Out of the kitchen and into the servants’ passages. Rhys wandered back toward Hanako’s bedroom, searching out the most empty section of palace he could pass through on the way there. He found himself in a largely unused section in the middle of the palace where no one had any reason to enter, and extended his trash senses for far enough to be sure he was in the clear. He hunkered down and gazed at the tea, thinking. How did he poison this so that Hanako and her bodyguards wouldn’t detect it?
Poisoning it wasn’t the problem. Hiding it from Hanako and her bodyguards was. If he put impurities into the tea directly, he’d almost certainly get detected. Plus, it was immoral if someone taste-tested it and inadvertently poisoned themselves. He could always stand nearby and hold back the impurities while they taste-tested it, but that was a horrible exit strategy. He wanted to be recognized as the killer eventually, but after he was long away from the scene of the crime and once again wearing another face. Not when he was standing right there, transparently manipulating the poison that killed Hanako. That was some real mouse-movie-villain bullshit, and he liked to think of himself as one step over a mouse-level villain.
Far away… wait, hold on a second. That’s it!
Rhys looked at the tea. The pot was beautiful and delicately painted, and the tea brewing within let off a gentle aroma. The cup matched the pot, and the treats sat atop a gorgeous little dish that was just different enough from the pot and cup to play the perfect third note in their chorus. The treats looked delicious, but he wasn’t about to eat one. What if Hanako wanted a specific number of treats? If she refused to drink the tea because of some petty reason like that, he’d be out a killing.
He rested his hand over the teacup. It was a nice receptacle and sparklingly clean, but at the end of the day, it’d be full of spit and backwash. No one liked drinking backwash. No, in fact, he and most other people would consider backwash nothing but trash! That made this teacup a trash can, and therefore… he pushed the teleportation spell outward, tying it to the rim of the cup. The spell settled, but rather than leaving it as-is, this time, he deactivated the spell. The technique was still there, imbued in the mouth of the cup, but it wasn’t active. Right now, if someone poured something into the cup, it would simply fill the cup.
Activatable teleportation ring! I can be wherever I want and poison anyone who drinks from it with complete impunity! Rhys felt the urge to cackle evilly, but held back. He was in enemy territory right now, after all. He could cackle evilly once he was back in safety.
His plan set, Rhys returned the teacup to the tray, carefully absorbing any hint of filth or trash he might have left on the cup, then set off again. He took the servants’ passages to the exit just outside Hanako’s bedroom, then, pretending he didn’t hear the screaming within, gave a nice crisp knock on the door.
Abruptly, the screaming went silent. Even though he was just playacting as a servant, Rhys still felt chills pass over him. His stomach sunk, and he had to swallow a lump in his throat. I did it deliberately, but it’s still scary! Intentionally stepping on the tail of the tiger, it turned out, didn’t make the tiger’s fangs any less terrifying when they were closing in on your head. Rhys’s instincts screamed at him to flee, but instead, he put on an oblivious smile and waited while one of the servants approached the door.
The door opened just a crack. The servant scowled at him. “You’d better have a good reason for interrupting Mistress Hanako.”
“I brought the tea she asked for,” Rhys said with all the foolish brightness of a new employee on their first day at the job, unaware they’d just put their foot in it and were on the verge of making their first day their last. He’d seen it happen enough times to have the whole act down to a science.
The servant looked over their shoulder. “Tea service?” she asked, in a can you believe this tone.
“Oh, wonderful. My throat was just getting dry.”
Abruptly, the servant’s tone changed. She smiled at Rhys. “Come right in.”
Rhys smiled, while internally he rolled his eyes. Yay for toxic work cultures! We love to see a toxic queen. He’d dodged his personal toxic work culture hell by working remotely, but even then, he’d still been hit by the edges of it. No thank you to any of that. He’d already decided not to work for anyone in this world, but he especially wasn’t going to submit to a toxic work culture when he didn’t need a job to survive.
He followed the elder servant in and placed the service where she’d indicated. Rhys paused. “Should I pour the tea?”
“No need. I can do it myself,” Hanako declared.
Rhys nodded, trying not to beam at her. She was perfect. Her robes were frilly, decked out with ribbons and roses, and in a tasteful paired purple and red that just screamed villainess. Her drilltails were sleek and shiny, and while they were a demure brunette rather than a flashy blonde, they still fit his perfect image of a villainess just fine. Naturally, she wore a bejeweled tiara upon her head for no reason whatsoever. He couldn’t have asked for a better outfit.
The other servant gestured toward the door, and Rhys bowed and quickly retreated. Now his objective was to put as much space between him and the scene of the crime as reasonably possible before he made it the scene of a crime.
Behind him, he heard the sound of tea splashing into a teacup. Rhys pursed his lips. Uh oh. He couldn’t wait; if she was drinking, he had to act. She might only have one sip of tea, after all, and who knew when she’d use this tea set again? If she was a proper villainess, and all signs pointed to yes, then she’d have dozens of tea sets. It could be months, years even! And he only had the scraps of a few days left before he had to ghost Ebi… or show up and admit himself to what was probably a gods-only-knew-how-long distraction. He hated nothing more than the not-long-enough villain, executing things on an arbitrary yet extremely compressed timeline when they had eternity before them, but this time, he really couldn’t wait that long. Something was going to happen, and if it wasn’t at whatever event was on the horizon, it would be during the time he was gone with Ebi, chasing the shadow of a monster that probably didn’t exist.
He beelined for the servants’ passages as tea gurgled into the teacup. As soon as he got there, he could quash his mana signature and run for it. Just a little further!
Porcelain clattered as Hanako set the teapot down. Letting out a little sigh of relief, she lifted the teacup to her lips.
Ah, shit. I’m just going to have to do the best improv of my life. Rhys continued at his rapid-yet-stately clip toward the servants’ passages while simultaneously opening a portal to his core. She tipped the cup back, and Rhys delivered a fierce blast of impurities directly to her mouth along with whatever tea got past his portal.
Hanako gagged. She dropped the teacup and clutched her throat. The teacup shattered, breaking the teleportation hoop and hiding Rhys’s tracks in one fell swoop. Rhys flexed his hand, forcing the impurities through her body, corrupting as much of her as he could. Her servants ran to her, shouting in shock and disbelief. One charged him, and Rhys let the man catch him and slam him against the wall.
“What did you do?” the man snarled, gripping him by the throat.
“I… I delivered… the tea, that…that’s all…” Rhys gasped. He was partially acting, but partially very much not acting; the man was about as strong as him and seriously choking him. Without using his main weapon of impurities to weaken the man, their strength was matched, and he really did struggle to breathe or speak around the man’s grip.
The man snarled and threw him aside. The other servants rushed off, some surrounding Hanako to try and heal her, while others beelined for the kitchen or otherwise ran for help. Rhys waited until the first line of servants had skedaddled, then popped to his feet and mingled with the running crowd. Behind him, Hanako breathed her last, and the mote of fierce mana burst off, flying toward the city.
And that’s what I needed. Rhys opened the portal again, retracting his impurities back through it, and continued to use the confusion to book it. As he ran, he altered his mana signature, filthing it up to make it unreadable. He couldn’t change his body as easily, not without a body of water, but that was more or less fine. In the chaos, no one was looking too hard at anyone’s faces, and in particular, there were only a few people who knew his face or knew to look for him.
Like the proverbial snake, he slipped away into the servants’ passages, then, when he was just far enough that no one was actively scanning him, he hopped into a teleportation hoop and vanished. As he passed through, he deliberately left some impurities in the hoop. Not strong ones, but ones just powerful enough that the hoop would almost immediately degrade to truly destroy the path behind him. Once he was through, he reached back and activated those impurities, and the portal closed.
A flawless exit. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, but they had also gone according to plan. What was the saying? No plan survives first contact with the enemy. He’d contacted the enemy, and he’d adapted, improvised, and overcame. Rhys paused for a moment. I feel like I need to hoo-rah after that. He wasn’t a military guy in the least, aside from admiring a certain steel arpeggio from a distance and with a little bit of a confused squint, but that had definitely been some military propaganda that had somehow infiltrated his subconsciousness anyways.
Man, that was an era, wasn’t it? Ship girls, tank girls, hell, there were probably car girls out there if he went looking hard enough. Hadn’t really been his cup of tea, but they definitely qualified as trash nonetheless. Out of all the eras of manga and anime, it had certainly been one.
He floated in the void for a bit, looking in from outside, then scurried toward his island. There was a little pool on it, and he used it to change his face back to normal, then poked around the hoops he’d dropped until he found one in the capital that was mostly out of the way. At this point, he was a serial litterer, a compulsive trash-dropper; his hands dropped the hoops without him really having to think about it.
Rhys looked at his hands. That’s actually kind of scary. I’m becoming the kind of person who litters without thinking about it? That’s even worse than my usual kind of trash!
Still, it helped him this time, so he decided to let it pass.
Standing in the city, Rhys paused for a moment. He turned, looking at Ryota’s hotel, then shook his head. He didn’t know what he was going to find at the center of the triangle. It was better to leave Ryota out of it until he knew for sure.
I’ll just go take a peek. I can always warp out. Repeating those words in his heart, Rhys turned his feet toward the point he’d divined from the three bolts of fierce mana.