Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Saint Was Kidnapped ❯ Kidnapped: 3 ( Chapter 3 )

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Chapter 3

 

There are times when being polite works. And times when it doesn’t. I am trying to decide which. The prince was a redhead, smug, and condescending. I took him for spoiled. Sei is really nice, even tempered, kind, and he was making her quietly angry. We’d played together as kids because our dads are brothers. Summers on the family farm for Obon and Golden Week. Good times. I was a tomboy, of course. And Sei loved gardening and hunting down herbs in the fields and woods. Sometimes Souta would come with us. Sometimes it was Kozue, who climbed trees and liked to wrestle. She was an aiki-doka now, with her own dojo up at Sapporo. Back then she liked climbing trees and jumping into the streams while I was trying to fish for trout. I used to cook them fresh-caught, with herbs stuffed inside. I got good at making small cooking fires in a few minutes. There’s a trick to it, of course, but it’s not that hard to learn.

“Highness, I wish to speak to the young lady,” I finally interrupted the posturing fop.

“I forbid it, commoner!” insisted the visual K twit. I sighed. When I get angry I start cursing people in English. It was a really good language for swearing, and the kitchens used it often.

“Be silent!” I commanded, pointing at him. There was a surge of something from my body and that sizzling feelings jetted out of me. If I’d been a man it would probably feel very familiar, but I’m a woman and our plumbing is very different. He moved his lips and no sound came out.

I stepped around him and introduced myself to the teenage Japanese girl.

“Hi. I’m Toka Takanashi. This is my cousin Sei Takanashi. We’re both from Japan,” I said to the girl.

“Uhm. Hello. I’m Aira Misono. I’m from Tokyo. Is Sei the lady who was summoned with me?” she asked.

“Apparently. Are you well? Have you been treated okay?” I asked her. This was an urgent question.

“I… umm. Yes. I guess. Nobody has hurt me,” she said.

“Nothing improper?” I made sure.

“No. The maids did wash me and help me into these clothes, but nothing bad. I have my own room and a servant for meals and dressing. They do ask me to train my magic and learn the sword, though,” explained Aira. She was young, probably 16 or so.

“I see. Do you want to go home?” I asked her.

“I… I can?” she asked, hope in her eyes. So it was like that. I sighed.

There was a hand on my shoulder. I looked. It was the blowhard prince moving his lips like he was shouting. No sound came out.

“Speak!” I said in English. I felt that weird buzzing again.

“How dare you enspell me, mage!” he shouted. His men surrounded us. Hawke was guarding Sei, looking furious at me.

“Kidnapper. You are a kidnapper. This girl is underage. You also kidnapped a member of my family. The clan will hear of this. There will be repercussions. Do you understand?” I asked him in a low threatening tone I’d learned from a fruit and vegetable wholesaler in Punjab.

Naturally, this would be when the mage behind me stunned me with a spell.

 

  +++++++++

 

“Toka? Toka? Are you okay?” Sei asked me. I was laying on the ground. Or lying on the ground? It wasn’t very comfortable. It smelled, too.

“Oh my head,” I finally ground out.

“Drink this,” said Sei. She put something to my lips and I sipped it, head clearing up. I think I was hallucinating though because I could swear I was glowing for a second there.

“Wow. That is better than Red Bull,” I eventually said, finishing the energy drink. I was clear headed, not jittery, and felt great. I stood up and brushed off my clothes. I looked around at the noise. The red head had an older red head chewing him out with that kind of politeness which indicates anger, the parental kind. I was familiar with it, having done the same with Rikka frequently.

“Did you know you cast a spell on the prince?” asked Sei, also watching the butt-chewing. “Nobody knows that spell. It’s entirely new. How did you learn a spell?”

“I just said it in English. I learned real English during my travels. Everybody speaks English, pretty much everywhere. Except here, apparently,” I amended.

“Toka, spells are in English, for some reason.”

“So if I point to you and say Heal in English you will heal?” I asked, pointing and saying Heal in English. A light glowed on Sei and I felt that weird sensation again. I felt kind of tired now. Weird. Like I wanted to take a nap and recover. Again, I don’t have the plumbing of a male so this was totally alien to me.

“Okay. So that just happened. I wonder if dragon slave works?” I asked out loud. I’d played video games, way back when I was a kid.

“Toka, don’t try that anywhere around here. I think people would be very angry if you blew up the city,” Sei warned me. That… was good advice.  

The older redhead approached. He had guards who meant business. I stood up straight and waited beside Sei.

Hawke bowed: “Your highness.”

“So, a new mage, and a traveler from foreign lands. Who is this man?” asked the king. I think he meant me.

“I am Toka Takanashi. I came looking for my cousin Sei. Our family was worried about her. I seem to have fallen through the same portal that summoned her. Also, I am a woman, your highness.” He looked me up and down in mild surprise.

“You are dressed strangely. Like a servant or peasant,” he responded.

“And you look like a fan of Visual K had a love child in the 1970’s,” I responded evenly. “Shall we discuss my cousin and your kidnapper son?” Sei touched my arm. I looked at her, eyebrow raised. She shook her head and stepped forward.

“Forgive my cousin Toka. She is a merchant and artisan of food preparation. She’s just trying to protect two ladies of our nation brought here without our consent. If your son had been kidnapped by foreign mages, how would you feel?” she asked. He looked grim at that and nodded.

“I shall forgive your tone, merchant,” he finally said. I guess that’s as good as I’ll get. So this was the king? He really was all visual K style but less posing.

“Sei, have you been treated okay?” I asked her. She smiled, and it was genuine.

“I get to make potions from herbs from the gardens around the institute of magic. The people here have been very nice and let me do as I please for the most part. Sometimes they tell me not to make so many potions but then we end up needing them all. I’ve saved lives with my potions. They’re… stronger than everybody else makes them. Not sure why.” Her hand had found the better dressed guy, Hawke. Ah, love.

“So you finally got to play with herbs after all this time?” I asked her. She really did look happy. She wasn’t wearing her glasses and her skin shone with good health. I didn’t look that good. Maybe she’d share some tips. Maybe the air here was better?

“How about the girl, Aira? The student? Is she still okay?” I asked.

“She’s under tutelage of my son to be the Saint,” the king said. I could hear that capital letter.

“A young girl with no contact allowed with her countrywoman? How about girls her age? Isolation is a tool of evil men, your highness.” The prince balked at that, not having considered the ramifications.

“Women need time to socialize with each other. If she is the Saint, as you suggest, won’t that help her grow stronger than merely acts of martial discipline?” I asked. Being older, and having cooked at a military base kitchen in Ethiopia helps me talk like a soldier, at least.

“You may be right about that,” pronounced the King. Aira stepped away from the prince and approached me. We hugged. Sei joined us. Aira started to cry.

“I think we should adjourn somewhere more private, your highness.”

 

+++++++++++

 

I was granted rights to the kitchens both in the palace and at the institute a few miles away. I visited the markets and perused various market stalls, bought meat and vegetables and herbs using the local bronze and silver coins, and prepared a meal for Sei and Aira and a couple of the ladies of the court, one of them the relieved fiancé of the prince, a very nice lady with blonde ringlets and a very poofy dress. She’d attempted to approach Aira and her beau about the seemliness of him spending all his time with an unescorted, unchaperoned young lady, and how many of the court fiancees were furious about the situation.

“I’ve been so busy with potions and then learning that my food heals people too, and then I learned a healing spell and it works really well, I sort of lost track of Aira.” It really wasn’t like her not to care.

“Sei, show me your heal spell, please,” I asked. It was like mine, but there were motes of yellow.

“Aira. You next.” No yellow motes. I showed off mine. No yellow motes. This was both big and obvious.

“Sei, you’re the Saint. Aira, what do you want to do? You don’t have to save the world by yourself anymore, but you’re welcome to help if you want to?” I said finally. Sei looked shocked, Aira looked relieved.

“So what is the Saint supposed to do?” I asked.

“The institute said that there’s some kind of dark contagion, like evil pollution leaking into the land from some bad place. They said they summoned the Saint, like in prior times, to fight off this contagion and purify the land,” Sei said. Aira nodded.

“That’s pretty much what they told me too, though we’ve been focusing on magical combat against the evil monsters. We aren’t sure about how to purify things yet.”

“So maybe a potion?” I suggested.

“Those only really work on people. And each one takes some magic,” Sei said.

“Do you get tired after casting a lot of magic?” I asked her.

“Yes, after a few hours I get tired. Then I have a little food and I can do it some more,” Sei said, like it was no big deal. My eyebrows went up.

“I’m tired from that heal spell. How about you, Aira?” I asked the school girl.

“Only a little. I can cast it a dozen times before I get tired.”

“I healed an entire hospital of wounded men. And regrew Wolf’s arm for him.”

“So that wasn’t a clue you were the Saint?” I asked. She blushed.

“Is there anything which increases your magical power?” I asked her. Sei was silent and blushing.

“Maybe a certain handsome captain of the first guards division? Looks like something from a romance game? Asks you on dates despite a reputation for being cold to everyone else?” I teased her. I’d overheard the gossip in the kitchens. And the markets.

Her incandescent blush surged into a flowing golden wave that spread past us, very refreshing and my mana instantly recovered as did my exhaustion.

“So that’s a yes. The rumors from the local mages is Love is the key to the Saint’s power. May I make a suggestion, cousin?” I teased her.

“What?” she whispered, seriously embarrassed now and still glowing golden like a summers day with magic.

“Spend your wedding night near one of these contagion areas. I suspect you’ll purify it.” She grew brighter if that was possible and I saw some flowers bloom out the open window.

 

And so it was that my cousin was married and did in fact purify the kingdom using ancient fertility rites behind closed doors. She returned from her honeymoon tour pregnant and incredibly happy and nobody died from their escorts, though several of the men were highly embarrassed and asked their sweethearts to marry them afterwards.