"Hey. Shouldn't we hurry outside already?"
"And from there? We don't even know if it's safe."
"I appreciate your reasonable words and all, but would you mind not playing
Mo〇〇ter Hunter while saying them?"
Yogiri was still sitting in the back row of the sightseeing bus, playing video games while waiting for Tomochika to calm down.
"Say, I've been watching since earlier, but aren't you a little too bad at that?"
"I don't know either, it's weird. What's with this delay after three hits? I don't remember being this bad at it."
"That's the adept style, right? How about switching to striker? That doesn't have a delay after the three hit combo."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
Yogiri switched styles as he was told and indeed, now the weapon handling was much closer to that of the prequels.
"Whoah, nice!"
"Also, you're being way too reckless for a lancer. When playing lance you stop after two attacks when it looks like you've got time for three, and after one attack when it looks like you've got time for two, always move in a way that lets you transition into either guarding or evading… actually, isn't this the totally wrong time for this?"
"It's like you're the goddess of lances or something."
"Pretty sure that much is common knowledge…"
Nonetheless, Tomochika was flattered.
"…Calmed down?"
"I guess. The fact that people died is still on my mind, but maybe I'm numb from the shock. The smell has become bearable as well."
Yogiri judged that the she had calmed down enough. He put his console on sleep and turned to her.
"Alright, can you tell me about what happened up until now?"
"Not like I know you that well, but you sure are the type to stick to his own pace, huh… The events so far then, right? Well, it seems we were transported to a different world, and there are these sages, and everyone became a sage candidate, and Yazaki-kun started taking control of things and-"
"Wait, what? Can you start at the beginning?"
"Ah, okay."
Tomochika told Yogiri about everything that had transpired so far.
＊＊＊＊＊
After passing through the tunnel they were in a field.
"Hueh?"
Tomochika's absentminded gazing out of the window was interrupted by an idiotic sounding voice. It was her own.
She was certain it had been night just a few moments ago, yet all of a sudden she and her classmates had found themselves in broad daylight. The snowy mountain scenery disappeared as well, making place for a grass-covered plain.
A moment later the rest of the students took notice of the absurd change in location and soon the whole bus was in uproar.
"Mikochi, any idea where we are?"
Tomochika turned to the girl in the seat next to her, Romiko Jougasaki.
"A grass plain, I guess?"
"I meant, you know, on a larger scale…"
Panic made its way through the confused students and the bus came to a full stop.
A woman in a white dress got on.
'A pitiful person with a thing for cosplaying as a magical girl,' was Tomochika's first impression of the new passenger.
"Greetings, sage candidates. My name is Sion, Grandchild of the Great Sage."
Even Tomochika with her tendency for comic relief one-liners was too bewildered to voice a single word. However, that may have been for the best. One uninvited interruption and things could have ended badly, as her homeroom teacher demonstrated.
"Who do you think you are! Are you responsible for――"
It would have been a good line, full of vigor, but he didn't get to finish it. Sion casually grasped his head and…
pop
With a hushed noise the teacher's cranium cracked, then burst, splattering the front row seats with blood and gray matter.
"No interruptions, please. The conduct I recommend all of you take is shaking from fear with clattering teeth. Don't act out of line, pay attention."
The bus fell into silence; the students had immediately grasped the danger Sion posed.
"I don't intend to cause direct harm to any sage candidates, but that only goes for as long as you don't get on my nerves. Make sure to take care in that regard, okay? My power level is 530,000."
(Note: A Dragon Ball Z reference.)
No one moved a muscle. Tomochika didn't throw in a quip.
"Aw, you could've laughed there."
Sion spoke as she moved her left hand towards the driver's seat.
Light gathered in her palm and in the next moment the bus driver, along with his whole seat, burned to nothing.
"See? I got irritated because my joke fell flat and here I went killing again."
Confronted with Sion's disregard for life the kids curled up even more.
"This may look terribly unreasonable to you all, but that's just how the world is. Can never know what the future brings. Well then, I'll be allowing myself to explain the current situation. You might have already noticed, but as far as you are concerned this place is a parallel universe. And I am the one that summoned you."
There was no way they could accept an explanation like being transported to a parallel universe just like that, but despite their disbelief they remained silent, doing as Sion had told them and staying in line.
"The purpose behind your summoning was to have you all take the roles of sage candidates. Sages are the ones managing this world, but a decrease in number every now and then raises a need for the occasional replenishment."
Sion pointed her right hand towards the students and the bus filled with glaring light; Tomochika was prepared for death.
But nothing happened.
Ever so timidly she opened her eyes and saw that Romiko next to her was glowing in a blue light. The classmates on the other side of the aisle were red and yellow.
She stood up to take a look through the bus and saw that everyone was shining in various colors.
――Huh? What's going on? Um, I'm not glowing, hello?
Was it a good sign, or a bad sign?
Tomochika did feel some unease about the idea of undergoing the same phenomenon, but she couldn't help feel like being left behind.