What infuriated her was that they had been conducting secret activities behind her back while continuing to invoke the Supreme Flagship's authority to make her carry out the mission of blockading humanity.
She had been kept completely in the dark, as though she were a fool being played by everyone else.
[Fleet of Fog First Oriental Fleet Flagship Kongou: I still have doubts about this so-called Superdimensional Channel. If you want me to accept that it's real, come to my world and prove your existence to me.]
[Golden Toilet: What's my reward?]
[Fleet of Fog First Oriental Fleet Flagship Kongou: What do you want?]
[Golden Toilet: How about you, shipgirl?]
Interesting!
[Fleet of Fog First Oriental Fleet Flagship Kongou: Your reward will be Takao, provided you can take her. As for me, we'll discuss that after you've dealt with Takao.]
The moment Kongou sent the message, she froze in surprise.
The man had immediately submitted an interworld travel request.
Excellent!
She would see what he was truly capable of.
Unfortunately, the designated arrival point couldn't be placed far enough away to drop him directly onto Takao's ship.
In that case, Kongou would have him appear somewhere near Takao and then welcome him with a cannon blast, knocking him the rest of the way toward her.
If his strength truly matched what she had seen in the recordings, a single shot shouldn't kill him.
And if he couldn't even withstand that, then he was nothing but a fraud.
(End of Chapter)
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