“You think Natsuki was wrong?”

    Aquila shook her head. “Natsuki Toshiro is a bona fide genius. If she deduces that something happened a certain way, then it happened that way. The problem is that on a tactical level, it makes no sense.”

    “How do you mean?”

    Aquila stared at the fire. “Why lead with those energy blasts? My counterpart wasn’t facing some overpowered hero from a bad isekai series – they faced a pair of guards and a moderately formidable dating sim protagonist. Those energy blasts involved a serious amount of information stream power. By comparison, my swords – and their muskets and bayonets – use next to nothing, and work against almost everybody. It’s like killing an ant by dropping an anvil on it.”

    Cap shrugged. “Perhaps the killer was trying to terrify, or make an example? That’s what you said you did in your war.”

    Aquila shook her head. “Killing somebody by definition creates terror. You don’t need to obliterate a person with an information stream blast to do it. And aside from which, an example is public. If it had been my war, I would have struck during the ball, where everybody could have seen it.

    “I have a power called the 23rd Stage of Creation. It rewrites the reality of a story world so that some thing or person no longer exists in it. There’s nothing the victim can do to stop it – unless you’re somebody with an information stream attached to them, like me. It’s more powerful than those energy blasts, but not by much. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to use it in my entire life. So why lead with something like that on a helpless guard?”

    “I don’t know,” Cap said, staring at the fire himself. “I saw plenty of unnecessary violence in my war, by people who revelled in the destruction. You’re right that it doesn’t make tactical sense, but people aren’t always rational.”

    “I guess not,” Aquila said. “Still, it doesn’t feel right. There has to be more behind it than viciousness.”

    “Well, hopefully we won’t have to find out,” Cap said. “Wait, do you hear that? No, I guess you wouldn’t – you don’t have super hearing.”

    Aquila glanced at him and then stiffened.

    “What is it?”

    “My counterpart is here,” Aquila said, rising to her feet. “They’re blasting away with information stream energy right now.”

    “So that’s what I was hearing. You can sense it all the way out here?”

    Aquila nodded and walked up to the top of the hill, staring towards the city. A blue light flickered in the distance.

    “That’s them?” Cap asked, coming up beside her.

    Aquila nodded again.

    “And they’re murdering somebody right now,” Cap said, his face twisting into a grimace.

    “Yes,” Aquila replied. “I’m sorry. Why blast away like that? Nobody in this world is powerful enough to require it.”

    “I should be down there stopping them,” Cap muttered.

    “If you did, you would just be leading them to us and throwing away your life,” Aquila stated. The flickering light disappeared. “Besides, there was no way you could have gotten there in time. That fight was over before it began.”

    “You were able to sense that, right?” Cap said. “So can you sense when they enter a world too?”

    “Theoretically yes, but it’s a bad idea,” Aquila replied. “The information stream signature from the arrival of a single person is very faint – I’d have to reach out with my own powers to have any chance of detecting it, and that would lead them straight to me. I’m not even trying to sense information stream energy right now, just in case I accidentally use some of my powers and reveal our position.”

    “We really are in a bad situation, aren’t we?”

    Aquila nodded. “Worse than we’ve ever been. We’d better leave in the early afternoon, just in case my counterpart sticks around for a while. Last thing we need is them detecting my screening worlds right before we jump.”

    “I’ll turn in, then,” Cap said. “Not much else to do now, anyway. You’d better get some sleep too.”

    “I will,” Aquila said as Cap headed towards his tent, knowing in her heart that she wouldn’t.

NEXT: “Encounter”